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How much is your car contributing to climate change? A new study can tell you. The research looks at 125 cars on today’s roads and measures not just their mileage and the type of fuel they use, but also the greenhouse gases generated in making the cars and, if they are electric vehicles, the greenhouse gases produced by the power plants that provide their juice. Cars and Climate Targets Search for your car on a more complete version of the M.I.T. Carbon Counter app. The result is an addictively clickable app that the authors hope will help car buyers make their next car purchase. There are surprises: A number of hybrids have a bigger carbon footprint than the lightest gas sippers among cars with internal combustion engines (we’re looking at you, Lexus RX), and some of the largest electric cars, like Toyota’s Rav4 offering, come off worse than a number of hybrids. Big, powerful cars require more energy to move them around, and they also tend to be somewhat more expensive and require more energy to produce; those issues are also factored into the study. But, I hear you say, a driver of an electric car in California will be getting cleaner power than a driver in the Midwest, which is heavily dependent on coal-fired power plants, right? The app lets you customize by region. Sign Up for the Science Times Newsletter Every week, we’ll bring you stories that capture the wonders of the human body, nature and the cosmos. Enter your email address Sign Up Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. SEE SAMPLE MANAGE EMAIL PREFERENCES PRIVACY POLICY The paper, by Jessika E. Trancik, a professor of energy studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleagues, noted that the cars with the lowest emissions also tended to be the cheapest, which undercuts the notion many people have that living a greener life is necessarily more expensive. “Consumers can save money and save emissions at the same time,” Dr. Trancik said. This app thrills me, because it turns out that I own the gas-powered car with the smallest carbon footprint — and physical footprint — on the market, according to the app: a Smart. I bought the tiny two-seater in 2008, and it has long been a point of contention between my wife and me. When people see us in the parking lot and ask how we like the car, I say “I love it!” and she says “I hate it” at the same time. She doesn’t like its bumpy ride or the finickiness of its transmission. Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change I love that my little rattletrap gets 40 miles per gallon, and now love even more that it’s better for the environment than about one third of the hybrids out there. It is a good day when the mighty engine of science comes together to prove me right about something.

In the realm of international trade, it is a truism seemingly as consistent as gravity: Jobs and investment flow from north to south, while manufactured goods travel the other way around. Factories in the United States and Canada shutter as work shifts to Mexico and Central America, where human hands do it more cheaply. So the established order of trade was by all appearances turned upside down on Tuesday, as General Motors agreed to cease manufacturing an automobile engine at a factory in Mexico while moving jobs to a plant in Canada. One might reflexively assume that this turn effectively validates a central promise made repeatedly by Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential aspirant. Loudly and frequently, Mr. Trump has vowed to yank jobs back to America from Mexico, using shame, executive fiat and his uniquely Trumpian form of threats to make it happen. Here was apparent proof that such a goal was doable. Except life turns out to be more complicated than that. The General Motors deal does indeed signal that work can today wind up transferred seemingly anywhere — never mind the well-pounded pathway of north to south. In an era of increasingly sophisticated manufacturing that relies more on computers and robotics than low-wage hands, centers of innovation like Canada and the United States will exert a greater pull than before. This plays well to Mr. Trump’s premise that a robust era of American job growth awaits, if only the nation selects a president with the audacity to set aside the niceties of trade agreements and begin acting like a self-interested superpower, dictating the terms of commerce. And it speaks to one group of voters that has embraced him — dispossessed factory workers prone to blaming globalization for lost jobs, declining wages and financial anxiety. But consider this deal more of a caveat added to the dominant narrative than some revolutionary twist to the story of globalization. Photo Making dash mats at a plant in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Donald J. Trump has vowed to pull jobs back to America from Mexico. Credit Ivan Pierre Aguirre/Associated Press “You can bring some jobs back, but they will likely be more of a drip than a big flow,” said Jared Bernstein, a former White House economic adviser in the Obama administration, and now a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. “Trump has a very nostalgic view of globalization, circa 1950.” Continue reading the main story RELATED COVERAGE Who Hates Free Trade Treaties? Surprisingly, Not Voters SEPT. 21, 2016 G.M. and Union Avoid Strike by Canadian Workers SEPT. 20, 2016 THE 2016 RACE Why a President Trump Could Start a Trade War With Surprising Ease SEPT. 19, 2016 ON