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US president Donald Trump thrust Greenland to the centre of global politics when he proposed to buy the vast, icebound island at the start of the year. With the world watching, Greenlandic voters went to the polls on March 11 2025 and delivered a landslide victory for a party that told Trump, “We are not for sale.”

Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark and its struggle for independence is a major political battleground. Both the right-wing Demokraatit (Democrats), now the largest party, and the socialist Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) that they recently decimated are pro-independence. However, they also want a slower independence process than the populist-nationalist Naleraq, which also did well in the election.

While foreign observers may have had their attention drawn to Greenland by Trump, they shouldn’t look away now. The outcome of this election has made a fossil-fuelled future for Greenland more likely, just when the escalating climate crisis demands an urgent global transition to renewable energy.

Crucial to Greenland’s future is its base of economic production. Greenland is estimated to have some of the world’s largest untapped oil and gas resources.

According to the US Geological Survey, the basin off Greenland’s east coast alone contains 31 billion barrels of oil equivalent and west Greenland about half of that. If this was all recoverable, Greenland could become one of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers.

But these fossil fuels are extremely difficult to extract. The unwelcoming terrain – a vast ice sheet on land, icebergs at sea – led successive fossil fuel companies to give up their hunt for oil and gas. At the moment, Greenland’s fossil fuels simply are not technically and commercially viable to get out of the ground.

Against this backdrop, IA passed a ban on all fossil fuel exploration and extraction when it came to power after the 2021 election. It was justified by the negative impacts a fossil fuel industry would have on the country’s fragile environment and the global climate, as well as domestic fisheries, which total 98% of Greenland’s export value.

The ban fits within a global movement to cut not just the use of fossil fuels, but also their supply. The rationale is that extraction of fossil fuels must end to stop them from further increasing climate change. After the ban, Greenland joined a group of like-minded countries known as the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, which have all implemented similar legislation.

Other members include Costa Rica, France and Sweden. Most impressive is Denmark – the first significant oil and gas producer to commit to a phaseout of fossil fuel production, albeit by the late year of 2050. Nevertheless, global efforts to end fossil fuel supply continue to gain pace, even if major producers like the US are going in the opposite direction.

No oil until after independence

Oil was not a major theme in the 2025 election campaign. Indeed, a new party proposing an independent Greenland energised by fossil fuel extraction called Qulleq (literally “oil”, a reference to Inuit oil lamps) failed to win a single seat in the 31-seat parliament, the Inatsisartut.

Chairman of Demokraatit, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, celebrated his party winning 30% of the vote.
EPA-EFE/Mads Claus Rasmussen

Despite Qulleq’s failure, the dramatically remade political landscape will allow significant changes to the future of fossil fuel production. Five of six parties support reconsidering the fossil fuel ban, with only IA maintaining strong opposition. More than ever before, oil must be understood in relation to the prevailing independence sentiment.

Greenland’s resources are not owned by Denmark. This ended with legislation in 2009 and 2020 which granted the Greenlandic state full control of the territory’s subsurface. However, as Denmark continues to pay an annual block grant to support the Greenlandic economy, currently around €600 million (£503 million), Denmark is entitled to half of any profits from natural resources up to the block grant value.

Based on pre-election statements by the parties, there will be no parliamentary majority to begin oil exploration, let alone extraction, for now. Naleraq and the centre-left Siumut are both open to pumping oil, but only once Greenland is able to retain 100% of the revenues, which means once the Danish block grant is abolished following independence.

Faced with the difficult prospect of building a post-colonial nation, fossil fuels are a tempting but dangerous way to secure the economic foundation of an independent Greenland. Yet, in the long shadow of Denmark’s colonial role, only the people of Greenland can determine the future of the world’s largest island.

What happens to Greenland’s oil and gas will have major implications not just for the Greenlandic people, but for the rest of the world. As one of the places most vulnerable to the consequences of the climate crisis, Greenland is already feeling the effects of a fossil-fuelled world. If the new government chooses to use extraction as its path to political and economic independence, it will have a devastating impact on the entire planet.

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December 2025 will mark the 10th anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report and its Calls to Action. Other forms of reconciliation are also happening among Indigenous communities that had previously been unconnected but share common experiences of systemic removal at the hands of powerful institutions.

This new reconciliation includes two Indigenous groups that narrowly missed one another at a very specific and dark time in Canadian history now coming back together under new terms — their own.

In southern Ontario, the similar yet distinct experiences of two groups of Indigenous people, both displaced from their homes and families and compelled to live in colonial institutions, played out separately, just 40 kilometres apart: First Nations children sent to the Mohawk Institute and Inuit patients sent to the Hamilton Mountain Sanatorium.

Indigenous survivors and organizations have been working for decades towards local and national forms of truth-telling. As a result, these chapters in the centuries-long saga of Indigenous resistance and resurgence continue to be more deeply understood in terms of historical and contemporary realities in Indigenous communities — as well as to the history of Canada.

A team of scholars and organizations, of which I am proud to be a member, is working to pull as much information as possible about these events into the daylight and use it to understand and advance the ongoing recovery from these experiences.

Children’s shoes placed on the steps leading up to the site of the former residential school, the Mohawk Institute, in Brantford, Ont., in November 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nick Iwanyshyn

Two colonial institutions

The Mohawk Institute — a residential school remembered as the “Mush Hole” for the poor quality of its food — operated in Brantford, Ont., from 1831 to 1970.

