Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

  With the deadline for candidates’ nominations now passed, four names are officially in the frame. Prof. Felix Dodds and Chris Spence size up the candidates. Originally published on Inter-Press Service here. APEX, North Carolina / SAN FRANCISCO, California, Apr 8 2026 (IPS)  - Let the race begin! April 1st was the deadline for candidates to be nominated for Secretary-General. Was it a coincidence that the deadline was April Fool’s Day? Judging by the quality of the official candidates, we suspect so. Before looking at the four official finalists, however, it’s worth examining the state of global politics, since this will certainly have an impact on the likely outcome. We are currently living in one of the most unstable times since the Second World War. Multilateralism is under threat and the UN is facing significant political and financial turbulence. To its credit, the UN is attempting to address these challenges through the UN80 process, which is trying to repurpos...

Article written by Ayesha Tandon for Carbon Brief, republished with the author’s permission.  Ayesha Tandon ,  is Science Correspondent for Climate Brief.  Ayesha holds an MSci in Natural Sciences, specializing in Climate Science, from the University of Exeter. She previously worked at the UK Met Office as a Climate Science Communicator. This was  first published in Carbon Brief here.  A resident walks through inundated streets in Nong Khai city, Thailand.  Credit: Adryel Talamantes / Alamy Stock Photo Limiting warming to 2C above pre-industrial temperatures may not be enough to prevent "extreme global climate outcomes," according to research published in Nature   The authors simulate climate extremes – such as drought in breadbasket regions and flooding in populated areas – under a 2C warming scenario using a range of different global climate models. They find that the “worst-case” model projections in a 2C warmer world are often more severe than t...