MONEY How Much Do We Really Know About Global Trade’s Impacts? SEPT. 6, 2016 ECONOMIC SCENE The Mirage of a Return to Manufacturing Greatness APRIL 26, 2016 “Broadly speaking, the trends that have hurt communities here in terms of trade and trade deficits are very much ongoing, and if that gets turned around, it’s not going to be about bringing all the old jobs back,” he said. “It’s going to be about forging new sectors like advanced manufacturing.” Which is to say, sectors where a handful of highly skilled people with degrees and technical prowess earn a good deal of money. And lesser-educated workers — the ones who lost jobs to China and Mexico and are now embracing Mr. Trump — continue to be left behind. Far from representing a reversal of course, the G.M. deal then underscores how multinationals are fine-tuning their approach to making things. They are increasingly differentiating between more labor-intensive manufacturing — tasks like stitching bluejeans and snapping together cellphone cases — and more advanced, machine-intensive pursuits that rely on automation and software. Given that state-of-the-art products fetch a higher price, it is presumably worth paying a premium to the limited numbers of humans involved in their creation — and especially since this buys proximity to the minds that dream up lucrative new visions. The Canadian plant getting the jobs sits near Waterloo, the birthplace of the BlackBerry, which is something like Canada’s Silicon Valley. The union in Canada won something headline-grabbing — jobs retrieved from Mexico. But it also relented on a major objective sought by G.M.: Workers gave up the fight to retain old-fashioned pensions that pay out fixed amounts. They accepted newfangled plans that see benefits fluctuate with the markets. CNBC By CNBC 6:09 Bill Clinton on Activist Investors Video Bill Clinton on Activist Investors The former president said that activist investors, rather than trade deals like NAFTA, are partially at fault for U.S. corporations sending jobs to Mexico. By CNBC on Publish Date September 20, 2016. Photo by CNBC. Watch in Times Video » Embed ShareTweet Far from proof that Canadian workers have somehow recaptured the upper hand in jockeying for the spoils of globalization, this deal is just the latest evidence that companies have effectively used international factories to permanently tilt the power dynamics in their favor. For decades, global automakers have been on the march for lower costs. In the United States, they shifted factories from union strongholds like Michigan and Wisconsin to Southern states like South Carolina and Alabama, where union ranks were weak and local rules limited labor organizing. Then, they kept moving south, to Mexico, exploiting a series of trade deals — not least the North American Free Trade Agreement. A quarter century ago, the then-American presidential candidate, Ross Perot, spoke of a “giant sucking sound” in warning that factory work was being vacuumed up by Mexico, with American communities abandoned. For workers in Canada and Mexico, the impacts were evident. They had to satisfy the demands of auto manufacturers locked in an increasingly global competition. They had to make concessions. Otherwise, the car companies could employ their demonstrated power to leave them behind, moving the work to places where labor was cheaper and more pliable. The G.M. deal affirms this reality. Labor paid a price for gaining jobs in Canada — downgraded retirement. Above all, the deal underscores the potency of markets in shaping what happens in commercial life, a force far more powerful than demagogues making dubious promises about tearing up trade deals. Photo Years ago, Ross Perot spoke of a “giant sucking sound” in warning that factory work was being vacuumed up by Mexico. Credit Andrea Mohin/The New York Times Canada’s unions are relatively strong, and the nation’s currency is relatively weak, making Canadian-made goods cheaper in the global marketplace. G.M. was willing to pay for access to highly skilled working hands, provided it got a break on its pension contributions. These factors coalesced into a negotiated result. The jobs did not come back to Canada because of the sort of edict Mr. Trump has promised to unleash, somehow compelling global companies to stop making things in Mexico and resume making them in the United States. “The central Trump fallacy here is that the president can tell multinational companies what to do,” said Mr. Bernstein, the former Obama administration economic adviser. “That’s completely wrong, I’ve seen that firsthand. President Obama was constantly exhorting companies to create more jobs, and they’ll only do so if they want to,” he added. “Simply calling multinational C.E.O.s from the Oval Office and yelling at them isn’t going to do anything.” If Mr. Trump really did seek to dictate to General Motors (or any company) where it can make its wares, that would risk undermining the company’s competitiveness. If, under threat of political action, a company had to buy steel from an American producer instead of China, that could make its cars more expensive than competing models from Honda or Hyundai. If they had to use American workers for final assembly instead of Mexicans, that could damage their business and undercut sales for many suppliers, from glassmakers in Ohio to auto parts manufacturers in Indiana. “Then,” said Chad P. Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, “those jobs that came back from Mexico aren’t going to be any jobs at all.”

