Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Susan Gourvenec, Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies – Intelligent & Resilient Ocean Engineering, University of Southampton

The ocean has long been treated as boundless – a frontier for extraction and a sink for waste. This perception has driven decades of exploitation and neglect, pushing marine systems toward irreversible decline. Yet with urgent, collective action, recovery remains within reach, offering renewed global benefits for people, nature and economies.

The world is at a fork in the road regarding the environmental and economic health of our ocean, and the welfare of those who depend on it. Decisions made now will determine whether we perpetuate an unsustainable “grey” ocean economy (one that is dominated by unsustainable and unjust practices) or take a path to a regenerative and just “blue” economy that supports equitable outcomes for communities, ecosystems and economic systems.

Our team’s recent study captures a snapshot of the current ocean economy, forecasts to the mid-century, and outlines different ways forward.

If the world carries on the “business as usual” path, the ocean economy will remain dominated by fossil fuel extraction, overfishing, unsustainable aquaculture and polluting shipping. Ocean health will be further burdened by the influx of land-based waste.

This raises the risk of environmental collapse and deepens global inequality by disproportionately affecting people who are least responsible for those damaging activities. This destabilises the ocean economy.

Even a probable path shaped by optimistic changes won’t meet mid-century decarbonisation and sustainability targets, and will exacerbate global inequalities. Fossil fuels are still expected to supply over 70% of offshore energy by 2050, while offshore wind growth remains too slow to meet climate targets.

Seafood production will rise through aquaculture as climate change, overfishing and illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing reduce potential for wild catch, with forecasted harvests still exceeding sustainable limits. And shipping emissions remain a major challenge, as International Maritime Organization’s targets face delays due to slow technological progress and adoption.

From grey to blue

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Growing pressure from civil society, non-governmental organisations and grassroot campaigners is prompting corporations, private sector coalitions, financiers and governments to make the bold shifts needed for a blue economy.

Future ocean strategies must address the inequities at the heart of unsustainable ocean-based sectors that create a persistent tension between environmental protection and rising global demands.

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Read more:
The world has finally noticed that the ocean is a finite resource

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The blue economy offers a path forward. Responsible ocean stewardship can drive prosperity, reduce inequality and safeguard ecosystems. Evidence shows that investing in offshore wind, sustainable seafood, cleaner shipping, and mangrove restoration could yield benefits over five times the cost by 2050. Transformative action can break from a legacy of extractivism and shift the grey ocean economy toward a blue economy that benefits all.

Moving towards a blue economy now will be easier, cheaper and fairer than dealing with the consequences later. This involves five key steps: reduce fossil fuels, increase renewables, improve the sustainability of fishing and shipping, plus cut polluting waste from land-based agriculture and coastal cities – which must be planned and implemented inclusively and equitably.

Five key steps

Glimmers of blue already exist in the ocean economy around the globe.

Countries such as Denmark, France, Ireland and Costa Rica have banned fossil fuel exploration and production. This proves that with strong political will, nationwide transformation is possible.

While New Zealand was one of the first to go down this path, the current government recently reversed the ban – demonstrating that without additional legally binding requirements or collective responsibility, governments can always backtrack.

Denmark, once the EU’s largest oil producer, is now the country with the largest proportion of electricity produced from wind power, with nearly half of that capacity offshore. A transformation that took less than two decades.

International policy to eliminate government subsidies that support environmentally destructive fishing practices can drive global action. Communities can also drive initiatives for sustainable food production. For example, hundreds of fishers in Mauritius, are diversifying and growing seaweed as a nutrient-rich food source and sustainably sourced fertiliser.

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Read more:
Mauritius needs stewardship, not leadership, to keep global respect

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Shipping innovations include internationally coordinated green corridors. At a local level, harnessing a natural sandbar at Lekki, Nigeria protects port infrastructure and enhances coastal ecosystems without needing to manufacture a harbour wall made from concrete or steel.

Countries including Pakistan and Madagascar have restored mangroves to reduce flood risk and support sustainable fishing while benefiting biodiversity and storing carbon.

Some UN initiatives are tackling ocean pollution from land-based activities such as litter, including plastic pollution, run-off from fertilisers and sewage. For example, farmers in countries including Ecuador, India, Kenya and Vietnam are switching to less polluting fertilisers and reducing agricultural plastic waste. This has prevented over 51,000 tonnes of hazardous pesticides and 20,000 tonnes of plastic waste from being released into the ocean.

Intentional change in policies, laws, and institutions that manage human activities affecting marine environments can curb corporate control and promote equity in ocean governance – helping shape a blue economy. This can include recognising the ocean as a living entity with its own rights, planning ocean use with fairness in mind, and sharing knowledge and money to support nature-based solutions.

Charting a path to a blue economy is essential to prevent severe climate disruption and irreversible harm to marine ecosystems and society. The health of our ocean – and our planet – hinges on the strategies we adopt and the decisions we make now.

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Part of the research contributing to this article was funded by the UK Government Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre to support the Global Strategic Trends Programme https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/global-strategic-trends-out-to-2055. Susan Gourvenec is supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering through the Chairs in Emerging Technologies scheme.

Wassim Dbouk is affiliated with the Green Party

– ref. Five ways to make the ocean economy more sustainable and just – https://theconversation.com/five-ways-to-make-the-ocean-economy-more-sustainable-and-just-268803

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matilda Brindle, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Oxford

If I asked you to imagine your dream snog, chances are it wouldn’t be with a
Neanderthal; burly and hirsute as they may be. However, my team’s new research
suggests that these squat beefcakes might have been right up your ancestors’
street.

In our new paper, colleagues and I investigated kissing in monkeys and apes, including modern humans and Neanderthals, to reconstruct its evolutionary history for the first time.

Before we could do this, we needed to construct a definition of kissing that was
applicable across a wide variety of animals. This sounds simple, but lots of
behaviour looks like kissing at first glance.

Many primates pre-chew food for their offspring and feed this to them orally (a
behaviour known as premastication). Ants also exchange fluid and food mouth-to-mouth in a process known as trophallaxis. Sometimes they do this mouth-to-anus too, but that is harder to mistake for a kiss. Tropical French grunt fish can also be seen passionately locking lips. However, this behaviour is no French kiss. It is part of a dominance display known as “kiss-fighting”.

We excluded kissing-like behaviour from our definition. We also excluded interactions that might be accidental or occur between members of different species, such as when dogs lick their owners’ mouths (or the time a capuchin monkey tried to snog me, but that’s a different story).

Taking all this into account, we define kissing as non-aggressive, directed, mouth-to-mouth contact between members of the same species, that doesn’t involve food
transfer. By this definition, all sorts of animals kiss, from polar bears enjoying spirited rounds of tonsil-tennis, to prairie dogs softly canoodling.

We used this definition to trawl published scientific papers, searching for observations of kissing in the group of monkeys and apes that evolved in Africa, Asia and Europe. It turns out that a handful of monkeys, and most apes, have been observed to kiss, with the exception of Eastern gorillas and the small apes (gibbons and siamangs).

The type of kiss can vary, both within and between species. Kissing between bonobos tends to be an exclusively sensual affair with “prolonged tongue-tongue interaction”. Other apes have a spicy side too, sometimes kissing as foreplay, or during sex.

Kissing also occurs in affectionate, platonic contexts across most apes, such as when mothers kiss their infants, or during greetings and reconciliation.

We combined this data with information on the evolutionary relationships between different species, in what is known as a phylogenetic comparative analysis. This technique allowed us to model the evolutionary history of kissing, and explore whether it was likely to have been present in the ancestors of different groups of species.

Our results paint early apes in an amorous light, showing that the ancestors of large apes were kissing each other as far back as 21.5 – 16.9 million years ago. Clearly, they were onto a good thing because they’ve been at it ever since, apart from Eastern gorillas, who just don’t seem to be into it.

Our reconstructions also shed light on the proclivities of Neanderthals who, it turns out, were also likely to be partial to a good smooch. Previous research shows that modern humans and Neanderthals shared an oral microbe long after the two species diverged into separate lineages. For this to happen, the microbes had to have been transferred between the two species. In other words, they were swapping saliva.

There could, of course, be an innocent explanation for this. Perhaps the two species were simply sharing food with one another over a friendly campfire. On the
other hand, when you consider that most people of non-African descent have some
Neanderthal ancestry, alongside our finding that kissing was present in Neanderthals, a saucier picture emerges.

So, did humans and Neanderthals get off with each other? Unfortunately, kissing
doesn’t preserve in the fossil record, so we’ll never be able to say for sure, but the evidence certainly points in that direction. One thing I can say for certain is that I’ll never look at a Neanderthal the same way again.

Matilda Brindle has previously received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council and the Leakey Foundation

– ref. When did kissing evolve and did humans and Neanderthals get off with each other? New research – https://theconversation.com/when-did-kissing-evolve-and-did-humans-and-neanderthals-get-off-with-each-other-new-research-269210

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Julian Woolford, Head of Musical Theatre, GSA, University of Surrey

The Wicked Witch of the West is back in part two of the film adaptation, of Wicked. Part one recounted the musical’s first half and with an interval of a year, audiences can now find out what happened to Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) after she learned to fly and set off on a mission to save the animals of Oz from the Wizard’s (Jeff Goldblum) vilification

The Legally Blonde light-heartedness of Shiz University is in the past and the second part, Wicked: For Good, has moved into more sinister political territory. This story emphasises the Wizard’s oppression of the animals as he makes them second-class citizens. It also charts the slow rise of fascism in Oz.

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Read more:
Wicked review: a stunning film adaptation that avoids all the usual pitfalls of moving musicals from the stage to the screen

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Elphaba is now mounting a one-woman rebellion against the Wizard and, slowly, raises the consciousness of her frenemy Glinda and Fiyero, Captain of the Guard and Glinda’s betrothed.

Ariana Grande’s Glinda has a considerably clearer arc in this movie than onstage. The live musical focuses on Elphaba’s journey and Glinda makes abrupt hand-break turns of realisation. In the film, however, Grande captures her slow disillusionment with the politics of Oz while growing to understand that she still benefits from it.

Grande’s performance is helped by The Girl in the Bubble, one of the two new songs added to the stage score. In this song Glinda chooses her side in the conflict. Grande’s revelatory performance proves her as an actress of considerable depth and remarkable subtlety.

The other new song, There’s No Place Like Home is Elphaba’s rallying call to the animals to stay and fight for Oz. It has less dramatic impetus but emphasises her reasons for fighting the Wizard when all of Oz is bowing to his will. It could be read as an anthem for refugees and the dispossessed everywhere.

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Read more:
Wicked’s Defying Gravity is a musical theatre anthem – and a battle cry for outsiders

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Erivo, a queer black woman, delivers a powerhouse performance. Director John Chu’s expert use of close-ups allows the actors to convey the delicacy of emotional shifts in a manner that is impossible onstage, and Erivo can break your heart with a single glance.

Unusually for a movie adaptation, the two-part story of Wicked features the complete score of the stage musical. There are changes, like the opening number Thank Goodness and The March of the Witch Hunters, which are both considerably expanded.

They have decided to keep the one number that sits uncomfortably in the stage show, the upbeat Wonderful. In this song the Wizard attempts to woo Elphaba to join him in power. Chu has added Glinda to this number to emphasise Elphaba’s ambivalence, but the light-hearted nature of moment is awkward, especially considering the more serious tone of the movie.

