Climate report: Some progress, must try harder

The world this week

Politics
Business
KAL’s cartoon
This week’s covers
The World Ahead


The World Ahead
The World Ahead 2024

Leaders


Must try harder
Progress on climate change has not been fast enough, but it has been real
And the world needs to learn from it

Climbing high
Lessons from the ascent of the United Arab Emirates
How to thrive in a fractured world

An election in Buenos Aires
In Argentina Javier Milei faces an economic crisis
The radical libertarian is taking over a country on the brink

OpenChaos
The fallout from the weirdness at OpenAI
Sam Altman is set to return, but the episode holds some disturbing lessons

One cheer for Jeremy Hunt
Britain’s autumn statement got business taxes right
It also cynically handed out an illusory windfall
Letters

On secondary legislation, tariffs, interest rates, realtors, Costa Rica, the Sagrada Família, James Bond, flying lawn chairs
Letters to the editor
By Invitation


COP28: climate finance
Mark Carney argues that finance needs to go where the emissions are
COP28: climate action and trade
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says open trade is crucial for decarbonisation
The war in Gaza
As a pause in fighting begins, Husam Zomlot calls for a comprehensive ceasefire
Briefing


Port in a storm
The messier the world gets, the more the UAE seems to thrive
For a tiny country, it has outsize influence
Asia


Taking wing
India is seeing a massive aviation boom
Et tu, India?
Did America thwart an Indian assassination plot?
Spy satellites
Will North Korea’s new spy satellite make the region safer?
Money for nothing
Thailand’s new government is handing out cash
IPEF MIA
America’s crumbling trade initiative in Asia
China


Fuzzy numbers, safer streets
China says it has achieved a miraculously low-crime society
Eyes everywhere
China’s enormous surveillance state is still growing
When China shook
A year on from the white-paper protests, China looks much different
Chaguan
Why Xi Jinping sounds friendlier to America

United States


Infrastructure weak
Spending on infrastructure has fallen in real terms in America
Mexican airwaves
Univision, America’s Spanish news giant, reaches out to Donald Trump
Just a small-town lab
An accidental discovery in rural California raised biosecurity fears
Abortion laws in Georgia
How confusing fetal-personhood laws in America affect hospitals
X, rated
What survey data reveal about antisemitism in America
Deus ex constitutione
Does a civil-war-era ban on insurrectionists apply to Donald Trump?
Lexington
The (sort of) isolationist case for backing Ukraine
Middle East & Africa


A break in the bloodshed
Israel strikes a hostage deal, but says the Gaza war isn’t over
Israel’s non-Jewish minorities
How the Gaza war affects Israel’s minorities in different ways
It’s in the posts
Why African businesses take a DIY approach to selling online
The last outpost
Will Chad be the next Western ally in Africa to fall?
The Americas


From cosplayer to president
Javier Milei will be Argentina’s first libertarian president
Cry me a river
Severe drought is constraining the Panama Canal
Blow up
Brazil’s biggest drug gang has gone global
Europe


Right turn
Geert Wilders’s election win leaves the Dutch in an awful quandary
Cross-Rhine rivals
Why German bosses are heaping unexpected praise on France
Hidden battle
Russia is starting to make its superiority in electronic warfare count
Life in containers
Turkey’s sluggish post-earthquake reconstruction
Charlemagne
Tyrant, liberator, warmonger, bureaucrat: the meaning of Napoleon
Britain


Mixed picture
Britain’s chancellor offers tax cuts and fiscal trickery
Flat-lining
Jeremy Hunt wants to improve Britain’s public-sector productivity
Old people and young firms
The government tries to unlock growth capital for British firms
Personal therapy
The world’s first pathway for individually designed drugs
The price is finally right
The National Health Service has a new drugs deal
Asylum and the law
Is Britain’s plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda salvageable?
Saving your bacon
Britain’s native farm animals can be rarer than giant pandas
Bagehot
What kind of legacy does Rishi Sunak want to leave behind?
Special report


The lost heart of net zero
Carbon-dioxide removal needs more attention
St Augustine’s climate policy
The temptations of deferred removals
On the other hand...
The many prices of carbon dioxide
Thy axe shall harm it not
Trees alone will not save the world
All the myriad ways
Carbon-dioxide-removal options are multiplying
The carbon economy
A net-zero world needs new markets and institutions
Business


OpenAI v CloseAI
With Sam Altman’s return, a shift in AI from idealism to pragmatism
Non-profit motives
Inside OpenAI’s weird governance structure
Soap power
ReelShort is the latest Chinese export to conquer America
The southern strategy
Why Chinese companies are flocking to Mexico
Sun, sea and lots of sand
Riyadh Air is betting on a tourist surge to Saudi Arabia
Bartleby
How not to motivate your employees
Investment screaming
Every country wants its own investment-screening regime
Schumpeter
The many contradictions of Sam Altman
Finance & economics


The sinews of war
Inside Hamas’s sprawling financial empire
Walking on air
Why house prices have risen once again
Buttonwood
Investors are going loco for CoCos
Economies of scales
The obesity pay gap is worse than previously thought
Ask again later
How will America’s economy fare in 2024? Don’t ask a forecaster
A day late and a dollar short
The rich world claims it has paid its overdue climate debts
Do not pass go
Another crypto boss falls
Free exchange
How to save China’s economy
Science & technology


Dimming the sun
Solar geoengineering is becoming a respectable idea
Big rockets and big rivers
SpaceX tests Starship, and prepares to face down Amazon
Explaining the wave function
A new way to predict ship-killing rogue waves
Culture


Poll position
Why non-white voters are abandoning the Democratic Party
One for the Monet
Claude Monet is celebrated in a colourful new biography
There’s no place like home
The likelihood of living on Mars soon is as remote as Pluto
Red light, green light
What “Squid Game: The Challenge” reveals about the state of TV
Johnson
Euphemism and exaggeration are both dangers to language
Watch the box
The Economist’s pick of the best television shows of 2023
Economic & financial indicators

Indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
The Economist explains


The Economist explains
The A to Z of the Arab-Israeli conflict
Obituary


The fastest gun in the west
Elinor Otto did not realise what giant strides she was making for women