During that time, more than 4,600 schoolchildren, most of them Haudenosaunee people from the Six Nations of the Grand River and nearby communities, were separated from their families and made to live at the school.

There, they were forced to learn English and to provide unpaid labour for the institute’s own operation and for neighbouring farms, all while enduring efforts to assimilate them into colonial society. Many were abused.

The last decades of the Mush Hole overlapped with the period when the nearby Hamilton Mountain Sanatorium, perched above the city’s west end on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment, treated more than 1,200 Inuit tuberculosis patients.

Between 1948 and 1963, Inuit were sent south from communities thousands of kilometres away in Nunavut. For a period, the “San,” as it was called, represented the largest year-round settlement of Inuit in all of Canada. Some Inuit patients never saw their families or homes again.

Between 1958 and 1962, 1,272 Inuit were treated at the Mountain Sanatorium for tuberculosis.
(Black Mount Collection, Hamilton Public Library, Local History & Archives)

‘Re-neighbouring’ communities

Our multi-year project, called Re-Neighbouring as Reconciliation: Indigenous Stories of Resistance, is now in full swing. It aims to improve access to records and artifacts, to gather and share information with all who are interested and to facilitate progress and healing through research, cultural exchanges and education that will introduce people from Six Nations to their counterparts from Nunavut in a concept we call “re-neighbouring.”

However, our team faces political and logistical challenges in doing this work. Some records from the San, for example, are not yet accessible to surviving patients, their families and their communities. We are advocating to correct that, especially in view of the TRC’s Calls to Action advocating for greater openness from museums and archives.

Even finding a way to connect this history to the present is complicated — is something really an artifact if it has cultural value to a living community?

In collaboration with the Art Gallery of Hamilton, we are working to bring a collection of soapstone carvings created by recovering tuberculosis patients during their long convalescence in Hamilton back to their communities to be seen by the descendants of the people who sculpted them.

Together, we are taking a meaningful look at repatriating what rightfully belongs to these communities, including the records of their experiences and the products of those experiences.

The Cross of Lorraine erected in 1953 along the road leading to the old Hamilton sanitorium. The cross was erected as a reminder of the threat of tuberculosis.
(Vanessa Watts)

Healing and justice

The goal is for survivors and those impacted inter-generationally within their communities to get to know one another across these two territories. We want to show how they are interacting with one another through their independent diplomatic and sovereign relations on their own terms.

The best outcome would be for those who were directly impacted to see themselves reflected in a way that gives them a feeling of connection, and for young people whose families and communities were affected by these institutions to know that history and to feel empowered to guide the future of their own lives and their children’s lives.

This work is about more than gathering information and publishing research. Our guiding principles are healing and justice. Our hope is to recover Indigenous knowledge, and to build new connections and understanding among and between the affected communities.

It’s important that everyone should witness distinct Indigenous communities coming together and understand there is not one broad Indigenous entity, but many. All of them are reclaiming their pasts and charting new futures for themselves. Läs mer…

Beavers, those iron-toothed rodents with a talent for hydraulic engineering, can legally return to English river catchments after an absence of 500 years.

Castor fiber has been on the way back for the last two decades thanks to unauthorised reintroductions. But until a few weeks ago, an enclosure was the only home these semi-aquatic mammals could legally find in the UK.

Successive governments have hesitated to issue release licenses for beavers, given their ability to transform the environment in unpredictable ways. When it comes to mitigating and adapting to climate change, however, that’s their biggest asset.

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When the reign of Tyrannosaurus rex abruptly ended 66 million years ago, a “prehistoric beaver” was on the ascendancy according to Stephen Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh.

“It wasn’t a good time to be alive,” he says. An asteroid had smashed into Earth with the equivalent fury of several million nuclear bombs. But Kimbetopsalis simmonsae, with its buck-toothed incisors and appetite for leaves and branches, survived.

Within a few hundred thousand years, lush forests had returned. Filling the vacant niches left by vanished dinosaurs were mammals like Kimbetopsalis.

“This burst of evolution led to primates, which eventually led to us,” Brusatte says.

Beaver-like ancestors braved a mass extinction event to help mammals rise from the ashes. What could modern beavers do during another era of planetary crisis?

Read more:
How we found ’prehistoric beaver’ that helped mammals inherit Earth after dinosaurs were wiped out

Dam the carbon

Legal protections and synthetic materials that reduced demand for warm fur have allowed beavers to regain their former haunts in Europe and North America.

The famously industrious rodents have wasted no time in picking up where they left off: damming streams to create ponds in which they build their dome-like lodges, safe from predators that might prowl the banks opposite.

A beaver lodge on a lake near Bad Freienwalde, north-eastern Germany.
Ebenart/Shutterstock

This behaviour has a stunning effect on the surrounding environment – perhaps even the climate. That’s because beaver dams trap vast quantities of sediment rich in carbon that might otherwise heat the atmosphere, says Christine E. Hatch, a professor of geosciences at UMass Amherst.

Read more:
Beavers offer lessons about managing water in a changing climate, whether the challenge is drought or floods

You should take this good news with a pinch of silt, however. CO₂ emissions from human activity were probably well over 40 billion tonnes last year – another annual high. Expecting beavers to offset our emissions is unrealistic, not to mention unreasonable.

Beavers may be skilled at stowing carbon in the wetlands they create, but this advantage is being undone by feedback mechanisms kickstarted by climate change. For example, the warming Arctic is inviting beavers to expand northwards. Here, their antics threaten to speed up the thawing of permafrost that has kept world-warming methane locked up says Helen Wheeler, a lecturer in wildlife ecology at Anglia Ruskin University.

Read more:
Arctic heatwave: what warmer summers mean for the region’s wildlife

Shelter from the storm

Where beavers really shine is in their knack for soothing damaged landscapes.

“Renowned engineers, beavers seem able to dam any stream, building structures with logs and mud that can flood large areas,” Hatch says.

“As climate change causes extreme storms in some areas and intense drought in others, scientists are finding that beavers’ small-scale natural interventions are valuable.”

The changes beavers make can help land hold onto water and release it slowly, which eases flooding and stalls drought. Compare this with human design innovations like tarmac, which radiates heat and allows storm water to slough off in torrents.

While the concrete dams that people construct bar the way for migratory freshwater fish, some of Earth’s most threatened animals, beaver dams present no such obstacle.

“One reason may be that the fish can rest in slow pools and cool pond complexes after navigating the tallest parts of the dams,” Hatch says.

Beaver wetlands do excel in blocking one thing, however: wildfires.

“Recent studies in the western US have found that vegetation in beaver-dammed river corridors is more fire-resistant than in areas without beavers because it is well watered and lush, so it doesn’t burn as easily,” Hatch says.

All of these qualities make beaver wetlands a fantastic refuge for a range of wildlife, particularly as ecosystems nearby are wracked and warped by rising temperatures and extreme weather. Even our towns and cities could be made more liveable with their help, as water evaporating from these ponds cools the air during heatwaves and absorbs flood water during a deluge.

Geographers Joshua Larsen (University of Birmingham), Annegret Larsen (Wageningen University) and Matthew Dennis (University of Manchester) are slightly more cautious.

“Unless the water bodies are very large, or high in number, this [effect] tends to diminish rapidly with distance from the water. This would make it difficult to rely upon beaver ponds for cooling benefits for human settlements,” they say.

Read more:
Beavers can do wonders for nature – but we should be realistic about these benefits extending to people

Nonetheless, allowing beavers to recover a fraction of their former abundance will make the effects of global heating less severe.

“Beavers are showing that their impacts can offer added levels of ecosystem resilience to a changing climate that we would be wise to embrace,” they add. Läs mer…

Approximately one quarter of hospital beds in acute wards – wards for patients who need close care for a sudden or severe medical conditions – are occupied by someone living with dementia in the UK.

The sights, sounds and smells of a hospital environment, and the lack of familiar carers, can be a significant challenge for people with dementia. Many healthcare staff feel that they do not have sufficient training to care well for them.

This can lead to some staff using less effective communication methods to reduce distress and anxiety in dementia patients. Some carers, for example, might try to “correct” patients with dementia who seem confused about their surroundings or may use therapeutic lying – when lies are told to alleviate the distress of a patient with dementia – to avoid upsetting patients further. Our research shows that there are two approaches that are more effective.

Managing competing realities

Dementia affects people’s abilities to use language, to understand other people’s use of language and to remember things. One common challenge is the presence of competing realities, where the person with dementia is oriented to a different time or place. These competing realities are often grounded in the person’s previous experience of a career or family role. For example, they may believe a parent is coming to take them home, or that they need to leave urgently to pick up their own child from school.

Managing these competing realities can be difficult for carers in any setting. It is particularly difficult in an acute ward, where staff may know little about the background of a patient admitted for treatment for an urgent medical need such as a fracture or infection. Competing realities can be a major source of distress for a person with dementia, who might not recognise where they are or that they have any medical need, and can’t understand why they are not simply able to leave when they ask.

Over recent years, my colleagues and I have been using video recordings of everyday ward interactions to identify the communication challenges that occur when caring for people with dementia.

We have developed training in communication skills focused on specific challenges. For example, dealing with refusals of medically necessary care, responding to talk that is hard to understand and closing interactions effectively. Most recently, we have focused on dealing with competing realities and the distress that these can cause.

Responding effectively

We found there are four ways in which staff tend to respond, but that only two of these are effective in addressing distress.

The first way is to confront or challenge the patient’s reality. For example, telling a person who believes they are at home that they are actually in hospital. It is understandable why staff might do this, but we found that it does not usually lead to agreement, and instead can make distress worse.

The second way is to go along with the patient’s reality. For example, by agreeing that a deceased family member such as a parent or spouse will be coming to visit or collect the patient later. While this might work as a short-term strategy, it is time-limited because the promised event will never happen. This can ultimately make distress worse. Wider debates on “therapeutic lying” to people with dementia suggest it should only be done if carefully thought out and planned, and only then as a last resort.

Read more:
Is it OK to lie to someone with dementia?

The third way is to find some aspect of the patient’s reality that is shareable, without fully entering into it. For example, if a patient says their (deceased) father is coming to collect them, a member of healthcare staff might ask “Do you miss your dad?” This avoids lying, but responds to the emotional tone of the patient and enables a sharing of feelings.

For a person worried they have left a child or a pet alone at home, a healthcare professional might say “Your neighbour is looking after everything at home”. This provides general reassurance without confirming or challenging the specifics. For a patient who repeatedly asks to go home because they do not recognise their medical need, asking “What would you be doing if you were at home?” can identify a need or desire – such as having a cup of tea, a walk, or watching the TV – which could be met in the hospital environment.