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Read more:
Wicked’s depiction of disability is refreshing – thanks to authentic casting and an accessible set

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Wonderful’s tonal shift also presents certain characters in different lights. Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard is more obviously self-serving than in part one and Michelle Yeoh’s Madame Morrible, now promoted to the Wizard’s right-hand woman is seen as clearly clinging to power. Also, Elphaba’s wheelchair-bound sister Nessarose and the Munchkin, Boq, start to feature more as their part in Dorothy’s tale are revealed.

The engagement with the wider world of The Wizard of Oz is vital to this movie. Part one is concerned with Elphaba and Glinda’s early relationship and establishes the socio-political background, a story that the writer Gregory Maguire entirely imagined in his book, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995) – the original source of the musical. In this film, however, the events of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wizard of Oz (and the subsequent movie) are vital.

However, Maguire smartly keeps Dorothy Gale mostly in the background and the film follows suit. She never speaks, her face is never seen, and no actress is credited in the role.

At some point, there is clearly going to be a fan edit that splices the 1939 The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland with both Wicked movies to create a complete journey for both Elphaba and Dorothy. But it is testament to the Wicked creators that, to my eyes, there appear to be no moments where these tales contradict each other, save for the Wicked Witch of the East’s magic slippers.

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Read more:
Wizard of Oz: why this extraordinary movie has been so influential

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In Baum’s original novel the slippers are silver but were changed to ruby by MGM to showcase their new Technicolor process (along with the Wicked Witch’s skin becoming green). But the studio declined to give the Wicked creators the copyright to the change, and so, in both stage musical and movie the slippers remain silver.

Chu and his design team cleverly, and sometimes subtly, reference The Wizard of Oz: Fiyero’s horse is blue, the train changes colour depending on who is travelling and Nessarose’s silver slippers glow ruby as Elphaba enchants her from her wheelchair. While the designs of both the Scarecrow and Tinman echo the 1939 movie, the only major departure is the Cowardly Lion, here rendered in CGI as a realistic anthropomorphic feline, rather than the vaudevillian in a furry suit of Bert Lahr’s performance.

Obviously Wicked and Wicked: For Good should really be considered a single movie, a remarkably successful screen adaptation that manages to respect all the underlying source material to create a truly epic movie musical. I wish I could take Baum to witness the entire five hours.

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Julian Woolford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Wicked: For Good – the second part of this reimagining of Oz takes a much darker political turn – https://theconversation.com/wicked-for-good-the-second-part-of-this-reimagining-of-oz-takes-a-much-darker-political-turn-269971

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tahani Mustafa, Lecturer in International Relations, King’s College London

Over the years, a charge that has repeatedly been levelled at the state of Israel is that is operates an “apartheid state”. And it’s easy to see why Israel’s opponents return to this argument.

The country’s regime of institutionalised separation and discrimination in occupied Palestine appears to meet the definition of apartheid under international law as set out by the United Nations in 1976. The international convention on the suppression and punishment of the crime of apartheid defines the system as “similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa”.

This, it says, amounts to “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them”.

But having spent years as an analyst of Palestinian security and governance, I believe that labelling Israel as an apartheid state is misleading, precisely because of the considerable differences between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa. It does not speak to the lived experience of many of the Palestinians under Israel’s occupation, and its use risks marginalising them in their struggle for their national and human rights.

Language matters. Ultimately the term apartheid obscures as much as it reveals. It diverts attention from the ongoing and seemingly intractable conflict. It ignores Israel’s justifiable need to ensure security for its people. It also does nothing to further the cause of Palestinian self-determination.

Instead it focuses on largely inconsequential arguments about the extent to which Israel does or does not resemble the former South African regime.

There are clearly parallels to be drawn between Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and the conditions listed above that define apartheid. No Palestinian – anywhere in Israel or occupied Palestine – is equal to an Israeli under the law.

Further, while any Jewish person anywhere in the world can become a citizen of Israel, no Palestinian has the right of return to their homeland. No Palestinian can return to their family’s home in Israel itself, while Palestinians in the diaspora have to get the approval of the Israeli authorities to return to occupied Palestine, an almost impossible task.

Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem face sweeping restrictions on their movements. Large numbers face the confiscation of their land and harsh and discriminatory treatment that has forced people from their homes in what amounts to forcible population transfer. Many cannot live where they want and do not have even the most basic civil rights.

Those living in Gaza have, in effect, been confined to a large prison camp which – even before the current conflict began in October 2023 – has restricted imports of food and goods for decades and subjected inhabitants to regular destructive and lethal assaults.

But the problem with naming Israel as an apartheid state is that the term has become more than a strictly legal description of the situation. And it ignores the fact that the two situations operate under completely different logic.

In South Africa, white people wanted black people for labour. Most Israelis appear to want Palestinians out. A poll taken in May 2025 found overwhelming support among Israelis for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and majority support for the expulsion of Israeli Arabs.

Many Palestinian citizens of Israel have latched on to the term apartheid because it describes their reality as second-class citizens in an ethno-national Jewish state. And many in the Palestinian diaspora have embraced the term because of their lived experience, deprived of their original nationality and unable to return to their family’s homes while any Jewish person can return and claim a citizenship they are denied.

National self-determination

Palestinians who use the term apartheid state often also embrace the solution inherent in the term. The aim is to end the apartheid conditions and live alongside Jews in a single democratic state as equals. This would transform Palestinians’ long struggle for self-determination into something more akin to a civil rights movement.

But not all Palestinians view the term in this way or embrace the one-state solution. This is where calling Israel an apartheid state becomes most problematic. While many of the Palestinians who live in occupied Palestine recognise the legal validity of the term, not all feel that it adequately captures their reality.

Some therefore prefer the term “settler colonialism”. It feels to them like a more appropriate concept in terms of the solutions it suggests. They believe a just two-state solution would allow them to keep their land while reclaiming their rights in that land and even potentially regaining land that has been lost.

Many in occupied Palestine do not want to compromise on their national rights to self-determination. They want separation from Israelis as much as Israelis want it from them.

