Schools brief

Softening the blow
Climate adaptation policies are needed more than ever

People are already suffering from catastrophic losses as a result of extreme weather events like cyclone Amphan

Not-so-slow burn
The world’s energy system must be transformed completely

It has been changed before, but never as fast or fully as must happen now

Bad times
Damage from climate change will be widespread and sometimes surprising

It will go far beyond drought, melting ice sheets and crop failures

Projections of the future
How modelling articulates the science of climate change

From paper and pencil to the world’s fastest computers

The problematic politics of climate change
Why tackling global warming is a challenge without precedent

The first of six weekly briefs looks at the history of efforts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions

Rousseau, Marx and Nietzsche
The prophets of illiberal progress

Terrible things have been done in their name

Rawls rules
Three post-war liberals strove to establish the meaning of freedom

Berlin, Rawls and Nozick put their faith in the sanctity of the individual

The exiles fight back
Hayek, Popper and Schumpeter formulated a response to tyranny

Their lives and reputations diverged, but their ideas were rooted in the traumas of their shared birthplace

Freedom v economics
Was John Maynard Keynes a liberal?

People should be free to choose. It was their freedom not to choose that troubled him

Liberal thinkers
De Tocqueville and the French exception

The gloomiest of the great liberals worried that democracy might not be compatible with liberty

The father of liberalism
Against the tyranny of the majority

John Stuart Mill's warning still resonates today