There are more refugees in the world today than at any other point in history. The United Nations estimates that there are now more than 120 million people forcibly displaced from their homes. That is one in every 69 people on Earth. Some 73% of this population is hosted in lower or middle-income countries.
From the legacies of European colonialism to global inequality, drone warfare and climate instability, politicians have failed to address the causes driving this mass displacement. Instead, far-right parties exploit the crisis by inflaming cultures of hatred and hostility towards migrants, particularly in high-income western countries.
This is exacerbated by visual media, which makes refugees an easy target by denying them the means of telling their own stories on their own terms. Pictures of migrants on boats or climbing over border walls are everywhere in tabloid newspapers and on social media. But these images are rarely accompanied by any detailed account of the brutal experiences that force people into these situations.
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Many different kinds of visual storytelling live under the umbrella of refugee comics. They include short strips and stories, such as A Perilous Journey (2016) with testimonies from people fleeing the civil war in Syria, and Cabramatta (2019), about growing up as a Vietnamese migrant in a Sydney suburb. They also include codex-bound graphic novels, such as The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (2017), and interactive web-comics such as Exodus by Jasper Rietman (2018).
They include documentaries made by journalists about the specific experiences of individual refugees. They also include fiction by artists who combine elements of several refugee testimonies into representative stories. Additionally, there are both fictional and non-fictional artworks made by migrants and refugees themselves.
Refugee comics address different forced mass displacements over the 20th and 21st centuries. These include the 1948 Nakba in Palestine, the 1970s flight of refugees from Vietnam and the 2010s displacement of people from Syria and other countries across sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.
These refugee comics challenge anti-migrant images in at least three ways. First, they often integrate the direct testimonies of refugees. This is enhanced by the combination of words and pictures that comprise the comics page, which allows refugees to frame the way we see and respond to images of displaced people.
For example, in The Unwanted by Joe Sacco (2012), familiar images of migrants crossing the Mediterranean on small boats are narrated by a refugee called Jon. Jon’s testimony turns our attention to the fears and desires that drive people to attempt dangerous sea crossings.
A second way comics challenge anti-migrant images is by allowing refugees to tell their stories without disclosing their identities. Because comics are drawn by hand and use abstract icons rather than photographs, refugees can tell their stories while also avoiding any unwanted scrutiny while also maintaining personal privacy. This reintroduces refugee agency into a visual culture that often seeks to reduce migrants to voiceless victims or security threats.
For example, in Escaping Wars and Waves: Encounters with Syrian Refugees (2018) German comics journalist Olivier Kugler dedicates two pages to a man he calls “The Afghan” because he didn’t want his name or identity revealed. Kugler presents this man’s testimony of failed attempts to get to the UK, but he never draws his face or refers to him by name.
The third way comics challenge anti-migrant images is by shifting our attention from refugees themselves to the hostile environments and border infrastructures that they are forced to travel through and inhabit. Refugee researchers describe this different way of seeing as a “places and spaces, not faces” approach.
For instance, in Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention (2017), Tings Chak walks her readers through migrant detention centres from the perspective of those who are being processed and detained.
Drawing displacement
This emphasis on place and space is built into the structure of our own book, Graphic Refuge. We begin by focusing on graphic stories about ocean crossings, particularly on the Mediterranean sea. We then turn to comics concerned with the experience of refugee camps, and we also ask how interactive online comics bring viewers into virtual refugee spaces in a variety of ways.
It is the obliteration of homes that forces people to become refugees in the first place. Later in the book, we explore how illustrated stories document the destruction of cityscapes across Syria and also in Gaza. Finally, we turn to graphic autobiographies by second-generation refugees, those who have grown up in places such as the US or Australia, but who must still negotiate the trauma of their parents’ displacement.
Where most previous studies of refugee comics have focused on trauma and empathy, in Graphic Refuge we take a different approach. We set out to show how refugee comics represent migrant agency and desire, and how we are all implicated in the histories and systems that have created the very idea of the modern refugee.
As critical refugee scholar Vinh Nguyen writes in our book’s foreword, while it is difficult to truly know what refugee lives are like, those of us who enjoy the privileges of citizenship can at least read these comics to better understand “what we – we who can sleep under warm covers at night – are capable of”.
This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.
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.
The global ecosystem of climate finance is complex, constantly changing and sometimes hard to understand. But understanding it is critical to demanding a green transition that’s just and fair. That’s why The Conversation has collaborated with climate finance experts to create this user-friendly guide, in partnership with Vogue Business. With definitions and short videos, we’ll add to this glossary as new terms emerge.
Blue bonds
Blue bonds are debt instruments designed to finance ocean-related conservation, like protecting coral reefs or sustainable fishing. They’re modelled after green bonds but focus specifically on the health of marine ecosystems – this is a key pillar of climate stability.
By investing in blue bonds, governments and private investors can fund marine projects that deliver both environmental benefits and long-term financial returns. Seychelles issued the first blue bond in 2018. Now, more are emerging as ocean conservation becomes a greater priority for global sustainability efforts.
By Narmin Nahidi, assistant professor in finance at the University of Exeter
Carbon border adjustment mechanism
Did you know that imported steel could soon face a carbon tax at the EU border? That’s because the carbon border adjustment mechanism is about to shake up the way we trade, produce and price carbon.
The carbon border adjustment mechanism is a proposed EU policy to put a carbon price on imports like iron, cement, fertiliser, aluminium and electricity. If a product is made in a country with weaker climate policies, the importer must pay the difference between that country’s carbon price and the EU’s. The goal is to avoid “carbon leakage” – when companies relocate to avoid emissions rules and to ensure fair competition on climate action.
But this mechanism is more than just a tariff tool. It’s a bold attempt to reshape global trade. Countries exporting to the EU may be pushed to adopt greener manufacturing or face higher tariffs.
The carbon border adjustment mechanism is controversial: some call it climate protectionism, others argue it could incentivise low-carbon innovation worldwide and be vital for achieving climate justice. Many developing nations worry it could penalise them unfairly unless there’s climate finance to support greener transitions.
Carbon border adjustment mechanism is still evolving, but it’s already forcing companies, investors and governments to rethink emissions accounting, supply chains and competitiveness. It’s a carbon price with global consequences.
By Narmin Nahidi, assistant professor in finance at the University of Exeter
Carbon budget
The Paris agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by 2030. The carbon budget is the maximum amount of CO₂ emissions allowed, if we want a 67% chance of staying within this limit. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the remaining carbon budgets amount to 400 billion tonnes of CO₂ from 2020 onwards.
Think of the carbon budget as a climate allowance. Once it has been spent, the risk of extreme weather or sea level rise increases sharply. If emissions continue unchecked, the budget will be exhausted within years, risking severe climate consequences. The IPCC sets the global carbon budget based on climate science, and governments use this framework to set national emission targets, climate policies and pathways to net zero emissions.
By Dongna Zhang, assistant professor in economics and finance, Northumbria University
Carbon credits
Carbon credits are like a permit that allow companies to release a certain amount of carbon into the air. One credit usually equals one tonne of CO₂. These credits are issued by the local government or another authorised body and can be bought and sold. Think of it like a budget allowance for pollution. It encourages cuts in carbon emissions each year to stay within those global climate targets.
The aim is to put a price on carbon to encourage cuts in emissions. If a company reduces its emissions and has leftover credits, it can sell them to another company that is going over its limit. But there are issues. Some argue that carbon credit schemes allow polluters to pay their way out of real change, and not all credits are from trustworthy projects. Although carbon credits can play a role in addressing the climate crisis, they are not a solution on their own.
By Sankar Sivarajah, professor of circular economy, Kingston University London
Carbon credits explained.
Carbon offsetting
Carbon offsetting is a way for people or organisations to make up for the carbon emissions they are responsible for. For example, if you contribute to emissions by flying, driving or making goods, you can help balance that out by supporting projects that reduce emissions elsewhere. This might include planting trees (which absorb carbon dioxide) or building wind farms to produce renewable energy.
The idea is that your support helps cancel out the damage you are doing. For example, if your flight creates one tonne of carbon dioxide, you pay to support a project that removes the same amount.
While this sounds like a win-win, carbon offsetting is not perfect. Some argue that it lets people feel better without really changing their behaviour, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as greenwashing.
Not all projects are effective or well managed. For instance, some tree planting initiatives might have taken place anyway, even without the offset funding, deeming your contribution inconsequential. Others might plant the non-native trees in areas where they are unlikely to reach their potential in terms of absorbing carbon emissions.
So, offsetting can help, but it is no magic fix. It works best alongside real efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage low-carbon lifestyles or supply chains.
By Sankar Sivarajah, professor of circular economy, Kingston University London
Carbon offsetting explained.
Carbon tax
A carbon tax is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by placing a direct price on CO₂ and other greenhouse gases.
A carbon tax is grounded in the concept of the social cost of carbon. This is an estimate of the economic damage caused by emitting one tonne of CO₂, including climate-related health, infrastructure and ecosystem impacts.
A carbon tax is typically levied per tonne of CO₂ emitted. The tax can be applied either upstream (on fossil fuel producers) or downstream (on consumers or power generators). This makes carbon-intensive activities more expensive, it incentivises nations, businesses and people to reduce their emissions, while untaxed renewable energy becomes more competitively priced and appealing.
Carbon tax was first introduced by Finland in 1990. Since then, more than 39 jurisdictions have implemented similar schemes. According to the World Bank, carbon pricing mechanisms (that’s both carbon taxes and emissions trading systems) now cover about 24% of global emissions. The remaining 76% are not priced, mainly due to limited coverage in both sectors and geographical areas, plus persistent fossil fuel subsidies. Expanding coverage would require extending carbon pricing to sectors like agriculture and transport, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and strengthening international governance.
What is carbon tax?
Sweden has one of the world’s highest carbon tax rates and has cut emissions by 33% since 1990 while maintaining economic growth. The policy worked because Sweden started early, applied the tax across many industries and maintained clear, consistent communication that kept the public on board.
Canada introduced a national carbon tax in 2019. In Canada, most of the revenue from carbon taxes is returned directly to households through annual rebates, making the scheme revenue-neutral for most families. However, despite its economic logic, inflation and rising fuel prices led to public discontent – especially as many citizens were unaware they were receiving rebates.
Carbon taxes face challenges including political resistance, fairness concerns and low public awareness. Their success depends on clear communication and visible reinvestment of revenues into climate or social goals. A 2025 study that surveyed 40,000 people in 20 countries found that support for carbon taxes increases significantly when revenues are used for environmental infrastructure, rather than returned through tax rebates.
By Meilan Yan, associate professor and senior lecturer in financial economics, Loughborough University
Climate resilience
Floods, wildfires, heatwaves and rising seas are pushing our cities, towns and neighbourhoods to their limits. But there’s a powerful idea that’s helping cities fight back: climate resilience.
Resilience refers to the ability of a system, such as a city, a community or even an ecosystem – to anticipate, prepare for, respond to and recover from climate-related shocks and stresses.
Sometimes people say resilience is about bouncing back. But it’s not just about surviving the next storm. It’s about adapting, evolving and thriving in a changing world.
Resilience means building smarter and better. It means designing homes that stay cool during heatwaves. Roads that don’t wash away in floods. Power grids that don’t fail when the weather turns extreme.
It’s also about people. A truly resilient city protects its most vulnerable. It ensures that everyone – regardless of income, age or background – can weather the storm.
And resilience isn’t just reactive. It’s about using science, local knowledge and innovation to reduce a risk before disaster strikes. From restoring wetlands to cool cities and absorb floods, to creating early warning systems for heatwaves, climate resilience is about weaving strength into the very fabric of our cities.
By Paul O’Hare, senior lecturer in geography and development, Manchester Metropolitan University
The meaning of climate resilience.
Climate risk disclosure
Climate risk disclosure refers to how companies report the risks they face from climate change, such as flood damage, supply chain disruptions or regulatory costs. It includes both physical risks (like storms) and transition risks (like changing laws or consumer preferences).
Mandatory disclosures, such as those proposed by the UK and EU, aim to make climate-related risks transparent to investors. Done well, these reports can shape capital flows toward more sustainable business models. Done poorly, they become greenwashing tools.
By Narmin Nahidi, assistant professor in finance at the University of Exeter
Emissions trading scheme
An emissions trading scheme is the primary market-based approach for regulating greenhouse gas emissions in many countries, including Australia, Canada, China and Mexico.
Part of a government’s job is to decide how much of the economy’s carbon emissions it wants to avoid in order to fight climate change. It must put a cap on carbon emissions that economic production is not allowed to surpass. Preferably, the polluters (that’s the manufacturers, fossil fuel companies) should be the ones paying for the cost of climate mitigation.
Regulators could simply tell all the firms how much they are allowed to emit over the next ten years or so. But giving every firm the same allowance across the board is not cost efficient, because avoiding carbon emissions is much harder for some firms (such as steel producers) than others (such as tax consultants). Since governments cannot know each firm’s specific cost profile either, it can’t customise the allowances. Also, monitoring whether polluters actually abide by their assigned limits is extremely costly.
An emissions trading scheme cleverly solves this dilemma using the cap-and-trade mechanism. Instead of assigning each polluter a fixed quota and risking inefficiencies, the government issues a large number of tradable permits – each worth, say, a tonne of CO₂-equivalent (CO₂e) – that sum up to the cap. Firms that can cut greenhouse gas emissions relatively cheaply can then trade their surplus permits to those who find it harder – at a price that makes both better off.
By Mathias Weidinger, environmental economist, University of Oxford
Emissions trading schemes, explained by climate finance expert Mathias Weidinger.
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing
ESG investing stands for environmental, social and governance investing. In simple terms, these are a set of standards that investors use to screen a company’s potential investments.
ESG means choosing to invest in companies that are not only profitable but also responsible. Investors use ESG metrics to assess risks (such as climate liability, labour practices) and align portfolios with sustainability goals by looking at how a company affects our planet and treats its people and communities. While there isn’t one single global body governing ESG, various organisations, ratings agencies and governments all contribute to setting and evolving these metrics.
For example, investing in a company committed to renewable energy and fair labour practices might be considered “ESG aligned”. Supporters believe ESG helps identify risks and create long-term value. Critics argue it can be vague or used for greenwashing, where companies appear sustainable without real action. ESG works best when paired with transparency and clear data. A barrier is that standards vary, and it’s not always clear what counts as ESG.
Why do financial companies and institutions care? Issues like climate change and nature loss pose significant risks, affecting company values and the global economy.
However, gathering reliable ESG information can be difficult. Companies often self-report, and the data isn’t always standardised or up to date. Researchers – including my team at the University of Oxford – are using geospatial data, like satellite imagery and artificial intelligence, to develop global databases for high-impact industries, across all major sectors and geographies, and independently assess environmental and social risks and impacts.
For instance, we can analyse satellite images of a facility over time to monitor its emissions effect on nature and biodiversity, or assess deforestation linked to a company’s supply chain. This allows us to map supply chains, identify high-impact assets, and detect hidden risks and opportunities in key industries, providing an objective, real-time look at their environmental footprint.
The goal is for this to improve ESG ratings and provide clearer, more consistent insights for investors. This approach could help us overcome current data limitations to build a more sustainable financial future.
By Amani Maalouf, senior researcher in spatial finance, University of Oxford
Environmental, social and governance investing explained.
Financed emissions
Financed emissions are the greenhouse gas emissions linked to a bank’s or investor’s lending and investment portfolio, rather than their own operations. For example, a bank that funds a coal mine or invests in fossil fuels is indirectly responsible for the carbon those activities produce.
Measuring financed emissions helps reveal the real climate impact of financial institutions not just their office energy use. It’s a cornerstone of climate accountability in finance and is becoming essential under net zero pledges.
By Narmin Nahidi, assistant professor in finance at the University of Exeter
Green bonds
Green bonds are loans issued to fund environmentally beneficial projects, such as energy-efficient buildings or clean transportation. Investors choose them to support climate solutions while earning returns.
Green bonds are a major tool to finance the shift to a low-carbon economy by directing finance toward climate solutions. As climate costs rise, green bonds could help close the funding gap while ensuring transparency and accountability.
Green bonds are required to ensure funds are spent as promised. For instance, imagine a city wants to upgrade its public transportation by adding electric buses to reduce pollution. Instead of raising taxes or slashing other budgets, the city can issue green bonds to raise the necessary capital. Investors buy the bonds, the city gets the funding, and the environment benefits from cleaner air and fewer emissions.
The growing participation of government issuers has improved the transparency and reliability of these investments. The green bond market has grown rapidly in recent years. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the green bond market reached US$2.9 trillion (£2.1 trillion) in 2024 – nearly six times larger than in 2018. At the same time, annual issuance (the total value of green bonds issued in a year) hit US$700 billion, highlighting the increasing role of green finance in tackling climate change.
By Dongna Zhang, assistant professor in economics and finance, Northumbria University
Just transition
Just transition is the process of moving to a low-carbon society that is environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive. In a broad sense, a just transition means focusing on creating a more fair and equal society.
Just transition has existed as a concept since the 1970s. It was originally applied to the green energy transition, protecting workers in the fossil fuel industry as we move towards more sustainable alternatives.
These days, it has so many overlapping issues of justice hidden within it, so the concept is hard to define. Even at the level of UN climate negotiations, global leaders struggle to agree on what a just transition means.
The big battle is between developed countries, who want a very restrictive definition around jobs and skills, and developing countries, who are looking for a much more holistic approach that considers wider system change and includes considerations around human rights, Indigenous people and creating an overall fairer global society.
A just transition is essentially about imagining a future where we have moved beyond fossil fuels and society works better for everyone – but that can look very different in a European city compared to a rural setting in south-east Asia.
For example, in a British city it might mean fewer cars and better public transport. In a rural setting, it might mean new ways of growing crops that are more sustainable, and building homes that are heatwave resistant.
By Alix Dietzel, climate justice and climate policy expert, University of Bristol
The meaning of just transition.
Loss and damage
A global loss and damage fund was agreed by nations at the UN climate summit (Cop27) in 2022. This means that the rich countries of the world put money into a fund that the least developed countries can then call upon when they have a climate emergency.
At the moment, the loss and damage fund is made up of relatively small pots of money. Much more will be needed to provide relief to those who need it most now and in the future.
By Mark Maslin, professor of earth system science, UCL
Mark Maslin explains loss and damage.
Mitigation v adaptation
Mitigation means cutting greenhouse gas emissions to slow climate change. Adaptation means adjusting to its effects, like building sea walls or growing heat-resistant crops. Both are essential: mitigation tackles the cause, while adaptation tackles the symptoms.
Globally, most funding goes to mitigation, but vulnerable communities often need adaptation support most. Balancing the two is a major challenge in climate policy, especially for developing countries facing immediate climate threats.
By Narmin Nahidi, assistant professor in finance at the University of Exeter
Nationally determined contributions
Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are at the heart of the Paris agreement, the global effort to collectively combat climate change. NDCs are individual climate action plans created by each country. These targets and strategies outline how a country will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change.
Each nation sets its own goals based on its own circumstances and capabilities – there’s no standard NDC. These plans should be updated every five years and countries are encouraged to gradually increase their climate ambitions over time.
The aim is for NDCs to drive real action by guiding policies, attracting investment and inspiring innovation in clean technologies. But current NDCs fall short of the Paris agreement goals and many countries struggle to turn their plans into a reality. NDCs also vary widely in scope and detail so it’s hard to compare efforts across the board. Stronger international collaboration and greater accountability will be crucial.
By Doug Specht, reader in cultural geography and communication, University of Westminster
Fashion depends on water, soil and biodiversity – all natural capital. And forward-thinking designers are now asking: how do we create rather than deplete, how do we restore rather than extract?
Natural capital is the value assigned to the stock of forests, soils, oceans and even minerals such as lithium. It sustains every part of our economy. It’s the bees that pollinate our crops. It’s the wetlands that filter our water and it’s the trees that store carbon and cool our cities.
If we fail to value nature properly, we risk losing it. But if we succeed, we unlock a future that is not only sustainable but also truly regenerative.
My team at the University of Oxford is developing tools to integrate nature into national balance sheets, advising governments on biodiversity, and we’re helping industries from fashion to finance embed nature into their decision making.
Natural capital, explained by a climate finance expert.