In a relentlessly antagonistic debate, Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton clashed over trade, the Iraq war, his refusal to release his tax returns and her use of a private email server, with Mr. Trump frequently showing impatience and political inexperience as Mrs. Clinton pushed him to defend his past denigration of women and President Obama. Mr. Trump repeatedly interrupted Mrs. Clinton and at times talked over her throughout the 90-minute debate, making slashing attacks that surely pleased his Republican base but may have been off-putting to women and undecided voters. He also left unchallenged her assertion that he paid no federal taxes for years. For her part, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly chided Mr. Trump for bungling his facts while accusing him of hiding information about his debts to Wall Street and foreign banks. Mr. Trump’s strongest moments came early in the evening, when he put Mrs. Clinton on the defensive over her support for free trade agreements that he argues have cost Americans jobs. But on issues of race and gender, Mr. Trump was less sure-footed. When he was pressed about what he would say to people offended by his years of questions about whether Mr. Obama was born in the United States, Mr. Trump did not respond directly, instead claiming credit for Mr. Obama’s releasing his birth certificate. illary Clinton on Monday night. Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, wrote on Twitter that Mrs. Clinton “has had the best debate training I’ve seen in years.” Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times “I say nothing because I was able to get him to produce it,” he said of the birth certificate. Mrs. Clinton also tried to drive a wedge between Mr. Trump and the president, whose approval ratings are on the rise. “Barack Obama is a man of great dignity, and I could tell how much it bothered him,” she said of the controversy, in a clear appeal to voters who deeply admire Mr. Obama but are less enthusiastic about her. She also broadened the issue beyond so-called birtherism, which she called a “racist lie,” and accused Mr. Trump of having “a long record of engaging in racist behavior.” She singled out his family’s real estate company for being sued by the Justice Department in 1973 for racial discrimination. Mr. Trump did little to rebut her charges of racism. He instead said that he had recently watched some of her debates with Mr. Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary and that she had been quite harsh on her then-rival. “You treated him with terrible disrespect,” he said. But Mr. Trump himself repeatedly demeaned Mr. Obama in the debate, at one point telling Mrs. Clinton that he was “your president” and, at another, mocking Mr. Obama over his penchant for golf. Later, Mrs. Clinton recalled Mr. Trump’s stream of insults to women over the years, a determined effort by her to rally female voters to her side. “This is a man who has called women pigs, slobs and dogs, and someone who has said pregnancy is an inconvenience to employers, who has said women don’t deserve equal pay unless they do as good a job as men,” Mrs. Clinton said. Referring to a beauty pageant contestant, she continued: “He called this woman Miss Piggy. Then he called her Miss Housekeeping, because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name.” Mr. Trump did not have a forceful rejoinder, saying that most of his insults had been aimed at the comedian Rosie O’Donnell, with whom he had feuded. “I said very tough things to her, and I think everybody would agree that she deserves it, and nobody feels sorry for her,” he said. But Mr. Trump said mysteriously that he had “something extremely rough” to say about “Hillary and her family,” then added, “I can’t do it, I can’t do it.” He told CNN afterward that he was proud of “holding back” on Bill Clinton and his extramarital affairs because the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, was in the audience. The debate took on a surreal quality at times, with more discussion of insults like “slobs” than immigration or the Affordable Care Act. Mrs. Clinton came off as a classically prepared debater who used Mr. Trump’s record and words against him at 19 separate moments, while Mr. Trump seemed to be improvising on stage much of the time. And Mr. Trump was stunningly personal in his attacks, such as questioning Mrs. Clinton’s stamina. She fired back: “As soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease-fire, a release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world, or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina.” Mr. Trump also targeted Mrs. Clinton for not taking a sufficiently hard line on crime, chastising her for refusing to say “law and order.” Blacks and Hispanics, he said, “are living in hell because it’s so dangerous.” He attacked Mrs. Clinton from the right on policing, suggesting that she supported “stop-and-frisk” policies but was not saying so for unstated political reasons. But in an attempt to damage her with black voters, he also invoked her use of the word “superpredator” in the 1990s to describe youthful criminals. “I think it was a terrible thing to say,” he said. The debate was like no other in the television era: The first female presidential nominee of a major party facing off against an alpha male businessman with no political