21 September 2022 Planetary Defence By Gwynne Dyer On Monday, about eleven million kilometres from Earth, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will make the first attempt to divert an asteroid from its orbit. But forget ‘Don’t Look Up’, ‘Deep Impact’, ‘Armageddon’ and all the other movies about planet-killing asteroids: this asteroid is …
14 September 2022 Long-Termism By Gwynne Dyer Which would be worse: a global nuclear war with all buttons pressed, or real, self-conscious artificial intelligence that goes rogue? You know, the central theme of the ‘Terminator’ movies. An AI called Skynet wakes up and immediately realises that humanity could simply switch it off again, so it …
30 August 2022 The United Kingdom: The Once and Future King By Gwynne Dyer As a child, outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly said he wanted to be ‘King of the World’. He ended up in a somewhat humbler role, was rejected by his own party’s members of parliament for his mendacity, corruption and …
24 August 2022 What Shall We Do With the Climate Refugees? By Gwynne Dyer You wait ages for the bus, and then three come along at once. Books are a bit like that, too, although in this case it’s only a pair of them, both tackling the question of what to do about all the …
18 August 2022 India at 75 By Gwynne Dyer Last Tuesday, on the 75th anniversary of Indian independence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to turn India into a developed country within the next 25 years. If all goes well, that could actually come to pass, b ut it would have to go very well indeed. …
30 July 2022 James Lovelock: Darwin’s Heir By Gwynne Dyer Jim Lovelock was a late bloomer. His first book, ‘Gaia: a New Look at Life on Earth’, was published in 1979, when he was already 60 years old. By the time he died last Thursday, on his 103rd birthday, he had written ten more books …
27 July 2022 Tunisia: The Last Arab Democracy Goes Under By Gwynne Dyer Tunisia would seem to have everything going for it. Average salaries are the third-highest in all of Africa’s fifty countries, just behind Morocco and South Africa. Literacy is 97% among the under-30s, population growth is only 1% a year, and it’s a …
25 July 2022 Monkeypox is a Reminder By Gwynne Dyer Monkeypox is very unpleasant and it spreads very fast, but it’s not a real killer: 16,000 cases in 75 countries in just a couple of months is impressive, but there have been only five deaths. Yet the World Health Organisation (WHO) has just declared monkeypox …
22 June 2022 Israel: It’s All About Bibi By Gwynne Dyer There was a rare moment of grace in Israeli politics last Monday, as Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid announced they would dissolve their extraordinary coalition and pitched Israel into its fifth election in three and a half years. The coalition …
8 June 2022 Boris Johnson: Dead Man Walking by Gwynne Dyer ‘Cad.’ ‘Scoundrel.’ ‘Rotter.’ The words that members of the British public used to describe Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the aftermath of last weekend’s failed attempt by parliamentary members of his own Conservative Party to remove him from office had a weirdly antique ring. …