One in five African states produce hydrocarbons, and most of these are heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues to finance their governments and generate foreign exchange. Further, an emerging group of East African states are waiting on international oil companies to develop new oil and gas reserves. But Africa’s record using non-renewable oil and gas resources to trigger economic and social development is poor – and plummeting prices may portend more instability to come.

Despite some critics, the recent U.S.-China agreement over carbon emissions has sparked remarkable optimism in global climate negotiations. It’s also opened the door to new bilateral engagement between the U.S. and Chinese environmental communities on other issues, including China’s massive air pollution problems (16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China).

This fall, a series of significant events signaled what many see as a shift toward meaningful collective action on climate change.

By 2045, global population will be north of 9 billion with increased urbanization and migration, natural resource stress, improved medical technologies, greater use of robotic labor, and a shift towards lifelong (and increasingly online) learning, according to a recent report from the UK Ministry of Defense.

Seasoned demography geeks know to anticipate the release of the UN Population Division’s World Population Prospects in the spring of odd-numbered years. An off-cycle update published last month in Science, summarizing new results and methodological changes to the projections, therefore provoked a buzz of interest and a mini-flurry of media coverage.