News round-up, Tuesday, February 28, 2023

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Quote of the day…

The EU economy's resilience is an asset against Russia

EDITORIAL BY LE MONDE

Although it might not last, it is commendable that the European Union has so far managed to contain the effects of the war on its economy.

'2023 opens on an international scene more conflicted and messy than ever'

Column by Le Monde

The war has strengthened transatlantic ties and has revitalized and further expanded NATO. It has demonstrated the effectiveness, if not the superiority, of Western weapons. Debated at leisure, the military "decline" of the West is not obvious. The 27 members of the European Union have remained united in their support for Kyiv and in their sanctions policy against Moscow. As the main provider of military assistance to Ukraine, the United States is balancing its support carefully: no arms deliveries that could strike deep into Russian territory. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives takes office in January. It will not reverse its support for Ukraine – for the moment largely bipartisan.

Offshore wind energy seeks to avoid repeating the mistakes of onshore wind energy...

Environmental associations give the green light to these offshore wind turbines, while fishermen reject their deployment.

Written in Spanish by ABC.es for JOSÉ A. GONZÁLEZ

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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Image: Germán & Co

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Offshore wind energy seeks to avoid repeating the mistakes of onshore wind energy... (abc.es)

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

Henry Kissinger Warns That AI Will Fundamentally Alter Human Consciousness

“I’ve become convinced that AI and the surrounding disciplines are going to bring a change in human consciousness, like the Enlightenment.”

Gizmodo.com

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Environmental associations give the green light to these offshore wind turbines, while fishermen reject their deployment.

Written in Spanish by ABC.es for JOSÉ A. GONZÁLEZ

Translation by Germán & Co

25/01/2023

The wind is blowing, but whether for or against offshore wind energy remains to be seen. Large wind turbines are already a character in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula, but now they want to deploy their imposing blades offshore. In 2021, the world offshore wind installation record was broken with 21,222 MW, an increase of 59% compared to 2020.

"These numbers give an idea of the strength and maturity of this technology," says the Spanish Wind Energy Association (AEE). However, not a single watt is in Spanish waters.

The sector is at square one waiting for the Council of Ministers to give the green light to the Maritime Space Management Plans (POEM) "to distribute the sea areas and their uses", says Tomás Romagosa, technical director and coordinator of the offshore wind working group of the Spanish Wind Energy Association (AEE). In 2021, offshore wind generated 35.3 gigawatts of energy, a third of which came from the British Isles. A race where Spain "aims to produce between one and three GW by 2030", according to the Minister for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera. One more step towards decarbonising the economy, but one that leaves its mark on the seabed.

The particularities of the Iberian peninsula's coastline complicate deployment, as Spain's more than 6,000 kilometres of coastline have a depth of between 2,500 metres in the Mediterranean and up to 4,000 metres in the Atlantic. "The continental shelf is smaller than in the North Sea," says Antonio Turiel, a researcher at the CSIC. Precisely these waters, which bathe the coasts of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, will account for 64% of the GW generated by offshore wind in 2021. Currently, of the 28,210 megawatts of offshore installed, 99.6% are fixed foundation, an option that is not valid for Spain, the alternative is floating wind.

"This means that ships have to go further out to sea and use more fuel. Torcuato Teixeira manager of the Peca-Galicia-Arpega-Obarco Shipowners' Association

A major disadvantage, but one that has its 'pros'. "The installation can be done with less environmental impact," says Virginia Dundas, head of strategic environmental programmes at Orsted, a Danish company that has deployed hundreds of offshore wind turbines in the North Sea. "It has less effect than the fixed one," says Cristóbal López, spokesman for the marine area of Ecologistas en Acción. However, "regardless of its anchoring, it will have a detriment and the important thing is that the location is done correctly", says Sara Pizzinato, an expert in renewable energies and territory and spokesperson for Greenpeace.

Environmental criteria

The roadmap for the deployment of offshore wind, written by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, establishes several international protocols and conventions, such as the Kyoto Protocol, the Ramsar Convention and the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment, among others, as the basis for its installation. "Both the fight against climate change and the loss of biodiversity have to go hand in hand," warns Pizzinato.

