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With parking lots packed with SUVs, lush golf courses in the desert, and a giant indoor ski slope to keep cool despite outdoor temperatures that regularly exceed 100 degrees, it is not surprising that the oil-rich United Arab Emirates has the highest per-capita carbon footprint on the planet. But the UAE’s rulers know the party won’t last forever, that someday the oil will run out.
As Pulitzer Center grantee Yochi Dreazen reports in National Journal, the UAE is facing reality by investing billions in renewable energy strategies and technologies, as are several other major oil producers in the region. “Persian Gulf countries, which sell more oil than any other nation in the world, are preparing for the changes they’ll have to make,” Yochi writes. “The United States, which buys more oil than any other nation in the world, is doing next to nothing to prepare for the decline of fossil fuels.”
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In an innovative partnership with Foreign Policy, the Pulitzer Center is proud to announce the publication of its first e-book: “Afghanistan by Donkey: One Year in a War Zone” by Anna Badkhen. The Pulitzer Center funded Anna for a year-long reporting project in northern Afghanistan. The result was a one-of-a-kind series of remarkably intimate dispatches that have now been woven together into a compelling narrative. Peter Bergen, a bestselling author and an authority on the region, calls it “a bleak tale told by an expert storyteller.” You can purchase Anna’s book on the Foreign Policy website, or the Kindle version from Amazon.
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Ever since the Kony2012 video went viral last month, there has been noticeably more interest on the part of governments in bringing Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army henchmen to justice. The LRA has been terrorizing and plundering large swaths of central Africa for more than 25 years. Pulitzer Center grantee Trevor Snapp documents the ramped-up hunt for Kony in a Newsweek photo essay and video. Trevor took time off from another project in which he and reporter Alan Boswell are developing an iPad book on the emergence of Africa’s newest nation: South Sudan. The Pulitzer Center and Triple Canopy will publish the iPad book later this year.
Another e-book just out is “Beyond #Kony2012: Atrocity, Awareness + Activism in the Internet Age.” A deconstruction of Invisible Children’s much-discussed video, it includes provocative essays by Pulitzer Center grantees Rebecca Hamilton, Jina Moore and Glenna Gordon. Ordering information at Leanpub.
Until next week,
Tom Hundley
Senior Editor