Sam Fulwood III: Buchanan’s fantasy past isn’t prologue to America’s future

  I’ve lived in many Americas.

  As a child of the 1960s, I remember the racial segregation of separate bathrooms and drinking fountains in my North Carolina hometown. In the late ‘70s, I was a beneficiary of affirmative action programs that provided both educational and occupational opportunities that my parents and grandparents were denied. Through the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early part of this century, I witnessed the rise, fall, and rebound of our nation’s economy; the decimation of jobs and industries; a growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots; amazing advances in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, rights; and a persistently stubborn gap in wages between men and women. In 2008—and again in 2012—I saw something I thought impossible: the election and re-election of an African American as president of the United States.

An Opportunity to develop a North American price on carbon

  Instruments for pricing carbon are beginning to proliferate. In recent years, South Korea implemented a trading system; France and Portugal implemented carbon taxes; China began seven subnational trading system pilots and announced a national trading system for implementation by 2020; and South Africa and Chile announced carbon taxes that will take effect in 2016 and 2017, respectively. These developments augment a landscape of carbon pricing instruments that are already well-established in various countries and regions, including the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, and the Nordic countries.

Nina Hachigian: What joins the United States and China and what divides them?

  Next week, President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet on the sidelines of the third Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands. The summit will highlight an issue on which the United States and China have cooperated to a degree in the past: nuclear proliferation. But the bilateral meeting will also cover more touchy subjects, including the current crisis in Ukraine, cyber theft, and regional territorial disputes. Such is the ever-dual nature of U.S.-China relations in the modern era.