Issues

We currently focus on four main issues: disarmament and security, climate change and energy, questions of who controls science and technology and issues surrounding new and emerging technologies. You will also see that we work on some other issues too. You can explore these with the menu on the left of this page and with the search function. Material in this section includes all SGR's main outputs since 2005, with a selection of the more important material from before then.

About resources/ issues

 

 

Hyrcanian Forest, Iran, before the war

Devastation and pollution: impacts of the Iran war on present and future life

The toll of the Iran war on human life and security is much discussed but there is another dimension: its environmental impact. Vanessa Spedding reports. 

4 May 2026 
 

A private jet flying over a superyacht

Polluter and cyber elites

Andrew Simms, SGR, charts a potentially lethal alignment of wealth, power and political interests in the fossil fuel and information industries, with AI entrenching and accelerating existing bias and inequalities.

20 April 2026

Artemis II launch (NASA)

Artemis and the ethics of human space flight

As Artemis II launches, Dr Stuart Parkinson, SGR, debates the environmental impacts of human space flight - and related ethical issues - on BBC Radio 4's 'The Moral Maze'.

2 April 2026 

 

Person with smartphone with background symbolising digital data

The AI surge: how sustainability and responsibility are being compromised

Dr Philip Inglesant, SGR, looks at key developments in the civilian Artificial Intelligence industry over the past year, especially the massive spending increases, the rapid expansion in the number of data centres, and the continued deregulation. He points to numerous problems ahead.  

24 March 2026

Primary school children colouring in pictures of militarised technology

The growing militarisation of UK schools

Laura Shewan, SGR, looks at the major expansion of military involvement currently underway in British schools – and questions the motivation of both the government and the arms industry.

11 March 2026

 

Fighter jet with fire

Growing military spending, growing carbon emissions

Dr Stuart Parkinson, SGR, summarises the latest estimates of how military carbon emissions are rising across the world, as spending surges.

23 February 2026

Artist's impression of Hinkley Point C nuclear power station

Is the UK really leading the world with a nuclear renaissance?

Prof Steve Thomas, Greenwich University, assesses the latest efforts of the UK government to expand nuclear power – and highlights numerous obstacles.

16 February 2026

Photo of chemist handling liquids while wearing full PPE

The legacy of chemical weapons, a century on from the ban

Bryony Maskell reflects on developments in the hundred years since chemical weapons fell under the first effective international prohibition treaty.

10 February 2026

Photo of Tasiilaq Bay in East Greenland

Greenland: reflections from an Arctic researcher

Michaela Louise Coote, of the universities of Lapland and Galway, discusses the serious difficulties in carrying out scientific research in the Arctic against a background of major geopolitical upheaval.  

27 January 2026