Project Loon the research program with the ambitious vision of delivering global Internet coverage is well underway. And with some luck, by the end of this year we’ll have a great indication of what the project means for the dream of universal Internet access. Project Loon is a flagship of X (previously Google X), the five-year old experimental projects lab fostering so-called ‘moonshot’ projects from Alphabet, the parent company behind Google. By any measure Project Loon is an undertaking of truly global proportions — it involves establishing a fleet of high-altitude balloons that will form a network of Internet-carrying transceivers.

WWF International recently launched a report Crossing the Divide: How to Close the Emissions Abyss to coincide with discussions by UN climate negotiators, focusing on emissions reductions in the pre-2020 period. The report highlights the ‘gigatonne gap’ of emissions reductions needed to meet 2020 commitments. In the report, national contacts in various developed and developing countries provide an analysis of the current situation on energy and climate change, and then provide ways their governments could do more to close the emissions gap