Greetings Pine Tree Republic readers! This past week, I had the good fortune to attend a conference of the National Academy of Sciences called the Sackler Colloquium. This particular conference convened economists and ecologists to discuss how the disciplines could combine forces to attack some of our most pressing global sustainability challenges, including climate change,…
Happy New Year to PineTreeRepublic readers! As we enter 2017 and approach our second anniversary, it seems like a good moment to continue an emerging annual tradition: the top 10 list of our favourite news articles from the past year. If nothing else, the twists and turns of 2016 demonstrated the importance of high-quality journalism in order to…
Presidential primaries unlike any other. Renewed promise for action on climate change. A refugee crisis that nobody seems to have an answer for. Increasingly brazen acts of terrorism around the world. A vote that may forever change Europe’s course. Through the first half of 2016, the world seemed to spin at an increasingly dizzying pace of change…
This week marks the one-year anniversary of Pine Tree Republic (and thank you to everyone who has contributed so far to the community through reading, sharing, and commenting on posts!). As we’ve discussed international events over the last 12 months, it’s safe to say that one of the most complex issues has been the mass migration of people…
The Story Sometimes, global crises hit without warning. Natural disasters, such as the massive 2010 earthquake in Haiti, or the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, are still beyond our ability to predict with precision and accuracy (though the social and environmental problems that followed may have been more predictable). In other cases, we miss the…
One of the first things I look forward to in every new year is the latest installment of international development conferences hosted by Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Canada, a non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to addressing global poverty through systems change. Every January, EWB convenes roughly 700 student and professional delegates from across Canada (and increasingly, around…
The Story Stock market indices across the world plunged on Monday, August 24, in response to recent signs that China’s explosive growth was hitting the brakes. In the United States, the Dow Jones Index dropped nearly 600 points on the latest version of “Black Monday”, marking the eighth-worst point drop in the index’s history. Meanwhile,…
As we turn the page on the first half of 2015 and the first four months of PineTreeRepublic, we take a look at some of the top news articles of 2015 so far. Each of the journalists in these articles provided an important perspective on some of the year’s most significant developments, and helped further our understanding on the…
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