CGD Policy Blogs

The White House finally blinked in the final hours of the UN's Bali Conference on Climate Change. The catalyst may have been the unprecedented boos and hisses directed at the US delegation from the floor, or the peremptory challenge from Kevin Conrad, Papua New Guinea's representative: "If for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please, get out of the way." Confronted by the prospect of pariah status, the US dropped its categorical resistance to emissions reduction targets and permitted their inclusion in a footnote to the final agreement.

I'm in one of the world's most beautiful places, and I am seriously bummed. Few people had much in the way of expectations for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali -- its purpose is to simply set the terms for negotiations over the next two years -- but I had retained a modicum of hope. I was especially hopeful that, in light of the IPCC's synthesis report and mountains of observational evidence of rapidly changing climate, we would see a new sense of urgency in the talks.

What is a country to do with thousands of young rebel fighters, wives, and children returning from an unpopular war? The question is one that has been faced by dozens of developing countries, and is currently confronting several more. More often than not, the answer has been to provide ex-fighters with goods, cash support, and promises of services, such as vocational training.

In today's Financial Times, Martin Wolf explains why international labor movement is "hard to tackle". He starts from the premise that free, open migration is off the table: