MADRID ― This month, the International Energy Agency will publish its annual report, the internationally definitive World Energy Outlook, which will confirm that we are not on the right track to reduce global warming. If the current trend in energy production continues, the earth’s average temperature will be more than 2 degrees Celsius higher in 2100 than it was in 1990, irreversibly harming the planet and conditions for human life.Other, more immediate crises are occupying the world’s attentio

Many parents in the U.S. are legitimately concerned about the prospects for their college-age children. After all, today’s students face three overlapping challenges: a long-term structural shift as the world’s effective labor supply expands; rising tuition and growing concerns about the quality of public higher education; and the misfortune of graduating into a weak labor market. The first challenge arises from rapid shifting of the tectonic plates that underlie the world labor market. Over the

NEW YORK ― The protest movement that began in Tunisia in January, subsequently spreading to Egypt, and then to Spain, has now become global, with the protests engulfing Wall Street and cities across America. Globalization and modern technology now enables social movements to transcend borders as rapidly as ideas can. And social protest has found fertile ground everywhere: a sense that the “system” has failed, and the conviction that even in a democracy, the electoral process will not set things

When the Association of Southeast Asian Nations decided to invite the United States and Russia to join the premium leader-led East Asia Summit in July 2010, it had no idea that their presence would impact on the overall pattern of engagement with other dialog partners.As it turns out, the desire to construct an expansive ASEAN-led regional architecture is being challenged fervently by other non-ASEAN EAS members. They have already collectively demanded to be treated as equal, as the sixth EAS sc

This week, President Obama travels to Wall Street, where he’ll demand ― in light of the Street’s continuing antics since the bailout, as well as its role in watering down the Volcker rule ― that the Glass-Steagall Act be resurrected and big banks be broken up.I’m kidding. But it would be a smart move.Americans of whatever stripe ― from Tea Partiers on the right to Occupiers on the left ― continue to hold Wall Street at least partly responsible for the nation’s continuing misery. With good reason

Hardly anyone noticed, but the Afghan government cut the budget for the state’s Independent Human Rights Commission by half this year, evidencing “the government’s lack of interest and political will in the promotion of human rights,” the commission said.Nowhere on earth is the work of a human-rights commission more important than in Afghanistan. Why is that? If you want to judge a country, the best measure in my view is how it treats its children.By that standard, the United States is hardly bl