Way off. In 2015’s Paris Agreement, nearly all the world’s countries pledged to try to limit global warming to an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. That is not going well—at all. Last year, global emissions of greenhouse gases hit a record high—and this year, they’re on pace to break the record again. If these trends continue, temperatures will be up by 3.1 degrees by the end of the century. So why aren’t any of these countries reining in their emissions?

Today, Rachel Cleetus explores the factors driving the ongoing rise in fossil-fuels usage: new and unexpected sources of demand for electricity, old and familiar interests pushing for more coal and oil, and, above all, the emerging dynamics shaping the power sector—which Cleetus sees as the key to decarbonizing the economy everywhere.

—Michael Bluhm

111MHz: ‘The Fatberg Which Weighed as Much as Three Elephants.’ Rubbish Music is, as you might expect, a U.K. duo—who on their new album play (as you might less expect) tubing, packaging, and some electronics, in a squishy-spooky ode to the slithering fatbergs that befoul the sewers of modern cities.

Magliabechi’s: The Tribe. Days after the U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump commented that his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo wouldn’t serve in the new administration. This followed Donald Trump Jr. remarking that he opposed not only Pompeo but all “neocons and warhawks” who favor the U.S. being more combative with its rivals—and its allies’ rivals. Now, however, the president-elect has chosen Florida’s Senator Marco Rubio as his nominee for the next secretary of state—and Marco Rubio is known as something of a hawk.

While it may not yet be clear how much influence either Trump Jr.’s stated views or Rubio’s established tendencies will have in the new administration, there’s one country where those tendencies may hold sway: Cuba. Not least because Trump Sr. shares Rubio’s view of Cuba policy: In his first term, Trump reversed Barack Obama’s steps toward normalizing economic and diplomatic relations with the country.

Rubio comes from the world of conservative Miami politics, where fierce opposition to Cuba’s autocratic government is virtually a way of life. In the Cuban writer Carlos Manuel Álvarez’s 2022 book The Tribe, he offers a view into how Cubans—those who’ve left and those who’ve stayed—think of that government. Very few feel sympathetic toward the regime, Álvarez says, though there’s less unanimity on what to do about it—including on Rubio’s view in favor of strenuous economic sanctions. Still, in Cuba itself, The Tribe follows how people of virtually every political persuasion have recently come together in the San Isidro Movement to oppose the Cuban government’s regime of censorship.

—Gustav Jönsson

‘It’s coming from inside the house.’ Last summer, the Marvel Cinematic Universe became the first ever franchise to earn more than US$30 billion in global box office revenue. It's emblematic of how franchises have conquered the entertainment industry. Back in the 1980s, franchise films accounted for roughly one-fourth of American box office sales; now, it's nearly three-fourths—while there are fewer original cinematic stories than ever. Why?

Today, Andrew deWaard explores how big entertainment conglomerates, working with even bigger financial firms, have transformed Hollywood.

—Gustav Jönsson

111MHz: ‘There Are Easier Ways to Disappear (but I’m Only Good at This One).’ The Beirut-based composer Yara Asmar uses metallophone, synths, and accordion (with effect pedals) to create shimmering towers of sound—in the mode of modern minimalists like Harold Budd or Pauline Oliveros. From her new album, Stuttering Music. Drones with clattering percussion; a sunbeam in musical form.

—Brendan Hasenstab

Get yourself together. Local governments in China have built up huge debts over the past few years, and many of these governments are now having trouble paying for basic operations. Which is why, on November 8, the country’s central government announced it’d give the localities US$1.4 trillion in debt relief spread over the next five years. The funding, Beijing says, should allow them to keep making critical investments.

But investors are unimpressed. On the next trading day, stock prices fell on the Hong Kong exchange, China’s most important market. Meanwhile, shares and currencies across Southeast Asia are closely tied to the Chinese economy, and their values nearly all declined, too—even though the debt relief just enabled Chinese localities to give Chinese companies favorable deals on land purchases and tax breaks to increase production, which should theoretically boost the Chinese economy.

What’s happening here?

In September, Victor Shih looked at the problems behind China’s sluggish economy. Local-government debt, Shih says, is one of a few major structural issues—also including population decline and a housing-market crash. But these debts are now so high that Beijing would need a stimulus two to three times as high as the one announced this month to revive the economy. Yet they’re also so high that China can’t afford it.

—Michael Bluhm

The killer. Believe it or not, Canada’s government says India’s home minister organized the murder of a Sikh separatist—and Canadian citizen—on Canadian soil, through a local mob boss. Strange as it sounds, it’s what Canada’s deputy foreign minister has reported to Parliament. Now, Ottawa has kicked six Indian diplomats out of the country, while Canada’s prime minister has said the killing was part of a campaign to harass and intimidate Sikh activists there.

India denies these allegations—but there are more of them. American officials have charged an Indian intelligence officer with planning the failed assassination of a Sikh activist in the U.S., while British officials have implicated the Indian government in harassing Sikhs in the U.K. What’s this all about?

Today, Omair Ahmad looks at Sikh separatism in India, Delhi’s reaction to it, and how India’s conduct in the West potentially belongs to a bigger shift in Delhi’s international allegiances.

—Michael Bluhm

111MHz: ‘Sometime Too Hot.’ The composer Tullis Rennie—also a professor of music in the U.K.—here sculpts slightly out-of-this-world club music. Layered rhythms blend with strings, sax, and synths that fade in and out. Woozy and joyous. From his new album, Safe Operating Space.

—Brendan Hasenstab

Magliabechi’s: Polarized by Degrees. Donald Trump won last week’s U.S. presidential election with a surge of working-class support. In 2020, American voters who made less than US$50,000 voted against Trump by 11 points; this time, they voted for him by 3 points—a fact that not only Democrats but more than a few journalists are struggling to make sense of. Why would such a rich man, who made such a policy priority of cutting taxes for the wealthy, get such backing from America's working class?

There’s going to be a lot of accounts to sift through—among them:

• Many Americans have been experiencing economic hardship. The cost of groceries, for instance, has risen considerably since Trump's presidency, and low-income households have felt that most acutely.
• Vice President Kamala Harris was more concerned with demonstrating that she wasn’t a political radical, as Republicans claimed, than she was with appealing to working families—and in the weeks leading up to the election, she stumped with Mark Cuban, the billionaire, more times than with Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, one of America's most prominent labor unions.
• Per internal recriminations, the Democratic Party has for years been losing sight of the working class altogether.

But as Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins explore in their new book Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics, there's another, long-term trend at play between America’s political parties—with the Democrats having become the party of credentialed elites and the Republicans now attracting the support of most non–college-educated voters. Which, Grossmann and Hopkins write, helps make sense not only of the parties’ changing cultures but of the cultural issues they fight over.

—Gustav Jönsson