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This week’s article…
What drives wildfires, and is humanity—and its environment—more at risk today?
The most common wildfire in the world is a forest fire. Other wildfires include shrubland fires, grassland fires, savanna fires, and cropland fires. A wildfire is an uncontrolled burn in an area with combustible vegetation. While fire is a natural phenomenon in these land cover types, which is beneficial for ecosystems, unnatural wildfires can also destroy ecosystems, properties, and human lives, and reduce air quality. So, what causes wildfires nowadays, and what is the relationship between wildfires and climate change?
Wildfires kill several hundred people every year. Tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people are evacuated. Some people are even displaced from their homes. Wildfires can harm human health due to the release of particulate matter and local air pollution.
The benefits of fire for ecosystems
Fire plays an important role in returning nutrients to the soil. It promotes plant growth by burning dead and decaying matter. Fire also creates space for a variety of plant and animal species by clearing dense vegetation. Thirdly, fire helps in controlling pests and diseases, which supports the overall health of ecosystems.
The disadvantages of fire
When organic material in the soil evaporates from the heat, these vapours condense may form… Continue reading
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How far is the smart meter rollout globally?
Nearly half of the world population is living in urban areas nowadays. The future prospect is that the number of people living in cities will further increase. By 2050 two-thirds of world’s population will live in cities. Cities worldwide are responsible for seventy-five percent of global energy consumption and put pressure on the environment. Nonetheless, cities produce eighty percent of global GDP… Continue reading
LONGREAD: Who looks after the children?
On September 9th, 2025, UNICEF stated that one in ten children worldwide is living with obesity. There are now globally more children with obesity than underweight among school-age children and adolescents. Above that, one in seven children and adolescents have a mental health condition, stated the United Nations on October 9th, 2024. The most common conditions are anxiety, depression, and behavioural disorders. This… Continue reading
Is humanity AI ready?
Definitely not! However, not for the reasons that are commonly believed. Job loss is the least of your concern, although you might think otherwise. We have lived for millions of years without jobs, so we can really do without them again if we decide to. However, there is one thing we cannot do without, even though we pretend we can. That misperception points exactly to what makes AI life-threatening for the majority… Continue reading
Images generated as original artwork by Vicki Van Lommel. Monochrome AI-generated images.
How can a well-intentioned idea turn into a world war?
The road to hell is most of the time paved with good intentions. We humans tend to see ourselves as good and those outside of us as wrong. Thinking in good and bad is a dualistic perspective that only exists in the human mind. Especially if the other person does not think like us, we humans tend to define that as wrong. However, what starts with a well-intentioned idea, can… Continue reading
Is climate change in itself a threat to humans?
July – September 2026
every Friday a new article about #ClimateChange on FPM blog
The latest articles on…
What drives wildfires, and is humanity—and its environment—more at risk today?
The most common wildfire in the world is a forest fire. Other wildfires include shrubland fires, grassland fires, savanna fires, and cropland fires. A wildfire is an uncontrolled burn… Continue reading
How does climate change affect life on Earth, both regionally and globally, and what is it actually telling us?
The effects of climate change vary by region worldwide. The five main climate regions into which the world can be divided are affected by climate change in different ways. So, how does climate change roughly affect human health, human societies, and nature in these regions and is climate change really the issue that humanity should be most concerned about?… Continue reading
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Also the following online magazines are offered by Free People Media:
LONGREAD: Urban climate conditions explained: shifting the climate debate from who is right or wrong to understanding the complex urban climate reality
Climate change is mainly a challenge for urban human populations around the world. Urban areas in developed countries are often not built for changing climate conditions. In developing countries, population density is growing so fast that urban areas cannot keep up with the increasing… Continue reading
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Is climate change in itself necessarily a threat to humans?
Climate change is as old as the estimated 4.54 billion years that the Earth has existed. Over the past five hundred million years, global temperatures were too high for persistent polar ice caps. The last fifty million years form an exception to this. During this last colder period, Homo sapiens appeared approximately 300,000 years ago. During this period,… Continue reading
How humanity turned out to live in an unfair world
Trust is declining worldwide. According to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, it is estimated that sixty-one percent of people globally experience a moderate or high sense of grievance. This is based on the belief that governments and businesses make people’s lives harder, and that wealthy people benefit the most from the system. It seems that distrust towards the media,… Continue reading
Can national security officials’ claims around the world be trusted blindly?
Every second, a lot happens in the world. This makes the world complex and rather unpredictable. Based on this, the question could be asked how capable people are to grasp what is happening in the world. Since national security officials have received specific education and/or training in the national security domain and… Continue reading
How come so many people in this world are mentally ill?
Recent research has shown that some people have a higher risk of a mental disorder than others because of certain genes. Based on that, there is the idea that new, more effective individual treatments could be explored. Since 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic was declared, however, depression and anxiety disorders have risen dramatically worldwide. That does not really sound like it is genetic!… Continue reading
COMING UP: mid-september 2026
1st release online magazine ‘Roots of the Free’ coming up mid-September 2026
FREE article to read
ESSAY:
No time to waste
‘No time to waste’ was first used as a slogan by Greenpeace in the early 90s. It became one of Greenpeace’s most iconic ‘crisis’ campaign slogans, calling for action to protect the environment. More than thirty years later, humanity is not only still in the middle of a global environmental crisis but also has to deal with several other crises on an international or even global scale. People’s mental and physical health is… Continue reading
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