Redirecting a Dementia Sufferer | Louis Theroux: Extreme Love – Dementia | BBC Studios.

Alternatively, staff used diversions. The topic of conversation can be shifted away from the issue that was causing distress, towards something else they could engage the person with.

This sometimes drew on the immediate environment – the view out of the window, for example. Sometimes they proposed an alternative activity, such as walking to a day room, or getting a drink. When no other possibilities were available, they sometimes asked the person with dementia a question that could lead into a different conversation.

These approaches are relevant for carers in any setting. Even in the context of a busy, pressured environment where carers may know very little about a person, the small differences in the way they communicate can have a profound effect on the care and wellbeing of those living with dementia. Läs mer…

What is the point of a Labour government? This is a question traditionally asked after Labour governments lose office. But it’s also a question asked while Labour governments are in office. And, sometimes, even when they still only recently arrived in office.

For a Labour prime minister to announce cuts in aid and development spending to increase spending on the military is one of those “Nixon in China” moments. Only a Labour prime minister could get away with so illiberal a move.

Yet for some it questions the very purpose of the Labour party, which, Harold Wilson told it in 1962, is “a moral crusade or it is nothing”. Two years later Prime Minister Wilson created a Department of Overseas Development.

Starmer’s decision to pull funding from international development to increase defence spending may ultimately prove to be an inflection point for the government.

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The prime minister had made his (unfashionable) enthusiasm for Wilson known. Yet Starmer has presided over the evisceration of an already diminished aid budget. Cuts have taken spending down from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3%. Starmer had once attacked Boris Johnson’s original cut from 0.7%.

The cuts mean Labour’s broad progressive constituency may see itself as being asked to stomach the attempted bromance with a reviled foreign leader. Rearmament is a direct consequence of Donald Trump’s re-election, and the aid cuts a direct consequence of Starmer’s February 27 White House visit. For most party members, and more than a few voters, a Labour manifesto commitment has been abandoned for the least palatable of reasons.

That this is a policy that will be popular (or at least not unpopular) with the public is a given. Foreign aid attracts neither votes nor sympathy. Development’s tiny budget, the lowest of low-hanging political fruit, has been raided and arms spending promised (as it has been phrased) on the backs of the world’s poorest people. That 28% of the development budget was being spent on housing asylum seekers in the UK domestically only adds to the tension within Labour.

And yet, criticism of the government’s shortest of short termism has been muted. Political opponents on the right approve. Cutting aid spending is a Reform UK manifesto commitment.

Labour backbenchers have been pointed. One described it as “Trumpian bullshit”, adding: “I’ve given my entire adult life to the party, is this what it was all for? Is this Labour values?”

Anneliese Dodds, the foreign office minister responsible for aid – and most moderate of souls – resigned after being humiliated by a prime minister who gave her an hour’s notice of the halving of her budget. She delayed her announcement so as not to detract from the White House visit.

Anneliese Dodds has resigned in protest over the aid cuts.
Shutterstock

In and out of favour

The historical pattern had been clear: Labour governments elevate, and Conservative governments relegate, international development as a government priority.

In 1964 Wilson made development a separate department. His Tory Edward Heath then moved it into the Foreign Office when he was in power. Wilson took it out again, but then Margaret Thatcher moved it back.

Tony Blair gave it a new title and a new status, and then, providing the exception to the rule, David Cameron not only retained its independence, but ring-fenced its budget. The pandemic gave cause for Cameron’s successor-but-one, Johnson, to revert to type and merge the department into the Foreign Office, one feels now, for the last time.

With these latest cuts, UK aid spending will fall to the lowest level as a percentage of national income since before 1964.

Development was also – and perhaps for the wrong reasons – historically the only department with reliably female leadership: Barbara Castle, Judith Hart, Lynda Chalker, Clare Short, Valerie Amos, Justine Greening, Priti Patel, Penny Mordaunt, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, Vicky Ford, Dodds and, now, Baroness Chapman.

One consequence was the foregrounding of women’s and girls issues in policy. Hart in particular proselytised for UK development spending. Her 1973 book Aid and Liberation was a clarion for socialist – rather than what she saw as neo-imperialist – aid to what was then called the third world. It was, for her, a political as well as a moral cause.

There may come a time when Starmer’s choices here will be spoken of by Labour members and, then voters, as craven. Portentously, Wilson was accused of the same over Vietnam, and Blair over Iraq.

The last time a Labour government diverted welfare funds to rearmament they were out of office shortly after, and for over a decade. At least Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin – the pair invoked by Starmer and his ministers as they announced the cuts – exchanged electoral advantage for historical greatness.

Trump’s second administration has created a crisis, both for the government and for Britain’s place in the world. It exacerbates another crisis, also known as the British economy, where pressure on public spending is about to create its own inflection point. Are Labour governments for cutting help for those in need at home as well as those overseas?

Leading where others follow, Trump has cut US foreign aid. By 83%. It is hard, in the new age of transactional, personalistic, international relations, to discern much a future for development spending. The end of the age of aid – one of the reasons for Labour governments – is upon us. Judith Hart would be broken. Läs mer…

There’s an illustration by Helen Oxenbury in the new exhibition of her work, Illustrating the Land of Childhood, at Burgh House, Hampstead, that I hadn’t seen before.

