Best Business Commentary
Consolidation among the U.S. airlines is “finally on the horizon,” says Dean Foust in BusinessWeek.com. “Dozens of new coal plants are on drawing boards” across the U.S., awaiting construction, says the Houston Chronicle in an editorial.
U.S. airlines circle their wagons
Consolidation among the U.S. airlines is “finally on the horizon,” says Dean Foust in BusinessWeek.com. First to the altar, “barring the unexpected,” will be Delta and Northwest, but other mergers can’t be far behind. The high price of oil is the “immediate pressure driving these pacts,” but lurking European airlines pose a threat just “as onerous as $90-per-barrel oil.” Not only are the Europeans poised to poach the “lucrative transatlantic routes,” one of the few “big profit centers” for U.S. carriers, but they also want to “buy controlling stakes in the enfeebled U.S. airlines” themselves. Can they? The only thing blocking the runway is politicians.
The end of the coal rush
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
“Dozens of new coal plants are on drawing boards” across the U.S., awaiting construction, says the Houston Chronicle in an editorial. Unfortunately, the “cheap coal they are premised on” is “going the way of inexpensive oil and gas.” And for the same reason: an “insatiable appetite in the exploding Chinese economy.” Because coal was cheap and the U.S. has “extensive deposits” of it, coal-powered plants used to make sense, to a point. But coal was always “by far the dirtiest of the fossil fuels,” and now that it’s expensive, too, we have a good opening to make a “massive” investment in “renewable and clean energy generation” to escape its “tightening vise.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Inside Marseille's deadly drug wars
The Explainer Teenage hitmen recruited through social media are lured by money and gang 'brand'
By The Week UK Published
-
A human foot found on Mount Everest is renewing the peak's biggest mystery
The discovery is reviving questions about who may have summited the mountain first
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Crossword: October 22, 2024
The Week's daily crossword
By The Week Staff Published