Environment
Why your air conditioner is making you cooler, and the world warmer
That refrigerator in the corner is doing more than extending the life of your fruits and vegetables: it’s also contributing to global warming

Cooling and refrigeration are essential to increasing labor productivity, improving educational outcomes, safeguarding food and minimizing its waste, improving healthcare, and supporting countries’ digital ambitions (that computer of yours heats up pretty fast).
And all of this, from improved productivity to education to health, is vital to eliminating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity across the globe.
And yet, it turns out that that refrigerator in the corner is doing more than extending the life of your fruits and vegetables: it’s also contributing to global warming. In a somewhat ironic twist, we know now that in filling the hole in the ozone layer over the past few decades under the aegis of the Montreal Protocol, we unwittingly had been adding to global warming.
The good news, though, is that we can act on this quickly, and the result (in ecological terms) is almost immediate. But if we continue as we have been, we could face big problems.
Undoubtedly, the Montreal Protocol’s success at reversing a universal environmental problem, depletion of the earth’s ozone layer, also helped in our fight against climate change. Without the Montreal Protocol agreement and its 25 years of action to stop production and human consumption of harmful chemicals, the climate challenge facing the world today would be far worse.
Overall, the climate achievements in phasing out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) an organic compound made exclusively of chlorine, fluorine, and carbon, have been equated to the equivalent of eight billion tons a year of CO2.
Environment
Southeast Asia remains a hot spot for plastic pollution
The use of plastics is deeply embedded in our daily lives, in everything from grocery bags and cutlery to water bottles and sandwich wrap. But the quest for convenience has gone too far and we are failing to use plastics efficiently, wasting valuable resources and harming the environment.

Southeast Asia has emerged as a hot spot for plastic pollution because of rapid urbanization and a rising middle class , whose consumption of plastic products and packaging is growing due to their convenience and versatility.
Environment
Diamonds are forever but “James Bond Island” in Phang Nga Bay may not

Thailand’s Department of Mineral Resources will assess the stability of the limestone karst towers, which make up the chain of islands, after several similar rock formations, in both the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea, have collapsed.
Environment
Climate Change: how Asia-Pacific will affect the whole planet
Pursuing a green recovery in the aftermath of COVID-19 might sound daunting, but it’s actually a great opportunity to direct recovery spending into stimulating sustainable jobs and growth and fight climate change.

Forget the poetic flap of a butterfly’s wings in Beijing causing rain in Central Park. Climate change issues in Asia-Pacific are measured in superlatives. The world’s biggest population. Two of the three largest carbon dioxide-emitting countries and the largest share of emissions globally.