Recent Issues

Global Economy
Can Globalization 'Go Social'?

• In a world continuing to harden socially because of rapid and unsettling modernizations, could prevailing thinking about globalization shift toward the social?

Civil Society
Big Democracies at the Crossroads

• In a balloting year filled with surprises from India and Venezuela, and with Americans battered by the Bush-Kerry race, what do Russia and Indonesia tell us about the future character of democracy as a globally expanding project?

War and weather:
An Unlikely Cause and Effect

Each time a George Bush Sr. or Jr. goes to war in the oil-rich Middle East, massive severe-weather events strike the United States one year later. While it may seem implausible to connect an army with the atmosphere, the intensity of war and weather—measured in combat deaths, atmospheric carbon dioxide, and number of hurricane disasters—only increases from one Bush administration to the next.

FIRST WAR... Bush Sr. 1991 • Gulf War • 293 US combat deaths Bush Jr. 2003 • Iraq War • 1,106 US combat deaths

...THEN DISASTER 1992 • Andrew • 356 parts per million CO2 2004 • Charley • Frances • Jeanne • Ivan • 379 parts per million CO2