Titled The House, the pen and watercolour image, mostly in black-and-white, shows the exterior of a street. Two windows of a single house are lit up in colour. The upstairs window looks in on a bedroom where a child is sleeping, and the window below shows the child’s mother preparing breakfast in the kitchen downstairs.

Who would’ve known that these characters had recently planted a plum tree in the bedroom that had burst through the floors and ceilings, almost destroying the home? Such is the story of Meal One (1971), by Oxenbury and Ivor Cutler, from which The House is taken.

Land of Childhood is Oxenbury’s first solo exhibition, and The House encapsulates the essence of the show. The world depicted through Oxenbury’s illustrations is one of family gatherings, mealtimes and activities, but also of oceans, forests, night skies and caves. Together they illuminate the adventure and anxiety of childhood.

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The exhibition spans almost six decades of Oxenbury’s career as a children’s book illustrator. In doing so, it demonstrates the different media that Oxenbury has worked with – including pastels, pen, gouache, watercolour and clay – to tell these stories.

An illustration from So Much (1994).
Courtesy of Helen Oxenbury

The earliest illustrations on display are from the 1960s, so it is also possible to follow a kind of journey through the materials used for creating and producing children’s books from the second half of the 20th century onward.

Like Oxenbury’s illustrations, the exhibition gallery in Burgh House offers something new to find in each alcove, recess, display case and picture wall of the room, with the artwork spotlit in the otherwise shaded room.

The gallery itself is small, meaning that visitors are close to the pictures and models on display. This compels a proximity to the images that is less typical of gallery exhibitions, and more familiar to reading books.

The descriptions on the wall are concise, noting the stories that the illustrations were made for, but without reproducing sections of the narrative. There is something exciting about seeing the illustrations loosened slightly from the stories that usually contain them.

One of the clay models on display.
Courtesy of Helen Oxenbury

The character and animation of things runs through the images and models in the exhibition, as does the drama and detail of the smallest interactions or tasks illustrated. The movement and rush of childhood seems especially vivid in the illustrations from the 1980s onward, including those from We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (1989, Michael Rosen), So Much (1994, Trish Cooke) and Through the Looking-Glass (2008, Lewis Carroll).

Seeing Oxenbury’s artwork on display, I think part of the effectiveness of these illustrations lies in their apparent openness, and the suggestion of vast spaces that extend just beyond the frame, or the unfolding of a scene yet to be concluded. This perhaps also underpins Oxenbury’s approach to illustrating childhood itself, when so much of our everyday is surprising.

And this is echoed in the sense of things still in motion that I noticed throughout the exhibition. Oxenbury’s interpretations of scene, and intimations of movement, are rendered in the almost unreal, vibrant pastel colours of a world that is still forming, and where anything is possible.

Helen Oxenbury: Illustrating the Land of Childhood is on until December 14, in the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Gallery at Burgh House in Hampstead, London. Läs mer…

Tobacco kills 8 million people worldwide every year, but imagine if it could be used to make medicine. The idea isn’t unheard of – tobacco has been used as a herbal medicine in the past. But now, in the age of genetic engineering, tobacco may well be the future of pharmaceutical production on Earth and beyond.

European explorers first encountered tobacco in the Americas during the 16th century. There, indigenous people had used it for centuries, either by inhalation, ingestion or topically, as a treatment for any number of illnesses like headaches, colds, sores and stomach upsets.

Tobacco became a panacea in 16th century Europe, prescribed for almost everything. The most bizarre application, however, would probably be as a cure for symptoms of drowning in the 18th century. Tobacco smoke enema kits were kept by the Thames River in London. Should someone fall in, they would be awoken with a shock with one of these kits. The thinking was that the tobacco smoke would provide warmth and stimulation.

Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories.

This story is part of a series, Plant Curious, exploring scientific studies that challenge the way you view plantlife.

While there is little evidence for tobacco being inherently medicinal, its harmfulness was observed even in the 18th century.

A lot of our modern medications come from plants, like the cancer chemotherapy Taxol from yew trees, or the heart medication Digoxin from fox gloves. These medications are tiny molecules. But if we want anything more complicated, like a protein-based pharmaceutical such as insulin or a vaccine, the equipment involved becomes a lot more technical.

Most of these more complex medications are the product of a kind of genetic engineering called recombinant technology. The genetic material required to make, for instance, insulin, is combined with a cell’s genetic material. That cell (which can be bacteria, yeast or animal cells) will now produce the insulin along with all its own proteins. It’s much like when a child stealthily slips a chocolate bar in with the rest of their parent’s shopping.

The technology is extraordinarily expensive (around US$2 billion, or £1.5 billion) because of the huge vats or bioreactors needed to grow recombinant cells in sterile conditions. This makes access to these kinds of pharmaceuticals difficult for low-income countries.

This is where tobacco could make a difference. Much like the recombinant cells we currently use, plants can also be genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals. Plants, however, only need soil, water and sunlight to grow. Tobacco is the largest leafy non-food crop. It is very amenable to genetic modification, and is an absolute power-house when it comes to producing proteins, be it their own or the ones we’ve introduced. This combined with their high biomass makes them the most prolific plant for pharmaceutical production.