But in general, Palestinians are realistic about the limitations of both one-state and two-state solutions They could easily be marginalised by either solution. In the former, they risk becoming de facto second-class citizens in a state dominated by Jewish Israelis. In the latter there is the very real prospect that they will end up living in a series of isolated enclaves akin to native reservations, enjoying only the most attenuated sovereignty.

However, many realise they have to compromise. In any one-state solution, they will have to compromise on their national rights, while under a two-state solution they will have to compromise on territory, settling for a state that constitutes 22% or less of the territory of historic Palestine. This willingness to compromise is rooted in realism born out of despair not hope.

The Palestinian national movement is arguably weaker than it has ever been. It is fragmenting along geographic and partisan lines. Palestinians in the diaspora, those who have Israeli citizenship and those in the West Bank and Gaza can hold very different views and there are significant divisions even within those four broad groupings. These divides have become ever more intractable over the past two years of conflict in Gaza.

So, painting Israel as an apartheid state is unrealistic when it comes to the situation faced by Palestinians. It’s a concept that achieves little in terms of a future strategy and, at the same time, undermines Palestinian unity.

Tahani Mustafa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Calling Israel an ‘apartheid state’ doesn’t help anyone – https://theconversation.com/calling-israel-an-apartheid-state-doesnt-help-anyone-268949

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Vincent Charles, Reader in AI for Business and Management Science, Queen’s University Belfast

On a sunny morning on October 19 2025, four men allegedly walked into the world’s most-visited museum and left, minutes later, with crown jewels worth €88 million (£76 million). The theft from Paris’s Louvre Museum – one of the world’s most surveilled cultural institutions – took just under eight minutes.

Visitors kept browsing. Security didn’t react (until alarms were triggered). The men disappeared into the city’s traffic before anyone realised what had happened.

Investigators later revealed that the thieves wore hi-vis vests, disguising themselves as construction workers. They arrived with a furniture lift, a common sight in Paris’s narrow streets, and used it to reach a balcony overlooking the Seine. Dressed as workers, they looked as if they belonged.

This strategy worked because we don’t see the world objectively. We see it through categories – through what we expect to see. The thieves understood the social categories that we perceive as “normal” and exploited them to avoid suspicion. Many artificial intelligence (AI) systems work in the same way and are vulnerable to the same kinds of mistakes as a result.

The sociologist Erving Goffman would describe what happened at the Louvre using his concept of the presentation of self: people “perform” social roles by adopting the cues others expect. Here, the performance of normality became the perfect camouflage.

The sociology of sight

Humans carry out mental categorisation all the time to make sense of people and places. When something fits the category of “ordinary”, it slips from notice.

AI systems used for tasks such as facial recognition and detecting suspicious activity in a public area operate in a similar way. For humans, categorisation is cultural. For AI, it is mathematical.

But both systems rely on learned patterns rather than objective reality. Because AI learns from data about who looks “normal” and who looks “suspicious”, it absorbs the categories embedded in its training data. And this makes it susceptible to bias.

The Louvre robbers weren’t seen as dangerous because they fit a trusted category. In AI, the same process can have the opposite effect: people who don’t fit the statistical norm become more visible and over-scrutinised.

It can mean a facial recognition system disproportionately flags certain racial or gendered groups as potential threats while letting others pass unnoticed.

A sociological lens helps us see that these aren’t separate issues. AI doesn’t invent its categories; it learns ours. When a computer vision system is trained on security footage where “normal” is defined by particular bodies, clothing or behaviour, it reproduces those assumptions.

Just as the museum’s guards looked past the thieves because they appeared to belong, AI can look past certain patterns while overreacting to others.

Categorisation, whether human or algorithmic, is a double-edged sword. It helps us process information quickly, but it also encodes our cultural assumptions. Both people and machines rely on pattern recognition, which is an efficient but imperfect strategy.

A sociological view of AI treats algorithms as mirrors: they reflect back our social categories and hierarchies. In the Louvre case, the mirror is turned toward us. The robbers succeeded not because they were invisible, but because they were seen through the lens of normality. In AI terms, they passed the classification test.

From museum halls to machine learning

This link between perception and categorisation reveals something important about our increasingly algorithmic world. Whether it’s a guard deciding who looks suspicious or an AI deciding who looks like a “shoplifter”, the underlying process is the same: assigning people to categories based on cues that feel objective but are culturally learned.

When an AI system is described as “biased”, this often means that it reflects those social categories too faithfully. The Louvre heist reminds us that these categories don’t just shape our attitudes, they shape what gets noticed at all.

After the theft, France’s culture minister promised new cameras and tighter security. But no matter how advanced those systems become, they will still rely on categorisation. Someone, or something, must decide what counts as “suspicious behaviour”. If that decision rests on assumptions, the same blind spots will persist.

The Louvre robbery will be remembered as one of Europe’s most spectacular museum thefts. The thieves succeeded because they mastered the sociology of appearance: they understood the categories of normality and used them as tools.

And in doing so, they showed how both people and machines can mistake conformity for safety. Their success in broad daylight wasn’t only a triumph of planning. It was a triumph of categorical thinking, the same logic that underlies both human perception and artificial intelligence.

The lesson is clear: before we teach machines to see better, we must first learn to question how we see.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How the Louvre thieves exploited human psychology to avoid suspicion – and what it reveals about AI – https://theconversation.com/how-the-louvre-thieves-exploited-human-psychology-to-avoid-suspicion-and-what-it-reveals-about-ai-269842

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Piers Forster, Professor of Physical Climate Change; Director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate, University of Leeds

Despite rapid progress in clean energy and electric vehicles, the world is still warming faster than ever. The good news is that we already have powerful ways to reduce the warming rate – if governments look beyond carbon dioxide and focus on a broader set of pollutants.

We are writing this from the UN’s Cop30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, where much of the attention is rightly on the carbon dioxide cuts that we need to avoid long-term warming. But we could make faster progress by also tackling a different set of pollutants that heat the planet intensely – but fade rapidly. Cutting emissions of these means cutting the warming quickly.

So-called “short-lived climate pollutants”, or SLCPs, are emitted in various ways and many of them have the same sources as CO₂. The common ground is that they typically don’t stay in the atmosphere for very long – from a few days to a few decades, compared to centuries for carbon dioxide.

If carbon dioxide is the marathon runner of global warming, SLCPs are the sprinters, with a fast and powerful impact on global temperatures. Because cutting their emissions quickly reduces how much of them is in the atmosphere, they offer a real and rapid way to slow warming.

Methane, emitted from leaky gas pipes, belching cows, and rotting organic matter (think municipal solid waste) among other sources, is one of the most prevalent and powerful SLCPs. It only lasts in the atmosphere for about 12 years, but traps heat 80 times more effectively than carbon dioxide in that time. It’s easy to see how methane has accounted for around a third of global warming since the industrial revolution.

Atmospheric methane reached record levels last year, with an increase of over 3% since just 2019. Aggressive cuts could make a big contribution to slowing warming before mid-century – a timeline that really matters for the countries most affected by escalating climate change.

Other potentially game-changing SLCPs include tropospheric ozone, formed when sunlight reacts primarily with methane and nitrogen oxides. Ground level ozone is also a pollutant that damages human health as well as crops and ecosystems. Hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, used in air conditioning and refrigeration, are also incredibly powerful greenhouse gases.

Nitrogen oxides themselves, along with ammonia, volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide, add to this mix, creating a cocktail of gases and other pollutants that aren’t carbon dioxide but are still able to change the climate. Cutting these pollutants helps human health, the climate and ecosystems.

But there is a flip side. One type of SLCPs (tiny airborne particles known as aerosols, emitted by burning fossil fuels and biomass among other sources) can temporarily cool the planet while they remain in the air. Whiter particles reflect sunlight back into space, while darker particles absorb it and warm the atmosphere. Aerosols also affect clouds, winds, and the strength of the monsoon.

This doesn’t mean we should delay reducing aerosols – keeping health-damaging pollutants in the air is hardly a climate strategy to be proud of – but it does mean that we need to accelerate action on other ways to stop the warming fast.

Fast moves

Many policies and technologies that target carbon dioxide can also reduce SLCPs. Shifting to renewable energy or electric vehicles also cuts methane, nitrogen oxides and aerosol emissions. Plans and policies focused on tackling short-lived pollutants, such as capturing methane emitted from landfill sites, disused coal mines, or stopping gas network leaks, also present quick and cost-effective wins.

Governments already know this. The Global Methane Pledge, launched at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, highlights that cutting methane is our single most effective strategy for keeping 1.5˚C within reach.

But a rapid acceleration is needed to meet its goal of reducing emissions by 30% by 2030, and at the moment too many countries, including key emitters who have signed the pledge (the EU and US) are not taking it seriously enough. Other major emitters like China and India haven’t signed up to the pledge, though backsliding from the west means that they have a chance to take the lead.

Other short-term pollutants may prove trickier. For example, HFCs are targeted by the 2016 Kigali amendment to the ozone layer-protecting Montreal Protocol.

This aims to phase them down by over 80% by 2050, but barriers to action include the costs of alternative technologies for developing countries and a black-market trade in HFCs. Global cooperation is needed to find solutions to these and other challenges.

What can Cop30 do?

SLCPs are clearly being discussed at Cop30, with influential non-state organisations like the Global Methane Hub, Clean Air Fund and Climate and Clean Air Coalition raising these issues. New initiatives like the Super Pollutant Country Action Accelerator, directly support developing countries in reducing methane and other non-carbon dioxide emissions.

But such ambitious action also needs to be taken at the highest level, by the governments negotiating the climate summit’s core outcomes, if we are to make use of this “emergency brake” on global warming.

The IPCC is set to publish a report on short-lived pollutants in 2027. This will not only raise the issue up the agenda but also provide governments with a sound basis on which to build policies and plans that tackle climate change and air pollution simultaneously.

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Piers Forster receives funding from UK and EU funding councils and he sits on the UK Climate Change Committee

Jessica Seddon is a co-chair of the Global Air Quality Forecasting and Information Services initiative of the WMO Global Atmosphere Watch. She is on the board of Radiant Earth and is a consultant/advisor to the Clean Air Fund.

– ref. The fast-fix for global warming that the UN climate summit can’t ignore – https://theconversation.com/the-fast-fix-for-global-warming-that-the-un-climate-summit-cant-ignore-269764

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Dryden, PhD Candidate in Economics, SOAS, University of London

The global investment frenzy around AI has seen companies valued at trillions of dollars and eye-watering projections of how it will boost economic productivity.

But in recent weeks the mood has begun to shift. Investors and CEOs are now openly questioning whether the enormous costs of building and running AI systems can really be justified by future revenues.

Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, has spoken of “irrationality” in AI’s growth, while others have said some projects are proving to be more complex and expensive than expected.

Meanwhile, global stock markets have declined, with tech shares taking a particular hit, and the value of cryptocurrencies has dipped as investors appear increasingly nervous.

So how should we view the health of the AI sector?

Well, bubbles in technology are not new. There have been great rises and great falls in the dot-com world, and surges in popularity for certain tech platforms (during COVID for example) which have then flattened out.

Each of these technological shifts was real, but they became bubbles when excitement about their potential ran far ahead of companies’ ability to turn popularity into lasting profits.

The surge in AI enthusiasm has a similar feel to it. Today’s systems are genuinely impressive, and it’s easy to imagine them generating significant economic value. The bigger challenge comes with how much of that value companies can actually keep hold of.

Investors are assuming rapid and widespread AI adoption along with high-margin revenue. Yet the business models needed to deliver that outcome are still uncertain and often very expensive to operate.

This creates a familiar gap between what the technology could do in theory, and what firms can profitably deliver in practice. Previous booms show how quickly things wobble when those ideas don’t work out as planned.