Last summer, the ministry led by Teresa Ribera opened a public consultation to draw up the regulations governing offshore wind power off the Spanish coast.

"This crisis cannot be solved by one person alone, it has to be a joint effort between companies and governments," says the spokeswoman for the Norwegian company working on the projection of wind turbines off the Spanish coast. "We have a multidisciplinary team with biologists, technicians and people who talk to the communities to understand the potential impacts," she adds. "There are big unknowns, but the impacts are obvious whether you want to disguise them or not," says Torcuato Teixeira, manager of the Peca-Galicia-Arpega-Obarco Shipowners' Association.

"Both the fight against climate change and the loss of biodiversity have to go hand in hand". Sara Pizzinato expert in renewable energies and territory and spokesperson for Greenpeace

One of the changes brought about by anchoring, whether fixed or floating, are fishing exclusion zones. The current projects propose the installation of these farms around 20 and 30 kilometres off the Spanish coast. "This means that vessels will have to go further out to fish and use more fuel," Teixeira complains. Several environmental organisations disagree: "It doesn't affect coastal fishing, but rather trawling, which damages the seabed more with the large nets they throw, and is a lesser evil," countered López.

"It's not like that, it also affects the volantera, the longliners and, if I dare say it, the artisanal fishermen," adds Teixeira.

Trawling is one of the most widespread forms of fishing around the world, where approximately 40% of catches are made with gear that comes into contact with the seabed. "These installations will not allow the deployment of the nets, nor will it be possible for the evacuation line (cable through which the energy is transferred) to go," Teixeira points out. "These areas will serve as a rest area for fishing and the seabed, although we regret that with respect to previous drafts, areas for offshore wind have been eliminated in favour of trawling areas, and this does not exactly respond to environmental needs," said Pizzinato.

The wind farm's communication route to the mainland is another of the impacts cited by ecologists and environmentalists. In the journal Science of the Total Environment, Spanish researchers warn that the transport of electricity generated offshore "can disorientate or even electrocute animals". "The noise will obviously also have an influence, but that is why there has to be a prior study and it has to be done in areas where it will have less impact," says the Greenpeace spokeswoman. "The information currently available is insufficient to assess everything," she adds.

Although the focus is on the seabed, the sea surface is also a cause for concern. "We shouldn't make the same mistake as we did on land and put wind turbines everywhere," says López.

"We shouldn't make the same mistake as we did on land and put wind turbines all over the place.  Cristóbal López spokesman for the marine area of Ecologistas in Action.

Several studies have shown that some species of birds change their migratory routes to avoid passing through wind turbines and "many die as a result of impacts", warns the head of the marine area of Ecologists in Action. "The latest drafts of the Maritime Space Management Plans contemplate the migratory routes of birds," adds Pizzinato. The environmental organisations have expressly asked the government for these installations to be 30 or 40 metres above the sea in order to "avoid influencing the fishing and feeding of birds".

"What we have to be clear about is that we have to leave a positive impact," says Dundas. His company has teamed up with WWF to stop the loss of biodiversity because "we need it and it is everywhere", he says. Together with WWF, they are working in Denmark on 'planting' 3D printed reefs to grow the cod population, but their concern goes beyond their 'homeland'. In Taiwan, Orsted has started a pilot project to plant these reefs in the foundations of turbines to combat their extinction. "If you do things right, you won't make the mistakes of onshore wind," says Lopez.

News round-up, Thursday, January 26, 2023

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Quote of the day…

Tesla reports record profit and confirms its long-term growth plan

Despite concerns about rising competition and macroeconomic headwinds, Elon Musk's electric vehicle company reported fourth-quarter profits up 59 percent from the year-ago period.

Le Monde with AP and AFP

Meta to reinstate Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts

The restoration of his accounts could provide a boost to Trump, who announced in November he will make another run for the White House in 2024. He has 34 million followers on Facebook and 23 million on Instagram, platforms that are key vehicles for political outreach and fundraising.