By Mette Morsing, professor of business sustainability and director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford
Net zero
Reaching net zero means reducing the amount of additional greenhouse gas emissions that accumulate in the atmosphere to zero. This concept was popularised by the Paris agreement, a landmark deal that was agreed at the UN climate summit (Cop21) in 2015 to limit the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
There are some emissions, from farming and aviation for example, that will be very difficult, if not impossible, to reach absolute zero. Hence, the “net”. This allows people, businesses and countries to find ways to suck greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere, effectively cancelling out emissions while trying to reduce them. This can include reforestation, rewilding, direct air capture and carbon capture and storage. The goal is to reach net zero: the point at which no extra greenhouse gases accumulate in Earth’s atmosphere.
By Mark Maslin, professor of earth system science, UCL
Mark Maslin explains net zero.
For more expert explainer videos, visit The Conversation’s quick climate dictionary playlist here on YouTube.
Mark Maslin is Pro-Vice Provost of the UCL Climate Crisis Grand Challenge and Founding Director of the UCL Centre for Sustainable Aviation. He was co-director of the London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership and is a member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group. He is an advisor to Sheep Included Ltd, Lansons, NetZeroNow and has advised the UK Parliament. He has received grant funding from the NERC, EPSRC, ESRC, DFG, Royal Society, DIFD, BEIS, DECC, FCO, Innovate UK, Carbon Trust, UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, Research England, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust, CIFF, Sprint2020, and British Council. He has received funding from the BBC, Lancet, Laithwaites, Seventh Generation, Channel 4, JLT Re, WWF, Hermes, CAFOD, HP and Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.
Amani Maalouf receives funding from IKEA Foundation and UK Research and Innovation (NE/V017756/1).
Narmin Nahidi is affiliated with several academic associations, including the Financial Management Association (FMA), British Accounting and Finance Association (BAFA), American Finance Association (AFA), and the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CMBE). These affiliations do not influence the content of this article.
Paul O’Hare receives funding from the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Award reference NE/V010174/1.
Alix Dietzel, Dongna Zhang, Doug Specht, Mathias Weidinger, Meilan Yan, and Sankar Sivarajah 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.
Evidence gathered by Amnesty International demonstrates how over a month since the introduction of its militarized aid distribution system, Israel has continued to use starvation of civilians as a weapon of war against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip and to deliberately impose conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as part of its ongoing genocide.
Heartbreaking testimonies gathered from medical staff, parents of children hospitalized for malnutrition and displaced Palestinians struggling to survive paint a horrifying picture of acute levels of starvation and desperation in Gaza. Their accounts provide further evidence of the catastrophic suffering caused by Israel’s ongoing restrictions on life-saving aid and its deadly militarized aid scheme coupled with mass forced displacement, relentless bombardment and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure.
“While the eyes of the world were diverted to the recent hostilities between Israel and Iran, Israel’s genocide has continued unabated in Gaza, including through the infliction of conditions of life that have created a deadly mix of hunger and disease pushing the population past breaking point,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
In the month following Israel’s imposition of a militarized “‘aid” scheme run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured either near militarized distribution sites or en route to humanitarian aid convoys.
This devastating daily loss of life as desperate Palestinians try to collect aid is the consequence of their deliberate targeting by Israeli forces and the foreseeable consequence of irresponsible and lethal methods of distribution.
Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
“This devastating daily loss of life as desperate Palestinians try to collect aid is the consequence of their deliberate targeting by Israeli forces and the foreseeable consequence of irresponsible and lethal methods of distribution,” said Agnès Callamard.
By continuing to prevent UN and other key humanitarian organizations from distributing certain essential items, like food parcels, fuel and shelter, within Gaza and by maintaining a deadly, dehumanizing and ineffective militarized ‘aid’ scheme, Israeli authorities have turned aid-seeking into a booby trap for desperate starved Palestinians. They have also deliberately fueled chaos and compounded suffering instead of alleviating it. The aid delivered is also way below the humanitarian needs of a population that has been experiencing almost daily bombings for the last 20 months.
Israel has continued to restrict the entry of aid and impose its suffocating cruel blockade and even a full siege lasting nearly eighty days.
Agnès Callamard.
“As the occupying power, Israel has a legal obligation to ensure Palestinians in Gaza have access to food, medicine and other supplies essential for their survival. Instead, it has brazenly defied binding orders issued by the International Court of Justice in January, March and May 2024, to allow the unimpeded flow of aid to Gaza. Israel has continued to restrict the entry of aid and impose its suffocating cruel blockade and even a full siege lasting nearly eighty days,” said Agnès Callamard.
This must end now. Israel must lift all restrictions and allow unfettered, safe, and dignified access to humanitarian aid throughout Gaza immediately.”
Amnesty International interviewed 17 internally displaced people (10 women and seven men) as well as the parents of four children hospitalized for severe malnutrition, and four healthcare workers, across three hospitals in Gaza City and Khan Younis in May and June 2025.
Devastating impact on children
Even before the imposition of a total siege on 2 March 2025, slightly but insufficiently eased some 78 days later, Israel’s deliberate imposition of conditions of life calculated to destroy Palestinians had had a particularly devastating impact on young children and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Since October 2023 at least 66 children have died as a direct result of malnutrition-related conditions. This figure does not include the many more children who have died as a result of preventable diseases exacerbated by malnutrition.
The victims include four-month-old baby, Jinan Iskafi, who tragically died on 3 May 2025 due to severe malnutrition. According to her medical report, which was reviewed by Amnesty International, Jinan was admitted to the Rantissi pediatric hospital due to severe dehydration and recurrent infections. She was diagnosed with Marasmus, a severe form of protein-energy malnutrition, chronic diarrhea, and a suspected case of immunodeficiency. The pediatrician treating her told Amnesty International that she required a specific lactose-free formula, which was not available due to the blockade.
Gaza’s decimated health sector, already overwhelmed with the volume of injuries, is struggling to deal with the influx of infants and children hospitalized for malnutrition. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as of 15 June 2025, a total of 18,741, children were hospitalized for acute malnutrition since the beginning of the year.
The vast majority of children suffering from malnutrition, however, cannot reach any hospital due to access challenges posed by displacement orders and heavy bombardment and ongoing military operations.
Numbers barely scratch the surface of the suffering in Gaza
Accounts from healthcare workers and displaced individuals paint an even more harrowing picture.
Susan Maarouf, a nutritional expert at the Nutrition unit in the Patient Friend Benevolent Society hospital in Gaza City, supported by the organizations Medical Aid for Palestinians and MedGlobal, said that in June 2024 the hospital opened a dedicated department for children aged six months to and five years to manage cases of severe malnutrition.
“Back then, Gaza City and the North Gaza governorate were hit by malnutrition [as a result of the tight blockade]. But this year for us the situation began to drastically get worse again in April. Since then, out of approximately 200-250 children we have screened daily for malnutrition. Nearly 15% showed signs associated with severe or moderate malnutrition,” she said.
In the worst cases visible signs include pale skin, falling hair and nails, and alarming weight loss. She expressed the profound helplessness of offering nutritional advice amid severe shortages of food, with fruit, vegetables and eggs only available at exorbitant prices, if at all: “In an ideal world, I would recommend the parents to provide the child with nutritious food, rich with protein. I would advise that they maintain a hygienic environment for their children; I would stress the importance of clean water… In our situation… any recommendation you give … sometimes you feel like you are rubbing salt into these parents’ wounds.”
Dr. Maarouf described the relentless cycle of malnutrition stating that in some cases children were re-hospitalized after being discharged:
“We treated one little girl, aged six, for nutritional edema, she had severe protein deficiency when she came in early May; with the treatment we gave her she showed signs of improvement, including gaining weight, becoming livelier… unfortunately she was recently admitted again because her condition relapsed. Like most families in Gaza, her family is displaced; they live in a tent; they have to rely on the lentil or rice they get from the community kitchen. It’s a cycle. With no aid getting in, you feel like as a hospital you only patch up the wound but eventually it will burst again.”
Doctors have also warned that the lives of newborn babies are at risk amid acute shortages of baby formula milk, especially for children with lactose-intolerance or other allergies.
One doctor said: “There is a milk crisis in Gaza overall. Also, we notice that new mothers, because they themselves are not eating properly or because of the panic, trauma and anxiety, are unable to breastfeed. So, to secure baby formula at all is a struggle. But if your child has allergies, it’s almost impossible to find special formula in any of Gaza’s hospitals for infants the failure to secure special baby formula can be a death sentence.”
At Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Dr. Wafaa Abu Nimer confirmed the dire situation, reporting that by 30 June 2025, 9 children were still being treated for malnutrition-related complications at her facility alone. She described the scenes they have witnessed over the past two months as “really unprecedented” with severe cases of nutritional edema or marasmus, muscle wasting. She also said that some are additionally suffering from injuries due to explosions from which they have not recovered.
Dr. Abu Nimer said that since Israel’s new aid distribution scheme began there has been no signs of improvement in the situation with hundreds of children screened for malnutrition on a daily basis in their pediatric emergency room. Mass displacement orders issued to the Khan Younis governorate in May made Nasser hospital out of reach for thousands of displaced families.
Dr. Abu Nimer described to Amnesty how the impact on children extends beyond the physical. “One girl whose hair fell out almost completely as a result of nutritional edema, kept asking me ‘doctor, will my hair grow again? Am I [still] beautiful?’ Abu Nimer said. “Even if these children recover completely, the scars will always remain with them. Medically we know that malnutrition amongst infants and small children may have long-term cognitive and developmental effects, but I don’t think enough attention is being given to the mental health and psychological impact [of starvation and war] on children and parents.”
She also conveyed the exhaustion felt by medical staff: “We as doctors are also exhausted, we are malnourished ourselves, most of us are also displaced and live in tents, yet we do our best to offer medical care, provide nutrient supplements and as much support as we can. We try to save lives, we try to alleviate the suffering, but there is very little we can do after discharge.”
Weaponized aid
While Israeli authorities continue to impose their unlawful blockade on the entry of aid and commercial supplies into the occupied Gaza Strip, hundreds of aid trucks remain stuck outside Gaza, waiting for an Israeli permit to enter.
OCHA reported that as of 16 June 2025, 852 trucks for UN and international humanitarian organizations, the majority of which carry food supplies, remain stuck in Al-Arish in Egypt, yet to receive a permit from the Israeli authorities to enter Gaza. Moreover, the partial easing of the total siege on 19 May did not include easing restrictions on certain critical supplies, such as fuel and cooking gas, which have not been allowed into Gaza since 2 March. Without fuel, electricity cannot be produced to allow, for example, life-saving medical devices to function.
Only a trickle of the extremely limited aid allowed by Israel into Gaza reaches those in need. It is either distributed through the inhumane and deadly militarized scheme run by the GHF, or is offloaded by desperate starved civilians, and in some cases, organized gangs. This grim reality is compounded by Israel’s deliberate destruction of or denial of access to life-sustaining infrastructure, including some of Gaza’s most fertile agricultural land and food production sources, like greenhouses and poultry farms.
The World Food Programme and local organizations were for the first time permitted to distribute flour in Gaza City on 26 June 2025. The relatively smooth distribution that took place with thousands waiting their turn and no reported injuries is a damning indictment of Israel’s militarized GHF scheme. All the evidence gathered, including testimonies which Amnesty International is receiving from victims and witnesses, suggest that the GHF was designed so as to placate international concerns while constituting another tool of Israel’s genocide.
“Not only has the international community failed to stop this genocide, but it has also allowed Israel to constantly reinvent new ways to destroy Palestinian lives in Gaza and trample on their human dignity,” said Agnès Callamard.
“States must cease their inertia and live up to their legal obligations. They must exercise all necessary pressure to ensure Israel lifts immediately and unconditionally its awful blockade and ends the genocide in Gaza. They must end any form of contribution to Israel’s unlawful conduct or risk complicity in atrocity crimes. This requires immediately suspending all military support to Israel, banning trade and investment that contribute to Israel’s genocide or other grave violations of international law.
“States should also adopt targeted sanctions, through international and regional mechanisms, against those Israeli officials most implicated in international crimes and cooperate with the International Criminal Court, including by implementing its arrest warrants.”
Background
According to figures obtained from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the under-five mortality rate for 2024 in Gaza was recorded at 32.7 deaths per 1,000 live births, representing a sharp increase compared to the 13.6 rate reported in 2022. Maternal mortality has also more than doubled from an estimated 19 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2022 to 43 deaths per 100,000 in 2024.
Huge aerial attacks on civilians and inflammatory remarks show us Moscow is not serious about peace: UK statement to the OSCE
UK Chargé d’Affaires, Deputy Ambassador James Ford, condemns Russia’s intensification of attacks against civilians in Ukraine, including its largest aerial assault of the war. This and inflammatory comments that run counter to Russia’s international commitments are further evidence that Moscow is still not serious about peace.
Thank you, Madam Chair. It is now nearly four months since Ukraine agreed to the US proposal for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. By contrast, Russia has not only refused to accept the proposal but has continued to intensify its attacks against Ukraine.
In fact, since direct talks began on 16 May, Russia has launched its biggest aerial attacks of the war. It broke its shameful records again at the start of this week, when it launched more than 500 aerial weapons at Ukraine.
As well as being the most intense aerial attacks of the war, these recent assaults have also been among the most deadly for Ukraine’s innocent civilians. The attack on the Dnipro region on 24 June killed 20 civilians, left more than 270 others wounded and damaged schools and hospitals. And the horrific attack against Kyiv on 16-17 June, which destroyed a civilian residential building, killed 30 civilians and left a further 172 people injured. This was the second deadliest attack on Kyiv since the full-scale invasion began. So far in 2025, Russian attacks have killed more than 1000 civilians in Ukraine.
These are not the actions of a government that is serious about peace. They are the actions of those who believe they can take advantage while the world is distracted by events elsewhere. It is our collective responsibility here to dispel this notion, to remind them that the world is watching and to ensure that Moscow understands that there will be a cost for frustrating peace and attacking innocent civilians.
Madam Chair, when it comes to peace, we have learnt to assess Russia’s actions rather than Russian rhetoric. But if we needed further evidence that Moscow is not currently serious about compromise or ending the war, we can look at the recent comments made by the President of the Russian Federation, as our Ukrainian colleague also highlighted.
On 18 June he said that, if Ukraine did not agree to Russia’s terms, “we will achieve our goals by military means.” On 20 June he said that “the Russian and Ukrainian peoples are essentially one people. In that sense, we see Ukraine as ours.” He also described as a long-standing principle that “wherever the foot of a Russian soldier steps is Russian land.”
Clearly, such statements run directly counter to the Helsinki commitments to which we have all agreed. And, alongside the escalation in attacks against Ukrainian civilians, they underline Moscow’s lack of seriousness about peace talks.
Madam Chair, as the UK – along with the vast majority of participating States here at the OSCE – we continue to call on Russia to agree to a full, immediate and unconditional ceasefire to create the space for negotiations on a framework for a just and lasting peace. Regrettably, we see no evidence that Russia will engage meaningfully without further pressure to do so. We are therefore ready to act with partners to introduce new sanctions if Moscow continues to ignore these widespread calls for a ceasefire. Thank you.
New research led by Viktoria Cologna at ETH Zurich in Switzerland may help to explain what’s going on. Using data from around the world, the study suggests simple exposure to extreme weather events does not affect people’s view of climate action – but linking those events to climate change can make a big difference.
Global opinion, global weather
The new study, published in Nature Climate Change, looked at the question of extreme weather and climate opinion using two global datasets.
The first is the Trust in Science and Science-related Populism (TISP) survey, which includes responses from more than 70,000 people in 68 countries. It measures public support for climate policies and the extent that people think climate change is behind increases in extreme weather.
The second dataset estimates how much of each country’s population has been affected each year by events such as droughts, floods, heatwaves and storms. These estimates are based on detailed models and historical climate records.
Public support for climate policies
The survey measured public support for climate policy by asking people how much they supported five specific actions to cut carbon emissions. These included raising carbon taxes, improving public transport, using more renewable energy, protecting forests and land, and taxing carbon-heavy foods.
Responses ranged from 1 (not at all) to 3 (very much). On average, support was fairly strong, with an average rating of 2.37 across the five policies. Support was especially high in parts of South Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, but lower in countries such as Russia, Czechia and Ethiopia.
Exposure to extreme weather events
The study found most people around the world have experienced heatwaves and heavy rainfall in recent decades. Wildfires affected fewer people in many European and North American countries, but were more common in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Cyclones mostly impacted North America and Asia, while droughts affected large populations in Asia, Latin America and Africa. River flooding was widespread across most regions, except Oceania.
Do people in countries with higher exposure to extreme weather events show greater support for climate policies? This study found they don’t.
In most cases, living in a country where more people are exposed to disasters was not reflected in stronger support for climate action.
Wildfires were the only exception. Countries with more wildfire exposure showed slightly higher support, but this link disappeared once factors such as land size and overall climate belief were considered.
In short, just experiencing more disasters does not seem to translate into increased support for mitigation efforts.
Seeing the link between weather and climate change
In the global survey, people were asked how much they think climate change has increased the impact of extreme weather over recent decades. On average, responses were moderately high (3.8 out of 5) suggesting that many people do link recent weather events to climate change.
Such an attribution was especially strong in Latin America, but lower in parts of Africa (such as Congo and Ethiopia) and Northern Europe (such as Finland and Norway).
Crucially, people who more strongly believed climate change had worsened these events were also more likely to support climate policies. In fact, this belief mattered more for policy support than whether they had actually experienced the events firsthand.
Prior research shows less dramatic and chronic events like rainfall or temperature anomalies have less influence on public views than more acute hazards like floods or bushfires. Even then, the influence on beliefs and behaviour tends to be slow and limited.
This study shows climate impacts alone may not change minds. However, it also highlights what may affect public thinking: helping people recognise the link between climate change and extreme weather events.
In countries such as Australia, climate change makes up only about 1% of media coverage. What’s more, most of the coverage focuses on social or political aspects rather than scientific, ecological, or economic impacts.
Omid Ghasemi receives funding from the Australian Academy of Science. He was a member of the TISP consortium and a co-author of the dataset used in this study.
Narendra Modi’s trip to Ghana in July 2025, part of a five-nation visit, is the first by an Indian prime minister in over 30 years. The two countries’ relationship goes back more than half a century to when India helped the newly independent Ghana set up its intelligence agencies. Ghana is also home to several large Indian-owned manufacturing and trading companies. International relations scholar Pius Siakwah unpacks the context of the visit.
What is the background to Ghana and India’s relationship?
It can be traced to links between Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, and his Indian counterpart, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1957. It is not surprising that the Indian High Commission is located near the seat of the Ghana government, Jubilee House.
Nkrumah and Nehru were co-founders of the Non-Aligned Movement, a group of states not formally aligned with major power blocs during the cold war. Its principles focused on respect for sovereignty, neutrality, non-interference, and peaceful dispute resolution. It was also a strong voice against the neo-colonial ambitions of some of the large powers.
The movement emerged in the wave of decolonisation after the second world war. It held its first conference in 1961 under the leadership of Josip Bros Tito (Yugoslavia), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt) and Sukarno (Indonesia) as well as Nehru and Nkrumah.
The relationship between Ghana and India seemingly went into decline after the overthrow of Nkrumah in 1966, coinciding with the decline of Indian presence in global geopolitics.
In 2002, President John Kufuor re-energised India-Ghana relations. This led to the Indian government’s financial support in the construction of Ghana’s seat of government in 2008.
Though the concept of the Non-Aligned Movement has faded this century, its principles have crystallised into south-south cooperation. This is the exchange of knowledge, skills, resources and technologies among regions in the developing world.
South-south cooperation has fuelled India-Ghana relations. Modi’s diplomatic efforts since 2014 have sought to relaunch India’s presence in Africa.
In recent times, India has engaged Africa through the India–Africa Forum Summit. The first summit was held in 2008 in New Delhi with 14 countries from Africa. The largest one was held in 2015, while the fourth was postponed in 2020 due to COVID-19. The summit has led to 50,000 scholarships, a focus on renewable energy through the International Solar Alliance and an expansion of the Pan-African e-Network to bridge healthcare and educational gaps. Development projects are financed through India’s EXIM Bank.
India is now one of Ghana’s major trading partners, importing primary products like minerals, while exporting manufactured products such as pharmaceuticals, transport and agricultural machinery. The Ghana-India Trade Advisory Chamber was established in 2018 for socio-economic exchange.
Modi’s visit supports the strengthening of economic and defence ties.
The bilateral trade between India and Ghana moved from US$1 billion in 2011-12 to US$4.5 billion in 2018-19. It then dipped to US$2.2 billion in 2020-21 due to COVID. By 2023, bilateral trade amounted to around US$3.3 billion, making India the third-largest export and import partner behind China and Switzerland.
Indian companies have invested in over 700 projects in Ghana. These include B5 Plus, a leading iron and steel manufacturer, and Melcom, Ghana’s largest supermarket chain.
India is also one of the leading sources of foreign direct investment to Ghana. Indian companies had invested over US$2 billion in Ghana by 2021, according to the Ghana Investment Promotion Center.
What are the key areas of interest?
The key areas of collaboration are economic, particularly:
energy
infrastructure (for example, construction of the Tema to Mpakadan railway line)
defence
technology
pharmaceuticals
agriculture (agro-processing, mechanisation and irrigation systems)
industrial (light manufacturing).
What’s the bigger picture?
Modi’s visit is part of a broader visit to strengthen bilateral ties and a follow-up to the Brics Summit, July 2025 in Brazil. Thus, whereas South Africa is often seen as the gateway to Africa, Ghana is becoming the opening to west Africa.
Modi’s visit can be viewed in several ways.
First, India as a neo-colonialist. Some commentators see India’s presence as just a continuation of exploitative relations. This manifests in financial and agricultural exploitation and land grabbing.
Second, India as smart influencer. This is where the country adopts a low profile but benefits from soft power, linguistic, cultural and historical advantages, and good relationships at various societal and governmental levels.
Third, India as a perennial underdog. India has less funds, underdeveloped communications, limited diplomatic capacity, little soft power advantage, and an underwhelming media presence compared to China. China is able to project its power in Africa through project financing and loans, visible diplomatic presence with visits and media coverage in Ghana. Some of the coverage of Chinese activities in Ghana is negative – illegal mining (galamsey) is an example. India benefits from limited negative media presence but its contributions in areas of pharmaceuticals and infrastructure don’t get attention.
Modi will want his visit to build on ideas of south-south cooperation, soft power and smart operating. He’ll want to refute notions that India is a perennial underdog or a neo-colonialist in a new scramble for Africa.
In 2025, Ghana has to navigate a complex geopolitical space.
Pius Siakwah 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.
There are more refugees in the world today than at any other point in history. The United Nations estimates that there are now more than 120 million people forcibly displaced from their homes. That is one in every 69 people on Earth. Some 73% of this population is hosted in lower or middle-income countries.
From the legacies of European colonialism to global inequality, drone warfare and climate instability, politicians have failed to address the causes driving this mass displacement. Instead, far-right parties exploit the crisis by inflaming cultures of hatred and hostility towards migrants, particularly in high-income western countries.
This is exacerbated by visual media, which makes refugees an easy target by denying them the means of telling their own stories on their own terms. Pictures of migrants on boats or climbing over border walls are everywhere in tabloid newspapers and on social media. But these images are rarely accompanied by any detailed account of the brutal experiences that force people into these situations.
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Many different kinds of visual storytelling live under the umbrella of refugee comics. They include short strips and stories, such as A Perilous Journey (2016) with testimonies from people fleeing the civil war in Syria, and Cabramatta (2019), about growing up as a Vietnamese migrant in a Sydney suburb. They also include codex-bound graphic novels, such as The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (2017), and interactive web-comics such as Exodus by Jasper Rietman (2018).
They include documentaries made by journalists about the specific experiences of individual refugees. They also include fiction by artists who combine elements of several refugee testimonies into representative stories. Additionally, there are both fictional and non-fictional artworks made by migrants and refugees themselves.
Refugee comics address different forced mass displacements over the 20th and 21st centuries. These include the 1948 Nakba in Palestine, the 1970s flight of refugees from Vietnam and the 2010s displacement of people from Syria and other countries across sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.
These refugee comics challenge anti-migrant images in at least three ways. First, they often integrate the direct testimonies of refugees. This is enhanced by the combination of words and pictures that comprise the comics page, which allows refugees to frame the way we see and respond to images of displaced people.
For example, in The Unwanted by Joe Sacco (2012), familiar images of migrants crossing the Mediterranean on small boats are narrated by a refugee called Jon. Jon’s testimony turns our attention to the fears and desires that drive people to attempt dangerous sea crossings.
A second way comics challenge anti-migrant images is by allowing refugees to tell their stories without disclosing their identities. Because comics are drawn by hand and use abstract icons rather than photographs, refugees can tell their stories while also avoiding any unwanted scrutiny while also maintaining personal privacy. This reintroduces refugee agency into a visual culture that often seeks to reduce migrants to voiceless victims or security threats.
For example, in Escaping Wars and Waves: Encounters with Syrian Refugees (2018) German comics journalist Olivier Kugler dedicates two pages to a man he calls “The Afghan” because he didn’t want his name or identity revealed. Kugler presents this man’s testimony of failed attempts to get to the UK, but he never draws his face or refers to him by name.
The third way comics challenge anti-migrant images is by shifting our attention from refugees themselves to the hostile environments and border infrastructures that they are forced to travel through and inhabit. Refugee researchers describe this different way of seeing as a “places and spaces, not faces” approach.
For instance, in Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention (2017), Tings Chak walks her readers through migrant detention centres from the perspective of those who are being processed and detained.
Drawing displacement
This emphasis on place and space is built into the structure of our own book, Graphic Refuge. We begin by focusing on graphic stories about ocean crossings, particularly on the Mediterranean sea. We then turn to comics concerned with the experience of refugee camps, and we also ask how interactive online comics bring viewers into virtual refugee spaces in a variety of ways.
It is the obliteration of homes that forces people to become refugees in the first place. Later in the book, we explore how illustrated stories document the destruction of cityscapes across Syria and also in Gaza. Finally, we turn to graphic autobiographies by second-generation refugees, those who have grown up in places such as the US or Australia, but who must still negotiate the trauma of their parents’ displacement.
Where most previous studies of refugee comics have focused on trauma and empathy, in Graphic Refuge we take a different approach. We set out to show how refugee comics represent migrant agency and desire, and how we are all implicated in the histories and systems that have created the very idea of the modern refugee.
As critical refugee scholar Vinh Nguyen writes in our book’s foreword, while it is difficult to truly know what refugee lives are like, those of us who enjoy the privileges of citizenship can at least read these comics to better understand “what we – we who can sleep under warm covers at night – are capable of”.
This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.
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.
The global ecosystem of climate finance is complex, constantly changing and sometimes hard to understand. But understanding it is critical to demanding a green transition that’s just and fair. That’s why The Conversation has collaborated with climate finance experts to create this user-friendly guide, in partnership with Vogue Business. With definitions and short videos, we’ll add to this glossary as new terms emerge.
Blue bonds
Blue bonds are debt instruments designed to finance ocean-related conservation, like protecting coral reefs or sustainable fishing. They’re modelled after green bonds but focus specifically on the health of marine ecosystems – this is a key pillar of climate stability.
By investing in blue bonds, governments and private investors can fund marine projects that deliver both environmental benefits and long-term financial returns. Seychelles issued the first blue bond in 2018. Now, more are emerging as ocean conservation becomes a greater priority for global sustainability efforts.
By Narmin Nahidi, assistant professor in finance at the University of Exeter
Carbon border adjustment mechanism
Did you know that imported steel could soon face a carbon tax at the EU border? That’s because the carbon border adjustment mechanism is about to shake up the way we trade, produce and price carbon.
The carbon border adjustment mechanism is a proposed EU policy to put a carbon price on imports like iron, cement, fertiliser, aluminium and electricity. If a product is made in a country with weaker climate policies, the importer must pay the difference between that country’s carbon price and the EU’s. The goal is to avoid “carbon leakage” – when companies relocate to avoid emissions rules and to ensure fair competition on climate action.
But this mechanism is more than just a tariff tool. It’s a bold attempt to reshape global trade. Countries exporting to the EU may be pushed to adopt greener manufacturing or face higher tariffs.
The carbon border adjustment mechanism is controversial: some call it climate protectionism, others argue it could incentivise low-carbon innovation worldwide and be vital for achieving climate justice. Many developing nations worry it could penalise them unfairly unless there’s climate finance to support greener transitions.
Carbon border adjustment mechanism is still evolving, but it’s already forcing companies, investors and governments to rethink emissions accounting, supply chains and competitiveness. It’s a carbon price with global consequences.
By Narmin Nahidi, assistant professor in finance at the University of Exeter
Carbon budget
The Paris agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by 2030. The carbon budget is the maximum amount of CO₂ emissions allowed, if we want a 67% chance of staying within this limit. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the remaining carbon budgets amount to 400 billion tonnes of CO₂ from 2020 onwards.
Think of the carbon budget as a climate allowance. Once it has been spent, the risk of extreme weather or sea level rise increases sharply. If emissions continue unchecked, the budget will be exhausted within years, risking severe climate consequences. The IPCC sets the global carbon budget based on climate science, and governments use this framework to set national emission targets, climate policies and pathways to net zero emissions.
By Dongna Zhang, assistant professor in economics and finance, Northumbria University
Carbon credits
Carbon credits are like a permit that allow companies to release a certain amount of carbon into the air. One credit usually equals one tonne of CO₂. These credits are issued by the local government or another authorised body and can be bought and sold. Think of it like a budget allowance for pollution. It encourages cuts in carbon emissions each year to stay within those global climate targets.
The aim is to put a price on carbon to encourage cuts in emissions. If a company reduces its emissions and has leftover credits, it can sell them to another company that is going over its limit. But there are issues. Some argue that carbon credit schemes allow polluters to pay their way out of real change, and not all credits are from trustworthy projects. Although carbon credits can play a role in addressing the climate crisis, they are not a solution on their own.
By Sankar Sivarajah, professor of circular economy, Kingston University London
Carbon credits explained.
Carbon offsetting
Carbon offsetting is a way for people or organisations to make up for the carbon emissions they are responsible for. For example, if you contribute to emissions by flying, driving or making goods, you can help balance that out by supporting projects that reduce emissions elsewhere. This might include planting trees (which absorb carbon dioxide) or building wind farms to produce renewable energy.
The idea is that your support helps cancel out the damage you are doing. For example, if your flight creates one tonne of carbon dioxide, you pay to support a project that removes the same amount.
While this sounds like a win-win, carbon offsetting is not perfect. Some argue that it lets people feel better without really changing their behaviour, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as greenwashing.
Not all projects are effective or well managed. For instance, some tree planting initiatives might have taken place anyway, even without the offset funding, deeming your contribution inconsequential. Others might plant the non-native trees in areas where they are unlikely to reach their potential in terms of absorbing carbon emissions.
So, offsetting can help, but it is no magic fix. It works best alongside real efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage low-carbon lifestyles or supply chains.
By Sankar Sivarajah, professor of circular economy, Kingston University London
Carbon offsetting explained.
Carbon tax
A carbon tax is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by placing a direct price on CO₂ and other greenhouse gases.
A carbon tax is grounded in the concept of the social cost of carbon. This is an estimate of the economic damage caused by emitting one tonne of CO₂, including climate-related health, infrastructure and ecosystem impacts.
A carbon tax is typically levied per tonne of CO₂ emitted. The tax can be applied either upstream (on fossil fuel producers) or downstream (on consumers or power generators). This makes carbon-intensive activities more expensive, it incentivises nations, businesses and people to reduce their emissions, while untaxed renewable energy becomes more competitively priced and appealing.
Carbon tax was first introduced by Finland in 1990. Since then, more than 39 jurisdictions have implemented similar schemes. According to the World Bank, carbon pricing mechanisms (that’s both carbon taxes and emissions trading systems) now cover about 24% of global emissions. The remaining 76% are not priced, mainly due to limited coverage in both sectors and geographical areas, plus persistent fossil fuel subsidies. Expanding coverage would require extending carbon pricing to sectors like agriculture and transport, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and strengthening international governance.
What is carbon tax?
Sweden has one of the world’s highest carbon tax rates and has cut emissions by 33% since 1990 while maintaining economic growth. The policy worked because Sweden started early, applied the tax across many industries and maintained clear, consistent communication that kept the public on board.
Canada introduced a national carbon tax in 2019. In Canada, most of the revenue from carbon taxes is returned directly to households through annual rebates, making the scheme revenue-neutral for most families. However, despite its economic logic, inflation and rising fuel prices led to public discontent – especially as many citizens were unaware they were receiving rebates.
Carbon taxes face challenges including political resistance, fairness concerns and low public awareness. Their success depends on clear communication and visible reinvestment of revenues into climate or social goals. A 2025 study that surveyed 40,000 people in 20 countries found that support for carbon taxes increases significantly when revenues are used for environmental infrastructure, rather than returned through tax rebates.
By Meilan Yan, associate professor and senior lecturer in financial economics, Loughborough University
Climate resilience
Floods, wildfires, heatwaves and rising seas are pushing our cities, towns and neighbourhoods to their limits. But there’s a powerful idea that’s helping cities fight back: climate resilience.
Resilience refers to the ability of a system, such as a city, a community or even an ecosystem – to anticipate, prepare for, respond to and recover from climate-related shocks and stresses.
Sometimes people say resilience is about bouncing back. But it’s not just about surviving the next storm. It’s about adapting, evolving and thriving in a changing world.
Resilience means building smarter and better. It means designing homes that stay cool during heatwaves. Roads that don’t wash away in floods. Power grids that don’t fail when the weather turns extreme.
It’s also about people. A truly resilient city protects its most vulnerable. It ensures that everyone – regardless of income, age or background – can weather the storm.
And resilience isn’t just reactive. It’s about using science, local knowledge and innovation to reduce a risk before disaster strikes. From restoring wetlands to cool cities and absorb floods, to creating early warning systems for heatwaves, climate resilience is about weaving strength into the very fabric of our cities.
By Paul O’Hare, senior lecturer in geography and development, Manchester Metropolitan University
The meaning of climate resilience.
Climate risk disclosure
Climate risk disclosure refers to how companies report the risks they face from climate change, such as flood damage, supply chain disruptions or regulatory costs. It includes both physical risks (like storms) and transition risks (like changing laws or consumer preferences).
Mandatory disclosures, such as those proposed by the UK and EU, aim to make climate-related risks transparent to investors. Done well, these reports can shape capital flows toward more sustainable business models. Done poorly, they become greenwashing tools.
By Narmin Nahidi, assistant professor in finance at the University of Exeter
Emissions trading scheme
An emissions trading scheme is the primary market-based approach for regulating greenhouse gas emissions in many countries, including Australia, Canada, China and Mexico.
Part of a government’s job is to decide how much of the economy’s carbon emissions it wants to avoid in order to fight climate change. It must put a cap on carbon emissions that economic production is not allowed to surpass. Preferably, the polluters (that’s the manufacturers, fossil fuel companies) should be the ones paying for the cost of climate mitigation.
Regulators could simply tell all the firms how much they are allowed to emit over the next ten years or so. But giving every firm the same allowance across the board is not cost efficient, because avoiding carbon emissions is much harder for some firms (such as steel producers) than others (such as tax consultants). Since governments cannot know each firm’s specific cost profile either, it can’t customise the allowances. Also, monitoring whether polluters actually abide by their assigned limits is extremely costly.
An emissions trading scheme cleverly solves this dilemma using the cap-and-trade mechanism. Instead of assigning each polluter a fixed quota and risking inefficiencies, the government issues a large number of tradable permits – each worth, say, a tonne of CO₂-equivalent (CO₂e) – that sum up to the cap. Firms that can cut greenhouse gas emissions relatively cheaply can then trade their surplus permits to those who find it harder – at a price that makes both better off.
By Mathias Weidinger, environmental economist, University of Oxford
Emissions trading schemes, explained by climate finance expert Mathias Weidinger.
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing
ESG investing stands for environmental, social and governance investing. In simple terms, these are a set of standards that investors use to screen a company’s potential investments.
ESG means choosing to invest in companies that are not only profitable but also responsible. Investors use ESG metrics to assess risks (such as climate liability, labour practices) and align portfolios with sustainability goals by looking at how a company affects our planet and treats its people and communities. While there isn’t one single global body governing ESG, various organisations, ratings agencies and governments all contribute to setting and evolving these metrics.
For example, investing in a company committed to renewable energy and fair labour practices might be considered “ESG aligned”. Supporters believe ESG helps identify risks and create long-term value. Critics argue it can be vague or used for greenwashing, where companies appear sustainable without real action. ESG works best when paired with transparency and clear data. A barrier is that standards vary, and it’s not always clear what counts as ESG.
Why do financial companies and institutions care? Issues like climate change and nature loss pose significant risks, affecting company values and the global economy.
However, gathering reliable ESG information can be difficult. Companies often self-report, and the data isn’t always standardised or up to date. Researchers – including my team at the University of Oxford – are using geospatial data, like satellite imagery and artificial intelligence, to develop global databases for high-impact industries, across all major sectors and geographies, and independently assess environmental and social risks and impacts.
For instance, we can analyse satellite images of a facility over time to monitor its emissions effect on nature and biodiversity, or assess deforestation linked to a company’s supply chain. This allows us to map supply chains, identify high-impact assets, and detect hidden risks and opportunities in key industries, providing an objective, real-time look at their environmental footprint.
The goal is for this to improve ESG ratings and provide clearer, more consistent insights for investors. This approach could help us overcome current data limitations to build a more sustainable financial future.
By Amani Maalouf, senior researcher in spatial finance, University of Oxford
Environmental, social and governance investing explained.
Financed emissions
Financed emissions are the greenhouse gas emissions linked to a bank’s or investor’s lending and investment portfolio, rather than their own operations. For example, a bank that funds a coal mine or invests in fossil fuels is indirectly responsible for the carbon those activities produce.
Measuring financed emissions helps reveal the real climate impact of financial institutions not just their office energy use. It’s a cornerstone of climate accountability in finance and is becoming essential under net zero pledges.
By Narmin Nahidi, assistant professor in finance at the University of Exeter
Green bonds
Green bonds are loans issued to fund environmentally beneficial projects, such as energy-efficient buildings or clean transportation. Investors choose them to support climate solutions while earning returns.
Green bonds are a major tool to finance the shift to a low-carbon economy by directing finance toward climate solutions. As climate costs rise, green bonds could help close the funding gap while ensuring transparency and accountability.
Green bonds are required to ensure funds are spent as promised. For instance, imagine a city wants to upgrade its public transportation by adding electric buses to reduce pollution. Instead of raising taxes or slashing other budgets, the city can issue green bonds to raise the necessary capital. Investors buy the bonds, the city gets the funding, and the environment benefits from cleaner air and fewer emissions.
The growing participation of government issuers has improved the transparency and reliability of these investments. The green bond market has grown rapidly in recent years. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the green bond market reached US$2.9 trillion (£2.1 trillion) in 2024 – nearly six times larger than in 2018. At the same time, annual issuance (the total value of green bonds issued in a year) hit US$700 billion, highlighting the increasing role of green finance in tackling climate change.
By Dongna Zhang, assistant professor in economics and finance, Northumbria University
Just transition
Just transition is the process of moving to a low-carbon society that is environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive. In a broad sense, a just transition means focusing on creating a more fair and equal society.
Just transition has existed as a concept since the 1970s. It was originally applied to the green energy transition, protecting workers in the fossil fuel industry as we move towards more sustainable alternatives.
These days, it has so many overlapping issues of justice hidden within it, so the concept is hard to define. Even at the level of UN climate negotiations, global leaders struggle to agree on what a just transition means.
The big battle is between developed countries, who want a very restrictive definition around jobs and skills, and developing countries, who are looking for a much more holistic approach that considers wider system change and includes considerations around human rights, Indigenous people and creating an overall fairer global society.
A just transition is essentially about imagining a future where we have moved beyond fossil fuels and society works better for everyone – but that can look very different in a European city compared to a rural setting in south-east Asia.
For example, in a British city it might mean fewer cars and better public transport. In a rural setting, it might mean new ways of growing crops that are more sustainable, and building homes that are heatwave resistant.
By Alix Dietzel, climate justice and climate policy expert, University of Bristol
The meaning of just transition.
Loss and damage
A global loss and damage fund was agreed by nations at the UN climate summit (Cop27) in 2022. This means that the rich countries of the world put money into a fund that the least developed countries can then call upon when they have a climate emergency.
