Wednesday-Night

Munk Debates 2009: Climate change is mankind’s defining crisis, and demands a commensurate response.
December 2009 Munk Debate on Climate Change “Be it resolved: climate change is mankind’s defining crisis, and demands a commensurate response.” George Monbiot and Elizabeth May took the affirmative; Bjørn Lomborg and Lord Nigel Lawson the negative. [Watch the debate]
Lomborg […]

How to Close the Achievement Gap
The world’s best schools offer important lessons about what works.
(Newsweek) All over the world, your chances of success in school and life depend more on your family circumstances than on any other factor. By age three, kids with professional parents are already a full year ahead of their poorer peers. […]

Japan as number three: Watching China whizz by
Japan is now the world’s third-largest economy. Can its firms cope?
(The Economist) FIVE years ago China’s economy was half as big as Japan’s. This year it will probably be bigger (see chart 1). Quarterly figures announced this week showed that China had overtaken its ancient rival. It had […]

Africa, China, the United States, and Oil ; Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Africa Policy Forum
A thoughtful article that goes a long way towards explaining conflict in and between nations - in Africa and many other parts of the world.
The Revenge of Geography : People and ideas influence events, but geography largely determines […]

More on oil and Wednesday-night.com Oil Notes

For several years, Wednesday Nights have witnessed often passionate discussions on the validity of M. King Hubbert’s prediction of the early depletion of (easily accessible - ‘cheap’) fossil fuels. With current rising oil prices, Hubbert’s Peak has become a familiar term far beyond the circles of energy experts. […]

Chatham House Briefing Paper - Cleo Paskal: How climate change is pushing the boundaries of security and foreign policy ; More of Cleo’s publications ; Global Warring website;  International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) Climate Change and Security ; The Regional Impacts of Climate Change ; Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS)
Cleo Paskal’s Global Warring […]

International Year of Biodiversity
Convention on Biological Diversity
IUCN Biodiversity Biodiversity
The State and Trends of Biodiversity Science in Canada
The Minister of Canadian Heritage, on behalf of the Canadian Museum of Nature, asked the Council of Canadian Academies to assess the state and trends of biodiversity science in Canada. The charge to the Expert Panel focuses […]

The evening opened with introductions of new faces, including Marie-Claude Johnson, a partner at M.R.C.N.R. strategic consultants; Susan Sproule, international development consultant, who has recently returned from Guyana where she was managing an educational training project; accountant Dahlia Zubaida and her husband, Philip Lowee of Megahydro, a private renewable energy company; Paul Shrivastava’s daughter, Claudia, […]

Pierre Arbour’s foresight and generosity in creating his eponymous Fondation Universitaire continues to foster bright young students through the Master and Doctoral levels providing them with means for acquiring the education that will enable them to make a contribution to the Quebec economy and their fellow humans not only in their chosen fields but to […]

By WILLIAM DALRYMPLE *
(NYT Op-Ed) THE name Gandamak means little in the West today. Yet this small Afghan village was once famous for the catastrophe that took place there during the First Anglo-Afghan War in January 1842, arguably the greatest humiliation ever suffered by a Western army in the East.
The course of […]