Obsessing over strategic geography has a rather… twentieth century feel to it. Few now worry about the control of the Suez Canal, or the rights of warships to traverse the Bosphorus; far-flung scraps of land once valued as coaling stations and choke points are now important chiefly as tax havens and political distractions, and the [...]

China’s top climate change negotiator wants the Chinese export sector to be excluded from their targets, and “consumers to pay” instead. This is not good news.
For a start, the tactics. It means accepting the principle of letting some special interests off. We know, after all, that there will be the mother of all lobbying wars [...]

Various commenters suggested that the 3% cut in EU CO2 emissions was essentially down to the recession. Here’s a chart from the report I linked to, which gives a rather different analysis. I don’t have the underlying figures, so there are limits to how far I can critically engage. But the take-out is that fuel-shifting [...]

Perhaps no surprise with the doomflow of neganews slinking catlike through your windows, but it looks like the EU cut its emissions of carbon dioxide by 3% last year. Worldchanging quotes an analyst report that reckons this is attributable to the European emissions trading system. I’m not so sure; what about all the cliff-diving?
However, [...]

In a joint letter, Martin Říman, the Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, and Andris Piebalgs, European Commissioner for Energy, have warned Moscow and Kyiv that the credibility of Ukraine and Russia as reliable partners would be irrevocably damaged should gas supply to European consumers not be immediately resumed.
I am sure that [...]

Do you all think I should tell David about this?

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In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through “methane [...]

Stupider than you can imagine. Evidence, the map over at this fine post from Sadly, No!. Read the whole thing, but as well as introducing the best title for a blog post ever, they’ve caught “Gates Of Vienna” pretending that in the future, Europe will be divided into Islamic states (with incredibly silly names), Russian [...]

The American continent is about to get its first high-speed train. Where?
Argentina.
Argentina on Tuesday signed a contract with a consortium led by Alstom of France to build the first high-speed train in the Americas, linking Buenos Aires with the cities of Rosario and Córdoba in three hours, nearly a fifth of the current journey time.
Patrick [...]

The Georgians may have lost two more UAVs in the escalating crisis between them, Abkhazia, and Russia (in so far as the latter two are distinct). At least, the Abkhaz side is claiming that their “anti-aircraft forces” shot down two drones, presumably Georgian ones; the Georgians deny it, which is interesting because they were keen [...]

It looks like Nicolas Sarkozy’s pet foreign-policy idea has been sporked, good and proper; his idea of a “Mediterranean Union” is now officially an ex-parrot, after it failed to get German support. As we’ve been saying right back to 2005, the key fact of European politics at the moment is that Angela Merkel has achieved [...]