At the moment, the loss and damage fund is made up of relatively small pots of money. Much more will be needed to provide relief to those who need it most now and in the future.
By Mark Maslin, professor of earth system science, UCL
Mark Maslin explains loss and damage.
Mitigation v adaptation
Mitigation means cutting greenhouse gas emissions to slow climate change. Adaptation means adjusting to its effects, like building sea walls or growing heat-resistant crops. Both are essential: mitigation tackles the cause, while adaptation tackles the symptoms.
Globally, most funding goes to mitigation, but vulnerable communities often need adaptation support most. Balancing the two is a major challenge in climate policy, especially for developing countries facing immediate climate threats.
By Narmin Nahidi, assistant professor in finance at the University of Exeter
Nationally determined contributions
Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are at the heart of the Paris agreement, the global effort to collectively combat climate change. NDCs are individual climate action plans created by each country. These targets and strategies outline how a country will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change.
Each nation sets its own goals based on its own circumstances and capabilities – there’s no standard NDC. These plans should be updated every five years and countries are encouraged to gradually increase their climate ambitions over time.
The aim is for NDCs to drive real action by guiding policies, attracting investment and inspiring innovation in clean technologies. But current NDCs fall short of the Paris agreement goals and many countries struggle to turn their plans into a reality. NDCs also vary widely in scope and detail so it’s hard to compare efforts across the board. Stronger international collaboration and greater accountability will be crucial.
By Doug Specht, reader in cultural geography and communication, University of Westminster
Fashion depends on water, soil and biodiversity – all natural capital. And forward-thinking designers are now asking: how do we create rather than deplete, how do we restore rather than extract?
Natural capital is the value assigned to the stock of forests, soils, oceans and even minerals such as lithium. It sustains every part of our economy. It’s the bees that pollinate our crops. It’s the wetlands that filter our water and it’s the trees that store carbon and cool our cities.
If we fail to value nature properly, we risk losing it. But if we succeed, we unlock a future that is not only sustainable but also truly regenerative.
My team at the University of Oxford is developing tools to integrate nature into national balance sheets, advising governments on biodiversity, and we’re helping industries from fashion to finance embed nature into their decision making.
Natural capital, explained by a climate finance expert.
By Mette Morsing, professor of business sustainability and director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford
Net zero
Reaching net zero means reducing the amount of additional greenhouse gas emissions that accumulate in the atmosphere to zero. This concept was popularised by the Paris agreement, a landmark deal that was agreed at the UN climate summit (Cop21) in 2015 to limit the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
There are some emissions, from farming and aviation for example, that will be very difficult, if not impossible, to reach absolute zero. Hence, the “net”. This allows people, businesses and countries to find ways to suck greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere, effectively cancelling out emissions while trying to reduce them. This can include reforestation, rewilding, direct air capture and carbon capture and storage. The goal is to reach net zero: the point at which no extra greenhouse gases accumulate in Earth’s atmosphere.
By Mark Maslin, professor of earth system science, UCL
Mark Maslin explains net zero.
For more expert explainer videos, visit The Conversation’s quick climate dictionary playlist here on YouTube.
Mark Maslin is Pro-Vice Provost of the UCL Climate Crisis Grand Challenge and Founding Director of the UCL Centre for Sustainable Aviation. He was co-director of the London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership and is a member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group. He is an advisor to Sheep Included Ltd, Lansons, NetZeroNow and has advised the UK Parliament. He has received grant funding from the NERC, EPSRC, ESRC, DFG, Royal Society, DIFD, BEIS, DECC, FCO, Innovate UK, Carbon Trust, UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, Research England, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust, CIFF, Sprint2020, and British Council. He has received funding from the BBC, Lancet, Laithwaites, Seventh Generation, Channel 4, JLT Re, WWF, Hermes, CAFOD, HP and Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.
Amani Maalouf receives funding from IKEA Foundation and UK Research and Innovation (NE/V017756/1).
Narmin Nahidi is affiliated with several academic associations, including the Financial Management Association (FMA), British Accounting and Finance Association (BAFA), American Finance Association (AFA), and the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CMBE). These affiliations do not influence the content of this article.
Paul O’Hare receives funding from the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Award reference NE/V010174/1.
Alix Dietzel, Dongna Zhang, Doug Specht, Mathias Weidinger, Meilan Yan, and Sankar Sivarajah 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.
AI-powered assistive devices, like hearing aids, are changing how the people who use them experience public space.(Shutterstock)
New applications and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with wearable devices are changing the way users interact with their environments and each other. The impacts and reach of these new technologies have yet to be fully understood.
Connections between technologies and bodies is not a new thing for many disabled persons. Assistive technologies — tools and products designed to support people with disabilities — have played a part in mitigating built and institutional barriers experienced by disabled persons for decades.
While not strictly considered assistive, immersive and wearable technologies have the potential to change the relationship between disabled users and their experience of place.
For example, Ray-Ban’s Meta glasses use AI to describe what the cameras are capturing using the Be My Eyes app. Using OpenAI’s large language model, ChatGPT, this effectively turns a user’s smart phone into a vision assistant.
The availability and production of environmental data from these technologies may impact how we relate to each other, how we move through and understand space, and how we engage with the physical environment around us at any given moment.
Sam Seavey, founder of TheBlindLife.com, reviews the possibilities and limitations of Apple’s VisionPro. (The Blind Life)
We’re at a critical juncture where AI-enabled technologies used by individuals may profoundly impact our urban futures.
What happens, for example, when wearables make any “place” a digital work or play place? What does a largely private-sector, consumer-driven, AI-enabled digital intervention into a city’s spaces mean for planning, zoning and taxation? What are the environmental costs of the global AI project?
And crucially, who gets to participate in this digital reimagining?
AI and the city
While access can be challenging — wearables are often costly — ableist thinking regarding the use of technology to render invisible Blind and/or Deaf people and culture is also a problem. Some people might naively assume that all Blind and Deaf people are universally seeking a bio-technological “miracle.”
There are also other challenges: how a technology captures or describes its data may not match up to a user’s pre-existing sense of place. Moreover, access to tech can produce some unintended consequences, including the erosion of in-person community building among disabled people.
My hearing aids use AI and machine learning to sense and adjust my sound environment. They help me cope with the ways in which the places of my everyday life — such as my home or the lecture hall — are generally configured for people without hearing loss.
When I use my hearing aids, I find that the city has never sounded so wonderful, and yet sometimes irritatingly loud. The sound of birds is one thing; the grinding sound of a breaking subway is another entirely.
Cumulative exposure to noisy indoor and outdoor places of the city poses auditory health risks, such as noise-induced hearing loss or tinnitus, and can contribute to poor health more broadly. I have to be careful about ongoing noise exposure, and by adjusting the volume of my hearing aids, I can turn down the city when I want to.
Future bodies and urban futures
AI-powered technologies can exacerbate issues of access, privilege and freedom of movement. This happens both through who is able to purchase and use devices, as well as through data and their applications. Data may be biased in terms of race, gender, sexuality and disability.
Scientific research and media representations tend to highlight the benevolent possibilities of technologies for “repairing” bodies conceived as being functionally medically deficient.
Much less is said about disabled persons controlling the narrative, taking up key roles in the messy terrain of AI, machine learning and data governance, and in the planning and design of future cities.
Digital modelling
We are also witnessing growing interest in the digital twinning — creating highly accurate digital models — of everything from human hearts to entire cities.
Not everyone can, should or wishes to be technologically “assisted” or augmented. There are medical, identity and culture, affordability, legal, moral and ethical concerns.
Other issues raised by brain-computer interface research, for example, include concerns about legal capacity and ownership of the self, including ownership of device-generated data.
In a study on the impact of neural technologies, researchers shared the legal repercussions relating to two disabled people deprived of voting rights in Spain. The person who recovered the ability to communicate autonomously using their finger and a computer had their rights restored, while the other, who used a human intermediary, did not.
Where does the person end and the technology begin, and vice versa? Who gets to decide?
Future technologies
As the use of AI and assistive technologies increases in everyday urban life, we will need to address these questions sooner rather than later.
And if disabled persons are not adequately involved in these discussions and decisions, then cities will be less — rather than more — accessible.
Ron Buliung 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.
Mountains on the moon as seen by NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)
In science-fiction stories, companies often mine the moon or asteroids. While this may seem far-fetched, this idea is edging closer to becoming reality.
Celestial bodies like the moon contain valuable resources, such as lunar regolith — also known as moon dust — and helium-3. These resources could serve a range of applications, including making rocket propellant and generating energy to sustaining long missions, bringing benefits in space and on Earth.
The first objective on this journey is being able to collect lunar regolith. One company taking up this challenge is ispace, a Japanese space exploration company ispace that signed a contract with NASA in 2020 for the collection and transfer of ownership of lunar regolith.
The company recently attempted to land its RESILIENCE lunar lander, but the mission was ultimately unsuccessful. Still, this endeavour marked a significant move toward the commercialization of space resources.
These circumstances give rise to a fundamental question: what are the legal rules governing the exploitation of space resources? The answer is both simple and complex, as there is a mix of international agreements and evolving regulations to consider.
Space activities have exponentially evolved since the treaty’s adoption. In the 60 years following the launch of Sputnik 1 — the first satellite placed in orbit — less than 500 space objects were launched annually. But since 2018, this number has risen into the thousands, with nearly 3,000 launched in 2024.
Because of this, the treaty is often judged as inadequate to address the current complexities of space activities, particularly resource exploitation.
A longstanding debate centres on whether Article II of the treaty, which prohibits the appropriation of outer space — including the moon and other celestial bodies — also prohibits space mining.
The prevailing position is that Article II solely bans the appropriation of territory, not the extraction of resources themselves.
We are now at a crucial moment in the development of space law. Arguing over whether extraction is legal serves no purpose. Instead, the focus must shift to ensuring resource extraction is carried out in accordance with principles that ensure the safe and responsible use of outer space.
International and national space laws
A significant development in the governance of space resources has been the adoption Artemis Accords, which — as of June 2025 — has 55 signatory nations. The accords reflect a growing international consensus concerning the exploitation of space resources.
Notably, Section 10 of the accords indicates that the exploitation of space resources does not constitute appropriation, and therefore doesn’t violate the Outer Space Treaty.
Considering the typically slow pace of multilateral negotiations, a handful of nations introduced national legislation. These laws govern the legality of space resource exploitation, allowing private companies to request licenses to conduct this type of activity.
Among these, Luxembourg’s legal framework is the most complete. It provides a series of requirements to provide authorization for the exploitation of space resources. In fact, ispace’s licence to collect lunar regolith was obtained under this regime.
This first high-resolution image taken on the first day of the Artemis I mission by a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays. The spacecraft was 57,000 miles from Earth when the image was captured. (NASA)
The rest of the regulations usually tend to limit themselves to proclaiming the legality of this activity without entering into too much detail and deferring the specifics of implementation to future regulations.
While these initiatives served to put space resources at the forefront of international forums, they also risk regulatory fragmentation, as different countries adopt varying standards and approaches.
In May 2025, the chair of the working group, Steven Freeland, presented a draft of recommended principles based on input from member states.
These principles reaffirm the freedom of use and exploration of outer space for peaceful purposes, while introducing rules pertaining to the safety of the activities and their sustainability, as well as the protection of the environment, both of Earth and outer space.
The development of a legal framework for space resources is still in its early stages. The working group is expected to submit its final report by 2027, but the non-binding nature of the principles raises concerns about their enforcement and application.
As humanity moves closer to extracting and using space resources, the need for a cohesive and responsible governance system has never been greater.
Martina Elia Vitoloni 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Rizwan Virk, Faculty Associate, PhD Candidate in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology, Arizona State University
In Stephenson’s novel ‘The Diamond Age,’ a device called the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer offers emotional, social and intellectual support.Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Every time I read about another advance in AI technology, I feel like another figment of science fiction moves closer to reality.
“The Diamond Age” depicted a post-cyberpunk sectarian future, in which society is fragmented into tribes, called phyles. In this future world, sophisticated nanotechnology is ubiquitous, and a new type of AI is introduced.
Though inspired by MIT nanotech pioneer Eric Drexler and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, the advanced nanotechnology depicted in the novel still remains out of reach. However, the AI that’s portrayed, particularly a teaching device called the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, isn’t only right in front of us; it also raises serious issues about the role of AI in labor, learning and human behavior.
In Stephenson’s novel, the Primer looks like a hardcover book, but each of its “pages” is really a screen display that can show animations and text, and it responds to its user in real time via AI. The book also has an audio component, which voices the characters and narrates stories being told by the device.
It was originally created for the young daughter of an aristocrat, but it accidentally falls into the hands of a girl named Nell who’s living on the streets of a futuristic Shanghai. The Primer provides Nell personalized emotional, social and intellectual support during her journey to adulthood, serving alternatively as an AI companion, a storyteller, a teacher and a surrogate parent.
The AI is able to weave fairy tales that help a younger Nell cope with past traumas, such as her abusive home and life on the streets. It educates her on everything from math to cryptography to martial arts. In a techno-futuristic homage to George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play “Pygmalion,” the Primer goes so far as to teach Nell the proper social etiquette to be able to blend into neo-Victorian society, one of the prominent tribes in Stephenson’s balkanized world.
No need for ‘ractors’
Three recent developments in AI – in video games, wearable technology and education – reveal that building something like the Primer should no longer be considered the purview of science fiction.
In May 2025, the hit video game “Fortnite” introduced an AI version of Darth Vader, who speaks with the voice of the late James Earl Jones.
While it was popular among fans of the game, the Screen Actors Guild lodged a labor complaint with Epic Games, the creator of “Fortnite.” Even though Epic had received permission from the late actor’s estate, the Screen Actors Guild pointed out that actors could have been hired to voice the character, and the company – in refusing to alert the union and negotiate terms – violated existing labor agreements.
In “The Diamond Age,” while the Primer uses AI to generate the fairy tales that train Nell, for the voices of these archetypal characters, Stephenson concocted a low-tech solution: The characters are played by a network of what he termed “ractors” – real actors working in a studio who are contracted to perform and interact in real time with users.
The Darth Vader “Fortnite” character shows that a Primer built today wouldn’t need to use actors at all. It could rely almost entirely on AI voice generation and have real-time conversations, showing that today’s technology already exceeds Stephenson’s normally far-sighted vision.
Recording and guiding in real time
Synthesizing James Earl Jones’ voice in “Fortnite” wasn’t the only recent AI development heralding the arrival of Primer-like technology.
I recently witnessed a demonstration of wearable AI that records all of the wearer’s conversations. Their words are then sent to a server so they can be analyzed by AI, providing both summaries and suggestions to the user about future behavior.
Several startups are making these “always on” AI wearables. In an April 29, 2025, essay titled “I Recorded Everything I Said for Three Months. AI Has Replaced My Memory,” Wall Street Journal technology columnist Joanna Stern describes the experience of using this technology. She concedes that the assistants created useful summaries of her conversations and meetings, along with helpful to-do lists. However, they also recalled “every dumb, private and cringeworthy thing that came out of my mouth.”
AI wearable devices that continuously record the conversations of their users have recently hit the market.
These devices also create privacy issues. The people whom the user interacts with don’t always know they are being recorded, even as their words are also sent to a server for the AI to process them. To Stern, the technology’s potential for mass surveillance becomes readily apparent, presenting a “slightly terrifying glimpse of the future.”
Relying on AI engines such as ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s Gemini, the wearables work only with words, not images. Behavioral suggestions occur only after the fact. However, a key function of the Primer – coaching users in real time in the middle of any situation or social interaction – is the next logical step as the technology advances.
Education or social engineering?
In “The Diamond Age,” the Primer doesn’t simply weave interactive fairy tales for Nell. It also assumes the responsibility of educating her on everything from her ABCs when younger to the intricacies of cryptography and politics as she gets older.
There are certainly advantages to AI tutors: Tutoring and college tuition can be exorbitantly expensive, and the technology can offer better access to education to people of all income levels.
Pulling together these latest AI advances – interactive avatars, behavioral guides, tutors – it’s easy to envision how an AI device like the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer could be created in the near future. A young person might have a personalized AI character that accompanies them at all times. It can teach them about the world and offer up suggestions for how to act in certain situations. The AI could be tailored to a child’s personality, concocting stories that include AI versions of their favorite TV and movie characters.
But “The Diamond Age” offers a warning, too.
Toward the end of the novel, a version of the Primer is handed out to hundreds of thousands of young Chinese girls who, like Nell, didn’t have access to education or mentors. This leads to the education of the masses. But it also opens the door to large-scale social engineering, creating an army of Primer-raised martial arts experts, whom the AI then directs to act on behalf of “Princess Nell,” Nell’s fairy tale name.
It’s easy to see how this sort of large-scale social engineering could be used to target certain ideologies, crush dissent or build loyalty to a particular regime. The AI’s behavior could also be subject to the whims of the companies or individuals that created it. A ubiquitous, always-on, friendly AI could become the ultimate monitoring and reporting device. Think of a kinder, gentler face for Big Brother that people have trusted since childhood.
While large-scale deployment of a Primer-like AI could certainly make young people smarter and more efficient, it could also hamper one of the most important parts of education: teaching people to think for themselves.
Rizwan Virk owns shares of investments funds which own stock in various private AI companies such as Open AI and X.ai. He owns public stock in Google and Microsoft. Virk has family members who work for a wearable AI company.
The Parker administration says it will issue $800 million in bonds over the next four years to fund affordable housing.Jeff Fusco/The Conversation, CC BY-NC-SA
Often, only city treasurers and the finance committees of city councils pay attention to the details behind these municipal bonds.
As a law professor who studies the social impact of municipal bonds, I believe it’s important that city residents understand how these bonds work as well.
While municipal bonds are integral to the city’s effort to increase access to affordable and market-rate housing, they can include hidden costs and requirements that raise prices in ways that make city services unaffordable for lower-income residents.
The Parker administration has vowed to create or preserve 30,000 affordable housing units in Philly through new construction, rehabilitation and expanded rental assistance. Jeff Fusco/The Conversation, CC BY-SA
How municipal bonds work
Most people are aware that companies sell shares on the stock market to raise capital. State and local governments do the same thing in the form of municipal bonds, which help them raise money to cover their expenses and to finance infrastructure projects.
These bonds are a form of debt. Investors can purchase an interest in the bond and, in exchange, the local government promises to pay the money back with interest in a specified time period. The money from investors functions like a loan to the government.
Municipal bonds are often used so that one generation of taxpayers is not having to bear the full cost of a project that will benefit multiple generations of residents. The cost of building a bridge, for example, which will be in use for decades, can be spread out over 30 years so that residents pay back the loan slowly over time rather than saddle residents with huge tax increases one year to cover the cost.
However, the cost of borrowing pushes up the cost of projects by adding interest payments the same way a mortgage adds to the overall cost of buying a house. Overall, the market and state and local governments have historically viewed this cost as a worthy trade-off.
Some municipal bonds have limits
The Parker administration has several options when it comes to raising capital on the municipal market.
The most common method is through general obligation bonds, which are backed by the city’s authority to impose and collect taxes. Bondholders rely on the city’s “full faith and credit” to assure them that if the city has difficulty paying back the debt, the city will raise taxes on residents to secure the payment.
The city plans to use general obligation bonds to help fund its affordable housing plan, but there are limits on how much it can borrow this way. The state constitution limits Philadelphia’s ability to incur debt to a total of 13.5% of the value of its assessed taxable real estate, based on an average of this amount for the preceding 10 years.
Philadelphia is more affordable than several other big U.S. cities, according to a 2020 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, but it has a high poverty rate. Jeff Fusco/The Conversation, CC BY-SA
Philly has another option
The city, however, also has the authority to take on another form of debt: revenue bonds. Revenue bonds rely on specific sources of revenue instead of the government’s taxing power. Jurisdictions issue revenue bonds to fund particular projects or services – usually ones that generate income from fees paid by users.
For example, a publicly owned water utility or electric company relies on water and sewage fees or electricity rates and charges to pay back their revenue bonds. Likewise, a transportation authority will rely on tolls to pay back revenue bonds issued to build a toll road, such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Under state law, revenue bonds are “non-debt debts.” They are not debts owed by the city, because the city has not promised to repay the debt through the use of its own taxing powers. Instead, the people who pay the fees to use the service are paying back the debt.
