In this essay William D. Nordhaus, Nobel laurate in Economics, discusses how pollution can be integrated into national accounting. Introducing green national accounting may lead to new and sometimes surprising conclusions.

NEW HAVEN – Once, on a flight out of Albuquerque, I was reading a glossy magazine article criticizing gross national product when I encountered the following quote from a “young radical”: “Don’t tell me about your GNP. To me, it’s really Gross National Pollution.”

The first iron sponge produced by SSAB using fossil free methods. If the experiments with hybrit steel are successful and the production of fossil free steel can be scaled up, what is the economic value of this progress? Photo: Magnus Hjalmarson Neideman/SvD/TT

Introducing green national accounting may lead to new and sometimes surprising conclusions.

Green National Accounting

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. In this essay Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, outlines and analyses the effects that these attacks had on the US and the world.

NEW YORK – This week marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. On that day, 19 terrorists took control of four civilian aircraft, flew two into the towers of New York’s World Trade Center, struck the Pentagon with a third, and crashed the fourth in a Pennsylvania field after passengers physically prevented the terrorists from reaching their target, often thought to be the White House or another US government building in Washington, DC.

In this Sept. 11, 2001 photo, as seen from the New Jersey Turnpike near Kearny, N.J., smoke billows from the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York after airplanes crashed into both towers. Photo: Gene Boyars/AP/TT

Richard Haas outlines and analyses the effects that these attacks had on the US and the world.

The World 9/11 Made

The veteran journalist and writer Elizabeth Drew shares her thoughts on Biden’s exit from Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON, DC – It is far from clear that President Joe Biden deserves the obloquy heaped on him for the US evacuation from Afghanistan. This is especially true given the endings of other American wars, and the nearly impossible situation confronting him – in particular, that the Kabul airport is located within a city of millions which had just come under Taliban control.

President Joe Biden watches as a carry team moves the transfer case containing the remains of one of the 13 service members who died at Afghanistan’s Kabul airport. Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP/TT

The veteran journalist and writer Elizabeth Drew on Biden’s exit from Afghanistan.

Joe Biden’s Afghan Nightmare

Professor Luigi Zingales discusses how to regulate social media and writes that to understand what type of regulation we need ”we first must appreciate the transformational nature of social media, which is arguably comparable to that of the printing press in fifteenth-century Europe.”

CHICAGO – After being celebrated for playing a central role in the Arab Spring, social-media platforms are now blamed for any outcome that traditional media outlets dislike – from the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s election to political polarization more generally. Growing disenchantment with social media has led to growing demands for regulation. The pressure is now great enough that Facebook, fearful of being shackled by the state, has sought to lead the regulatory effort itself, advertising heavily to express its own support for such policies.

In the picture, a replica of the Gutenberg printing press in the Gutenberg museum in Mainz, southern Germany. Photo: Michael Probst/AP/TT

Professor Luigi Zingales argues that ”we should separate social media’s networking infrastructure from the editorial role.”