experience, both of them world-famous and both of them deeply unpo[CENSORED]r, with a potential record-setting audience of 100 million watching and hoping to see their preferred candidate blow the other to smithereens. First Clinton and Trump Debate: Analysis Mr. Trump seemed most confident when he accused Mrs. Clinton of lacking a record of success or results despite being in public life for 30 years. He tried to pin blame on her for decades of American policy, including the decision by her husband, Mr. Clinton, to sign the North American Free Trade Agreement into law, as well as her past support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story “Nafta is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere,” Mr. Trump said, invoking a pact that is deeply unpo[CENSORED]r in several swing states, and then added that the Trans-Pacific Partnership “will be almost as bad.” After Mrs. Clinton said she had opposed the trans-Pacific trade deal, Mr. Trump interjected and, raising his voice, talked over her. “You called it the gold standard,” he said, nearly shouting. Mrs. Clinton, in a measured tone and with a tight smile, responded with a harsh rejoinder of her own. “Donald, I know you live in your own reality, but that is not the facts,” she said. Mr. Trump hurled so many accusations at Mrs. Clinton — and with such fervor that he frequently had to sip water — that she found herself saying at one point, “I have a feeling that by the end of this evening, I’m going to be blamed for everything that’s ever happened.” “Why not?” Mr. Trump shot back. “Why not? Yeah, why not,” Mrs. Clinton replied. “You know, just join the debate by saying more crazy things.” Mrs. Clinton pressed Mr. Trump on his failure to release his tax returns, an issue that polls show is resonating with voters. She suggested that he had not made them public because they would show that “you haven’t paid any federal income tax for a lot of years.” Slide Show SLIDE SHOW | 15 Photos Photographs From the First Presidential Debate Photographs From the First Presidential DebateCreditDamon Winter/The New York Times Mr. Trump did not dispute that, saying instead that the government would waste his money. “It would be squandered, too, believe me,” he said. At another point, he argued that he was “smart” to have avoided paying any federal income tax earlier in his career. Mrs. Clinton assailed his economic policies as favoring wealthy Americans, calling them “trumped-up, trickle-down,” and then made the first of several attempts to bait Mr. Trump into an overreaction. She said that he had gotten a $14 million loan from his father to start his business and asserted that he “really believes the more you help wealthy people, the better off we’ll be.” Mr. Trump responded simply that it was “a very small loan,” a sign that he had been prepared to be careful about attacking. Mrs. Clinton also poked at Mr. Trump by saying he believed that climate change was a “hoax,” prompting him to interject, “I do not say that, I do not say that.” (He did, in 2012.) He called himself “a great believer in all forms of energy” and said the nation had too much debt to risk jobs on energy policies that might protect the environment. Then he blasted Mrs. Clinton as a candidate with lots of policy ideas but no history of success. “Hillary, you’ve been doing this for 30 years,” Mr. Trump said. “Why are you just thinking about these solutions?” “I have thought about this quite a bit,” she said. “Yeah, for 30 years,” he replied sarcastically. Beyond the frequent policy clashes and vivid personality differences, the hostility between the two candidates was unmistakable. Mrs. Clinton was all icy stares and pointed rebukes, while avoiding the sort of prickly reactions that hurt Mr. Obama in his first debate against Mitt Romney in 2012 and were devastating to Al Gore in his initial debate against George W. Bush in 2000. Mr. Trump looked more irritable and impatient as the night went on, and lost his cool when Mrs. Clinton noted that he had initially supported the war in Iraq. “Wrong,” Mr. Trump said. “Wrong, wrong.” Mr. Trump did signal support for the American invasion of Iraq at first, but when the moderator, Lester Holt of NBC News, pointed that out, Mr. Trump lashed out. “That is a mainstream media nonsense put out by her,” Mr. Trump said of Mrs. Clinton. When Mr. Holt said “the record shows otherwise,” Mr. Trump went on a long tangent about various antiwar comments he had made to allies like Sean Hannity of Fox News. When cornered at times, Mr. Trump tried to shift the subject, criticizing Mrs. Clinton for using a private email server as secretary of state. “I made a mistake using a private email,” Mrs. Clinton said. “That’s for sure,” Mr. Trump said. “And if I had to do it over again, I would, obviously, do it differently,” she added. Mr. Trump would not let it go. “That was more than a mistake — that was done purposely,” he said. “When you have your staff taking the Fifth Amendment, taking the Fifth, so they’re not prosecuted, when you have the man that set up the illegal server taking the Fifth, I think it’s disgraceful.” The debate was the first of three; the next will be on Oct. 9 in St. Louis and will use the format of a town meeting, with uncommitted voters asking about half of the questions. The third will be on Oct. 19 in Las Vegas and will feature the same format as Monday’s.