It may be indigenous to the Americas and Australia, but it is a resilient plant and can be grown all over the world. Thanks to its ease of genetic modification, tobacco can become even more resilient by making it drought-resistant.

This idea of molecular farming is still new, but is starting to gain traction. In 2012 the Canadian company Medicago demonstrated the speed of tobacco as a production platform. They used tobacco to produce more than 10 million doses of the influenza vaccine in one month. Given that globally we can produce 40 million doses of the vaccine per month, this achievement was ground-breaking.

Tobacco is resilient and fast growing.
Attasit saentep/Shutterstock

There are several clinical trials underway looking at tobacco-produced immunotherapies for diseases like HIV, and even Ebola virus disease. One treatment already received emergency use status in the US for returning healthcare workers during the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak. These diseases disproportionately affect low-income countries and tobacco is grown predominantly in these countries already.

Tobacco is even being used to produce cancer immunotherapies. These cancer treatments work by boosting our own immune systems to fight off cancer cells, with few side-effects compared to traditional chemotherapy. They are, however, prohibitively expensive, so this platform could make them more accessible.

Smoking has caused a great deal of harm worldwide, but its decline in popularity is going to cause a new problem: tobacco farmers in low-income countries will lose their livelihoods. So why not repurpose these crops?

Drugs on Mars

Oscar Wilde once wrote “every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future”. So what is the future of tobacco?

Thinking beyond Earth, if we plan to visit or colonise other planets, we are going to need medications while we’re there. Tobacco can grow all over the world, why not on Mars too? A packet of tobacco seeds would take up much less room on a rocket than a five years’ supply of insulin, or an entire bioreactor facility for that matter. Plus, the tobacco is an infinite source – collect the seeds and re-plant.

Before we head off to Mars, though, we should address the problems here on Earth, and sustainability is a big one. Plants that we extract medicines from today, such as yew trees, are becoming endangered.

An emerging field is engineering tobacco to have it produce the same medications we typically extract from these plants. Not only that, but we can also produce expensive spices like saffron, or flavours such as raspberry, at a fraction of the cost. Not even the sky is the limit for tobacco’s potential. Läs mer…

While Britain has for the most part had a strong commitment to free trade, it’s a very different story in the US, which has a long history of protectionism. This means that President Donald Trump’s tariff wars are playing out very differently politically on his side of the Atlantic. And there is no certainty that domestic opposition will be strong enough to curb his enthusiasm for using tariffs as a weapon.

Britain’s political economy is still shaped by the battle over free trade that took place nearly 200 years ago. The bitter debate over the Corn Laws, which put high tariffs on imported food to protect UK landowners, led to a political triumph for the new Liberal party. It also led to wide support among working people and manufacturers for a policy of free trade.

Britain’s domination of the world economy in the 19th century owed much to the triumph of free trade. And the British public still largely backs free trade today.

In contrast, many American politicians in the 19th century believed that US industry needed protection from its more efficient rivals. It was Alexander Hamilton, one of the authors of the US constitution and America’s first treasury secretary, who introduced tariffs in 1789. Hamilton cited the need to protect America’s “infant industries” from foreign competition.

By the end of the 19th century, US manufacturers had surpassed their British rivals. Protectionism, however, remained a cornerstone of American international economic policy. It was the expanding US domestic market and not exports to foreign countries that was driving the growth of America’s giant corporations – which were closely allied with the ruling Republican party.

Between 1861 and 1933, US tariffs on foreign imports averaged 50% – among the highest in the world. Tariffs also contributed nearly half of all government revenues. Federal income taxes were only introduced, after much opposition, in 1913.

The postwar turn

It was at the end of the second world war that the US moved to embrace free trade. But even then, political support was weak. In 1948 the US Congress rejected the proposed International Trade Organization, which would have regulated international trade. This had been part of the Bretton Woods negotiations that set up the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and gave the dollar the leading role in the global economy.

The determining factor in the US endorsement of free trade was not economic gain, but political necessity. With the cold war in full swing, the US understood the need to help Europe and Japan’s economies flourish in order to resist the appeal of communism.

With American industry – greatly expanded by war – dominating the world economy, the political cost of allowing more foreign imports was low. And the potential benefits of selling more American goods abroad looked promising.

But this began to change in the 1970s, driven by the success of Japanese car manufacturers. In 1981 the US negotiated with Japan’s carmakers a voluntary cap on exports to the US of 1.68 million cars per year.

The WTO and after

Nevertheless, the US was still the driving force in trade liberalisation. Both Republicans and Democrats endorsed the benefits of globalisation, urging the spread of free trade and economic deregulation globally.

It was only in 1995, under President Bill Clinton, that the World Trade Organization (WTO) was created, giving full legal status to trade negotiations for the first time. But Clinton’s plan to host talks in Seattle in 1999 had to be cancelled after demonstrations by trade unionists and environmentalists paralysed the city.

The next meeting was held in 2001 in Doha, Qatar – where no protests were allowed – to launch talks that would widen trade liberalisation to cover agriculture and services. The most important result however was that China was admitted to the WTO, giving it full access to US and European markets.

It soon became clear that China’s manufacturing sector had a huge advantage over its US rivals. China’s trade surplus with the US soared (meaning it sold more to America than it bought from it), while US manufacturing jobs in the “rust belt” industrial regions fell into decline.

While economists could argue that overall, the benefits to US consumers of cheaper goods outweighed the costs to workers in some industries, this came at a a high political cost.

