It’s only natural to be skeptical when a political leader stands up and makes a promise about a target that’s far off, hard to achieve, and lacks a clear pathway. So one reaction to a report that Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, will pledge next week to reduce the country’s net carbon emissions to zero by 2050 might be: Really? After all, public and private Japanese banks are still funding new coal-fired power stations in Vietnam, Indonesia and Bangladesh, ex

Viewpoints Oct. 28, 2020

Like self-improvement books, the purpose of pension adequacy surveys is to make us feel lousy about ourselves.　 Lousy and scared: We haven’t saved enough because we’re myopic and lack self-control. We don’t have a retirement plan, and it’s getting late.　 And the nagging chases us right into our graves. At the back of our minds, there’s always the guilt that we should be leaving something -- actually, a lot -- to our children. So perhaps we shouldn’t bother h

Viewpoints Oct. 27, 2020

Octavia Butler’s classic futurist novel “Parable of the Sower” recently made the New York Times bestseller list for the first time. It depicts an America falling apart at the seams due to violence, economic decline, and governmental dysfunction. But despite the chaos, the protagonist, Lauren Olamina, spends much of her time thinking about space exploration. Faced with a dystopian Earth, she motivates herself and her followers to survive by dreaming of the stars. Today, the US

Viewpoints Oct. 22, 2020

If Joe Biden enters the White House on the afternoon of Jan. 20, there is reason to expect that intraparty conflicts will come racing to the fore: between the Democratic left and Democratic moderates; between multicultural, debt-laden youth and Whiter, more affluent, suburbanites; between the alternate Sanders/AOC ticket and the actual Biden/Harris ticket. It’s also possible that Biden might succeed in having an awful lot of his political cake and eating it, too. US politics has changed

Viewpoints Oct. 21, 2020

Kastellorizo is one of those places that might become a cause for war even though most people couldn’t find it on a map. The combatants would be Greece and Turkey, formally NATO “allies” but in reality perennial foes since the sloppy unraveling of the Ottoman Empire. And their war would be less about the island as such than about the Mediterranean waters said to belong to it. That’s because underneath the sea bed, there may be lots of oil and gas. Kastellorizo derives

Viewpoints Oct. 20, 2020

India’s COVID-19 economic gloom turned into despair last week, on news that its per capita gross domestic product may be lower for 2020 than in neighboring Bangladesh. “Any emerging economy doing well is good news,” Kaushik Basu, a former World Bank chief economist, tweeted after the International Monetary Fund updated its World Economic Outlook. “But it’s shocking that India, which had a lead of 25 percent five years ago, is now trailing.” Ever since it beg

Viewpoints Oct. 19, 2020

Shares of Big Hit Entertainment, the company behind South Korean boy band BTS, begin trading this week. A top-of-the-range IPO valuation of $4.2 billion implies rock-star earnings multiples. Institutional investors have piled in anyway, displaying impressive confidence in the staying power of ultra-groomed youths and their obsessive followers. To live up to the hype, billionaire founder Bang Si-hyuk needs to turn a one-band wonder into something closer to Universal Music Group, adding artists a

Viewpoints Oct. 14, 2020

Losses in the main US stock indexes on Friday will go down in history simply as small ones in an otherwise choppy week. But assessed in more detail, they provide a remarkable example of the intense tug-of-war that now grips markets and will most likely persist, if not intensify, in the weeks ahead. Two news developments dominated the runup to the US market opening Friday. First and foremost was the middle-of-the-night tweet from President Donald Trump confirming that he and his wife had tested

Viewpoints Oct. 7, 2020

When Boris Johnson announced on March 27 that he’d tested positive for COVID-19, Brits were in shock, much as Americans were Friday morning when they heard President Donald Trump was infected. The UK prime minister was the first leader of a major country to be hospitalized with the virus, an event that was characterized as “routine” at first before the illness took a more serious turn. Nobody knows how this will play out for Trump, just as they didn’t for Johnson. But th

Viewpoints Oct. 6, 2020

More by carelessness than design, the European Union has conflated two of its biggest problems into what last week became one hot mess. To get out of it, the bloc may have to make the Brussels equivalent of Sophie’s choice: It could sacrifice the principle that all member states must respect the rule of law. Or it could ditch its plans for economic recovery and fiscal cohesion. This trap was laid in July. Under the moderation of Germany, which holds the rotating EU presidency, the 27 nati

Viewpoints Oct. 5, 2020

One feature of the COVID-19 era is how much the standard ways of seeing and doing things have been remixed and turned upside down. The obvious question is then whether people will decide to make these new arrangements permanent or return to the old. For example: I used to enjoy going to nouvelle-style slightly fancy restaurants, ordering 10 appetizers (and no main courses) and sharing them with a table of four. Many of those appetizers were composed of disparate ingredients, carefully placed on

Viewpoints Sept. 30, 2020

There are potential catastrophes so dire, only an approach that blurs the realist and the utopian seems appropriate. Take for example the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Adopted by the United Nations in 2017, it seeks to completely get rid of the most satanic arms ever created. The treaty’s already been signed by 84 states and ratified by 45. To take effect -- that is, to be binding on its signatories -- it needs only another handful of ratifications. And last week a group

Viewpoints Sept. 29, 2020

When the World Trade Organization was created in the mid-1990s, the US Senate voted 76-24 to establish it. But it is now facing more opposition than ever, and from both parties. “The World Trade Organization has been not good for the United States,” President Donald Trump said in a mid-September press conference. “It’s been good for everybody else, but it’s not been good. It was a method, in my opinion, of taking advantage of the United States.” Bob Woodward

Viewpoints Sept. 24, 2020

It was 1985, I think. The Federalist Society was hosting a conference in Washington on equality. I was a young professor, the token liberal on a panel, and its least distinguished member. The experience was brutal. Professor Paul Bator, a famous scholar who had been my teacher not long before, was on the panel, and at one point he whispered in my ear. “Just stop talking,” he said. “No one in the room wants to hear you.” Humiliated, I retreated to my hotel room. At about

Viewpoints Sept. 22, 2020

The end of the summer holidays and the reopening of schools have sparked a lively debate over the future of remote working. From the US to the UK, politicians and employers are nudging workers to return to the office even though the pandemic is not over. But these requests put employees in a very awkward place -- caught between fearing for their health and fearing for their job. Following two key principles may resolve some of the tension. First, the government should have no say in this decisi

Viewpoints Sept. 21, 2020