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BEIJING - White House officials have lauded President Xi Jinping's anticipated promise of a national market for China in greenhouse gas quotas as a breakthrough in environmental cooperation and reform. But to work well, Mr. Xi's plan, expected to be announced in Washington on Friday, will demand big changes from a government accustomed to heavy-handed intervention and skewed statistics.

I really like the cap and trade idea because it ensures that the every firm is paying the maximum amount each is willing to spend to pollute the air. Firms that don't value being able to pollute as much can sell their permits and use the money to become more environmentally friendly. The cap and trade method encourages technological change that reduces the harm from each unit of a firm's product. As the article says, "The intended result is a competitive market that induces companies to devise ways to reduce emissions." The cap and trade method will hopefully relieve China of some of its pollution.

The national environmental quota set by the cap and trade announced by President Xi shows that there is some possibility of environmental cooperation from China, one of the world's most heavy polluters. The article voices the well founded skepticism of critics, who doubt that this new system will work well when it hasn't exactly taken off among the nations of the European Union; however, China's state is very different from its western counterparts. Comparatively, it can exact more control over its countries' businesses and factories, so this system just may be successful.

Russian officials have suggested that the electoral system does not meet democratic standards, and that it and the politicization of media are responsible for the unrest at the capitol.

Yes! Both of these are very clear factors. I believe that media/social media in general plays a large role in the polarization of our country. The social dilemma (a movie you can find on Netflix) was super eye opening when it described the ways that social media companies expose you to specialized content that creates intra-national division.

^^I agree with everything said about the media and I second Theo's recommendation for the Social Dilemma. I think it also quite hypocritical that Russia is criticizing the US democratic system considering that they undermined our democratic process by interfering in the 2016 election.

At a time when the globe is experiencing financial turmoil, it's nice to know that some people are still concerned with the fundamentals (such as a missile defense system with no actual practical use). Missile defense is the somewhat fictional art of shooting down big missiles with smaller missiles, or lasers, or whatever the MIT guys thought up this week. The article is written by the Secretary General of NATO however, so there is a high likelihood that some sort of missile defense system may be put in place. Probably a good idea to know more about it... Estimated cost: a billion?

Definitely something I don't think about every day. It'd be nice to know more about what "missile defense" actually means and what's happening in that field (anything going on besides the work of the "MIT guys"?).

I just read an article in last weeks "The Week" about potential terrorist threats all over Europe specifically in: Britain, France, and Germany. Apparently al Qaida was plotting large-scale attacks. I am curious about the legitimacy of this Missile Defense system because when ever i hear about them i think back to when Bush wanted to put a MIssile Defense system around our entire country.

Immigration has been a very important topic for Swedes in these past five years, and many Swedes have grown very resistant towards letting in any more refugees from the Middle East. The Nordics are touted as these examples of equality under capitalism, and yet these results reveal a perhaps uncomfortable truth: Swedes believe the homogeneity of their country, not their economic system, is the origin of their success; they will vote for a neonazi-adjacent faction over the very party that created their welfare system if they believe the ethnic unity of Sweden is threatened.

"Swedes believe the homogeneity of their country, not their economic system, is the origin of their success;" Isn't it both--the social democratic system and the homogeneous population, until the last two decades? How might we use this article as a mirror for the US in the sense that, even now, a certain percentage of white Americans think that the US was better when white (and male) people were the only ones worthy of consideration in this country's social and economic contract?

Hong Kong's government is not Hong Kong's own, its chief executive has been appointed by the central Chinese government since China regained sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997. However, residents of Hong Kong have enjoyed more civil liberty than the residents of mainland China, for example the freedom of speech and it's own separate judiciary system. With residents of Hong Kong fed up with current pro-Beijing chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, and mainland China's current president, Xi Jiping, who are limiting the democratic liberties of the territory. Though mainland China has sovereignty over the domain of offshore Hong Kong, the levels of democracy in mainland China and Hong Kong are very dissimilar. In China, the internet, education systems, communities, and society as a whole are controlled by the central government, allowing the residents few civil liberties. For a while, Hong Kong, has utilized its own judiciary system and maintained its own chief executive to deal with governance, allowing Hong Kong to keep some of its Western democratic roots, from Hong Kong's time as a British colony; more recently the central government has appointed pro-Beijing (mainland) chief executives who have slowly taken more and more democratic liberties from the people. The people have taken to the streets of Hong Kong in protest asking for more democratic power in the appointment of their chief executive, but the iron-fisted Xi Jiping refuses to allow for any compromises. Xi Jiping is a strongly believes previous communist regimes fell apart because they were lax; as a result, Xi Jiping refuses to let these protests flourish or compromise with protestors because he doesn't want this to spark any freedom protests in the mainland. Yet, Xi Jiping can't use the force he would like to, because the level of force necessary to take down protests with such fervor at this scale who be reminiscent to the force used in the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. Any significant bloodshed would j

Yemen (on April 29th of this year) had an outbreak of 5 COVID cases, and an immediate 2-week lockdown was imposed. Though that number seems quite small, the health system was quickly overrun. This is because Yemen's health department has been "devastated by war," and though Saudi Arabia declared a unilateral cease-fire on April 9th, airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition increased 30% from April 22nd - 29th. Even pre-COVID, Yemen had a cholera outbreak in January, quickly exacerbate by torrential rains and putting 5 million children under the age of 5 at risk.

A coronavirus outbreak in Yemen poses a dire threat that will add to the conditions that have been increased by the war. Yemen's health care system has been devastated by the war and is in no means able to handle a pandemic. Moreover, the increase in airstrikes lead by Saudi Arabia, despite a cease-fire, can and will increase the spread of the virus. Humanitarian efforts will decrease as a result and the already wrecked healthcare system will suffer more. It is clear the U.S and other members of the UN security council need to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to implement a cease fire.

I think that it's also important to mention that the United States is complicit in the crisis in Yemen. We not only provide support to Saudi Arabia but sell them weapons, most importantly bombs, that are used against Yemeni civilians. A bipartisan bill to end US involvement in the war passed the Senate last year, but was vetoed by President Trump. Not many people seem to know about our role in the war, and that needs to change.

Relates to Story of Stuff where Annie Leonard says "According to companies setting up shop in the third world, the locals "don't own these resources even if they've been living there for generations, they don't oven the means of production and they're not buying a lot of stuff.  And in this system, if you don't own or buy a lot of stuff, dou don't have value."

Thousands of criminals have been killed under the Philippine president, Duterte, due to a corrupt judicial system that leads citizens to feel unsafe. Therefore, these citizens search for short-term security in terms of murder.

I found this topic fascinating because it addresses the internal Chinese conflict of democracy and communism. The general public (those not in the communist party and not in control) is not happy with the governments plan to initiate a national education system. With the national education system teachers and schools will no longer have the choice on how to teach their students. This article questions Communism, Democracy, Nationalism, and Patriotism, all of which are important to China.

This article makes an interesting connection between the Occupy Wall Street protests and the Arab Spring. The author suggests that the Arab Spring and the people's call for greater equality and freedom in the face of oppression have inspired other countries across the globe. Arab Spring shows the power that the young have in the new digital age, and this lesson has in a large part inspired young adults in other countries to protest against the injustices within their own society. IN the U.S. these protests have taken the form aversion and anger with the inequality that has resulted from our capitalist system

I think it is also interesting to note that both the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movements can in large part be characterized by large groups of people working towards lofty aspirations, but without tangible plans for moving forward. Arab Spring sought to overthrow the dictatorships, but didn't necessarily have a strategy for the new governments. Similarly, Occupy Wall Street protesters want to overthrow the current system, but don't have a realistic solution for the country's economic policy.

High speed rail revolution- "...In Europe and Japan, the seeds for high speed rail were sewn in the 1960s and 1970s, when high oil prices, growing highway congestion, and an aging and congested rail system prompted countries to think deeply about how best to move people in the future. Later on, air quality concerns, prospects for economic development, and rising airport congestion helped push more countries to build high speed rail..."

A letter from the vice president of the NRA to president Obama, he focuses on individual rights to bear arms and advocates for Obama to solve the problem of gun violence without stripping people of what he thinks is the right to bear arms.

This is the first article I read about the fines and fees system in suburbs around St. Louis, MO

This report examines how risk and reward is allocated amongst savers and retirees in the United States, Australia, Canada, and Netherlands. Overall, the authors conclude that the United States shifts the majority of risk onto savers and retirees. The thesis can be whittled to: "while the level of risk borne by employees varies across the three countries' retirement income systems, risks are pooled among workers or offset by employers and government to a greater extent than in the U.S." (See also: Walsh's NYT article on the Dutch system, wherein more than double the US income is guaranteed for everyone.) Truly a great source. It also describes in detail the functioning and successes and failures of the various national pension schemes.

"BEIJING - Officials in Beijing declared on Monday that the thick smog blanketing the city was bad enough to require a red alert, the first time they had raised the alarm to its highest level since an emergency air-pollution response system was announced in 2013. "

This article briefly overviews the Chinese education system. It specifies on some more recent changes that have been implemented and the corresponding consequences.