OPINION

How to Mobilize Private Climate Finance

By Mette Frederiksen and Mia Amor Mottley NEW YORK – Around the world, we are witnessing the devastating effects of changing temperatures. Droughts, floods, and sweltering heat are taking lives, eroding hard-earned socioeconomic gains, and leaving countries’ future hanging in the balance. Worse, those who have contributed the least to …

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Helping Women Adapt to Extreme Heat Helps Us All

LONDON/SAN FRANCISCO – Climate shocks – from heat waves to droughts, floods to wildfires – often hit women the hardest. New research published this May in The Lancet found that even in wealthy European countries, women died at nearly twice the rate as men from extreme heat over the last …

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Saving the Planet from Plastics

NEW DELHI – There is no denying that plastics have delivered tremendous benefits over the past century, driving technological innovation, transforming health care, and fueling global economic growth. But as we now know, this progress has come at great cost. The adverse consequences of our overreliance on plastics are well-documented. …

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Monopolies Are to Blame for Generative AI’s Hallucinations

BRUSSELS – In May, Google rolled out a long-expected update that incorporated generative artificial intelligence into its dominant search engine. Users searching for information in the United States are now sometimes shown an AI-generated overview that summarizes the results, followed by the usual list of websites ranked by relevance. Within days, people …

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Why Harris Can Beat Trump

WASHINGTON, DC – Kamala Harris can win the US presidency. Yes, Donald Trump is a formidable candidate, whose campaign was bolstered by his defiant reaction to the July 13 attempt on his life. But Harris has emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee with stunning speed following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal; …

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Harnessing AI for the Common Good

BERKELEY – Much of the media coverage of artificial intelligence has focused on its potential negative impact. Science-fiction scenarios like the human-robot wars of the Terminator franchise and real-world controversies, such as the proliferation of deep fakes and OpenAI’s unauthorized use of Scarlett Johansson’s voice for its new digital assistant, have captured the public imagination, …

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Why Republicans Go Crawling Back to Donald Trump

WASHINGTON, DC – Donald Trump has been convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. But this is unlikely to make much difference to the Republican Party. Not only is he still the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee; Republicans have repeatedly proved perfectly willing to forgive his indiscretions, however serious. …

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Preparing Now for the Next Disease X

NAIROBI/BOSTON/WASHINGTON, DC – On December 12, 2019, a group of patients in Wuhan, China, started showing symptoms of an atypical pneumonia-like illness that did not respond well to standard treatments. Ninety days later, with more than 118,000 cases reported in 114 countries and 4,291 deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 …

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Don’t Believe the AI Hype

BOSTON – According to tech leaders and many pundits and academics, artificial intelligence is poised to transform the world as we know it through unprecedented productivity gains. While some believe that machines soon will do everything humans can do, ushering in a new age of boundless prosperity, other predictions are at least more grounded. …

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The “Billions to Trillions” Charade

NEW DELHI – The international development sector has become fixated on calculating financing gaps. Hardly a day goes by without new estimates of the funds low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) need to meet their climate targets and achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Independent High-Level Expert Group …

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