Opinion

One of the best pieces of news in years is that China’s finally getting serious about cleaning up its environment. Renewable energy use is growing rapidly while coal use is declining. Air pollution targets are being tightened. Contaminated farmland is finally getting high-level attention. Yet all that good could be undermined if China simply exports its environmental problems elsewhere. A …

Beneath a photograph of an AR-15 with all the trimmings, an online petition calling for the open carry of firearms at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July (and possibly intended as parody) has acquired more than 40,000 signatures. USA Today reported that the petition is “of unknown origin.” Because extreme gun culture excels at self- parody, it’s dangerous …

Presidential campaigns incite both hypochondria and euphoria, portraying the present as grimmer than it is and the future as grander than it can be. As an antidote to both, read a rarity, an academic’s thick book (762 pages) widely recognized as relevant to America’s current discontents. Robert Gordon’s “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” argues that an unprecedented and …

Urbanization is posing huge challenges to city planners across the world and these challenges are going to multiply, if the goal of improving quality of life is given a short shrift. Lack of vision and working with myopia will only aggravate the existing woes that urbanites are facing today. Estimates indicate that 70% of the global population will be urban …

Edward Cavanough SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS The attacks in Brussels last Tuesday that left 35 dead and hundreds wounded have rightly shocked Australians and stoked global condemnation. But what are the consequences, if any, of this appalling act for the Australian public and government? It is becoming increasingly acknowledged that a similar style attack in Australia is “probable,” according to …

No issue has aroused more partisan passion over the past six years than the Affordable Care Act. Yet the law is playing only a secondary role in the U.S. elections. Sure, Republican presidential candidates cater to their base by vowing to repeal and replace Obamacare, and on the Democratic side, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont promises to replace it with …

US politics today presents, to this foreign observer at least, a very un-American spectacle. A country originally built on immigration is awash with popular hatred against immigrants. A candidate of the right rails against free trade and foreigners, while that of the left proclaims his faith in socialism. Xenophobia is rife. Class war seems perilously close to the surface. The …

The Chinese Communist Party’s relationship with the private sector is a sensitive one, both in ideological and practical terms. Though it remains a nominally communist state, China’s role as an economic superpower is owed entirely to the fundamental overhaul of its state-controlled economy. Starting with Deng Xiaoping’s “Reform and Opening” campaign in 1978, the government gradually ceded control over the …

We are a very wealthy society, and we shouldn’t forget it. Donald Trump apparently has — along with many other people. Visiting recently with The Washington Post editorial board, here’s how Trump explained his suggestion that the United States limit its overseas military commitments, including support for NATO, founded in 1949: “I think that we are not in the position …

Global economy is facing uncertainties as never before. It’s challenges galore out there. The business ecosystem is changing in the flicker of an eyelid. And the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are not untouched by these swift changes. No wonder then the UAE government has a tough task ahead: not just to support the segment but also to ensure that …