When it comes to sustainable development, not all goals are created equal, says Wael Hmaidan, the director of Climate Action Network International, in this week’s podcast. Climate change “intersects everything we do,” he says, but is underrepresented in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a global development agenda being drafted to replace the Millennium Development Goals next year.

As the UN General Assembly begins charting a course toward sustainable growth, population projections will likely undergird many of their most important assumptions about the future. As two new papers released last week demonstrate, however, there are differing opinions about how much the world’s population will grow and when it will stabilize.

In a tiny village called Chepuwa in the Sankhuwasabha district of Nepal, high in the Himalayas and almost four days’ trek from the nearest road, Mikmar Bhote has been growing and selling medicinal and aromatic plants for five years.

The U.S. military has historically relied on its capacity for technological innovation to respond to new risks and crises. But, as Sharon Burke explains in this week’s podcast, the Pentagon has had to invent a new role for itself in response to a changing world.