Reuters

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

---

Cooperate with ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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Joi Ito, Scott Dadich, and President Barack Obama photographed in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on August 24, 2016.

Barack Obama, Neural Nets, Self-Driving Cars & The Future of the World…

www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-mit-joi-ito-interview/

IT’S HARD TO think of a single technology that will shape our world more in the next 50 years than artificial intelligence. As machine learning enables our computers to teach themselves, a wealth of breakthroughs emerge, ranging from medical diagnostics to cars that drive themselves. A whole lot of worry emerges as well. Who controls this technology? Will it take over our jobs? Is it dangerous? President Obama was eager to address these concerns. The person he wanted to talk to most about them? Entrepreneur and MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito. So I sat down with them in the White House to sort through the hope, the hype, and the fear around AI. That and maybe just one quick question about Star Trek. —SCOTT DADICH

SCOTT DADICH: Thank you both for being here. How’s your day been so far, Mr. President?

BARACK OBAMA: Busy. Productive. You know, a couple of international crises here and there.

DADICH: I want to center our conversation on artificial intelligence, which has gone from science fiction to a reality that’s changing our lives. When was the moment you knew that the age of real AI was upon us?

November 2016.

OBAMA: My general observation is that it has been seeping into our lives in all sorts of ways, and we just don’t notice; and part of the reason is because the way we think about AI is colored by popular culture. There’s a distinction, which is probably familiar to a lot of your readers, between generalized AI and specialized AI. In science fiction, what you hear about is generalized AI, right? Computers start getting smarter than we are and eventually conclude that we’re not all that useful, and then either they’re drugging us to keep us fat and happy or we’re in the Matrix. My impression, based on talking to my top science advisers, is that we’re still a reasonably long way away from that. It’s worth thinking about because it stretches our imaginations and gets us thinking about the issues of choice and free will that actually do have some significant applications for specialized AI, which is about using algorithms and computers to figure out increasingly complex tasks. We’ve been seeing specialized AI in every aspect of our lives, from medicine and transportation to how electricity is distributed, and it promises to create a vastly more productive and efficient economy. If properly harnessed, it can generate enormous prosperity and opportunity. But it also has some downsides that we’re gonna have to figure out in terms of not eliminating jobs. It could increase inequality. It could suppress wages.

JOI ITO: This may upset some of my students at MIT, but one of my concerns is that it’s been a predominately male gang of kids, mostly white, who are building the core computer science around AI, and they’re more comfortable talking to computers than to human beings. A lot of them feel that if they could just make that science-fiction, generalized AI, we wouldn’t have to worry about all the messy stuff like politics and society. They think machines will just figure it all out for us.

OBAMA: Right.

ITO: But they underestimate the difficulties, and I feel like this is the year that artificial intelligence becomes more than just a computer science problem. Everybody needs to understand that how AI behaves is important. In the Media Lab we use the term extended intelligence1. Because the question is, how do we build societal values into AI?

Extended intelligence is using machine learning to extend the abilities of human intelligence.

OBAMA: When we had lunch a while back, Joi used the example of self-driving cars. The technology is essentially here. We have machines that can make a bunch of quick decisions that could drastically reduce traffic fatalities, drastically improve the efficiency of our transpor­tation grid, and help solve things like carbon emissions that are causing the warming of the planet. But Joi made a very elegant point, which is, what are the values that we’re going to embed in the cars? There are gonna be a bunch of choices that you have to make, the classic problem being: If the car is driving, you can swerve to avoid hitting a pedestrian, but then you might hit a wall and kill yourself. It’s a moral decision, and who’s setting up those rules?

The car trolley problem is a 2016 MIT Media Lab study in which respondents weighed certain lose-lose situations facing a driverless car. E.g., is it better for five passengers to die so that five pedestrians can live, or is it better for the passengers to live while the pedestrians die?

ITO: When we did the car trolley problem2, we found that most people liked the idea that the driver and the passengers could be sacrificed to save many people. They also said they would never buy a self-driving car. [Laughs.]

DADICH: As we start to get into these ethical questions, what is the role of government?

OBAMA: The way I’ve been thinking about the regulatory structure as AI emerges is that, early in a technology, a thousand flowers should bloom. And the government should add a relatively light touch, investing heavily in research and making sure there’s a conversation between basic research and applied research. As technologies emerge and mature, then figuring out how they get incorporated into existing regulatory structures becomes a tougher problem, and the govern­ment needs to be involved a little bit more. Not always to force the new technology into the square peg that exists but to make sure the regulations reflect a broad base set of values. Otherwise, we may find that it’s disadvantaging certain people or certain groups.

Temple Grandin is a professor at Colorado State University who is autistic and often speaks on the subject.

ITO: I don’t know if you’ve heard of the neurodiversity movement, but Temple Grandin3 talks about this a lot. She says that Mozart and Einstein and Tesla would all be considered autistic if they were alive today.

OBAMA: They might be on the spectrum.

ITO: Right, on the spectrum. And if we were able to eliminate autism and make everyone neuro-­normal, I bet a whole slew of MIT kids would not be the way they are. One of the problems, whether we’re talking about autism or just diversity broadly, is when we allow the market to decide. Even though you probably wouldn’t want Einstein as your kid, saying “OK, I just want a normal kid” is not gonna lead to maximum societal benefit.

OBAMA: That goes to the larger issue that we wrestle with all the time around AI. Part of what makes us human are the kinks. They’re the mutations, the outliers, the flaws that create art or the new invention, right? We have to assume that if a system is perfect, then it’s static. And part of what makes us who we are, and part of what makes us alive, is that we’re dynamic and we’re surprised. One of the challenges that we’ll have to think about is, where and when is it appropriate for us to have things work exactly the way they’re supposed to, without surprises?

Tesla reports record profit and confirms its long-term growth plan

Despite concerns about rising competition and macroeconomic headwinds, Elon Musk's electric vehicle company reported fourth-quarter profits up 59 percent from the year-ago period.

Le Monde with AP and AFP

Published on January 25, 2023

Tesla on Wednesday, January 25, posted record net income in the fourth quarter of last year, and the company predicted that additional software-related profits will keep its margins higher than any other automaker.

The Austin, Texas, maker of electric vehicles and solar panels said it made $3.69 billion from October through December, or an adjusted $1.19 per share. That beat estimates of $1.13 that had been reduced by analysts, according to FactSet. The company’s profit was 59% more than the same period a year ago.

Revenue for the quarter was $24.32 billion, which fell short of the $24.67 billion that analysts expected. On January 13, the company cut prices in the US and China, its two biggest markets, by up to 20% on some models, leading many analysts to believe that demand had fallen due to high prices and rising interest rates.

Tesla said in its investor letter Wednesday that it would produce about 1.8 million vehicles this year, ahead of a predicted 50% annual growth rate. But the outlook section of the letter didn’t give an estimate of deliveries for the year. Previously Tesla has said its deliveries would grow at a 50% annual rate most years.

'Demand is a problem'

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a note to investors early Wednesday that demand is a problem for the company. "In our view, the price cuts are indeed a response to slowing incremental demand relative to incremental supply," he wrote.

Tesla also said it has rolled out its "Full Self-Driving" software to about 400,000 users, and that it recognized $324 million from Full Self-Driving software during the quarter. Despite its name, "Full Self-Driving" cannot drive itself, and Tesla warns drivers that they must be ready to intervene at any time.

The company said it knows there are questions about macroeconomics in the face of rising interest rates. "In the near term we are accelerating our cost reduction roadmap and driving towards higher production rates, while staying focused on executing against the next phase of our roadmap," the letter said.

Image: Germán & Co

Meta to reinstate Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts

By Katie Paul and Sheila Dang

Trump's Facebook, Instagram accounts to be restored

Jan 25 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) said Wednesday it will reinstate former U.S. President Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks, following a two-year suspension after the deadly Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021.

