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The country accounts for over a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Even assuming that China’s population does not grow at all over the next 30 years, that the energy efficiency of its economy increases at a faster pace than most developed and developing countries and that it manages to decarbonize its energy sources faster than pretty much anybody else, China would still be emitting a lot more carbon in 2040 than it does today, according to E.I.A. calculations.

Can the United States or anybody else do anything to speed China down a low-carbon path?

The latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued in April, suggested several ways to allot responsibilities. If one starts counting in the 18th century and counts only emissions from industry and energy generation, the United States is responsible for more than a quarter of all greenhouse gases that humanity has put into the air. China, by contrast, is responsible for 10 percent.But if one starts counting in 1990, when the world first became aware that CO2 was a problem, and includes greenhouse gases emitted from changes in land use, the United States is responsible for only 18 percent, and China’s share rises to 15 percent. Rich and poor countries, unsurprisingly, disagree on the proper measure. Photo

Not everybody will meet their Copenhagen pledges. Japan, which unplugged its nuclear energy after the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, will fall behind. So will Canada and Australia, whose new conservative governments have lost interest in the pledges of their predecessors.

St. Charles noted that 144 patients tended to use the emergency room the most. Taken together, they averaged 14.25 trips each over 12 months. These patients drove much of the area’s Medicaid spending.

The majority had unmet mental health needs, even though most had Medicaid, which provides mental health coverage.

It stationed community health workers in emergency rooms, who could help assess why patients had turned up.

Of the 144 patients in the study, only 62 percent agreed to work with a community worker on a plan for their care. The others proved difficult to track down or did not want to participate.

Emergency department visits fell by 49 percent. On average, the program generated about $3,000 in savings per patient.

“I’m reassured by people talking about the role primary care providers need to play,” said Ern Teuber, the clinic’s executive director. “Still, when we start talking specific dollars, the perception is there isn’t enough money to go around and that somebody has to lose.”

It’s a huge issue, and there’s no doubt that hospital business models are going to have to change,”

“Medicaid by itself isn’t enough to change things,” he said. “For a lot of hospitals, it’s maybe 7 percent of their business. We have another 600,000 people the state covers.

Worse still, the aging natural-gas infrastructure is riddled with holes and seeps; early this year, a survey of gas mains along Boston’s 785 miles of road, the first-ever such examination, found 3,356 leaks.

To ask utilities to take in large amounts of solar power

One recent estimate put the EROEI of Spain’s extensive solar-power network at less than 3.

When renewables supply 20 to 30 percent of all electricity, many utility-energy engineers predict, the system will no longer be able to balance supply and demand. Brownouts will ripple across the landscape

As an example, typical solar cells today have an EROEI of about 10—better than tar sands but worse than most oil and gas.

is like asking a shipping firm to replace its huge, professionally staffed container ships with squadrons of canoes paddled by random adolescents.

But even if such techniques work in the way researchers hope, the infrastructure transformation ahead is daunting in scale and scope. It’s like setting up a second Industrial Revolution, only all over the world and in one-third the time.

The rethink, which would have scrapped spending on agricultural subsidies, ran into heavy opposition and stalled

After months of arguments, two broad alliances have emerged. The first comprises countries like Britain, Germany and Sweden that are big net contributors and want to keep a tighter rein on spending. The second, known as the “Friends of Cohesion,” after a class of development grants aimed at less wealthy areas, includes Poland, Spain, Portugal and others that want to make sure the union’s largess does not dry up.

The European Commission, however, has been far less forthcoming. It told Mr. Ehrenhauser that it could not give a breakdown of spending in recent years on wine because that would require “lengthy research” and “it cannot consider doing this at the present time because of other priorities.”

Evidence of this is all around. Until recently machines have found it difficult to “understand” written or spoken language, or to deal with complex visual images, but now they seem to be getting to grips with such things.

concluded that 47% of employment in America is at high risk of being automated away over the next decade or two.

Now technology is empowering talented individuals as never before and opening up yawning gaps between the earnings of the skilled and the unskilled, capital-owners and labour.

The effect of technological change on trade is also changing the basis of tried-and-true methods of economic development in poorer economies.

The labor cost on a notebook, which is about 4 to 5 percent of the retail price, is only slightly higher than the cost of shipping by air. Soon even that is likely to change because of the twin forces of lower manufacturing costs from automation and higher transportation costs from rising global activity.

Intel, which makes most of the processors, has plants in Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Israel, Ireland and China.

That plant was shut in 2001, when Gateway elected to save costs by manufacturing in China. Dell, which made its mark by developing lean manufacturing techniques in Texas, closed its showcase Austin factory in 2008 as part of a companywide move to manufacturing in China. A Dell factory in Winston-Salem, N.C., for which Dell received $280 million in incentives from the government, was shut in 2010 (Dell had to repay some of the incentives).

Banks have so little loss-absorbing capacity that they stand permanently on the edge of disaster.

The eurozone must either make the industry far more robust, by hugely increasing equity capital, or consolidate fiscal capacity and tighten regulation, to ensure adequate eurozone-wide oversight and fiscal support.

GDP continues to shrink,

Moreover, balkanization of economic activity, banking systems, and public-debt markets continues, as foreign investors flee the eurozone periphery and seek safety in the core.

Likewise, competitiveness losses have been partly reversed as wages have lagged productivity growth, thus reducing unit labor costs, and some structural reforms are ongoing.

Unlike most other Spanish industries, car manufacturing has no sectorwide collective bargaining agreement with unions. As a result, each carmaker has been able to adjust working hours with its own employees, in response to changing demand.

In return, the companies have promised workers that they will not be subjected to the huge layoffs made in other parts of the economy,

I don’t want to give lessons to anybody. But at such a delicate moment for Spain, showing that we believe in flexibility and consensus has certainly been highly valued by the carmakers.”

View/Create comment on this paragraphFor Tigar, deleveraging has meant that banks that had pursued its business only a couple of years ago have suddenly cut lending – even though the company never missed a debt payment. Previous loans came due, while cash-flow needs grew. Despite its good operating margins, growing markets, and prime international clients, the company experienced a drop in liquidity, requiring serious balance-sheet restructuring.

Furthermore, collateral – especially real-estate assets – will continue to be downgraded.

Indeed, several Western financial groups are considering partial or complete exits from the region – without any clear strategic replacement in sight.