Durban

New details, and condemnations from English PEN, American PEN and many other quarters, are still coming in following reports that South African novelist ZP Dala has been admitted to a mental asylum in Durban, after remarks in praise of Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, and attacks on her that ensued. The original statement […]

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Topics:climate change, climate change The predictable failure of the Durban conference on climate change to achieve the goals of binding international commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, following on the failures of the earlier Copenhagen conference and the Kyoto treaty, is the result of intellectual failure, not just a lack of political will. At the heart of modern environmentalism is the idea that the planet must be saved from further damage by humanity.  But it is far from clear that this is possible or even that the transformation of nature by human beings with technology is necessarily a bad