The restoration of his accounts could provide a boost to Trump, who announced in November he will make another run for the White House in 2024. He has 34 million followers on Facebook and 23 million on Instagram, platforms that are key vehicles for political outreach and fundraising.

His Twitter account was restored in November by new owner Elon Musk, though Trump has yet to post there.

Free speech advocates say it is appropriate for the public to have access to messaging from political candidates, but critics of Meta have accused the company of lax moderating policies.

Meta said in a blog post Wednesday it has "put new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses."

"In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation," wrote Nick Clegg, Meta's president of global affairs, in the blog post.

The decision, while widely expected, drew sharp rebukes from civil rights advocates. "Facebook has policies but they under-enforce them," said Laura Murphy, an attorney who led a two-year long audit of Facebook concluding in 2020. "I worry about Facebook's capacity to understand the real world harm that Trump poses: Facebook has been too slow to act."

The Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Free Press and other groups also expressed concern Wednesday over Facebook's ability to prevent any future attacks on the democratic process, with Trump still repeating his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.

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Climate Change May Usher in a New Era of Trade Wars

Countries are pursuing new solutions to try to mitigate climate change. More trade fights are likely to come hand in hand.

NYT by Ana Swanson

Jan. 25, 2023

WASHINGTON — Efforts to mitigate climate change are prompting countries across the world to embrace dramatically different policies toward industry and trade, bringing governments into conflict.

These new clashes over climate policy are straining international alliances and the global trading system, hinting at a future in which policies aimed at staving off environmental catastrophe could also result in more frequent cross-border trade wars.

In recent months, the United States and Europe have proposed or introduced subsidies, tariffs and other policies aimed at speeding the green energy transition. Proponents of the measures say governments must move aggressively to expand sources of cleaner energy and penalize the biggest emitters of planet-warming gases if they hope to avert a global climate disaster.

But critics say these policies often put foreign countries and companies at a disadvantage, as governments subsidize their own industries or charge new tariffs on foreign products. The policies depart from a decades-long status quo in trade, in which the United States and Europe often joined forces through the World Trade Organization to try to knock down trade barriers and encourage countries to treat one another’s products more equally to boost global commerce.

Now, new policies are pitting close allies against one another and widening fractures in an already fragile system of global trade governance, as countries try to contend with the existential challenge of climate change.

“The climate crisis requires economic transformation at a scale and speed humanity has never attempted in our 5,000 years of written history,” said Todd N. Tucker, the director of industrial policy and trade at the Roosevelt Institute, who is an advocate for some of the measures. “Unsurprisingly, a task of this magnitude will require a new policy tool kit.”

The current system of global trade funnels tens of millions of shipping containers stuffed with couches, clothing and car parts from foreign factories to the United States each year, often at astonishingly low prices. But the prices that consumers pay for these goods do not take into account the environmental harm generated by the far-off factories that make them, or by the container ships and cargo planes that carry them across the ocean.

A factory in Chengde, China. U.S. officials believe they must lessen a dangerous dependence on goods from China.Credit...Fred Dufour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

American and European officials argue that more needs to be done to discourage trade in products made with more pollution or carbon emissions. And U.S. officials believe they must lessen a dangerous dependence on China in particular for the materials needed to power the green energy transition, like solar panels and electric vehicle batteries.

The Biden administration is putting in place generous subsidies to encourage the production of clean energy technology in the United States, such as tax credits for consumers who buy American-made clean cars and companies building new plants for solar and wind power equipment. Both the United States and Europe are introducing taxes and tariffs aimed at encouraging less environmentally harmful ways of producing goods.

Climate Forward  There’s an ongoing crisis — and tons of news. Our newsletter keeps you up to date.

Biden administration officials have expressed hopes that the climate transition could be a new opportunity for cooperation with allies. But so far, their initiatives seem to have mainly stirred controversy when the United States is already under attack for its response to recent trade rulings.

