The most important and anticipated climate change conference in years is finally underway. In some ways, as Bill McKibben and Andrew Revkin have pointed out, its success is relatively assured thanks to the number of major commitments countries have already made. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to see here. “The conference isn’t the game – it’s the scoreboard,” writes McKibben. To extend the metaphor even more, you might call it the league scoreboard, giving us a glimpse of many different storylines playing out.

In his speech on climate change and national security on November 10, Secretary of State John Kerry said climate change is already a “threat multiplier,” and that worse is to be expected if climate change continues unchecked. But the relationship between the environment and violent conflict is complex and often indirect. Researchers have been wrangling for years over the role that global environmental change plays in fueling conflict and state fragility.

The dark eyes and hair of the Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Afghans almost blend with the other migrants’. The brown skin tones are also not giveaways, but ask them where they come from, and you notice the hesitation – trying hard to blend into the crowd of Syrian migrants at Europe’s border crossings, afraid of being spotted and sent back.

When Colombia is in the news, it’s not necessarily for the reasons we Colombians would like. We have lived through 50 years of violent conflict. Peace is a very abstract idea to most of us. Despite this we are still some of the happiest people on Earth.

The booming geothermal industry in Kenya illustrates how rapid transitions to renewable energy systems can risk generating conflicts if they are not done with sensitivity to the impact of transition on marginalized populations and to local ethnic and political dynamics.

In a commanding speech at Old Dominion University this week, Secretary Kerry announced a dramatic step toward integrating climate and security into U.S. foreign policy. In Norfolk, Virginia, home to the world’s largest naval station, Kerry said the State Department is creating a new “task force of senior government officials to determine how best to integrate climate and security analysis into overall foreign policy planning and priorities.”

In the midst of a minefield on day two of Desert Storm Task Force Ripper, Marine Corps Operations Officer Richard Zilmer stepped out of his armored personnel carrier, squinted up at the sky, and saw nothing but black from horizon to horizon. Iraqi forces, trying desperately to blunt the attack of coalition armies, had set fire to hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells and oil-filled trenches.

A recent article by Malcolm Potts, Aafreen Mahmood, and Alisha Graves of the University of California Berkeley’s OASIS Initiative notes that family planning has an important role to play in building peace by increasing women’s empowerment and their agency. “The pill is mightier than the sword,” as they put it.