In The News

US Told to "Wake Up" Over Climate Change

David Adam December 13, 2007
In global talks about climate-change policy, the European Union would prefer some binding targets to reduce carbon emissions, while the United States argues that setting big goals, possibly unsustainable or unrealistic, is mere talk and a waste of time. The US would have more leverage in the global discussions if it weren't the world's largest energy consumer and carbon emitter....

The End of Globalization?

Gabor Steingart December 12, 2007
Doubts expressed out loud can spur major movements. Such doubts about globalization are emerging in the US presidential campaign, as candidates question whether free trade is a source of the nation’s wealth or economic woes. Since World War II, US presidents supported a philosophy of free trade for spreading wealth and other benefits. “America's enormous trade deficit – and that in a country...

The Price of Gold

Jane Danowitz December 11, 2007
An 1872 US law – designed to encourage settlement of the American West – allows mining companies to extract gold from the ground without environmental clean-up. The American West has long been settled, and most mining firms taking advantage of the law are foreign-owned, explains Jane Danowitz in a Los Angeles Times opinion essay. Most of the gold goes toward making jewelry, yet Danowitz writes...

A Hawkeyed Addition to Canada's Arctic Arsenal

Paul Taylor December 11, 2007
A Canadian satellite – Radarsat-2 – will monitor the Arctic and Antarctic and help defend Canada’s territorial claims in the Arctic, reports Paul Taylor in the Globe & Mail. Canada has had a similar satellite in orbit since 1995, which monitors the progress of melting polar ice, oil spills and agricultural growth. Research based on the satellite’s images contributed to Canada becoming a...

Subsidies' Harvest of Misery

Jimmy Carter December 10, 2007
A US bill passed during the 1930s Great Depression – paying farmers for crops not grown – no longer makes sense. Instead, current US farm programs hurt the poorest people in the world and small farmers in the US, encouraging “excess production while channeling enormous government payments to the biggest producers,” argues former President Jimmy Carter in an opinion essay for the Washington Post...

Woodman, Spare That High-Carbon Tree

James Cameron December 7, 2007
Worldwide deforestation is responsible for 20 percent of all carbon emissions, writes James Cameron in an opinion essay for the London Times. Trees, which absorb and store carbon, take a hundred or more years to grow, and Cameron urges that property owners think before cutting trees down in an economically shortsighted way. “Sir Nicholas Stern said in his ground-breaking climate change review...

Western Union Empire Moves Migrant Cash Home

Jason DeParle December 5, 2007
Technology and circumstances can lift or dash industry fortunes in a heartbeat. Western Union was a company that went bankrupt in the early days of the internet. But even as the internet became established in homes and offices, worker mobility increased, with growing numbers of migrants looking for safe, easy ways to send money home to families. So Western Union is back in business, earning...