China surpassed the US to become a manufacturing powerhouse.
Jenson/Shutterstock

It was Trump who saw the opportunity this gave the Republican party to champion the white working class. These voters often felt deserted by the Democrats. Trump’s support of high tariffs, with the aim of restoring US manufacturing dominance and “reshoring” industry, may be unlikely to succeed in that aim. But that does not mean it is unpopular in those heartlands – the key swing states that Trump won in the 2024 election.

Attempts by the Biden administration to move in the same direction, including keeping Trump-era tariffs on Chinese imports and introducing subsidies for key manufacturing sectors, shows the way the political wind is blowing.

Of course, if the tariff wars cause a major recession in the US, this would be politically damaging. But the US is far less dependent on international trade than rivals like Japan, China and the EU.

Americans are doubtful about the value of expanding free trade. The issue is not high on the list of issues that most worry US voters, although there are sharp partisan divides on whether Trump’s higher tariffs will benefit or harm the US economy.

The Democrats are likely to fight the next election on domestic economic issues such as defending social security and boosting jobs and income. Meanwhile the WTO has effectively been rendered impotent, and we are unlikely to return to a world of globally agreed trade rules.

In fact, Britain, with one of the most open economies in the world, is particularly vulnerable. So, for the US, the political and economic cost of a trade war would be disproportionately felt overseas – something that the president will be well aware of. Läs mer…

Young people today face increasing levels of uncertainty. They’re navigating volatile job and housing markets and contending with a future that’s likely to be significantly marked by the climate crisis. Evidence also indicates that this generation is experiencing a sharp deterioration in mental health. Developing resilience is often hailed as the solution.

Resilience is typically framed as overcoming adversity and this tends to mean conforming to social norms. Staying in school, holding down a job, persevering no matter what. It’s an individual virtue, which places an emphasis on personal responsibility and self-reliance.

But this conventional understanding of what it means to be resilient, and what we expect to see when we ask young people to be resilient, may be overlooking the hidden ways they adapt and survive. It dismisses alternative responses, such as resistance, disengagement or inaction.

By redefining resilience to include different ways of adapting and the importance of support from others, we can create a more practical approach to handling uncertainty.

My research with colleagues has explored the unconventional side of resilience. It is based on interviews with 92 young people across four European countries, as well as further focus group discussions. It was part of a larger a European study of young people facing disadvantage across ten countries.

To understand the experiences of these young people, we spent time with them in their own spaces. These included youth centres, protest groups and online communities.

We held one-on-one conversations where young people shared their personal experiences, thoughts and struggles. And we worked with them in creative ways, often within workshops or group discussions, so they could help shape the research.

Through this work, we found that actions by the young people that might ordinarily be dismissed as failures can actually be hidden, unconventional forms of strength and adaptation in their own right. They reveal broader, more nuanced versions of resilience.

Take Liam, a 15-year-old in the UK who had been in care and was serving a community sentence. For Liam, school was a toxic environment filled with conflict and pressure from his peers and teachers. Although he was keen to achieve some academic qualifications and saw it as a source of pride, Liam made the decision to stop attending.

By leaving school, Liam reduced his risk of becoming drawn into problematic peer groups and criminal behaviour. While some might see leaving school as giving up, from Liam’s perspective it was a way to protect himself.

Samantha, at 24 years old, had experienced neglect from her parents and a lack of support from social workers. She often felt unheard and judged unfairly by those in authority, such as her social workers and educators.

Instead of disputing what they said, which had the potential to cause her a lot of upset and conflict, Samantha would quietly remove herself from those conversations. This might involve physically leaving the room, redirecting the discussion to a neutral topic, or simply disengaging emotionally by remaining silent.

What might seem like giving up was, for her, a form of resilience that protected her from further harm in the face of a system that had repeatedly let her down.

Learning to navigate uncertainty

The idea of promoting resilience among young people is to enable them to cope with living in an uncertain world. But young people often face issues that are impossible for them to overcome through their own efforts.

These can include unequal, limited access to quality education or stable job opportunities. They may be living in poverty and unstable housing, experiencing discrimination within education settings, social care or the criminal justice system. They may face inadequate mental health support, or the challenges of leaving the care system, such as insufficient preparation for independent living.

This is often coupled with limited access to supportive resources such as a lack of youth-friendly spaces or programs in underfunded communities. There may be insufficient availability of mentorship or guidance in schools, restricted access to affordable extracurricular activities, and limited pathways to secure housing or financial aid for young people transitioning out of care. Navigating these challenges cannot be addressed solely through personal effort.

Resilience can be built through receiving help from a community.
SynthEx/Shutterstock

Supporting resilience, then, can mean creating environments where they can safely explore options on how to handle challenges in a way that feels realistic and sustainable, make mistakes and learn how to adapt without fear of judgement.

At 16, Paco, from Spain, found himself in a self-managed youth club where young people decide on the youth workers they employ, the activities offered and how to engage with the neighbourhood. It was aimed at supporting those who, like Paco, were not studying or in work.

The staff and his peers didn’t just tell him what to do but listened to his thoughts and ideas. Unlike other places where he felt judged, this place gave him a chance to explore his ideas without fear of unduly harsh criticism.

Rather than dictating what he should do or emphasising rigid goals, people involved in the program actively listened to Paco’s thoughts and ideas, creating a space where he felt genuinely heard.

