In September 2011, The Asia-Pacific Journal published my research into the presence of US military defoliants, including Agent Orange, on Okinawa during the 1960s and early ‘70s. Drawing on the testimonies of over 20 US veterans who had served on the island at a time when it was a forward staging post for the war in Vietnam, the article catalogued the storage, spraying and burial of these dioxin-tainted chemicals on 14 American installations from the Yambaru jungles in northern Okinawa to Naha Port in the south. Despite this large number of firsthand accounts, however, the Pentagon continues to deny that military defoliants were ever on the island.

In 2008 the government of Lee Myung-bak announced the Sadaegang Saligi (Four Major Rivers, Sadaegang, restoration) project, calling it also Korea's Green New Deal. Since then, Korea's Han, Nakdong, Geum, and Yeongsan Rivers have been ecologically and geographically transformed by dredging and weir construction.

Peter Lynch, an expert on the renewable energy sector, offers a concise introduction to the central role of feed-in tariffs (FITs) in fostering the ongoing transition from conventional, carbon-laden sources of generating electricity to renewables such as solar, wind and geothermal. As the author points out, FITs guarantee markets and prices for renewable power, and drive down their cost through deployment and the encouragement of yet more technical advance. FITs thus offer much hope to a world that seems unable to reach any sort of global agreement on cutting emissions which have continued to spiral since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.