The Frontier

Oliver Morton says China emitted around 12 billion tonnes of CO2 last year, roughly one-third of global emissions and more than twice the US total. Chinese emissions rose almost every year for four decades, apart from a dip during COVID.

Oliver Morton cites the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air's finding that Chinese CO2 emissions fell 3.1% year on year in the third quarter of 2026, the steepest drop since COVID lockdowns began. He expects the full-year decline to be smaller.

Morton attributes part of the emissions drop to mild weather, but says structural changes matter more: electric vehicles now make up well over half of cars sold, while renewable and nuclear generation are growing faster than electricity demand.

Morton says higher oil and liquefied natural gas prices linked to the Israel-US-Iran war have reduced fossil-fuel use. Electric-car purchases can lock in that reduction: unlike driving less, switching to an EV prevents future oil use even if prices fall.

China's construction boom has ended, reducing demand for cement and steel, which produce substantial CO2. Morton says industrial electrification is underway, but is not yet large enough to explain the emissions decline.

Morton says China's clean-energy shift is driven mainly by business and energy security, not climate policy: replacing imported-oil vehicles with electric ones and building exportable renewable-energy capacity serve China's interests. He argues climate policy should use this momentum to push further electrification.

Chinese solar equipment and batteries can give consumers cheaper, more dependable electricity, including in Pakistan and Zimbabwe, Morton says. Some countries have security concerns about embedded software, but solar can outperform unreliable grids and diesel generators where access to power is limited.

Morton says other countries can follow China's electrification path by expanding EV use and solar power; batteries make solar more useful, and this applies even to countries that rely on coal. The Global Carbon Budget Consortium's preliminary figures suggest global CO2 emissions may fall slightly by year-end.

Sarah Burke describes Nayib Bukele's security record in El Salvador as popular but built on mass arrests, often on flimsy evidence, and a mega-prison where detainees disappear. The crackdown sharply reduced the murder rate and earned Bukele domestic and foreign praise.

Bukele sent about 2,000 Salvadoran soldiers to Haiti after four Salvadoran aviation technicians serving with a UN-backed force disappeared. Burke says the deployment also fits Bukele's ambition to gain international standing ahead of a February re-election contest.

Haiti's crisis followed President Jovenel Moïse's 2021 assassination, with gangs controlling parts of the capital. Burke reports at least 16,000 deaths, 1.5 million displaced people, and 12 million people facing acute hunger; she says this desperation makes outside intervention appealing.

Burke says Bukele's troops reportedly destroyed the headquarters of 400 Mawozo, Haiti's largest gang, in a joint Salvadoran-Haitian strike. Haiti's interim government approved the deployment, Donald Trump appeared to endorse it, and regional countries offered logistical support.

The Salvadoran deployment is the largest foreign-troop operation outside a UN mission in the Americas in years, Burke says. Haiti's UN-backed gang-suppression force includes six countries and was meant to field 5,500 troops but has only 2,000; Haitian police and soldiers, plus Eric Prince's contractors, are also present.

Burke warns that Bukele cannot simply apply El Salvador's crackdown to Haiti, and an ill-planned operation could escalate into a long war. The UN-backed force has engaged gangs cautiously; overlapping armed groups raise risks of confusion and human-rights abuses being wrongly attributed to the UN.

Matt Kaplan says dogs readily catch yawns from people but rarely from other dogs, unlike elephants, chimpanzees, pigs, wolves, and parrots, which show contagion within their own species. He links the dog-human pattern to more than 30,000 years of breeding alongside humans.

Researchers from the University of Leipzig and La Sapienza University studied captive wolves in 15-minute sessions. Purebred wolves copied a witnessed yawn within two minutes 41% of the time, compared with 24% for wolves crossbred with dogs, suggesting dog genes reduce contagious yawning.

The study found that dominant wolves and close relatives did not trigger more yawning; socially connected wolves that interacted across the pack did. Kaplan contrasts this with chimpanzees and bonobos, where strong social bonds can drive contagious yawning, and warns that dog genes may disrupt broader wolf social behavior.

Donald Trump said voters disliked the war, rising gasoline prices and Israel, while immigration enforcement both helped and hurt Republicans. He argued the defeat would have looked different if he had been on the ballot.

Shashank Joshi describes Trump as unrepentant after the defeat, with no sign of changing course on tariffs, the economy or the Middle East. Joshi reads the appointment of Stephen Miller as chief of staff as a signal Trump will double down.

Joshi says Trump's sway with voters is falling, but his endorsement can still deliver about 30% of the vote in some Republican primaries. Trump's favored candidates in Texas and South Carolina did poorly, though his influence over the MAGA base remains significant.

Joshi says Republicans are split between loyalists who blame party leaders for abandoning Trump-backed candidates and MAGA purists who opposed the Iran war. Tucker Carlson blamed the war and alleged corruption, while some of his criticism carried an anti-Semitic strain.

Joshi says J.D. Vance blamed the Iran war and the administration's relationship with Israel for the defeat without naming Trump. Vance is appealing to disaffected MAGA voters by calling for America to distance itself from Israel.

Joshi sees a post-Trump Republican split between an establishment calling for free markets and restored alliances, and pragmatists such as Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis. Both supported the Iran war initially, then said it should have ended sooner; DeSantis also called for Epstein files and a congressional stock-trading ban.

Joshi says Democrats are already fighting over whether progressive Abdul El-Sayed or centrists who won in competitive states represent the party's future. He points to John Ossoff and Texas candidate Tallarico, who emphasized populist economics and played down culture-war and foreign-policy issues.

Joshi says Democrats must decide whether to retain Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, and whether to use their congressional majority to investigate Trump and his circle or focus on the cost of living. Those choices will signal which party factions are gaining influence ahead of 2028.

Vindjeri Mukandarire says more than half of American children play organized sports, costing families just over $1,000 per child each year, up 46% since 2019. Parents spend more than 15 hours weekly on transport, training and sports administration.

Vindjeri Mukandarire says three-quarters of South Korean pupils take paid lessons, including 57% in the lowest-income quintile, with average spending near a tenth of household disposable income. Tutoring reaches over a quarter of Indian students, nearly a third in Indian cities and French teenagers, and 30% of UK state-school pupils, rising to 45% in London.

The National Transfer Accounts Project found private family spending rose from about 18% of US education investment in 1990 to nearly a quarter, or $68,000, in 2020. In South Korea, families covered 42% of lifetime education costs in 2023, about $152,000 per child.

Mukandarire says rising inequality makes parents place less value on imagination and independence and more on hard work. Families spend more to secure their children's futures, but the rich keep investing too, so the spending arms race has not restored upward mobility.

Mukandarire says children's chances of out-earning their parents have flatlined in France and Spain and collapsed in Singapore and South Korea. Harvard admits 3% of applicants, down from around 30% in 1960; rural students' share at Peking University fell from about a third to a sixth by 2021.