Opinion

The world’s cities will add 2.5 billion more residents by 2050, more than half of them in Asia. The effect of this great migration on climate change will depend in part on what kind of homes, factories and office buildings they live and work in. It’s a seemingly minor but significant issue that should attract attention from officials gathered at ...

It’s easy to see the oil and gas asset sell-off proposed by Norges Bank Investment Management, the entity that runs Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, as a bet on the hydrocarbon industry’s long-term decline. Indeed, Siv Jensen, Norway’s finance minister and the proposal’s addressee, predicted such a decline in a conference speech on Friday. But there’s a better reason ...

At a global economic conference last weekend, the US was everywhere and nowhere. In conversations at the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Councils, people wrestled with challenges to the global trading system, developing infrastructure for the 21st century, and restoring trust in experts and leadership. Donald Trump was never far off — his election being a kind of shorthand for ...

Is Tesla Inc.’s Semi on the verge of doing to the trucking industry what the iPhone did to telecommunications? Probably not — but the decarbonization of road freight may still upend both the logistics business and the oil industry. To see why, have a look at the International Energy Agency’s estimates last week for future oil demand. Consumption by passenger ...

The Russian economy is once again relying on consumers, who are borrowing more to buy real estate and imported products. The growth is real, but it’s also meager. And it will be hard to sustain without bigger changes. On November 13, Rosstat, Russia’s official statistics agency, announced that the country’s gross domestic product increased 1.8 percent year-over-year in the quarter ...

As mankind puts the world’s largest living structure at risk, economists have come up with a new solution: put a price tag on it. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is bigger than Japan, visible from space and one of the most complex ecosystems on earth. But it’s also under siege from climate change, agricultural runoff, coastal development and illegal fishing. Debate ...

A London tribunal’s ruling last week that Uber drivers aren’t self-employed was hailed as a victory by the company’s critics. The court upheld an earlier finding that Uber resorted to “fictions” and “twisted language” in denying its obligations as an employer, and that its claim to be a service linking 30,000 small businesses to their customers was “faintly ridiculous.” Clear ...

Germany is widely seen as a world leader in the fight against climate change. Thanks to its investments in renewable power, wind and solar energy provide a third of its electricity, more than double the US share. Germany’s goal to lower carbon-dioxide emissions 40 percent by 2020 is significantly more ambitious than that of Europe as a whole or the ...

As New Delhi suffers through a surge in the most harmful type of smog—a toxic stew that makes India’s capital one of the most polluted in the world—Beijing offers lessons in how another troubled city made progress clearing the air. China, which for more than a decade has been the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, has made its capital ...

If he doesn’t already, Narendra Modi should start believing in Santa Claus. For the Prime Minister, whose party faces an important poll in Modi’s home state next month, the one-notch rating bump to Baa2 by Moody’s Investors Service is an early Christmas present. More importantly, the rationale for the upgrade cites two of his most destabilizing measures of the past ...