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Climate change is often misunderstood as a package deal: If global warming is “real,” both sides of the debate seem to assume, the climate lobby’s policy agenda follows inexorably.

Global warming is not even the obvious top environmental threat. Dirty water, dirty air and insect-borne diseases are a far greater problem today for most people world-wide. Habitat loss and human predation are a far greater problem for most animals. Elephants won’t make it to see a warmer climate. Ask them how they would prefer to spend $1 trillion—subsidizing high-speed trains or a human-free park the size of Montana. 

Climate policy advocates’ apocalyptic vision demands serious analysis, and mushy thinking undermines their case. If carbon emissions pose the greatest threat to humanity, it follows that the costs of nuclear power—waste disposal and the occasional meltdown—might be bearable. It follows that the costs of genetically modified foods and modern pesticides, which can feed us with less land and lower carbon emissions, might be bearable. It follows that if the future of civilization is really at stake, adaptation or geo-engineering should not be unmentionable. And it follows that symbolic, ineffective, political grab-bag policies should be intolerable.

The U.S. entered the ninth year of economic expansion in steady but unspectacular fashion that shows little sign of abating.

Gross domestic product, a broad measure of goods and services produced in the U.S., expanded at a 2.6% annual rate in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said Friday, a rebound after a tepid start to the year.

The figures repeated a familiar pattern of weak winters followed by a stronger spring and summer, leaving overall growth subdued. “The economy is on cruise control. Unfortunately cruise control is about 2%,” said Diane Swonk, founder of DS Economics.

The U.S. emerged from recession in mid-2009. Since then, GDP growth has averaged 2.1%. In contrast, growth averaged 3.6% during a 10-year span in the 1990s and 4.9% during a nearly nine-year stretch in the 1960s, the only two expansions with longer durations.

The U.S. entered the ninth year of economic expansion on a familiar path of steady but unspectacular growth, with few obvious indications it is near exhausting itself. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of goods and services produced in the U.S., rose at a 2.6% annual rate in the April to June period, the Commerce Department said Friday. Figures are adjusted for inflation and seasonality.

Apple today has only one plant of its own—in Cork, Ireland. Its contract manufacturers operate two small U.S. plants, in Austin, Texas and Fremont, Calif. Those facilities have never grown beyond their narrow role making Apple’s Mac Pro computer, a niche product that sells for $3,000 or more.

. . . Apple last opened manufacturing facilities for computers in the 1990s with plants in Fountain, Colo. and Elk Grove, Calif. It shut down its last U.S. manufacturing line in 2004, laying off 235 full-time workers in Elk Grove.

In theory, the high-wage jobs of the technology industry could be filled by people working anywhere. But in practice, the best tech jobs in the U.S., offering salaries in excess of $100,000 a year, are becoming increasingly concentrated in the metropolitan areas of just eight cities, according to new research. The eight leading U.S. tech hubs account for slightly less than 10% of U.S. jobs and about 13% of overall job postings. But the cities — Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Austin, Raleigh, Washington, Baltimore and Boston — account for more than 27% of the listings for U.S. tech jobs, research from Jed Kolko, the chief economist of the job-search website Indeed, shows.

At a time when politicians and pundits decry the end of middle-class jobs, it may come as a surprise that there are 30 million jobs paying more than $35,000 a year for U.S. workers without four-year college degrees. Now for the bad news: there are 75 million U.S. workers without college diplomas, or 2.5 workers for every one of those good jobs, meaning that high-school grads have far lower odds of winning the career lottery than they did 25 years ago, according to a new report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. . . The number of good jobs for noncollege graduates rose to 30 million in 2015 from 27 million in 1991, but the labor market grew, too. By 2015, the share of all good jobs that went to noncollege graduates fell to 45% from 60% in 1991—leaving 45 million workers in low-paying, sometimes part-time roles that don’t offer a path to the middle class.

Drilling down, the paper found the law drove people to make different choices about work. “Middle-income individuals reduced their labor supply due to the additional tax on earnings while lower income individuals worked more in order to qualify for private insurance,” the authors wrote. “In the aggregate, these countervailing effects approximately balance” in terms of their impact on overall participation rates.

The mortgage interest deduction, a sacred cow in the U.S. tax code, does nothing to promote homeownership, according to an academic paper released Monday, a finding that undermines one of the core justifications for the tax break. Letting taxpayers deduct mortgage interest encourages them to buy bigger homes and more expensive homes – but it doesn’t change that fundamental decision about whether to buy in the first place

Even as Wall Street bulls tout Tesla’s stock, almost a conspiracy of silence has surrounded the most interesting questions. One of these concerns what happens when 300,000 customers who deposited $1,000 each for the forthcoming Tesla Model 3 learn that the $7,500 federal tax credit will expire before they can get their hands on it. Now we know. Tesla may not be too big to fail as far as the federal government is concerned, but it certainly is too big to fail as far as California politicians are concerned. As enthusiast site GreenCarReports.com says frankly of AB 1184, a bill recently passed by the state Assembly and awaiting Senate action: “CA bill would make up for federal electric-car incentives as they expire.”

For the first time in years, pay for the lowest-income Americans is rising faster than for other groups. Weekly pay for full-time earners at the lowest 10th percentile of the wage scale rose at a faster rate last quarter, year-to-year, than for any other group measured by the U.S. Labor Department—including those at the top of the income scales who earn five times as much. The shift for low-income workers—including restaurant workers and retail cashiers—who make about $10.75 an hour, is a sign that a tightening labor market is delivering better pay to workers who largely haven’t shared in gains since the recession ended eight years ago, according to economists and government data. Last quarter marked the first time since late 2010 that this earning group’s gains outpaced all others, including the 90th, 75th, 50th and 25th percentiles.

Tesla Inc.’s sales in Hong Kong came to a standstill after authorities slashed a tax break for electric vehicles on April 1, demonstrating how sensitive the company’s performance can be to government incentive programs. Not a single newly purchased Tesla model was registered in Hong Kong in April, according to official data from the city’s Transportation Department analyzed by The Wall Street Journal. In March, shortly after the tax change was announced and ahead of the April 1 deadline, 2,939 Tesla vehicles were registered there—almost twice as many as in the last six months of 2016.

The unemployment rate for Hispanic or Latino workers fell to 4.8% last month, the lowest level on records back to the 1970s. The rate for black Americans was 7.1%, the second-lowest monthly rate, bested only by April 2000’s 7% reading, according to the Labor Department. The decline in unemployment for blacks and Hispanics comes with a significant caveat: Both June lows are higher than the 3.8% rate for whites, and the 4.4% overall rate.

U.S. employers picked up their pace of hiring in June. Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 222,000 from the prior month, the Labor Department said. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4% from 4.3% the prior month as more people joined the workforce. Average hourly earnings for private-sector workers rose 2.5% in June, little changed from prior months. In one positive sign, the average workweek rose by 0.1 hour to 34.5 hours.

Tesla Inc. shares took a beating on Wednesday after several analysts questioned whether customer demand for its two electric vehicles is waning as the company begins producing a cheaper sedan. The Silicon Valley auto maker’s shares fell nearly 5% in midday trading to $335.74—the lowest point in more than a month—after rising about 69% this year through last week on enthusiasm for the coming Model 3 sedan, which is central to Tesla’s plan to sharply increase total sales. Tesla on Monday reported sales of its Model S cars and Model X sport-utility vehicles were lower than analysts expected because of a supply issue with battery packs, raising new fears the company will have trouble meeting ambitious production targets for the Model 3.