Since states began to place stricter limits on debt in the wake of the Great Depression in the 1930s, cities across the U.S. have increasingly used revenue bonds to get around state debt limits and still fund valuable public services, including affordable housing projects.
When another government entity – rather than the city – issues the bond, and the city pays them a service fee for doing so, it’s a form of what’s called conduit debt. That obligation to pay the service fee to the other government entity is the conduit debt that the city pays out of its general fund.
From fiscal years 2012 to 2021, the city’s outstanding debt from general obligation bonds paid for out of its general fund was between $1.3 billion to $1.7 billion per year. However, the city’s conduit debt outstripped that number every year, ranging from $1.8 billion to nearly $2.3 billion. In more recent years, conduit debt has been less than the city’s debt from general obligation bonds.
The city keeps conduit debt on its books – and is obligated to pay it back – even though it comes from bonds issued by the development authorities, because these debts loop back to the city. In the bonds issued by these agencies, the city actually becomes like a client of the agency. The city is typically obligated to pay the agency service fees as part of a contractual obligation that cannot be canceled.
The revenue on which the development agencies’ bonds rely, the money from which bondholders expect to be paid back, does not come from fees that residents pay out of their own pocket – for example through ticket sales from a sports stadium built with revenue bonds. The money instead comes out of the city’s treasury.
A loophole to affordable housing
Essentially this is a loophole for the city to bypass debt limits set for Philadelphia in the state constitution. Sometimes creativity in government requires using loopholes to get the job done – to get to yes instead of a stalemate.
Consider this analogy. Say your sister takes out a bank loan to buy a car for you because your credit limit is maxed out. She is relying on you to pay her back, and she uses your payment to pay the bank. But if you don’t pay her back, she’s not responsible by law for paying the bank herself. So, it’s your debt, but she is the conduit.
If the city holds itself accountable, it can use conduit debt responsibly to make affordable housing construction a reality.
The mayor’s office did not respond to my questions about whether they plan to use conduit debt issued by a development authority, whether that conduit debt would include service fees, and what funds would be used to pay those fees.
In its quest to increase access to affordable housing, the Parker administration should, in my view, be mindful of limiting the service fees it agrees to pay – which have no legally prescribed limits – and also account for where it will find income to cover these costs. For example, will it come from the sale of city-owned land? Fees charged to developers? Or some other source?
Otherwise, taxpayers may be left to foot a bill that is essentially unlimited.
Jade Craig does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Reid Kress Weisbord, Distinguished Professor of Law and Judge Norma Shapiro Scholar, Rutgers University – Newark
Musician Jimmy Buffett and his wife, Jane Slagsvol, attend a Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts event in 2018 in New York. Evan Agostini/Invision via AP
Lawyers often tell their clients that everyone should have a will that clearly states who should inherit their assets after they die. But even having a will is not necessarily enough to avoid a costly and contentious legal dispute.
Consider what happened after Jimmy Buffett died of skin cancer at the age of 76 in 2023. The singer and entrepreneurial founder of the Margaritaville brand ordered in his will that his fortune be placed in a trust after his death. To manage the trust, Buffett named two co-trustees: his widow, Jane Slagsvol, and Richard Mozenter, an accountant who had served as the singer’s financial adviser for more than three decades.
In dueling petitions filed in Los Angeles and Palm Beach, Florida, in June 2025, however, Slagsvol – identified as Jane Buffett in her legal filing – and Mozenter are both seeking to remove each other as a trustee.
As law professors who specialize in trusts and estates, we teach graduate courses about the transfer of property during life and at death. We believe that the Buffett dispute offers a valuable lesson for anyone with an estate, large or small. And choosing the right person to manage the assets you leave behind can be just as important as selecting who will inherit your property.
Buffett’s business empire
Buffett’s estate includes valuable intellectual property from his hit songs, including “It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere,” “Oldest Surfer on the Beach” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Buffett’s albums have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and continue to generate some $20 million annually in royalties. Buffett also owned a yacht, real estate, airplanes, fancy watches and valuable securities.
According to Slagsvol’s petition, Buffett’s trust was set up to benefit his widow. Slagsvol, who married Buffett in 1977, is one of two trustees of that trust, which is required to have at least one “independent trustee” in addition to her “at all times.” That requirement is stated expressly in Buffett’s trust declaration.
Slagsvol receives all income earned by the trust – an estate-planning technique for giving away property managed by a trustee on behalf of the trust beneficiaries – for the rest of her life. She can also receive additional trust funds for her health care, living expenses and “any other purpose” that the independent trustee – Mozenter, as of July 2025 – deems to be in Slagsvol’s best interests.
The estate plan also created separate trusts for their three children: Savannah, Sarah “Delaney” and Cameron Buffett, who are in their 30s and 40s. Each child reportedly received $2 million upon Jimmy’s death. When Slagsvol dies, she can decide who will receive any remaining assets from among Buffett’s descendants and charities.
The structure of Buffett’s plan is popular among wealthy married couples. It provides lifelong support for the surviving spouse while ensuring that their kids and grandchildren can inherit the remainder of their estate – even if that spouse remarries. This type of trust typically cannot be changed by the surviving spouse without court approval.
If you’re fortunate enough to reach your golden years with a sizable nest egg, it helps your loved ones if you can draft a detailed will. You might also want to consider establishing a trust. Maskot/Getty Images
Dueling trustee removal petitions
Slagsvol is trying to remove Mozenter as the trust’s independent trustee.
She claims he refused to comply with her requests for financial information, failed to cooperate with her as her co-trustee, and hired a trust attorney who pressured her to resign as trustee. Slagsvol also raised numerous questions about the trust’s income projections and compensation paid to Mozenter for his services.
Mozenter’s petition, filed in Florida, is not available to the public. According to media coverage of this dispute, he seeks to remove Slagsvol as trustee. He claims that, during his decades-long role as Buffett’s financial adviser, the musician “expressed concerns about his wife’s ability to manage and control his assets after his death.”
That led Buffett to establish a trust, Mozenter asserted, “in a manner that precluded Jane from having actual control” over it.
Estate planning lessons
We believe that the public can learn two important estate planning lessons from this dispute.
First, anyone planning to leave an estate, whether modest or vast, needs to choose the right people to manage the transfer of their property after their death.
That might mean picking a professional executor or trustee who is not related to you. A professional may be more likely to remain neutral should any disputes arise within the family, but hiring one can saddle the estate with costly fees.
An alternative is to choose a relative or trusted friend who is willing to do this for free. About 56% of wills name an adult child or grandchild as executor, according to a recent study. Some estates, like Buffett’s trust, name both a professional and a family member. An important consideration is whether the people asked to manage the estate will get along with each other – and with anyone else who is slated to inherit from the estate.
The second lesson is, whether you choose a professional, a loved one or a friend to manage your estate, make clear what circumstances would warrant their removal. Courts are reluctant to remove a handpicked trustee without proof of negligence, fraud or disloyalty. But trustees can be removed when a breakdown in cooperation interferes with their ability to administer the estate or trust.
Some trusts anticipate such conflicts by allowing beneficiaries to replace a professional trustee with another professional trustee. That can resolve some disputes while avoiding the cost of seeking court approval.
Preventing disputes from erupting in the first place can help people avert the costly and embarrassing kind of litigation now ensnaring Jimmy Buffett’s estate.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Robert Bird, Professor of Business Law & Eversource Energy Chair in Business Ethics, University of Connecticut
Something dangerous is happening to the U.S. economy, and it’s not inflation or trade wars. Chaotic deregulation and the selective enforcement of laws have upended markets and investor confidence. At one point, the threat of tariffs and resulting chaos evaporated US$4 trillion in value in the U.S. stock market. This approach isn’t helping the economy, and there are troubling signs it will hurt both the U.S. and the global economy in the short and long term.
The rule of law – the idea that legal rules apply to everyone equally, regardless of wealth or political connections − is essential for a thriving economy. Yet globally the respect for the rule of law is slipping, and the U.S. is slipping with it. According to annual rankings from the World Justice Project, the rule of law has declined in more than half of all countries for seven years in a row. The rule of law in the U.S., the most economically powerful nation in the world, is now weaker than the rule of law in Uruguay, Singapore, Latvia and over 20 other countries.
When regulation is unnecessarily burdensome for business, government should lighten the load. However, arbitrary and frenzied deregulation does not free corporations to earn higher profits. As a business school professor with an MBA who has taught business law for over 25 years, and the author of a recently published book about the importance of legal knowledge to business, I can affirm that the opposite is true. Chaotic deregulation doesn’t drive growth. It only fuels risk.
Chaos undermines investment, talent and trust
Legal uncertainty has become a serious drag on American competitiveness.
A study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that public policy risks — such as unexpected changes in taxes, regulation and enforcement — ranked among the top challenges businesses face, alongside more familiar business threats such as competition or economic volatility. Companies that can’t predict how the law might change are forced to plan for the worst. That means holding back on long-term investment, slowing innovation and raising prices to cover new risks.
When the government enforces rules arbitrarily, it also undermines property rights.
For example, if a country enters into a major trade agreement and then goes ahead and violates it, that threatens the property rights of the companies that relied on the agreement to conduct business. If the government can seize assets without due process, those assets lose their stability and value. And if that treatment depends on whether a company is in the government’s political favor, it’s not just bad economics − it’s a red flag for investors.
When government doesn’t enforce rules fairly, it also threatens people’s freedom to enter into contracts.
Consider presidential orders that threaten the clients of law firms that have challenged the administration with cancellation of their government contracts. The threat alone jeopardizes the value of those agreements.
If businesses can’t trust public contracts to be respected, they’ll be less likely to work with the government in the first place. This deprives the government, and ultimately the American people, of receiving the best value for their tax dollars in critical areas such as transportation, technology and national defense.
Regulatory chaos also allows corruption to spread.
For example, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits businesses from bribing foreign government officials, has leveled the playing field for firms and enabled the best American companies to succeed on their merits. Before the law was enacted in 1977, some American companies felt pressured to pay bribes to compete. “Pausing” enforcement of the law, as the current presidential administration has done, increases the cost of doing business and encourages a wild west economy where chaos thrives.
Chaotic enforcement of the law also corrodes labor markets.
American companies require a strong pool of talented professionals to fuel their financial success. When legal rights are enforced arbitrarily or unjustly, the very best talent that American companies need may leave the country.
The science brain drain is already happening. American scientists have submitted 32% more applications for jobs abroad compared with last year. Nonscientists are leaving too. Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs has witnessed a 50% increase in Americans taking steps to obtain an Irish passport. Employers in the U.K. saw a spike in job applications from the United States.
Business from other countries will gladly accept American talent as they compete against American companies. During the Third Reich, Nazi Germany lost its best and brightest to other countries, including America. Now the reverse is happening, as highly talented Americans leave to work for firms in other nations.
Threats of arbitrary legal actions also drive away democratic allies and their prosperous populations that purchase American-made goods and services. For example, arbitrarily threatening to punish or even annex a closely allied nation does not endear its citizens to that government or the businesses it represents. So it’s no surprise that Canadians are now boycotting American goods and services. This is devastating businesses in American border towns and hurts the economy nationwide.
Similarly, the Canadian government has responded to whipsawing U.S. tariff announcements with counter-tariffs, which will slice the profits of American exporters. Close American allies and trading partners such as Japan, the U.K. and the European Union are also signaling their own willingness to impose retaliatory tariffs, increasing the costs of operations to American business even more.
Modern capitalism depends on smart regulation to thrive. Smart regulation is not an obstacle to capitalism. Smart regulation is what makes American capitalism possible. Smart regulation is what makes American freedom possible.
Clear and consistently applied legal rules allow businesses to aggressively compete, carefully plan, and generate profits. An arbitrary rule of law deprives business of the true power of capitalism – the ability to promote economic growth, spur innovation and improve the overall living standards of a free society. Americans deserve no less, and it is up to government to make that happen for everyone.
Robert Bird does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
About 600 miles off the west coast of Africa, large clusters of thunderstorms begin organizing into tropical storms every hurricane season. They aren’t yet in range of Hurricane Hunter flights, so forecasters at the National Hurricane Center rely on weather satellites to peer down on these storms and beam back information about their location, structure and intensity.
The satellite data helps meteorologists create weather forecasts that keep planes and ships safe and prepare countries for a potential hurricane landfall.
Now, meteorologists are about to lose access to three of those satellites.
On June 25, 2025, the Trump administration issued a service change notice announcing that the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, DMSP, and the Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center would terminate data collection, processing and distribution of all DMSP data no later than June 30. The data termination was postponed until July 31 following a request from the head of NASA’s Earth Science Division.
How hurricanes form. NOAA
I am a meteorologist who studies lightning in hurricanes and helps train other meteorologists to monitor and forecast tropical cyclones. Here is how meteorologists use the DMSP data and why they are concerned about it going dark.
Looking inside the clouds
At its most basic, a weather satellite is a high-resolution digital camera in space that takes pictures of clouds in the atmosphere.
These are the satellite images you see on most TV weather broadcasts. They let meteorologists see the location and some details of a hurricane’s structure, but only during daylight hours.
Hurricane Flossie spins off the Mexican coast on July 1, 2025. Images show the top of the hurricane from space as day turns to night. NOAA GOES
Meteorologists can use infrared satellite data, similar to a thermal imaging camera, at all hours of the day to find the coldest cloud-top temperatures, highlighting areas where the highest wind speeds and rainfall rates are found.
But while visible and infrared satellite imagery are valuable tools for hurricane forecasters, they provide only a basic picture of the storm. It’s like a doctor diagnosing a patient after a visual exam and checking their temperature.
Infrared bands show more detail of Hurricane Flossie’s structure on July 1, 2025. NOAA GOES
For more accurate diagnoses, meteorologists rely on the DMSP satellites.
The three satellites orbit Earth 14 times per day with special sensor microwave imager/sounder instruments, or SSMIS. These let meteorologists look inside the clouds, similar to how an MRI in a hospital looks inside a human body. With these instruments, meteorologists can pinpoint the storm’s low-pressure center and identify signs of intensification.
Precisely locating the center of a hurricane improves forecasts of the storm’s future track. This lets meteorologists produce more accurate hurricane watches, warnings and evacuations.
About 80% of major hurricanes – those with wind speeds of at least 111 mph (179 kilometers per hour) – rapidly intensify at some point, ramping up the risks they pose to people and property on land. Finding out when storms are about to undergo intensification allows meteorologists to warn the public about these dangerous hurricanes.
Where are the defense satellites going?
NOAA’s Office of Satellite and Product Operations described the reason for turning off the flow of data as a need to mitigate “a significant cybersecurity risk.”
The three satellites have already operated for longer than planned.
The DMSP satellites were launched between 1999 and 2009 and were designed to last for five years. They have now been operating for more than 15 years. The United States Space Force recently concluded that the DMSP satellites would reach the end of their lives between 2023 and 2026, so the data would likely have gone dark soon.
The advanced technology microwave sounder, or ATMS, can provide data similar to the special sensor microwave imager/sounder, or SSMIS, but at a lower resolution. It provides a more washed-out view that is less useful than the SSMIS for pinpointing a storm’s location or estimating its intensity.
Images of Hurricane Erick off the coast of Mexico, viewed from NOAA-20’s ATMS (left) and DMPS SSMIS (right) on June 18 show the difference in resolution and the higher detail provided by the SSMIS data. U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, via Michael Lowry
ML-1A is a microwave satellite that will help replace some of the DMSP satellites’ capabilities. However, the government hasn’t announced whether the ML-1A data will be available to forecasters, including those at the National Hurricane Center.
Why are satellite replacements last minute?
Satellite programs are planned over many years, even decades, and are very expensive. The current geostationary satellite program launched its first satellite in 2016 with plans to operate until 2038. Development of the planned successor for GOES-R began in 2019.
Scientists prepare a GOES-R satellite for packing aboard a rocket in 2016. NASA/Charles Babir
Delays in developing the satellite instruments and funding cuts caused the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System and Defense Weather Satellite System to be canceled in 2010 and 2012 before any of their satellites could be launched.
The 2026 NOAA budget request includes an increase in funding for the next-generation geostationary satellite program, so it can be restructured to reuse spare parts from existing geostationary satellites. The budget also terminates contracts for ocean color, atmospheric composition and advanced lightning mapper instruments.
Hurricane forecasters will continue to use all available tools, including satellite, radar, weather balloon and dropsonde data, to monitor the tropics and issue hurricane forecasts. But the loss of satellite data, along with other cuts to data, funding and staffing, could ultimately put more lives at risk.
Chris Vagasky is a member of the American Meteorological Society and the National Weather Association.
On June 26, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 ruling that preserves free preventive care under the Affordable Care Act, a popular benefit that helps approximately 150 million Americans stay healthy.
The case, Kennedy v. Braidwood, was the fourth major legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The decision, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh with the support of Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, ruled that insurers must continue to cover at no cost any preventive care approved by a federal panel called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
Members of the task force are independent scientific experts, appointed for four-year terms. The panel’s role had been purely advisory until the ACA, and the plaintiffs contended that the members lacked the appropriate authority as they had not been appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Supreme Court rejected this argument, saying that members simply needed to be appointed by the Health and Human Services Secretary – currently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – which they had been, under his predecessor during the Biden administration.
This ruling seemingly safeguards access to preventive care. But as public health researchers who study health insurance and sexual health, we see another concern: It leaves preventive care vulnerable to how Kennedy and future HHS secretaries will choose to exercise their power over the task force and its recommendations.
What is the US Preventive Services Task Force?
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force was initially created in 1984 to develop recommendations about prevention for primary care doctors. It is modeled after the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, which was established in 1976.
Under the ACA, insurers must fully cover all screenings and interventions endorsed by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images
The task force makes new recommendations and updates existing ones by reviewing clinical and policy evidence on a regular basis and weighing the potential benefits and risks of a wide range of health screenings and interventions. These include mammograms; blood pressure, colon cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis screenings; and HIV prevention. Over 150 million Americans have benefited from free coverage of these recommended services under the ACA, and around 60% of privately insured people use at least one of the covered services each year.
The task force plays such a crucial role in health care because it is one of three federal groups whose recommendations insurers must abide by. Section 2713 of the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to offer full coverage of preventive services endorsed by three federal groups: the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and the Health Resources and Services Administration. For example, the coronavirus relief bill, which passed in March 2020 and allocated emergency funding in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, used this provision to ensure COVID-19 vaccines would be free for many Americans.
The Braidwood case and HIV prevention
This case, originally filed in Texas in 2020, was brought by Braidwood Management, a Christian for-profit corporation owned by Steven Hotze, a Texas physician and Republican activist who has previously filed multiple lawsuits against the ACA. Braidwood and its co-plaintiffs argued on religious grounds against being forced to offer preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medicine that prevents HIV infection, in their insurance plans.
At issue in Braidwood was whether task force members – providers and researchers who provide independent and nonpartisan expertise – were appropriately appointed and supervised under the appointments clause of the Constitution, which specifies how various government positions are appointed. The case called into question free coverage of all recommendations made by the task force since the Affordable Care Act was passed in March 2010.
In the ruling, Kavanaugh wrote that “the Task Force members’ appointments are fully consistent with the Appointments Clause in Article II of the Constitution.” In laying out his reasoning, he wrote, “The Task Force members were appointed by and are supervised and directed by the Secretary of HHS. And the Secretary of HHS, in turn, answers to the President of the United States.”
Concerns over political influence
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is meant to operate independently of political influence, and its decisions are technically not directly reviewable. However, the task force is appointed by the HHS secretary, who may remove any of its members at any time for any reason, even if such actions are highly unusual.
Kennedy recently took the unprecedented step of removing all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which debates vaccine safety but also, crucially, helps decide what immunizations are free to Americans guaranteed by the Affordable Care Act. The newly constituted committee, appointed in weeks rather than years, includes several vaccine skeptics and has already moved to rescind some vaccine recommendations, such as routine COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women and children.
Kennedy has also proposed restructuring out of existence the agency that supports the task force, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. That agency has been subject to massive layoffs within the Department of Health and Human Services. For full disclosure, one of the authors is currently funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and previously worked there.
The decision to safeguard the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force as a body and, by extension, free preventive care under the ACA, doesn’t come without risks and highlights the fragility of long-standing, independent advisory systems in the face of the politicization of health. Kennedy could simply remove the existing task force members and replace them with members who may reshape the types of care recommended to Americans by their doctors and insurance plans based on debunked science and misinformation.