This approach focused on building trust, empowering Paco to make incremental changes at his own pace. Paco was supported back into study – something that he felt much more enthusiastic about – and was confident in getting his life back on track.

Thinking of resilience in this more flexible way – one which allows for what might look like failure, or accepting help from a community – challenges an understanding of resilience seen in neoliberal thinking. This is a philosophy that champions individual responsibility and self-reliance and is often tied to economic productivity.

Instead of expecting young people to simply “bounce back” and thrive in times of adversity, we should support them in exploring sustainable, adaptive responses to life’s challenges.

To equip young people to navigate an uncertain and challenging world, we need to recognise the value of unconventional forms of resilience. It should be understood as a process that often arises in response to structural inequalities, rather than a one-size-fits-all ideal rooted in conformity and individual effort. Läs mer…

United States President Donald Trump recently announced the U.S. would establish a strategic cryptocurrency reserve of Bitcoin, Ether, Ripple, Solana and Cardano. This move, he said, would make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the world.”

Once a vocal crypto-skeptic, Trump now frames his support as an embrace of technologies that champion freedom and innovation.

However, the problem with Trump’s view is that it assumes crypto will lead to the elimination of financial intermediaries. By replacing trust with transparency, cryptocurrency promises to put individuals in charge of their monetary transactions.

Our research demonstrates that this is only a partial view. In reality, crypto is dependent on social practices behind the technology.

Crypto-believers often blame greedy financiers as the cause of the Great Recession in 2008. But we argue that crypto is not immune to these same risks.

Replacing trust with transparency

Cryptocurrencies are a type of digital money that trades on a blockchain. A blockchain is a decentralized ledger technology that allows users to trade pseudo-anonymously.

Public blockchains operate on a distributed peer-to-peer network. This network provides each user a complete record of transactions that is updated in real time. Users can send digital cash between themselves without relying on a centralized authority.

Donald Trump speaks at the annual Bitcoin Conference in July 2024, in Nashville, Tenn.
(AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

Since each user has a full record of transactions, the system promises full transparency. But our research demonstrates that public blockchains, and the cryptocurrencies that run on them, do not actually replace trust with transparency.

Speculation, manipulation and market crashes remain very real dangers, regardless of whether the financial system is centralized or decentralized.

Cryptocurrencies rely on people

We studied the communications between the founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, and the early Bitcoin community. We found the development and implementation of cryptocurrencies relies on negotiations between individuals. Who has a final say on which line of code will prevail depends on a social hierarchy dominated by insiders.

Centralization of power in the hands of insiders is still a major issue in the cryptocurrency space. This is particularly an issue for emerging cryptocurrencies like memecoins. Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency named after internet memes or similar jokes. They draw their value entirely from speculation.

The Trump Organization recently launched memecoins $TRUMP and $MELANIA. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has concluded that memecoins do not qualify as securities, and therefore are outside its regulatory purview. Not only are memecoins risky, but they come with a significant risk of insider trading.

Read more:
$Trump and $Melania crypto tokens illustrate the risks posed by trendy meme coins

A recent case study on the memecoin $LIBRA shows how influencers, anonymous developers and centralized exchanges facilitate market distortions, often at the expense of retail investors.

When cryptocurrencies are outside the scope of regulation, individuals behind the technology can profit from insider information. This is less of a risk with widely traded cryptocurrencies like Ether and Bitcoin, but investors should be aware that any technology is reliant on the people who design the code and regulate its changes.

Personal views towards privacy, for instance, can impact governance decisions. These beliefs can have important implications for the value and usability of any technology, cryptocurrencies included.

Talking crypto into reality

Our research suggests cryptocurrency insiders can artificially inflate the value of their coins by talking them up, effectively creating value out of nothing.

By using economic and accounting language to describe Bitcoin, the early Bitcoin community effectively turned a string of zeroes and ones into something that could be measured, valued and recognized. Economists argue that even fiat currency is backed by a type of belief — trust in institutions.

A price chart on the Bybit website for the cryptocurrency Ethereum is seen on a computer screen in New York in February 2025.
(AP Photo/Patrick Sison)

Bitcoin, too, relies on belief, but a different kind. Its value is based users’ collective confidence in the technology and security of the network, a phenomenon known as the network effect. As more people adopt Bitcoin, its perceived value rises, creating a self-sustaining cycle of belief and value based on market demand.

Recently, American stockbroker and anti-crypto advocate Peter Schiff accused Trump of manipulating the cryptocurrency market following the announcement of the strategic crypto reserve. Schiff has called for a congressional investigation into Trump and his team to determine who may have profited from the announcement, which triggered a massive increase in crypto prices.

Given the volatility of cryptocurrencies, their values are highly susceptible to herd behaviour, and public sentiment has a significant effect on cryptocurrency returns.

Where does this leave investors?

Our research and other studies like it have shown that cryptocurrency is subject to important value changes based on announcements by a small group of influential individuals.

We caution anyone interested in investing in crypto to do their homework by examining the underlying economics of a coin, getting to know the team behind it and evaluating their risk tolerance before moving forward.

With thousands of cryptocurrencies in circulation, distinguishing between a promising investment, a speculative gamble or even scams is crucial.

Despite the uncertain and unpredictable nature of digital assets, one thing is certain: the conversation around crypto is far from over. Läs mer…