AI may well reshape entire sectors, but if the dazzling potential doesn’t translate quickly into steady, profitable demand, the excitement can slip away surprisingly fast.

Fit to burst?

Investment bubbles rarely deflate on their own. They are usually popped by outside forces, which often involve the US Federal Reserve (the US’s central bank) making moves to slow the economy by raising interest rates or limiting the supply of money, or a wider economic downturn suddenly draining confidence.

For much of the 20th century, these were the classic triggers that ended long stretches of rising markets.

But financial markets today are larger, more complex, and less tightly tied to any single lever such as interest rates. The current AI boom has unfolded despite the US keeping rates at their highest level in decades, suggesting that external pressures alone may not be enough to halt it.

Instead, this cycle is more likely to end from within. A disappointment at one of the big AI players – such as weaker than expected earnings at Nvidia or Intel – could puncture the sense that growth is guaranteed.

Alternatively, a mismatch between chip supply and demand could lead to falling prices. Or investors’ expectations could quickly shift if progress in training ever larger models begins to slow, or if new AI models offer only modest improvements.

Overall then, perhaps the most plausible end to this bubble is not a traditional external shock, but a realisation that the underlying economics are no longer keeping up with the hype, prompting a sharp revaluation across related stocks.

Artificial maturity

If the bubble did burst, the most visible shift would be a sharp correction in the valuations of chipmakers and the large cloud companies driving the current boom.

These firms have been priced as if AI demand will rise almost without limit. So any sign that the market is smaller or slower than expected would hit financial markets hard.

This kind of correction wouldn’t mean AI disappears, but it would almost certainly push the industry into a more cautious, less speculative phase.

The deepest consequence would be on investment. Goldman Sachs estimates that global spending on AI-related infrastructure could reach US$4 trillion by 2030. In 2025 alone, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Google’s owner Alphabet have poured almost US$350 billion into data centres, hardware and model development. If confidence faltered, much of this planned expansion could be scaled back or delayed.

That would ripple through the wider economy, slowing construction, dampening demand for specialised equipment, and dragging on growth at a time when inflation remains high.

But a bursting AI bubble would not erase the technology’s long-term importance. Instead, it would force a shift away from the “build it now, profits will follow” mindset which is driving much of the current exuberance.

Companies would focus more on practical uses that genuinely save money or raise productivity, rather than speculative bets on transformative breakthroughs. The sector would mature. But it would probably do so only after a painful period of adjustment for investors, suppliers and governments who have tied their growth expectations to an uninterrupted AI boom.

Alex Dryden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Is the AI bubble about to burst? What to watch for as the markets wobble – https://theconversation.com/is-the-ai-bubble-about-to-burst-what-to-watch-for-as-the-markets-wobble-270113

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrea Rigon, Professor, Politecnico di Milano, and, UCL

The UK has announced much harsher rules for asylum seekers including the prospect of more deportations for those whose applications fail. The US is trebling the size of its deportation force. The EU is doubling its border budgets. And in the coming decades, hundreds of millions of people might be displaced by ecological changes.

In the face of this challenge, those countries which are most responsible for climate change have two options. Either they can share resources more equitably, and fund adaptation plans on a massive scale. Or they can prevent others from accessing resources and liveable land through physical and regulatory walls, enforced through mass deportation.

Recent events show that, faced with this choice, many governments are choosing not to share resources to anywhere near the extend needed, and are instead building higher walls.

Climate change is already making life unliveable in some parts of the world. According to a 2020 report from thinktank the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), 2.6 billion people face high or extreme water stress. By 2040, this may jump to 5.4 billion. Droughts, heatwaves, floods, cyclones, food shortages and related conflicts will force millions from their homes.

The IEP warns that up to 1.2 billion people globally might be displaced by 2050, while even the more-cautious World Bank predicts 216 million climate migrants.

Most of these people will move internally within nations, but this too is likely to mean more walls and borders. In very unequal countries, internal migration has already triggered security-driven responses, with a rise in gated communities and other segregated living arrangements to keep the poorer away from the wealthy.

Many other climate migrants will be pushed to travel internationally. It’s likely their motivation will be characterised by many as economic rather than due to climate change. But it’s misleading to separate “economic” from “climate” migrants. When drought kills crops in Somalia or floods wash away farmland in Pakistan, the loss of income is inseparable from the climate shocks that caused it.

Even before the worst impacts hit, climate change is already woven into the economic pressures that push people to move – shrinking harvests, emptying wells and ruining livelihoods. The most severe climate-driven displacement is still ahead, but it has already begun.

Importantly, these pressures come with inequalities in causing climate change and bearing the costs. The richest 1% of the world’s population produces as much carbon as the poorest two-thirds, according to a study of global emissions in 2019 by Oxfam. Northern Europe and the US alone account for 92% of historical emissions.

Those who have contributed the least to climate change are the worst affected and often have the fewest resources to adapt, forcing many people to migrate.

More walls, more deportations

In this context, governments of wealthier countries are massively increasing spending on migration policing. In the US, proposed funding levels are extraordinary.

Recent legislation allocates nearly US$30 billion (£22 billion) to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) for enforcement and deportation operations – roughly three times its current budget.

The US has also authorised US$45 billion for new detention centres – a 265% increase, more than the entire defence budget of Italy – and US$46.6 billion for additional border walls. Under this plan, Ice would become the largest US law enforcement agency, three times the size of the FBI.

Donald Trump’s policies can be easily labelled as the excess of one would-be autocrat, but this is a global trend across the political spectrum, albeit implemented with more acceptable language by the centre-left.

Introducing the UK Labour government’s new asylum and returns policy, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: “We need an approach with a stronger deterrent effect and rules that are robustly enforced.” But previously-supportive MPs from his own party have warned this will mean “Ice-style raids” to deport asylum seekers.

