Global Catastrophes: The Most Extreme Risks

Post Date February 05, 2015
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category publications

View the paper “Global Catastrophes: The Most Extreme Risks”

The most extreme risk are those that threaten the entirety of human civilization, known as global catastrophic risks. The very extreme nature of global catastrophes makes them both challenging to analyze and important to address. They are challenging to analyze because they are largely unprecedented and because they involve the entire global human system. They are important to address because they threaten everyone around the world and future generations. Global catastrophic risks also pose some deep dilemmas. …

Read More »

GCR News Summary January 2015

Post Date February 02, 2015
Comments 2 Comments
Author
Category news summary

Highly-enriched uranium image courtesy of the US Department of Energy

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the minute hand of its “Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight. The symbolic clock is now at three minutes to midnight, indicating that the Bulletin believes the “probability of global catastrophe is very high”:

In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to …

Read More »

GCR News Summary December 2014

Post Date December 31, 2014
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category news summary

Castle Bravo nuclear test image courtesy of the US Department of Energy

The Marshall Islands presented written arguments to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its case against the world’s nuclear powers. The Marshall Islands argued that the nine nuclear powers have flouted their legal obligation to disarm under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and under customary international law. The Marshall Islands was the site of 67 US nuclear tests, including the 15-megaton “Castle Bravo” test. Article VI of the …

Read More »

GCR News Summary November 2014

Post Date December 01, 2014
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category news summary

Barack Obama and Xi Jinping in Beijing, November 12, 2014 image courtesy of The Whitehouse/Pete Souza

The US and China announced a major agreement to reduce carbon emissions. The US agreed to reduce emissions 26-28% from 2005 levels by 2025, while China pledged that its emissions would peak by 2030. Chinese President Xi Jinping also said that 20% of China’s energy production would be from clean energy sources by that date. At the end of October, the EU had said it would cut …

Read More »

GCR News Summary October 2014

Post Date November 04, 2014
Comments 1 Comment
Author
Category news summary

Mars image courtesy of CDC Global under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

In October, Ebola spread to the US, Spain, and Mali. The US had its first local case when a Liberian man—who may have lied both to airport officials and to health care workers about his contact with an infected person—came down with the disease in Dallas. Two nurses in Dallas contracted the disease after treating the man. A New York doctor also came down with the disease …

Read More »

GCR News Summary September/August 2014

Post Date October 01, 2014
Comments 1 Comment
Author
Category news summary

Medical facility in Kailahun, Sierra Leone image courtesy of EC/ECHO/Cyprien Fabre under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) projected that in the worst case scenario if more isn’t done to stop the spread of Ebola, there could be 1.4 million cases by the end of January 2015. Maia Majumder estimated that around 80% of people who contract this strain of Ebola eventually die. There is currently no proven effective treatment or vaccine for …

Read More »

GCR News Summary July 2014

Post Date July 30, 2014
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category news summary

Boy with smallpox image courtesy of the CDC Public Health Image Library

Workers found vials containing the smallpox virus in a storage room at a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) laboratory at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The vials appear to have been in the laboratory since the 1950s. They were moved to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) containment laboratory shortly after they were discovered. The CDC said that there was no sign the vials …

Read More »

GCR News Summary June 2014

Post Date July 01, 2014
Comments 3 Comments
Author
Category news summary

Dominion power plant image courtesy of Ed Brown under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 Generic License (the image has been cropped)

Russia has lost contact with its only missile detection satellite in geostationary orbit above the US. The satellite was originally supposed to operate until at least 2017, but began malfunctioning shortly after its launch in 2012. Russia still has two remaining missile detection satellites in elliptical orbits around the planet, but they are reportedly able to monitor US missile activity …

Read More »

GCR News Summary May 2014

Post Date June 02, 2014
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category news summary

Pope Francis image courtesy of Jeffrey Bruno/Aleteia under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0Generic License (the image has been cropped)

Billionaire Petro Poroshenko won the Ukrainian presidential election with 55% of the vote. Voter turnout was high, although pro-Russian separatists prevented many people from voting in the eastern part of the country. Poroshenko promised to bring peace to the eastern regions and move the country closer to the European Union. Russia said that it was moving its forces away from the …

Read More »

GCR News Summary April 2014

Post Date May 09, 2014
Comments 6 Comments
Author
Category news summary

Soap and chlorine image courtesy of UNICEF Guinea under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License (the image has been cropped)

Tensions continued to run high between Russia and the acting government of Ukraine as well-armed pro-Russian groups occupied strategic buildings across eastern Ukraine and skirmished with the Ukrainian military. An agreement between Russia, Ukraine, the US, and the EU to lower tensions fell apart when separatists captured military observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and …

Read More »
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »