World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

President Obama has announced a limited intervention in South Sudan.  The number of military personnel being sent is very small, so the intent is simply to protect American citizens in the country.  The move follows an aborted attempt to rescue three Americans which was foiled by rebel fire.  The situation in South Sudan is fragile and dangerous, and it is not clear how an outside intervention can resolve the power struggle between the Nuer and the Dinka.  But the presence of American troops will have a small stabilizing effect which might be built upon with a sustained diplomatic effort.

It is hard to comprehend climate change–the earth seems to be so vast and we, as individual humans, seem to be so insignificant.  One possible metric of the rate of change cause by global warming is to understand that human activity contributes 250 trillion Watts (Joules per second).  That translates into the amount of energy released by four Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs every second, or 400,000 such bombs every day.  That’s an awful lot of energy to release into the atmosphere.