Resources Archive

Humanity is at war with the living planet, endangering our prosperity and indeed our very survival on Earth. That is the stark message of the 30th Human Development Report, “The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene,” released last week by the United Nations Development Program. For too long, we have pursued an economic model of development based on unsustainable production and consumption, heedless of the impact on the natural world in which we are inextricably embedded. The bill is now coming due. The COVID-19 pandemic, which began as a zoonotic disease, is only the latest example of the pressures […]

In early November, Oman’s government announced plans to institute an income tax on high earners by 2022. The policy will break precedent in the oil-rich Gulf, where states tend to pay their citizens, rather than requiring citizens to pay the state. The question now is whether this decision will fundamentally shift the social contract in Oman, which has been an absolute monarchy for decades. Oman’s neighboring rentier economies will be watching closely to see whether direct taxation leads Omanis to more vocally demand representation in government. Oman’s experience will also have implications for U.S. engagement with the region. That Oman […]

The year 2020 may well mark the tipping point for the oil and gas industry. Amid a global pandemic that has slashed oil demand by some 8 million barrels per day, the governments of key countries—China, Japan, South Korea, South Africa and others—have announced that they aim to reach net-zero emissions by the middle of the century. After President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January, he will likely add the United States to the list, and when he does, net-zero targets will apply to more than three-fifths of global CO2 emissions. It seems that the world is about to double […]