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Editorial

A free speech problem

For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned. This social silencing, this depluralizing of America, has been evident for years, but dealing with it stirs yet more fear. It feels like a third rail, dangerous. For a strong nation and open society, that is dangerous. How has this happened? In large part, it's because the political left and the right are caught in a destructive loop ...

Questions to Biden on oil, gas

Every so often President Biden makes himself available to the press to ask a question—when he’s not walking to or from a helicopter—and we have a suggestion for the next opportunity: “Mr. President, will you do everything in your regulatory power to make it easier for American companies to produce more oil and gas to make the U.S. and its allies in Europe and elsewhere less dependent on Russian energy?” The question is straightforward, and the goal is to elicit a straight answer that gets to the heart of the current geopolitical moment. Oil and gas prices are soaring amid ...

Facing a new reality

What masks? A recent journey to California brought us face to face with, believe it or not, other people’s faces. Lots of them: in stores and restaurants and the crowded dance floor of our niece’s wedding. It took a while to acclimate to this headlong return to normality. After two years of social distancing and smiling with our eyes, it felt odd going maskless around strangers indoors, an uneasy cross between taking a risk and breaking a rule. There was also a liberating tingle akin to starting summer vacation after a rough school year. This month marks the second ...

Constitutional rights targeted

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday effectively extinguished a lawsuit challenging the state’s antiabortion law, all but ensuring that Texas’s extreme restrictions will remain on the books for the foreseeable future. But do not imagine that Texas’s success, the result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s permissive attitude toward the state’s aggressive legal maneuvers, will affect only pregnant people within its borders — or that the consequences will be limited to abortion rights. The high court’s complacency might open the way for states that seek to restrict constitutional rights ...

Curtailing plastic pollution

There is no data on global plastic pollution that is equivalent to the regular measurements of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. But as with greenhouse gases, the recent news has been nearly all bad. In 1950, worldwide production of plastics stood at 2m tons per year. In 2020, it was 367m tons (down from 368m the year before due to the coronavirus pandemic). An increase this enormous is hard to visualise. But the 8.8m tons of plastic waste that is estimated to enter the world’s marine environment each year is the equivalent of a rubbish truck filled with plastic being tipped ...

Pouring oil on crisis

In hindsight, the tragedy that is now unfolding in Ukraine could have been averted if some of the parties involved had focused more on seeking a diplomatic solution rather than taking steps that have only served to precipitate the conflict. Given that it is now the military alliance’s consensus that Ukraine’s membership of NATO “will not take place,” as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, an earlier clarification of that stance would have been opportune. Now, more than 10 days after Russia launched its “special military operation” in Ukraine, the humanitarian crisis ...