Partisanship and the politicization of health threaten trust in evidence. Already, signs are emerging that Americans on both side of the political divide are losing confidence in government health agencies. This ruling preserves a crucial part of the Affordable Care Act, yet federal health guidelines and access to lifesaving care could still swing dramatically in Kennedy’s hands – or with each subsequent transition of power.
Paul Shafer receives research funding from the National Institutes of Health, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Department of Veterans Affairs. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of these agencies or the United States government.
Kristefer Stojanovski receives funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of these agencies or the United States government.
On June 26, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 ruling that preserves free preventive care under the Affordable Care Act, a popular benefit that helps approximately 150 million Americans stay healthy.
The case, Kennedy v. Braidwood, was the fourth major legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The decision, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh with the support of Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, ruled that insurers must continue to cover at no cost any preventive care approved by a federal panel called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
Members of the task force are independent scientific experts, appointed for four-year terms. The panel’s role had been purely advisory until the ACA, and the plaintiffs contended that the members lacked the appropriate authority as they had not been appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Supreme Court rejected this argument, saying that members simply needed to be appointed by the Health and Human Services Secretary – currently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – which they had been, under his predecessor during the Biden administration.
This ruling seemingly safeguards access to preventive care. But as public health researchers who study health insurance and sexual health, we see another concern: It leaves preventive care vulnerable to how Kennedy and future HHS secretaries will choose to exercise their power over the task force and its recommendations.
What is the US Preventive Services Task Force?
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force was initially created in 1984 to develop recommendations about prevention for primary care doctors. It is modeled after the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, which was established in 1976.
Under the ACA, insurers must fully cover all screenings and interventions endorsed by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images
The task force makes new recommendations and updates existing ones by reviewing clinical and policy evidence on a regular basis and weighing the potential benefits and risks of a wide range of health screenings and interventions. These include mammograms; blood pressure, colon cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis screenings; and HIV prevention. Over 150 million Americans have benefited from free coverage of these recommended services under the ACA, and around 60% of privately insured people use at least one of the covered services each year.
The task force plays such a crucial role in health care because it is one of three federal groups whose recommendations insurers must abide by. Section 2713 of the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to offer full coverage of preventive services endorsed by three federal groups: the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and the Health Resources and Services Administration. For example, the coronavirus relief bill, which passed in March 2020 and allocated emergency funding in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, used this provision to ensure COVID-19 vaccines would be free for many Americans.
The Braidwood case and HIV prevention
This case, originally filed in Texas in 2020, was brought by Braidwood Management, a Christian for-profit corporation owned by Steven Hotze, a Texas physician and Republican activist who has previously filed multiple lawsuits against the ACA. Braidwood and its co-plaintiffs argued on religious grounds against being forced to offer preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medicine that prevents HIV infection, in their insurance plans.
At issue in Braidwood was whether task force members – providers and researchers who provide independent and nonpartisan expertise – were appropriately appointed and supervised under the appointments clause of the Constitution, which specifies how various government positions are appointed. The case called into question free coverage of all recommendations made by the task force since the Affordable Care Act was passed in March 2010.
In the ruling, Kavanaugh wrote that “the Task Force members’ appointments are fully consistent with the Appointments Clause in Article II of the Constitution.” In laying out his reasoning, he wrote, “The Task Force members were appointed by and are supervised and directed by the Secretary of HHS. And the Secretary of HHS, in turn, answers to the President of the United States.”
Concerns over political influence
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is meant to operate independently of political influence, and its decisions are technically not directly reviewable. However, the task force is appointed by the HHS secretary, who may remove any of its members at any time for any reason, even if such actions are highly unusual.
Kennedy recently took the unprecedented step of removing all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which debates vaccine safety but also, crucially, helps decide what immunizations are free to Americans guaranteed by the Affordable Care Act. The newly constituted committee, appointed in weeks rather than years, includes several vaccine skeptics and has already moved to rescind some vaccine recommendations, such as routine COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women and children.
Kennedy has also proposed restructuring out of existence the agency that supports the task force, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. That agency has been subject to massive layoffs within the Department of Health and Human Services. For full disclosure, one of the authors is currently funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and previously worked there.
The decision to safeguard the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force as a body and, by extension, free preventive care under the ACA, doesn’t come without risks and highlights the fragility of long-standing, independent advisory systems in the face of the politicization of health. Kennedy could simply remove the existing task force members and replace them with members who may reshape the types of care recommended to Americans by their doctors and insurance plans based on debunked science and misinformation.
Partisanship and the politicization of health threaten trust in evidence. Already, signs are emerging that Americans on both side of the political divide are losing confidence in government health agencies. This ruling preserves a crucial part of the Affordable Care Act, yet federal health guidelines and access to lifesaving care could still swing dramatically in Kennedy’s hands – or with each subsequent transition of power.
Paul Shafer receives research funding from the National Institutes of Health, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Department of Veterans Affairs. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of these agencies or the United States government.
Kristefer Stojanovski receives funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of these agencies or the United States government.
Based on pronouncements in 2024, you might think now is the time to see U.S. citizens streamingout of the country. Months before the 2024 presidential election, Americans were saying they would leave should candidate Donald Trump win the election. Gallup polling in 2024 found that 21% of Americans wanted to leave the United States permanently, more than double the 10% who had said so in 2011.
And indeed in June 2025, a Vermont legislator announced that she was resigning her seat and moving to Canada because of political concerns and economic opportunities. To be sure, people are moving. Even so, as a scholar of American migration overseas, my research finds that the vast majority of Americans are not about to depart for greener shores.
A western Massachusetts group
In October 2024, I surveyed 68 Americans in western Massachusetts, an area with a slight Democratic majority, asking if they wanted to leave the United States for a lengthy period of time, but not necessarily permanently. Over 90% said no, noting that there were factors limiting their mobility, such as financial obligations or having a partner who would not move, and that there were reasons that made them want to stay, such as owning property and having friends nearby.
Just three respondents indicated they were making plans to move, while an additional 11 said they wanted to move “someday.”
Reality strikes
After the November 2024 election, I interviewed seven of those respondents, two of whom had said prior to the election that they might leave the United States. After the election, they all said they planned to stay.
One who had said she wanted to leave acknowledged her reversal, saying: “I may have flippantly said, ‘Oh, if (Trump) gets voted in … I would leave,’ but I can’t see leaving. Part of it is because of my daughter,” who had recently become a mother. She continued, “It’s never crossed my mind seriously enough to even research it.”
Another told me, “I’m not going to let somebody push me out of what I consider my country and my home because he’s a jerk.”
Others spoke of needing to work several more years in order to receive a pension, or having family responsibilities keeping them in the country. None supported the current administration.
On a national level
In two nationally representative surveys, my colleague Helen B. Marrow, a sociologist of immigration, and I found no significant increase in migration aspiration between 2014 and 2019. We also found that respondents mentioned exploration and adventure much more often than political or economic reasons for wanting to move abroad.
Even though the U.S. passport grants visa-free visitor access to more than 180 countries, U.S. citizens still need residence and work visas. At home, they, like others, have family commitments and financial constraints, or may just not want to leave home. More than 95% of the world’s population do not move abroad – and U.S. citizens are no different.
Relocation coaching
In addition to my academic research on overseas Americans, I am also an international relocation coach. I help Americans considering a move abroad navigate the emotional, practical and professional complexities of relocation, whether they’re just starting to explore the idea or actively planning their next steps.
In February 2025, a national poll found that 4% of Americans said they were “definitely planning to move” to another country.
That same month, I followed up with my seven interviewees from western Massachusetts, including one trans man. They all reiterated their choice to remain in the United States. One person, who might move abroad at some point, told me she hadn’t changed her mind about leaving soon: “Leaving doesn’t necessarily mean anything will be better for me, even if it was a financial possibility.”
Two people said that recent political developments actually meant that they were more committed to remaining in the United States. One told me, “Now, more than ever, individuals need to figure out what small actions can be taken to help our fellow Americans get through this dark period.”
But even those “definitely planning on moving” can have other factors intervene. Two clients of mine who were making serious plans had to stop when family members’ health situations changed for the worse.
So how many people are actually leaving? It is clear that a growing number of Americans are considering a move abroad. But far fewer are conducting serious research, seeking professional consultation or actually moving. Drawing on available data, my own academic research and my coaching experience, my educated estimate is that no more than 1% to 2% of U.S. citizens are actively making viable plans to leave the country. Nor are all of those leaving out of protest; many are still motivated by exploration, adventure, employment or to be with a partner.
Even so, that figure is roughly 3 million to 6 million people – which would be a significant increase over the estimated 5.5 million Americans currently living abroad. As with many migration flows, even the movement of a small percentage of a population can still have the potential to reshape both the United States and its overseas population.
Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Rizwan Virk, Faculty Associate, PhD Candidate in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology, Arizona State University
In Stephenson’s novel ‘The Diamond Age,’ a device called the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer offers emotional, social and intellectual support.Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Every time I read about another advance in AI technology, I feel like another figment of science fiction moves closer to reality.
“The Diamond Age” depicted a post-cyberpunk sectarian future, in which society is fragmented into tribes, called phyles. In this future world, sophisticated nanotechnology is ubiquitous, and a new type of AI is introduced.
Though inspired by MIT nanotech pioneer Eric Drexler and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, the advanced nanotechnology depicted in the novel still remains out of reach. However, the AI that’s portrayed, particularly a teaching device called the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, isn’t only right in front of us; it also raises serious issues about the role of AI in labor, learning and human behavior.
In Stephenson’s novel, the Primer looks like a hardcover book, but each of its “pages” is really a screen display that can show animations and text, and it responds to its user in real time via AI. The book also has an audio component, which voices the characters and narrates stories being told by the device.
It was originally created for the young daughter of an aristocrat, but it accidentally falls into the hands of a girl named Nell who’s living on the streets of a futuristic Shanghai. The Primer provides Nell personalized emotional, social and intellectual support during her journey to adulthood, serving alternatively as an AI companion, a storyteller, a teacher and a surrogate parent.
The AI is able to weave fairy tales that help a younger Nell cope with past traumas, such as her abusive home and life on the streets. It educates her on everything from math to cryptography to martial arts. In a techno-futuristic homage to George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play “Pygmalion,” the Primer goes so far as to teach Nell the proper social etiquette to be able to blend into neo-Victorian society, one of the prominent tribes in Stephenson’s balkanized world.
No need for ‘ractors’
Three recent developments in AI – in video games, wearable technology and education – reveal that building something like the Primer should no longer be considered the purview of science fiction.
In May 2025, the hit video game “Fortnite” introduced an AI version of Darth Vader, who speaks with the voice of the late James Earl Jones.
While it was popular among fans of the game, the Screen Actors Guild lodged a labor complaint with Epic Games, the creator of “Fortnite.” Even though Epic had received permission from the late actor’s estate, the Screen Actors Guild pointed out that actors could have been hired to voice the character, and the company – in refusing to alert the union and negotiate terms – violated existing labor agreements.
In “The Diamond Age,” while the Primer uses AI to generate the fairy tales that train Nell, for the voices of these archetypal characters, Stephenson concocted a low-tech solution: The characters are played by a network of what he termed “ractors” – real actors working in a studio who are contracted to perform and interact in real time with users.
The Darth Vader “Fortnite” character shows that a Primer built today wouldn’t need to use actors at all. It could rely almost entirely on AI voice generation and have real-time conversations, showing that today’s technology already exceeds Stephenson’s normally far-sighted vision.
Recording and guiding in real time
Synthesizing James Earl Jones’ voice in “Fortnite” wasn’t the only recent AI development heralding the arrival of Primer-like technology.
I recently witnessed a demonstration of wearable AI that records all of the wearer’s conversations. Their words are then sent to a server so they can be analyzed by AI, providing both summaries and suggestions to the user about future behavior.
Several startups are making these “always on” AI wearables. In an April 29, 2025, essay titled “I Recorded Everything I Said for Three Months. AI Has Replaced My Memory,” Wall Street Journal technology columnist Joanna Stern describes the experience of using this technology. She concedes that the assistants created useful summaries of her conversations and meetings, along with helpful to-do lists. However, they also recalled “every dumb, private and cringeworthy thing that came out of my mouth.”
AI wearable devices that continuously record the conversations of their users have recently hit the market.
These devices also create privacy issues. The people whom the user interacts with don’t always know they are being recorded, even as their words are also sent to a server for the AI to process them. To Stern, the technology’s potential for mass surveillance becomes readily apparent, presenting a “slightly terrifying glimpse of the future.”
Relying on AI engines such as ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s Gemini, the wearables work only with words, not images. Behavioral suggestions occur only after the fact. However, a key function of the Primer – coaching users in real time in the middle of any situation or social interaction – is the next logical step as the technology advances.
Education or social engineering?
In “The Diamond Age,” the Primer doesn’t simply weave interactive fairy tales for Nell. It also assumes the responsibility of educating her on everything from her ABCs when younger to the intricacies of cryptography and politics as she gets older.
There are certainly advantages to AI tutors: Tutoring and college tuition can be exorbitantly expensive, and the technology can offer better access to education to people of all income levels.
Pulling together these latest AI advances – interactive avatars, behavioral guides, tutors – it’s easy to envision how an AI device like the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer could be created in the near future. A young person might have a personalized AI character that accompanies them at all times. It can teach them about the world and offer up suggestions for how to act in certain situations. The AI could be tailored to a child’s personality, concocting stories that include AI versions of their favorite TV and movie characters.
But “The Diamond Age” offers a warning, too.
Toward the end of the novel, a version of the Primer is handed out to hundreds of thousands of young Chinese girls who, like Nell, didn’t have access to education or mentors. This leads to the education of the masses. But it also opens the door to large-scale social engineering, creating an army of Primer-raised martial arts experts, whom the AI then directs to act on behalf of “Princess Nell,” Nell’s fairy tale name.
It’s easy to see how this sort of large-scale social engineering could be used to target certain ideologies, crush dissent or build loyalty to a particular regime. The AI’s behavior could also be subject to the whims of the companies or individuals that created it. A ubiquitous, always-on, friendly AI could become the ultimate monitoring and reporting device. Think of a kinder, gentler face for Big Brother that people have trusted since childhood.
While large-scale deployment of a Primer-like AI could certainly make young people smarter and more efficient, it could also hamper one of the most important parts of education: teaching people to think for themselves.
Rizwan Virk owns shares of investments funds which own stock in various private AI companies such as Open AI and X.ai. He owns public stock in Google and Microsoft. Virk has family members who work for a wearable AI company.
Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Rizwan Virk, Faculty Associate, PhD Candidate in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology, Arizona State University
In Stephenson’s novel ‘The Diamond Age,’ a device called the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer offers emotional, social and intellectual support.Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Every time I read about another advance in AI technology, I feel like another figment of science fiction moves closer to reality.
“The Diamond Age” depicted a post-cyberpunk sectarian future, in which society is fragmented into tribes, called phyles. In this future world, sophisticated nanotechnology is ubiquitous, and a new type of AI is introduced.
Though inspired by MIT nanotech pioneer Eric Drexler and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, the advanced nanotechnology depicted in the novel still remains out of reach. However, the AI that’s portrayed, particularly a teaching device called the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, isn’t only right in front of us; it also raises serious issues about the role of AI in labor, learning and human behavior.
In Stephenson’s novel, the Primer looks like a hardcover book, but each of its “pages” is really a screen display that can show animations and text, and it responds to its user in real time via AI. The book also has an audio component, which voices the characters and narrates stories being told by the device.
It was originally created for the young daughter of an aristocrat, but it accidentally falls into the hands of a girl named Nell who’s living on the streets of a futuristic Shanghai. The Primer provides Nell personalized emotional, social and intellectual support during her journey to adulthood, serving alternatively as an AI companion, a storyteller, a teacher and a surrogate parent.
The AI is able to weave fairy tales that help a younger Nell cope with past traumas, such as her abusive home and life on the streets. It educates her on everything from math to cryptography to martial arts. In a techno-futuristic homage to George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play “Pygmalion,” the Primer goes so far as to teach Nell the proper social etiquette to be able to blend into neo-Victorian society, one of the prominent tribes in Stephenson’s balkanized world.
No need for ‘ractors’
Three recent developments in AI – in video games, wearable technology and education – reveal that building something like the Primer should no longer be considered the purview of science fiction.
In May 2025, the hit video game “Fortnite” introduced an AI version of Darth Vader, who speaks with the voice of the late James Earl Jones.
While it was popular among fans of the game, the Screen Actors Guild lodged a labor complaint with Epic Games, the creator of “Fortnite.” Even though Epic had received permission from the late actor’s estate, the Screen Actors Guild pointed out that actors could have been hired to voice the character, and the company – in refusing to alert the union and negotiate terms – violated existing labor agreements.
In “The Diamond Age,” while the Primer uses AI to generate the fairy tales that train Nell, for the voices of these archetypal characters, Stephenson concocted a low-tech solution: The characters are played by a network of what he termed “ractors” – real actors working in a studio who are contracted to perform and interact in real time with users.
The Darth Vader “Fortnite” character shows that a Primer built today wouldn’t need to use actors at all. It could rely almost entirely on AI voice generation and have real-time conversations, showing that today’s technology already exceeds Stephenson’s normally far-sighted vision.
Recording and guiding in real time
Synthesizing James Earl Jones’ voice in “Fortnite” wasn’t the only recent AI development heralding the arrival of Primer-like technology.
I recently witnessed a demonstration of wearable AI that records all of the wearer’s conversations. Their words are then sent to a server so they can be analyzed by AI, providing both summaries and suggestions to the user about future behavior.
Several startups are making these “always on” AI wearables. In an April 29, 2025, essay titled “I Recorded Everything I Said for Three Months. AI Has Replaced My Memory,” Wall Street Journal technology columnist Joanna Stern describes the experience of using this technology. She concedes that the assistants created useful summaries of her conversations and meetings, along with helpful to-do lists. However, they also recalled “every dumb, private and cringeworthy thing that came out of my mouth.”
AI wearable devices that continuously record the conversations of their users have recently hit the market.
These devices also create privacy issues. The people whom the user interacts with don’t always know they are being recorded, even as their words are also sent to a server for the AI to process them. To Stern, the technology’s potential for mass surveillance becomes readily apparent, presenting a “slightly terrifying glimpse of the future.”
Relying on AI engines such as ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s Gemini, the wearables work only with words, not images. Behavioral suggestions occur only after the fact. However, a key function of the Primer – coaching users in real time in the middle of any situation or social interaction – is the next logical step as the technology advances.
Education or social engineering?
In “The Diamond Age,” the Primer doesn’t simply weave interactive fairy tales for Nell. It also assumes the responsibility of educating her on everything from her ABCs when younger to the intricacies of cryptography and politics as she gets older.
There are certainly advantages to AI tutors: Tutoring and college tuition can be exorbitantly expensive, and the technology can offer better access to education to people of all income levels.
Pulling together these latest AI advances – interactive avatars, behavioral guides, tutors – it’s easy to envision how an AI device like the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer could be created in the near future. A young person might have a personalized AI character that accompanies them at all times. It can teach them about the world and offer up suggestions for how to act in certain situations. The AI could be tailored to a child’s personality, concocting stories that include AI versions of their favorite TV and movie characters.
But “The Diamond Age” offers a warning, too.
Toward the end of the novel, a version of the Primer is handed out to hundreds of thousands of young Chinese girls who, like Nell, didn’t have access to education or mentors. This leads to the education of the masses. But it also opens the door to large-scale social engineering, creating an army of Primer-raised martial arts experts, whom the AI then directs to act on behalf of “Princess Nell,” Nell’s fairy tale name.
It’s easy to see how this sort of large-scale social engineering could be used to target certain ideologies, crush dissent or build loyalty to a particular regime. The AI’s behavior could also be subject to the whims of the companies or individuals that created it. A ubiquitous, always-on, friendly AI could become the ultimate monitoring and reporting device. Think of a kinder, gentler face for Big Brother that people have trusted since childhood.
While large-scale deployment of a Primer-like AI could certainly make young people smarter and more efficient, it could also hamper one of the most important parts of education: teaching people to think for themselves.
Rizwan Virk owns shares of investments funds which own stock in various private AI companies such as Open AI and X.ai. He owns public stock in Google and Microsoft. Virk has family members who work for a wearable AI company.