The European Commission’s 2028–34 budget proposal earmarks €25.2 billion (£21.7 billion) for border management and €12 billion for migration, plus €11.9 billion for the Frontex border agency – more than double its current resources.

All this effectively triples current migration and border spending. In 2024, the EU ordered 453,000 non-EU nationals to leave, and actually deported 110,000 of them.

This is part of a much wider pattern, with borders today being far more militarised than at the end of the cold war. After decades of globalisation, states are now reterritorialising, building armoured fortifications against unwanted flows.

In the past two decades, more than 70 new international barriers have gone up, including Poland’s barbed-wire fence with Belarus, Greece’s steel wall on the Turkish border, Turkey’s stone wall on its Iranian border, and the new sections of the infamous wall between the US and Mexico.

Israel has built an “iron wall” around Gaza and border fences through much of the West Bank. Supposedly built to prevent Palestinians moving into Israel, these barriers have become a clear example of migration control tied to power grabs for land and resources.

A crossroads for human rights

Resource-driven migration pressures are rising just as the world is hardening its borders. In July 2025, the International Court of Justice declared that countries have a legal responsibility to address and compensate for climate change – and can be held accountable for their emissions. It is another signal that as humanity, we are at a crossroads.

The world can either prioritise universal human rights by sharing resources. Or it can attempt to protect a small, wealthy minority through walls, mass deportations and border violence on an unprecedented scale.

Andrea Rigon has received funding from UKRI and now receives funding from Fondation Botnar.

– ref. How the rich world is fortifying itself against climate migration – https://theconversation.com/how-the-rich-world-is-fortifying-itself-against-climate-migration-262936

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Catherine Norton, Associate Professor Sport & Exercise Nutrition, University of Limerick

Once the clocks have gone back and darkness falls before many of us even leave work, the rhythms of winter can feel heavier — shorter days, darker evenings, and often, later dinners. But shifting when we eat during the winter could make these months a little easier on our bodies and minds.

Our bodies operate on circadian rhythms – internal 24-hour clocks that regulate sleep, metabolism, digestion and hormone cycles. These rhythms are naturally synchronised with light and dark, so when daylight fades earlier, our metabolism also begins to wind down.

This connection between metabolism and daylight may help explain why a growing body of research from the field of chrononutrition suggests that when we eat may be nearly as important as what we eat. Chrononutrition examines how meal timing interacts with out internal body clock, and what affect short days might have on mood, metabolism and health.

For instance, one study found that healthy adults who ate dinner at 10pm experienced 20% higher blood sugar peaks and burned 10% less fat compared to those who ate dinner at 6pm. This was despite both groups eating identical meals and having similar bedtimes.

Broader analyses support the same trends, with a meta-analysis of 29 trials reporting that earlier eating windows, fewer meals and eating the bulk of one’s calories earlier in the day were linked to greater weight loss and improved metabolic markers (such as better blood pressure and lower blood sugar and cholesterol levels).

Other research links consistent late-night eating – especially close to bedtime – with poorer health outcomes and a greater risk of obesity and metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes.

Earlier dinners may better align with the body’s natural metabolic rhythms, particularly when the last meal occurs well before the body enters its “rest” phase. This might explain why eating earlier has health benefits.

Many chronobiologists conclude that aligning food intake with circadian biology represents a promising, low-cost method of improving metabolic outcomes – especially when combined with other lifestyle factors such as physical activity and healthy eating.

Eating with intent

In winter, especially in northern latitudes, shorter days and longer nights can disrupt circadian rhythms.

Reduced sunlight can lower serotonin levels, contributing to low mood or seasonal affective disorder (SAD). When paired with longer evenings indoors, it’s common for people to snack more often or delay eating dinner until later at night.

But digestion, hormone release (including those that help with sleep and digestion) and even the amount of calories you burn throughout the day all follow circadian rhythms. When meals are pushed too close to sleep, these processes overlap in ways that can affect both metabolism and rest – potentially increasing risks of poor sleep and metabolic ill health.

While light and dark have the biggest influence on circadian rhythms, food intake, stress, physical activity and temperature also affect them.

So, should you eat dinner earlier in winter?

For some people, yes — at least a little earlier. There are three main reasons why.

The first has to do with metabolic alignment. Eating when your metabolism is still active supports better blood sugar control, energy use and fat burning.

The second has to do with digestion. Leaving a few hours between dinner and bedtime allows digestion to wind down before sleep, which may improve sleep quality and recovery.

The third reason has to do with supporting mood and circadian rhythms. A consistent eating window and earlier dinner can help anchor daily routines – especially helpful when other time cues (such as daylight) are weaker.

But here’s the caveat: this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Many different factors – such as how active you are, if you have any chronic conditions and your schedule – need to be taken into account.

An elite athlete training in the evening may need a later meal to support performance and recovery. But someone less active might benefit more from an earlier, lighter dinner.

So rather than rigid rules, think of meal timing as a flexible tool in your nutrition toolkit. The real focus should be on eating with intent.

This means taking into account your goals (such as whether you want to lose weight or boost athletic performance), how often you exercise, how close to bedtime you normally eat, how you feel depending on the time of day you eat dinner and what’s realistic given your schedule.

If you’re eating after 9pm most nights and waking up sluggish or find sleep less restful, experimenting with earlier meals may be worthwhile. But if you’re training late or eating socially, that’s fine too — focus on quality over timing, choosing lighter, balanced meals and allowing at least two to three hours before bed.

Some other mealtime tips you can try during the darker months include:

• finishing dinner earlier, ideally between 5.30pm–7.00pm, or at least two to three hours before bedtime
• front loading your calories by making breakfast and lunch more substantial while there’s more daylight and your metabolism is more active
• planing around activity, so if you exercise late, have your main meal earlier and a small recovery snack afterwards
• keeping a consistent eating window, finishing eating by around 8pm most nights to support circadian alignment
• reflecting and adjusting by noting how meal timing affects your energy, sleep quality and mood for a week or two then changing as needed
• staying flexible by remembering perfection isn’t required – a regular schedule and awareness of what you need is what counts.

As winter settles in, paying attention to when you eat may be just as important as what you eat. Aligning mealtimes with your body’s natural rhythms can help steady energy, mood and sleep through the darker months.

But the real key is intentionality: making choices that serve your health, not rigid rules that create stress. The healthiest rhythm is the one that harmonises with both your biology and your lifestyle.

Catherine Norton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Should we eat dinner earlier in winter? Why timing might matter more than you think – https://theconversation.com/should-we-eat-dinner-earlier-in-winter-why-timing-might-matter-more-than-you-think-269559

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Markus Gottschling, Research Associate in Rhetoric, University of Tübingen

In the new documentary, Babo, viewers watch the gifted yet controversial German rapper Haftbefehl almost destroy himself with cocaine. The documentary, which follows both his huge success and his personal crises, has become the most-viewed film on Netflix Germany – a sign of what gets the country talking.

Haftbefehl (literally meaning “arrest warrant”) is one of Germany’s most famous rappers. He’s known for his brutal and drug-glorifying lyrics. Born Aykut Anhan, he is the documentary’s titular “Babo”, a formative figure in German-language rap. Babo – slang for “boss” or “leader” – has been Haftbefehl’s self-proclaimed nickname ever since his breakthrough song Chabos Wissen Wer Der Babo Ist (Chabos Know Who the Babo Is, “chabos” is Romani for boys).

Some consider him a gifted artist, whose command of language has shaped an entire generation in Germany, or a role model, particularly among people with a migrant background. Some student representatives have even urged that Haftbefehl’s lyrics be incorporated into school lessons.

Others see him as a misogynist and antisemite because of some of his lyrics. But admirers and critics alike are now taking part in a broader, and unexpectedly fruitful, public conversation. From the culture pages of major newspapers to office small talk and TikTok, people are suddenly talking about systemic racism, drug-fuelled decline and what counts as art. As linguists and rhetoricians interested in researching common ground, this debate has drawn our attention.

Haftbefehl the orator

On his albums, Haftbefehl raps about growing up as a drug dealer in the housing projects of Offenbach, a city near Frankfurt am Main; about his own drug use and about his meteoric rise to rap superstardom. On the surface, his lyrics follow a street-rap formula, full of familiar hip-hop clichés, but there is more to Haftbefehl’s writing.

His style is shaped by the way he switches between languages and registers, amplifying the force of what he says: “Das ist kein Deutsch, was ich mache, ist Kanakiş” (“What I’m doing isn’t German, it’s Kanakiş”, Kanakiş is his signature slang style). Such multi-ethnic youth varieties of the German language should, as research suggests, no longer be regarded as a sign of lack of integration, but rather as a dynamic dialect.

Threading Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic expressions into German lyrics, he reaches listeners on the streets as well as middle-class teenagers in their bedrooms. No wonder then that Babo had already been declared the official youth word of the year 2013 in Germany.

Haftbefehl is what rhetorical theory would call an orator. In the documentary, we see a speaker whose power lies in weaving content, character and emotional force into one persuasive story.

His message can’t be separated from his image. The emotion in his words and music creates a kind of persuasion that feels lived-in – the mix of tough and vulnerable traits comes across as authentic. Haftbefehl is seen as the “Babo” because his lyrics, sound and personality go beyond what listeners expect, giving them both intense honesty and creative use of language and music.

More and more, however, the documentary shows his severe addiction to cocaine. We hear the rattling and gasping of his breathing and learn how, after an overdose and while still in intensive care, he tore out his tubes and ran off to use again. We also meet other artists, managers and assistants who speak both of his lyrical genius and of his excesses. Anhan is portrayed as a “force of nature” that cannot be contained.

Why he lays himself so completely bare – presenting himself as a junkie with suicidal impulses, as a bad father and as the kind of partner nobody would wish for – is something Anhan himself explains right at the beginning of the documentary: “Do you know why I’m here? In case something ever happens to me, so that my story will be told correctly. From my perspective.”

All of this culminates in a specifically German discourse, one that Haftbefehl’s story shapes. No one questions whether his story has been told “correctly”. But in the documentary’s narrative mirror, we see a problematic figure re-emerge: the romantic genius, tossed between genius and madness.

One scene shows the rapper as a sensitive artist beneath the armour of his superstardom. Haftbefehl plays the production team a song by the German folk singer Reinhard Mey on his smartphone, visibly moved.

The song, written over half a century ago, seems entirely out of place within the rapper’s harsh style – and yet he, and along with him the audience, immediately recognise the parallels to the brokenness of his own life.

In the end, the documentary doesn’t so much show us who Haftbefehl is as provide a pretext for talking about him. This makes his story feel like both a warning and a rescue. We learn that both Anhan, the person, and “Haftbefehl”, the persona, are pushed into getting help when Anhan’s younger brother tricks him into entering a closed rehab clinic in Turkey.

And when we finally see him at the end – overweight, with a flattened nose from cocaine use and a nervous leg twitch – he talks about how he is keeping up: “I’m doing fine, bro. I was in therapy.” In that moment, the documentary gives us a small bit of hope that his future might turn out better.

The deeper issues behind Haftbefehl’s story, however, only really emerge when people begin to discuss what the documentary leaves out: the absence of his mother, or how racism and class differences affect migrant kids – precisely the kind of work public discourse can do, and the reason we need to study it.

Germany has been split into people who admire Haftbefehl and people who can’t stand him. And yet, by talking about Anhan, the country has oddly been brought together.

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Nina Kalwa receives funding from the German Research Foundation.

Markus Gottschling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Babo: the Netflix documentary forcing Germany to confront race, class and the cost of fame – https://theconversation.com/babo-the-netflix-documentary-forcing-germany-to-confront-race-class-and-the-cost-of-fame-269980