United States Archive

Young people across the world are struggling to find work. Even before the pandemic hit, young people were three times more likely to be unemployed than those over the age of 25. And one in five met the criteria for what the international system characterizes as NEET—for “not in education, employment or training”—meaning they weren’t gaining experience in the labor market, receiving an income from work or enhancing their education and skills.  Now, the pandemic has demonstrated that in a crisis, young workers are also among the first to lose their jobs. More than one in 10 young people—aged 16 to 25—were forced to […]

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change contains a curious omission: The phrase “fossil fuels,” which appears nowhere in the nearly 7,200-word document. Nor do the terms “coal,” “oil” or “natural gas,” despite these resources being responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions. That lacuna was no accident. It reflects the decision by national governments, reinforced by industry lobbyists, to focus emissions reduction efforts on reducing the demand for fossil fuels, rather than limiting fossil fuel supply by discouraging or even prohibiting their extraction in the first place.  In other words, as climate activist Tzeporah Berman points out in a powerful […]

After five years and a nearly 20-month border shutdown, the heads of government of Mexico, Canada and the United States gave a sense of restored normalcy to trilateral relations last month, when they joined up in Washington for the first summit of its kind since a 2016 gathering—featuring a famously awkward handshake—in Ottawa. Then again, by the time Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO, met with U.S. President Joe Biden in the Oval Office on the sidelines of what has been dubbed the Three Amigos Summit, they were already capping off a period filled with renewed, high-level bilateral […]

On Nov. 24, two devastating and separate, but ultimately interrelated, incidents took place in far-flung corners of the world. First, at least 27 people perished while attempting to cross the turbulent waters of the English Channel, which separates France from the United Kingdom. The dead were migrants from Africa and the Middle East whose fragile, flimsy raft sank before it reached the U.K.’s shores. This was the deadliest migrant crossing across the channel ever recorded, but it is not an isolated incident. Attempted channel crossings have spiked since 2018, resulting in hundreds of deaths.  On the same day, more than […]

As he watched his country flail early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Nobel laureate economist Paul Romer argued that only by taking a dramatic, concerted step, carried out simultaneously nationwide, would the United States be able to stop the spread of the virus and contain its spiraling costs. At the time, in April 2020, Romer said that the United States should commit an estimated $100 billion dollars to a crash national testing program that would allow the quarantining of people who were positive and thereby stop the spread of the pathogen to others. This, he argued, was a pittance compared […]