On June 26, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 ruling that preserves free preventive care under the Affordable Care Act, a popular benefit that helps approximately 150 million Americans stay healthy.
The case, Kennedy v. Braidwood, was the fourth major legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The decision, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh with the support of Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, ruled that insurers must continue to cover at no cost any preventive care approved by a federal panel called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
Members of the task force are independent scientific experts, appointed for four-year terms. The panel’s role had been purely advisory until the ACA, and the plaintiffs contended that the members lacked the appropriate authority as they had not been appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Supreme Court rejected this argument, saying that members simply needed to be appointed by the Health and Human Services Secretary – currently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – which they had been, under his predecessor during the Biden administration.
This ruling seemingly safeguards access to preventive care. But as public health researchers who study health insurance and sexual health, we see another concern: It leaves preventive care vulnerable to how Kennedy and future HHS secretaries will choose to exercise their power over the task force and its recommendations.
What is the US Preventive Services Task Force?
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force was initially created in 1984 to develop recommendations about prevention for primary care doctors. It is modeled after the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, which was established in 1976.
Under the ACA, insurers must fully cover all screenings and interventions endorsed by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images
The task force makes new recommendations and updates existing ones by reviewing clinical and policy evidence on a regular basis and weighing the potential benefits and risks of a wide range of health screenings and interventions. These include mammograms; blood pressure, colon cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis screenings; and HIV prevention. Over 150 million Americans have benefited from free coverage of these recommended services under the ACA, and around 60% of privately insured people use at least one of the covered services each year.
The task force plays such a crucial role in health care because it is one of three federal groups whose recommendations insurers must abide by. Section 2713 of the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to offer full coverage of preventive services endorsed by three federal groups: the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and the Health Resources and Services Administration. For example, the coronavirus relief bill, which passed in March 2020 and allocated emergency funding in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, used this provision to ensure COVID-19 vaccines would be free for many Americans.
The Braidwood case and HIV prevention
This case, originally filed in Texas in 2020, was brought by Braidwood Management, a Christian for-profit corporation owned by Steven Hotze, a Texas physician and Republican activist who has previously filed multiple lawsuits against the ACA. Braidwood and its co-plaintiffs argued on religious grounds against being forced to offer preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medicine that prevents HIV infection, in their insurance plans.
At issue in Braidwood was whether task force members – providers and researchers who provide independent and nonpartisan expertise – were appropriately appointed and supervised under the appointments clause of the Constitution, which specifies how various government positions are appointed. The case called into question free coverage of all recommendations made by the task force since the Affordable Care Act was passed in March 2010.
In the ruling, Kavanaugh wrote that “the Task Force members’ appointments are fully consistent with the Appointments Clause in Article II of the Constitution.” In laying out his reasoning, he wrote, “The Task Force members were appointed by and are supervised and directed by the Secretary of HHS. And the Secretary of HHS, in turn, answers to the President of the United States.”
Concerns over political influence
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is meant to operate independently of political influence, and its decisions are technically not directly reviewable. However, the task force is appointed by the HHS secretary, who may remove any of its members at any time for any reason, even if such actions are highly unusual.
Kennedy recently took the unprecedented step of removing all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which debates vaccine safety but also, crucially, helps decide what immunizations are free to Americans guaranteed by the Affordable Care Act. The newly constituted committee, appointed in weeks rather than years, includes several vaccine skeptics and has already moved to rescind some vaccine recommendations, such as routine COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women and children.
Kennedy has also proposed restructuring out of existence the agency that supports the task force, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. That agency has been subject to massive layoffs within the Department of Health and Human Services. For full disclosure, one of the authors is currently funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and previously worked there.
The decision to safeguard the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force as a body and, by extension, free preventive care under the ACA, doesn’t come without risks and highlights the fragility of long-standing, independent advisory systems in the face of the politicization of health. Kennedy could simply remove the existing task force members and replace them with members who may reshape the types of care recommended to Americans by their doctors and insurance plans based on debunked science and misinformation.
Partisanship and the politicization of health threaten trust in evidence. Already, signs are emerging that Americans on both side of the political divide are losing confidence in government health agencies. This ruling preserves a crucial part of the Affordable Care Act, yet federal health guidelines and access to lifesaving care could still swing dramatically in Kennedy’s hands – or with each subsequent transition of power.
Paul Shafer receives research funding from the National Institutes of Health, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Department of Veterans Affairs. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of these agencies or the United States government.
Kristefer Stojanovski receives funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of these agencies or the United States government.
The Parker administration says it will issue $800 million in bonds over the next four years to fund affordable housing.Jeff Fusco/The Conversation, CC BY-NC-SA
Often, only city treasurers and the finance committees of city councils pay attention to the details behind these municipal bonds.
As a law professor who studies the social impact of municipal bonds, I believe it’s important that city residents understand how these bonds work as well.
While municipal bonds are integral to the city’s effort to increase access to affordable and market-rate housing, they can include hidden costs and requirements that raise prices in ways that make city services unaffordable for lower-income residents.
The Parker administration has vowed to create or preserve 30,000 affordable housing units in Philly through new construction, rehabilitation and expanded rental assistance. Jeff Fusco/The Conversation, CC BY-SA
How municipal bonds work
Most people are aware that companies sell shares on the stock market to raise capital. State and local governments do the same thing in the form of municipal bonds, which help them raise money to cover their expenses and to finance infrastructure projects.
These bonds are a form of debt. Investors can purchase an interest in the bond and, in exchange, the local government promises to pay the money back with interest in a specified time period. The money from investors functions like a loan to the government.
Municipal bonds are often used so that one generation of taxpayers is not having to bear the full cost of a project that will benefit multiple generations of residents. The cost of building a bridge, for example, which will be in use for decades, can be spread out over 30 years so that residents pay back the loan slowly over time rather than saddle residents with huge tax increases one year to cover the cost.
However, the cost of borrowing pushes up the cost of projects by adding interest payments the same way a mortgage adds to the overall cost of buying a house. Overall, the market and state and local governments have historically viewed this cost as a worthy trade-off.
Some municipal bonds have limits
The Parker administration has several options when it comes to raising capital on the municipal market.
The most common method is through general obligation bonds, which are backed by the city’s authority to impose and collect taxes. Bondholders rely on the city’s “full faith and credit” to assure them that if the city has difficulty paying back the debt, the city will raise taxes on residents to secure the payment.
The city plans to use general obligation bonds to help fund its affordable housing plan, but there are limits on how much it can borrow this way. The state constitution limits Philadelphia’s ability to incur debt to a total of 13.5% of the value of its assessed taxable real estate, based on an average of this amount for the preceding 10 years.
Philadelphia is more affordable than several other big U.S. cities, according to a 2020 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, but it has a high poverty rate. Jeff Fusco/The Conversation, CC BY-SA
Philly has another option
The city, however, also has the authority to take on another form of debt: revenue bonds. Revenue bonds rely on specific sources of revenue instead of the government’s taxing power. Jurisdictions issue revenue bonds to fund particular projects or services – usually ones that generate income from fees paid by users.
For example, a publicly owned water utility or electric company relies on water and sewage fees or electricity rates and charges to pay back their revenue bonds. Likewise, a transportation authority will rely on tolls to pay back revenue bonds issued to build a toll road, such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Under state law, revenue bonds are “non-debt debts.” They are not debts owed by the city, because the city has not promised to repay the debt through the use of its own taxing powers. Instead, the people who pay the fees to use the service are paying back the debt.
Since states began to place stricter limits on debt in the wake of the Great Depression in the 1930s, cities across the U.S. have increasingly used revenue bonds to get around state debt limits and still fund valuable public services, including affordable housing projects.
When another government entity – rather than the city – issues the bond, and the city pays them a service fee for doing so, it’s a form of what’s called conduit debt. That obligation to pay the service fee to the other government entity is the conduit debt that the city pays out of its general fund.
From fiscal years 2012 to 2021, the city’s outstanding debt from general obligation bonds paid for out of its general fund was between $1.3 billion to $1.7 billion per year. However, the city’s conduit debt outstripped that number every year, ranging from $1.8 billion to nearly $2.3 billion. In more recent years, conduit debt has been less than the city’s debt from general obligation bonds.
The city keeps conduit debt on its books – and is obligated to pay it back – even though it comes from bonds issued by the development authorities, because these debts loop back to the city. In the bonds issued by these agencies, the city actually becomes like a client of the agency. The city is typically obligated to pay the agency service fees as part of a contractual obligation that cannot be canceled.
The revenue on which the development agencies’ bonds rely, the money from which bondholders expect to be paid back, does not come from fees that residents pay out of their own pocket – for example through ticket sales from a sports stadium built with revenue bonds. The money instead comes out of the city’s treasury.
A loophole to affordable housing
Essentially this is a loophole for the city to bypass debt limits set for Philadelphia in the state constitution. Sometimes creativity in government requires using loopholes to get the job done – to get to yes instead of a stalemate.
Consider this analogy. Say your sister takes out a bank loan to buy a car for you because your credit limit is maxed out. She is relying on you to pay her back, and she uses your payment to pay the bank. But if you don’t pay her back, she’s not responsible by law for paying the bank herself. So, it’s your debt, but she is the conduit.
If the city holds itself accountable, it can use conduit debt responsibly to make affordable housing construction a reality.
The mayor’s office did not respond to my questions about whether they plan to use conduit debt issued by a development authority, whether that conduit debt would include service fees, and what funds would be used to pay those fees.
In its quest to increase access to affordable housing, the Parker administration should, in my view, be mindful of limiting the service fees it agrees to pay – which have no legally prescribed limits – and also account for where it will find income to cover these costs. For example, will it come from the sale of city-owned land? Fees charged to developers? Or some other source?
Otherwise, taxpayers may be left to foot a bill that is essentially unlimited.
Jade Craig does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Reid Kress Weisbord, Distinguished Professor of Law and Judge Norma Shapiro Scholar, Rutgers University – Newark
Musician Jimmy Buffett and his wife, Jane Slagsvol, attend a Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts event in 2018 in New York. Evan Agostini/Invision via AP
Lawyers often tell their clients that everyone should have a will that clearly states who should inherit their assets after they die. But even having a will is not necessarily enough to avoid a costly and contentious legal dispute.
Consider what happened after Jimmy Buffett died of skin cancer at the age of 76 in 2023. The singer and entrepreneurial founder of the Margaritaville brand ordered in his will that his fortune be placed in a trust after his death. To manage the trust, Buffett named two co-trustees: his widow, Jane Slagsvol, and Richard Mozenter, an accountant who had served as the singer’s financial adviser for more than three decades.
In dueling petitions filed in Los Angeles and Palm Beach, Florida, in June 2025, however, Slagsvol – identified as Jane Buffett in her legal filing – and Mozenter are both seeking to remove each other as a trustee.
As law professors who specialize in trusts and estates, we teach graduate courses about the transfer of property during life and at death. We believe that the Buffett dispute offers a valuable lesson for anyone with an estate, large or small. And choosing the right person to manage the assets you leave behind can be just as important as selecting who will inherit your property.
Buffett’s business empire
Buffett’s estate includes valuable intellectual property from his hit songs, including “It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere,” “Oldest Surfer on the Beach” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Buffett’s albums have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and continue to generate some $20 million annually in royalties. Buffett also owned a yacht, real estate, airplanes, fancy watches and valuable securities.
According to Slagsvol’s petition, Buffett’s trust was set up to benefit his widow. Slagsvol, who married Buffett in 1977, is one of two trustees of that trust, which is required to have at least one “independent trustee” in addition to her “at all times.” That requirement is stated expressly in Buffett’s trust declaration.
Slagsvol receives all income earned by the trust – an estate-planning technique for giving away property managed by a trustee on behalf of the trust beneficiaries – for the rest of her life. She can also receive additional trust funds for her health care, living expenses and “any other purpose” that the independent trustee – Mozenter, as of July 2025 – deems to be in Slagsvol’s best interests.
The estate plan also created separate trusts for their three children: Savannah, Sarah “Delaney” and Cameron Buffett, who are in their 30s and 40s. Each child reportedly received $2 million upon Jimmy’s death. When Slagsvol dies, she can decide who will receive any remaining assets from among Buffett’s descendants and charities.
The structure of Buffett’s plan is popular among wealthy married couples. It provides lifelong support for the surviving spouse while ensuring that their kids and grandchildren can inherit the remainder of their estate – even if that spouse remarries. This type of trust typically cannot be changed by the surviving spouse without court approval.
If you’re fortunate enough to reach your golden years with a sizable nest egg, it helps your loved ones if you can draft a detailed will. You might also want to consider establishing a trust. Maskot/Getty Images
Dueling trustee removal petitions
Slagsvol is trying to remove Mozenter as the trust’s independent trustee.
She claims he refused to comply with her requests for financial information, failed to cooperate with her as her co-trustee, and hired a trust attorney who pressured her to resign as trustee. Slagsvol also raised numerous questions about the trust’s income projections and compensation paid to Mozenter for his services.
Mozenter’s petition, filed in Florida, is not available to the public. According to media coverage of this dispute, he seeks to remove Slagsvol as trustee. He claims that, during his decades-long role as Buffett’s financial adviser, the musician “expressed concerns about his wife’s ability to manage and control his assets after his death.”
That led Buffett to establish a trust, Mozenter asserted, “in a manner that precluded Jane from having actual control” over it.
Estate planning lessons
We believe that the public can learn two important estate planning lessons from this dispute.
First, anyone planning to leave an estate, whether modest or vast, needs to choose the right people to manage the transfer of their property after their death.
That might mean picking a professional executor or trustee who is not related to you. A professional may be more likely to remain neutral should any disputes arise within the family, but hiring one can saddle the estate with costly fees.
An alternative is to choose a relative or trusted friend who is willing to do this for free. About 56% of wills name an adult child or grandchild as executor, according to a recent study. Some estates, like Buffett’s trust, name both a professional and a family member. An important consideration is whether the people asked to manage the estate will get along with each other – and with anyone else who is slated to inherit from the estate.
The second lesson is, whether you choose a professional, a loved one or a friend to manage your estate, make clear what circumstances would warrant their removal. Courts are reluctant to remove a handpicked trustee without proof of negligence, fraud or disloyalty. But trustees can be removed when a breakdown in cooperation interferes with their ability to administer the estate or trust.
Some trusts anticipate such conflicts by allowing beneficiaries to replace a professional trustee with another professional trustee. That can resolve some disputes while avoiding the cost of seeking court approval.
Preventing disputes from erupting in the first place can help people avert the costly and embarrassing kind of litigation now ensnaring Jimmy Buffett’s estate.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Robert Bird, Professor of Business Law & Eversource Energy Chair in Business Ethics, University of Connecticut
Something dangerous is happening to the U.S. economy, and it’s not inflation or trade wars. Chaotic deregulation and the selective enforcement of laws have upended markets and investor confidence. At one point, the threat of tariffs and resulting chaos evaporated US$4 trillion in value in the U.S. stock market. This approach isn’t helping the economy, and there are troubling signs it will hurt both the U.S. and the global economy in the short and long term.
The rule of law – the idea that legal rules apply to everyone equally, regardless of wealth or political connections − is essential for a thriving economy. Yet globally the respect for the rule of law is slipping, and the U.S. is slipping with it. According to annual rankings from the World Justice Project, the rule of law has declined in more than half of all countries for seven years in a row. The rule of law in the U.S., the most economically powerful nation in the world, is now weaker than the rule of law in Uruguay, Singapore, Latvia and over 20 other countries.
When regulation is unnecessarily burdensome for business, government should lighten the load. However, arbitrary and frenzied deregulation does not free corporations to earn higher profits. As a business school professor with an MBA who has taught business law for over 25 years, and the author of a recently published book about the importance of legal knowledge to business, I can affirm that the opposite is true. Chaotic deregulation doesn’t drive growth. It only fuels risk.
Chaos undermines investment, talent and trust
Legal uncertainty has become a serious drag on American competitiveness.
A study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that public policy risks — such as unexpected changes in taxes, regulation and enforcement — ranked among the top challenges businesses face, alongside more familiar business threats such as competition or economic volatility. Companies that can’t predict how the law might change are forced to plan for the worst. That means holding back on long-term investment, slowing innovation and raising prices to cover new risks.
When the government enforces rules arbitrarily, it also undermines property rights.
For example, if a country enters into a major trade agreement and then goes ahead and violates it, that threatens the property rights of the companies that relied on the agreement to conduct business. If the government can seize assets without due process, those assets lose their stability and value. And if that treatment depends on whether a company is in the government’s political favor, it’s not just bad economics − it’s a red flag for investors.
When government doesn’t enforce rules fairly, it also threatens people’s freedom to enter into contracts.
Consider presidential orders that threaten the clients of law firms that have challenged the administration with cancellation of their government contracts. The threat alone jeopardizes the value of those agreements.
If businesses can’t trust public contracts to be respected, they’ll be less likely to work with the government in the first place. This deprives the government, and ultimately the American people, of receiving the best value for their tax dollars in critical areas such as transportation, technology and national defense.
Regulatory chaos also allows corruption to spread.
For example, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits businesses from bribing foreign government officials, has leveled the playing field for firms and enabled the best American companies to succeed on their merits. Before the law was enacted in 1977, some American companies felt pressured to pay bribes to compete. “Pausing” enforcement of the law, as the current presidential administration has done, increases the cost of doing business and encourages a wild west economy where chaos thrives.
Chaotic enforcement of the law also corrodes labor markets.
American companies require a strong pool of talented professionals to fuel their financial success. When legal rights are enforced arbitrarily or unjustly, the very best talent that American companies need may leave the country.
The science brain drain is already happening. American scientists have submitted 32% more applications for jobs abroad compared with last year. Nonscientists are leaving too. Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs has witnessed a 50% increase in Americans taking steps to obtain an Irish passport. Employers in the U.K. saw a spike in job applications from the United States.
Business from other countries will gladly accept American talent as they compete against American companies. During the Third Reich, Nazi Germany lost its best and brightest to other countries, including America. Now the reverse is happening, as highly talented Americans leave to work for firms in other nations.
Threats of arbitrary legal actions also drive away democratic allies and their prosperous populations that purchase American-made goods and services. For example, arbitrarily threatening to punish or even annex a closely allied nation does not endear its citizens to that government or the businesses it represents. So it’s no surprise that Canadians are now boycotting American goods and services. This is devastating businesses in American border towns and hurts the economy nationwide.
Similarly, the Canadian government has responded to whipsawing U.S. tariff announcements with counter-tariffs, which will slice the profits of American exporters. Close American allies and trading partners such as Japan, the U.K. and the European Union are also signaling their own willingness to impose retaliatory tariffs, increasing the costs of operations to American business even more.
Modern capitalism depends on smart regulation to thrive. Smart regulation is not an obstacle to capitalism. Smart regulation is what makes American capitalism possible. Smart regulation is what makes American freedom possible.
Clear and consistently applied legal rules allow businesses to aggressively compete, carefully plan, and generate profits. An arbitrary rule of law deprives business of the true power of capitalism – the ability to promote economic growth, spur innovation and improve the overall living standards of a free society. Americans deserve no less, and it is up to government to make that happen for everyone.
Robert Bird does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Based on pronouncements in 2024, you might think now is the time to see U.S. citizens streamingout of the country. Months before the 2024 presidential election, Americans were saying they would leave should candidate Donald Trump win the election. Gallup polling in 2024 found that 21% of Americans wanted to leave the United States permanently, more than double the 10% who had said so in 2011.
And indeed in June 2025, a Vermont legislator announced that she was resigning her seat and moving to Canada because of political concerns and economic opportunities. To be sure, people are moving. Even so, as a scholar of American migration overseas, my research finds that the vast majority of Americans are not about to depart for greener shores.
A western Massachusetts group
In October 2024, I surveyed 68 Americans in western Massachusetts, an area with a slight Democratic majority, asking if they wanted to leave the United States for a lengthy period of time, but not necessarily permanently. Over 90% said no, noting that there were factors limiting their mobility, such as financial obligations or having a partner who would not move, and that there were reasons that made them want to stay, such as owning property and having friends nearby.
Just three respondents indicated they were making plans to move, while an additional 11 said they wanted to move “someday.”
Reality strikes
After the November 2024 election, I interviewed seven of those respondents, two of whom had said prior to the election that they might leave the United States. After the election, they all said they planned to stay.
One who had said she wanted to leave acknowledged her reversal, saying: “I may have flippantly said, ‘Oh, if (Trump) gets voted in … I would leave,’ but I can’t see leaving. Part of it is because of my daughter,” who had recently become a mother. She continued, “It’s never crossed my mind seriously enough to even research it.”
Another told me, “I’m not going to let somebody push me out of what I consider my country and my home because he’s a jerk.”
Others spoke of needing to work several more years in order to receive a pension, or having family responsibilities keeping them in the country. None supported the current administration.
On a national level
In two nationally representative surveys, my colleague Helen B. Marrow, a sociologist of immigration, and I found no significant increase in migration aspiration between 2014 and 2019. We also found that respondents mentioned exploration and adventure much more often than political or economic reasons for wanting to move abroad.
Even though the U.S. passport grants visa-free visitor access to more than 180 countries, U.S. citizens still need residence and work visas. At home, they, like others, have family commitments and financial constraints, or may just not want to leave home. More than 95% of the world’s population do not move abroad – and U.S. citizens are no different.
Relocation coaching
In addition to my academic research on overseas Americans, I am also an international relocation coach. I help Americans considering a move abroad navigate the emotional, practical and professional complexities of relocation, whether they’re just starting to explore the idea or actively planning their next steps.
In February 2025, a national poll found that 4% of Americans said they were “definitely planning to move” to another country.
That same month, I followed up with my seven interviewees from western Massachusetts, including one trans man. They all reiterated their choice to remain in the United States. One person, who might move abroad at some point, told me she hadn’t changed her mind about leaving soon: “Leaving doesn’t necessarily mean anything will be better for me, even if it was a financial possibility.”
Two people said that recent political developments actually meant that they were more committed to remaining in the United States. One told me, “Now, more than ever, individuals need to figure out what small actions can be taken to help our fellow Americans get through this dark period.”
But even those “definitely planning on moving” can have other factors intervene. Two clients of mine who were making serious plans had to stop when family members’ health situations changed for the worse.
So how many people are actually leaving? It is clear that a growing number of Americans are considering a move abroad. But far fewer are conducting serious research, seeking professional consultation or actually moving. Drawing on available data, my own academic research and my coaching experience, my educated estimate is that no more than 1% to 2% of U.S. citizens are actively making viable plans to leave the country. Nor are all of those leaving out of protest; many are still motivated by exploration, adventure, employment or to be with a partner.
Even so, that figure is roughly 3 million to 6 million people – which would be a significant increase over the estimated 5.5 million Americans currently living abroad. As with many migration flows, even the movement of a small percentage of a population can still have the potential to reshape both the United States and its overseas population.
Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
VEHIS commits to originate PLN 2.6 billion of auto leases for the benefit of Polish SMEs.
The new lending is enabled by a cash securitisation whereby VEHIS obtains funding from EIB and from an external investor backed by EIF.
The operation will support financing of low carbon road vehicles and financing of women-led businesses, and contribute to regional development and economic inclusion across Poland.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) Group is joining forces with Polish car platform VEHIS to expand access to financing for a range of businesses in Poland. The EIB Group, which also includes the European Investment Fund (EIF), will back auto leases by VEHIS so that the company can boost lending to Polish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and Mid-Caps.
The operation will contribute to regional development and economic inclusion across Poland. It will further support gender equality and the green transition through targeted financing for women-led businesses and electric vehicles.
Under the agreement, the EIB will invest PLN 637 million (€150 million) in notes backed by auto leases originated by VEHIS, and the EIF will provide guarantees to a third-party, enabling it to purchase notes for an amount of similar size. The operation aims to generate a new portfolio of SME and Mid-Cap leases totalling PLN 2.6 billion.
At least 30% of the new car financing by VEHIS will go to women-led businesses and at least 10% will support climate action including electric-vehicle leasing.
“This transaction is a great example of how we can use capital markets tools to deliver real impact for small businesses,” said Marjut Falkstedt, Chief Executive of the EIF. “By working with VEHIS, we’re helping to channel funding where it’s needed most — to entrepreneurs driving innovation, inclusion and sustainability across Poland.”
Under the accord, the EIB’s investment will be in the senior class notes of a securitisation of VEHIS auto leases and the EIF guarantees will enable the third party to invest in the senior class and mezzanine class notes of the same transaction.
“Together with the EIB and EIF, we are carrying out the first securitization of a portfolio built under warehouse financing in the history of the Polish market. This is a unique moment of appreciation for us by leading European financial institutions and another important step that will allow us to continue our dynamic growth. Thanks to the cooperation, we will be able to continue active SME financing, including supporting women-led businesses, as well as financing low-emission cars,” said Jan Bujak, CFO of VEHIS.
The operation will also contribute to regional development in Poland by enabling VEHIS to reach more entrepreneurs in underserved market segments and in areas where per capita income is below the European Union average.
“Supporting SMEs is at the heart of what we do at the EIB Group,” commented Teresa Czerwińska, Vice-President of the EIB. “This partnership with VEHIS will not only help businesses grow but also promote gender equality and accelerate the shift to cleaner transport. It’s a smart, targeted investment in Poland’s future.”
Technical note on the securitisation transaction
The transaction is structured as a cash securitisation of a granular portfolio of performing auto leases originated by VEHIS and sold to a securitisation special purpose entity (Issuer). EIB purchases class A1 notes issued by the Issuer. EIF simultaneously, through bilateral financial guarantees agreed with an institutional investor, takes exposure to class A2 notes (ranking pari passu with the mentioned class A1 notes) and to class B notes (characterised by higher credit risk compared to the class A1 and class A2 notes) issued by the Issuer. VEHIS effectively retains credit exposure to the securitised lease exposures by purchasing and retaining the most junior notes (characterised by higher credit risk than the class A and class B notes) issued by the Issuer. The notes and the securitised exposures pay floating interest and are denominated in polish zloty.
The reference portfolio consists of more than 9,000 leases, 100% secured by light vehicles and with c. 90% of lessees in the form of SMEs. The transaction is non-revolving and includes standard credit enhancement features such as subordination, excess spread, use of a cash reserve and a principal deficiency ledger.
Background information
About EIB Group The European Investment Bank (ElB) is the long-term lending institution of the European Union, owned by its Member States. Built around eight core priorities, we finance investments that contribute to EU policy objectives by bolstering climate action and the environment, digitalisation and technological innovation, security and defence, cohesion, agriculture and bioeconomy, social infrastructure, the capital markets union, and a stronger Europe in a more peaceful and prosperous world.
The EIB Group, which also includes the European Investment Fund (EIF), signed nearly €89 billion in new financing for over 900 high-impact projects in 2024, boosting Europe’s competitiveness and security.
The Group’s latest Investment Survey (EIBIS) showed Poland fares better than European Union peers when it comes to gender equality in business management.
To enhance the positive impact of its activities on gender equality and empower women and girls, the EIB Group has embedded gender equality goals into its business model through a dedicated Strategy on Gender Equality and Women’s Economic Empowerment and a Gender Action Plan. These guide its lending, blending, and advisory work both within and outside the European Union. In 2024, EIB financing for gender equality represented more than €3 billion across over 40 projects. The EIB also applies global gender-lens investing criteria (“2X”) and is committed to promoting gender equality in the workplace. You can find more information here on the EIB gender equality initiatives.
About VEHIS
VEHIS is a car platform that allows customers to select and purchase a vehicle along with the relevant financing options. The offer encompasses all car brands available on the Polish market from key dealers, along with financing options in the form of leasing.
VEHIS provides full support throughout the period of vehicle use, including a special insurance package, GPS monitoring and service support for the car, as well as handling traffic damage claims.
VEHIS advisors working in 18 VEHIS branches across Poland support customers in choosing a car, its financing and insurance. The entire process can be completed online through the website or with the remote assistance of an advisor.
The platform offers a selection of over 10,000 cars at competitive prices from 200 dealers. These offers are updated almost in real time, thanks to IT tools developed by VEHIS.
VEHIS’ strategic investor is Enterprise Investors, one of the oldest and largest private equity firms in Central and Eastern Europe.
Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region – 4
The Secretary for Housing, Ms Winnie Ho, began her visit to Lisbon, Portugal, yesterday (July 2, Lisbon time). She first met with the Secretary of State for Housing in the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing, Ms Patrícia Gonçalves Costa, to exchange views on the housing policies of the two places. She attended the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU) held at the Pavilion of Portugal for the previous World Expo afterwards and explored the latest trends of housing planning, design and management, community engagement and more with scholars, industry representatives, professional bodies and students from the Mainland, Europe and the United States. She also took the opportunity to promote Hong Kong’s resident-oriented “Well-being design” concepts and strategies.
Ms Ho attended the IFoU Winter School workshop held in Hong Kong earlier this year, where she shared a vision on public housing projects over the next five years including those in the Northern Metropolis, and how to integrate the eight well-being concepts from the “Well-being design” guide into public housing developments. Speaking at the IFoU, Ms Ho said that she was delighted to be invited again to attend this forum and exchange views with international scholars, political and business sectors and young people on Hong Kong’s public housing design and development.
She stated in the plenary session that public housing construction not only promotes the development of innovative construction technologies, but also enables further exploration of resident-oriented design to build a more interactive, energetic community that enhances intergenerational harmony. The Housing Bureau and the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA) launched the “Well-being design” guide last year, which covers eight well-being concepts, namely “Health & Vitality”, “Green Living and Sustainability”, “Age-Friendliness”, “Intergenerational & Inclusive Living”, “Family & Community Connection”, “Urban Integration”, “Upward Mobility” and “Perception & Image”. It serves as a reference for the future design of new public housing estates and the improvement works of existing estates to create a more comfortable and vibrant living environment for its residents.
Ms Ho said that with 308 000 public housing units to be built in the next 10 years, new public housing estates will have an average of 4 000 to 5 000 units, in which around 10 000 people will reside. The completion of each housing estate is like establishing a new small community, with common areas for various residents’ activities to take place and bring people together. Within a 15-minute living circle, various shops are available to meet the daily needs of residents, and social welfare facilities and schools are provided. Public transportation is available to enable the residents’ commute and help them stay connected with society. The HKHA is also increasing green spaces in the estates through landscaping to promote green, healthy living, and is introducing new technologies to save energy and reduce carbon emissions.
Ms Ho said that Hong Kong can give full play to the role of being a “super connector” through interactions and exchanges in different places: on one hand promoting the HKHA’s evolving design and experiences in construction and management since its establishment over 50 years ago, the application of the “Well-being design” guide and innovative construction technologies to outside of Hong Kong. On the other hand, Hong Kong is gaining a better understanding of the efforts of other places in carbon reduction, energy saving and sustainable development, and more.
The IFoU is an international platform for converging innovative ideas on architecture and urban planning. International conferences and workshops on architecture and urban design are organised in different cities each year, allowing representatives and students from member institutions around the world to exchange ideas. This year’s conference, themed “Future Living” has seven topics, namely “Dwelling”, “Connecting”, “Integrating”, “Adapting”, “Visioning”, “Steering”, and “Sharing”, and was hosted by the University of Lisbon. Participants of the forum explored ideas towards future living environments to foster cross-sectoral co-operation to cope with various challenges, and formulate innovative plans for sustainable development.
After the forum, Ms Ho and the Commissioner for the Development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), Ms Maisie Chan, had dinner with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the People’s Republic of China to the Portuguese Republic, Mr Zhao Bentang, and briefed him on Hong Kong’s latest housing policies and initiatives, including promoting the development of innovative housing construction technologies by capitalising on the strengths of the GBA; leveraging Hong Kong’s important role as a “super connector” and a “super value-adder” between the Mainland and the rest of the world, serving as a two-way springboard for Mainland enterprises to go global, and for attracting overseas enterprises.
Ms Ho will continue her visit in Lisbon today (July 3, Lisbon time) before departing for Barcelona, Spain.
Source: Moscow Government – Government of Moscow –
In the Tekstilshchiki district in the south-east of Moscow, a fifth new building has appeared under the renovation program. The single-section residential complex is located at 13a Graivoronovskaya Street. The total area of the building is almost 15 thousand square meters. This was reported by the Minister of the Moscow Government, head of the capital’s Department of Urban Development Policy Vladislav Ovchinsky.
“The building’s living area is 7.9 thousand square meters. There are 140 apartments in the building, four of which are intended for people with limited mobility. The spacious entrance hall has a concierge room, a room for storing strollers and bicycles, and four elevators. In the future, social and household facilities may open on the first non-residential floor. The courtyard has two children’s playgrounds and one sports ground, as well as a quiet recreation area,” Vladislav Ovchinsky specified.
Near the new building there are schools, a clinic and a kindergarten. Nearby are the Stakhanovskaya and Nizhegorodskaya stations of the Nekrasovskaya metro line, as well as the Nizhegorodskaya station of the Moscow Central Circle.
“Mosgosstroynadzor supervised the construction of the house on a land plot of 0.5 hectares at all stages. In total, 28 on-site inspections were organized, as a result of the final control and supervision event, the committee’s inspectors issued a conclusion on the compliance of the building with the approved design documentation,” noted the Chairman of the Committee for State Construction Supervision of the City of Moscow
Earlier, Sergei Sobyanin reported that this year new housing was received under the renovation program more than 18 thousand Muscovites.
The renovation program was approved in August 2017. It concerns about a million Muscovites and provides for the resettlement of 5,176 houses. The Moscow mayor ordered to increase the pace of implementation of the renovation program in twice.
Moscow is one of the leaders among regions in terms of construction volumes. High rates of housing construction correspond to the goals and initiatives of the national project “Infrastructure for life”.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
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Carbon pricing is increasingly recognized worldwide as a powerful tool to combat the devastating impacts of climate change. But what exactly is it, and how does it work? Let’s explore this transformative approach to driving a greener and more sustainable future.
Carbon pricing is a policy mechanism that puts a financial cost on greenhouse gas emissions. This policy tool is primarily aimed at discouraging emitters of the greenhouse gas especially carbon dioxide and encouraging individuals, industries and other stakeholders to reduce such emissions to save the mother earth, as climate change is causing a great deal of damage in almost every part of the world, which appears irreparable in several cases.
Driven largely by the excessive emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, climate change is increasingly posing a critical threat to global ecosystems, economies and societies. In the process, one of the most effective tools developed to mitigate these emissions is carbon pricing. This mechanism mandates to internalize the environmental damage caused by pollution, thus encouraging industries and consumers to reduce their carbon footprint.
To understand it lucidly, carbon pricing is an economic strategy designed to reduce global warming. It reflects the cost of carbon emissions in the market, encouraging emitters to either reduce their emissions or pay for the same. In simple terms, it is a kind of financial penalty imposed on the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by the people, industries or other stakeholders.
There are two primary forms of carbon pricing- carbon tax and cap-and-trade. Each of these mechanisms puts a price on carbon, but in different ways. While, carbon tax directly sets a price on carbon by defining a tax rate on greenhouse gas emissions or more commonly on the carbon content of fossil fuels, making it easier for businesses to plan future investments.
Besides, carbon tax is imposed by the government on on fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas based on their carbon content. The higher the emissions associated with a fuel, the higher the tax, making high emission fuels more expensive, thus encouraging a shift towards cleaner energy sources. For example, Sweden has one of the highest carbon taxes in the world, set at around $130 per tonne of CO₂. The country has reduced carbon emissions significantly while maintaining economic growth since its adoption of the mechanism in 1991.
On the other hand, under Cap-and-Trade or Emissions Trading System (ETS), the government sets a total cap on emissions and distributes or auctions emission permits to emitters. Companies can buy and sell these allowances, creating a market for carbon emissions. Without doubt, a cap limits total emissions for a group of industries or the entire economy.
In this system, companies receive or purchase allowances representing the right to emit a specific amount of CO2, and if a company emits less than its allowance, it can sell the surplus to other companies. Similarly, if a company exceeds the allowance level, it must buy more. Here, it is interesting to note that the cap doesn’t remain fixed, but is gradually reduced over time to decrease total emissions.
The European Union emissions trading system is the largest and most established cap-and-trade system, as it covers more than 11,000 power plants and factories across Europe and is a cornerstone of the EU’s climate policy.
However, a number of countries worldwide have adopted carbon pricing mechanisms including those in Europe. Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, USA, New Zealand, Britain, South Africa, Mexico, Kazakhstan, Singapore, Colombia, Ukrain, Indonesia, Vietnam and a few others have already adopted different mechanisms. The pioneers in the process are Sweden and Finland. While Sweden introduced it in 1991, Finland was the first country to introduce a carbon tax in 1990.
While, the impacts of climate change are widespread, serious experienced across the globe, the trends to contain it through carbon pricing mechanisms are also encouraging. According to estimates, as of now, carbon pricing mechanisms cover about 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The total global value of carbon pricing instruments in operation exceeds $100 billion annually.
At the same time, there is a growing push for international coordination, especially through article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which allows countries to trade emissions reductions. Thus, the carbon market has grown rapidly in the past decade, fueled by increased climate commitments under the Paris Agreement and the development of regional and national carbon pricing mechanisms.
To know more about how different countries of the world are responding to these initiatives, we can approach to the World Bank’s Carbon Pricing Dashboard, which provides a comprehensive overview of carbon pricing initiatives worldwide, including their design, coverage and price levels. The World Bank report on the trends of carbon pricing also shows a significant increase in the number of operational carbon pricing instruments and highlights the growing trend of carbon pricing globally.
In recent years, especially since Narendra Modi government came at the Centre, India has also been rapidly advancing toward a structured and regulated carbon pricing ecosystem. It is a part of India’s broader climate and sustainable development agenda.
Amid the growing global focus on carbon markets and emissions trading, India is taking significant steps toward establishing a rate-based Emissions Trading System (ETS) along with complementary voluntary carbon credit mechanisms. The World Bank’s ‘State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2025’ report highlights India’s expanding role as a key emerging economy shaping the future of global climate finance and carbon pricing architecture.
Rate-based ETS refers to a system where total emissions are not capped but individual entities are allocated a performance benchmark that serves as a limit on their net emissions. Rate-based ETSs offer additional flexibility in managing future growth uncertainty as well as international competitiveness concerns.
India’s Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS) is a strategic initiative aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions through carbon pricing. It comprises two main components- a compliance mechanism for obligated entities, especially for the industrial sector and an offset mechanism to enable voluntary participation.
The scheme being worked out in India, is designed to incentivize and support efforts toward decarbonizing the Indian economy. By establishing the necessary institutional framework, the CCTS has laid the groundwork for the development of the Indian Carbon Market (ICM).
It’s heartening to note here that carbon pricing is no longer a niche policy meant for only rich countries, now it has become a mainstream tool for climate action worldwide including India and other developing countries. Whether through carbon taxes or emissions trading systems, countries are finding ways to internalize the environmental costs of carbon and transition toward a low-carbon future, which augur well for the future of the planet.
Deputy Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Bernice Swarts will launch the One Million Trees campaign next week.
The campaign, part of the Presidential Ten Million Trees Flagship Project currently in its fourth year, aims to mobilise South Africans from all walks of life, three spheres of government, private sector, interfaith formations, business, diplomatic corps, traditional leaders, NGOs, youth, to pledge and donate trees.
At the launch, the Deputy Minister will outline the ambitious plan to plant one million trees in one day.
The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) is the custodian of the forestry function in the country.
One of the key activities and functions in this regard is the implementation of the National Greening Programme, aimed at planting at least two million trees per annum for a period of five years to realise the Presidential Ten Million Trees Flagship Project.
The One Million Trees campaign serves as one of the platforms of revamping the National Greening Programme to ensure that the set target of planting ten million trees over a period of five years is achieved.
This will be done through creating awareness on the importance of planting of trees, encouraging stakeholders to take ownership and responsibility of their environment through pledging and planting of trees and facilitating that one million trees are planted in one day.
As part of the launch, Deputy Minister Swarts will showcase the Information Technology Pledge Form System and the South African National Biodiversity Institute’s (SANBI) Tree Bank where the donated trees will be stored.
The donated trees will be stored at the 11 National Botanical Gardens across the country and DFFE nurseries.
The launch will take place under the theme: “My Tree, My Oxygen. Plant Yours Today” on Monday, 07 July 2025, at the Pretoria National Botanical Gardens. – SAnews.gov.za
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