World
G-8 disappoints Syrian rebels, makes progress on corporate tax evasion
Leaders of the G-8 agree on a plan to clamp down on money launderers, illegal tax evaders and corporate tax avoiders, while pushing for immediate peace talks on Syria.
Environment | OUR PLANET EARTH Apr 25, 2010
Will arrogance and ignorance doom our biosphere?
by Stephen Hesse
This year, 2010, is the United Nations’ International Year of Biodiversity — which is a very good thing. But why this critically important global concern gets just one year is seriously worth debating. For now, however, the easier story for the media is that ...
Environment | OUR PLANET EARTH Mar 28, 2010
Sea change: Can science, sense turn the tide?
by Stephen Hesse
In “The Tempest,” William Shakespeare writes of a human body deep beneath the waves undergoing “a sea-change into something rich and strange,” transmuting into coral and pearls. The Bard’s coinage has come to mean a profound or notable transformation of any sort (now rendered ...
Environment | OUR PLANET EARTH Feb 28, 2010
Is the Atsugi tragedy finally drawing to a close?
by Stephen Hesse
During the 18 years I have been writing this column, few stories have haunted me as much as that about the Japanese-owned incinerator that, for more than a decade, fumigated the U.S. Naval Air Facility at Atsugi in the Kanagawa Prefecture cities of Yamato ...
Environment | OUR PLANET EARTH Jan 24, 2010
Saving the planet through its trees
by Stephen Hesse
Negotiators at the COP15 conference in Copenhagen didn’t see eye to eye on much last month, but almost everyone agreed on one thing: To protect the planet we need to save its forests. From Denmark to Japan, where The Japan Times’ Nature page columnist ...
Environment | OUR PLANET EARTH Dec 27, 2009
COP15 farce: There's always more time, till there isn't
by Stephen Hesse
Post-conference analysis of the Copenhagen COP15 has ranged from despair and disgust to guarded optimism that 2010 will bring a new and better agreement. The truth is, Copenhagen was a circus of geopolitical bickering among self- absorbed leaders representing powerful and powerless nations, of ...
Environment | OUR PLANET EARTH Nov 22, 2009
Beyond Copenhagen there's more than just cutting CO2
by Stephen Hesse
Imagine for a minute that global warming is not changing our planet’s biosphere and the ecosystems that sustain life on Earth. Imagine that climate change abetted by rising human-generated emissions of greenhouse gases does not threaten freshwater supplies, agriculture, marine ecosystems, human health, coastal ...
Environment | OUR PLANET EARTH Oct 25, 2009
Of simmering frogs and economists leaping to terminal conclusions
by Stephen Hesse
They say that if a frog is dropped into boiling water it will jump out, but if it is placed in water that is then heated slowly it will steadily acclimate and boil to death — having missed its chance to escape. I have ...
Environment | OUR PLANET EARTH Sep 27, 2009
Captains of industry must stop playing the blame game — now
by Stephen Hesse
While visiting India earlier this month I had a revelation. It wasn’t a burst of enlightenment of the spiritual sort, though India offers those, too. It was a realization about corporate social responsibility that came with the lifting of a misapprehension I have toiled ...
Environment | OUR PLANET EARTH Aug 23, 2009
Imagine a time with no fish in the sea
by Stephen Hesse
BAR HARBOR MAINE — Each summer, our family visits this part of the New England coast, and each year I am reminded of the elemental connections humans share with the oceans. This summer, though, brought a deeper awareness of the dramatic changes humans are ...
Environment | OUR PLANET EARTH Jul 26, 2009
'Groundhog Day' man realizes why solar fans love running backward
by Stephen Hesse
Events this month have brought home to me once again the enduring truth of that popular slogan, “Think globally, act locally.” While watching G8 and G-5 delegates posturing and finger-pointing at the recent summit in Rome, two acquaintances reminded me that real change often ...
Environment | OUR PLANET EARTH Jun 28, 2009
Priorities and politics 'must change fast' to head off global calamity
by Stephen Hesse
The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer declared: “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.” Reading the most recent book by James Gustave Speth, Dean of the Yale University School of ...
Environment | OUR PLANET EARTH May 24, 2009
Students share hopes for nation's future environment
by Stephen Hesse
Each year on May 5, Japan celebrates Children’s Day with waves of young families flooding local parks, playgrounds and amusement centers. If the swelling crowds and cacophony of cheerful voices are any indication, all is well in Japan. But the numbers tell a different ...