The administration has publicly flouted several decisions of World Trade Organization panels that ruled against the United States in trade disputes involving national security issues. In two separate announcements in December, the Office of the United States Trade Representative said it would not change its policies to abide by W.T.O. decisions.

But the biggest source of contention has been new tax credits for clean energy equipment and vehicles made in North America that were part of a sweeping climate and health policy bill that President Biden signed into law last year. European officials have called the measure a “job killer” and expressed fears they will lose out to the United States on new investments in batteries, green hydrogen, steel and other industries. In response, European Union officials began outlining their own plan this month to subsidize green energy industries — a move that critics fear will plunge the world into a costly and inefficient “subsidy war.”

The United States and European Union have been searching for changes that could be made to mollify both sides before the U.S. tax-credit rules are settled in March. But the Biden administration appears to have only limited ability to change some of the law’s provisions. Members of Congress say they intentionally worded the law to benefit American manufacturing.

Biden administration is putting in place subsidies to encourage the production of clean energy technology in the United States, such as tax credits for consumers who buy American-made clean cars.Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

European officials have suggested that they could bring a trade case at the World Trade Organization that might be a prelude to imposing tariffs on American products in retaliation.

Valdis Dombrovskis, the European commissioner for trade, said that the European Union was committed to finding solutions but that negotiations needed to make progress or the European Union would face “even stronger calls” to respond.

“We need to follow the same rules of the game,” he said.

Anne Krueger, a former official at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, said the potential pain of American subsidies on Japan, South Korea and allies in Europe was “enormous.”

“When you discriminate in favor of American companies and against the rest of the world, you’re hurting yourself and hurting others at the same time,” said Ms. Krueger, now a senior fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

But in a letter last week, a collection of prominent labor unions and environmental groups urged Mr. Biden to move forward with the plans without delays, saying outdated trade rules should not be used to undermine support for a new clean energy economy.

“It’s time to end this circular firing squad where countries threaten and, if successful, weaken or repeal one another’s climate measures through trade and investment agreements,” said Melinda St. Louis, the director of the Global Trade Watch for Public Citizen, one of the groups behind the letter.

Valdis Dombrovskis, the European commissioner for trade, has pressed the United States to negotiate more on its climate-related subsidies for American manufacturing.Credit...Stephanie Lecocq/EPA, via Shutterstock

Other recent climate policies have also spurred controversy. In mid-December, the European Union took a major step toward a new climate-focused trade policy as it reached a preliminary agreement to impose a new carbon tariff on certain imports. The so-called carbon border adjustment mechanism would apply to products from all countries that failed to take strict actions to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

The move is aimed at ensuring that European companies that must follow strict environmental regulations are not put at a disadvantage to competitors in countries where laxer environmental rules allow companies to produce and sell goods more cheaply. While European officials argue that their policy complies with global trade rules in a way that U.S. clean energy subsidies do not, it has still rankled countries like China and Turkey.

The Biden administration has also been trying to create an international group that would impose tariffs on steel and aluminum from countries with laxer environmental policies. In December, it sent the European Union a brief initial proposal for such a trade arrangement.

The idea still has a long way to go to be realized. But even as it would break new ground in addressing climate change, the approach may also end up aggravating allies like Canada, Mexico, Brazil and South Korea, which together provided more than half of America’s foreign steel last year.

Under the initial proposal, these countries would theoretically have to produce steel as cleanly as the United States and Europe, or face tariffs on their products.

A steel plant in Belgium. Under the initial proposal, countries would theoretically have to produce steel as cleanly as the United States and Europe, or face tariffs.Credit...Kevin Faingnaert for The New York Times

Proponents of new climate-focused trade measures say discriminating against foreign products, and goods made with greater carbon emissions, is exactly what governments need to build up clean energy industries and address climate change.

“You really do need to rethink some of the fundamentals of the system,” said Ilana Solomon, an independent trade consultant who previously worked with the Sierra Club.

Ms. Solomon and others have proposed a “climate peace clause,” under which governments would commit to refrain from using the World Trade Organization and other trade agreements to challenge one another’s climate policies for 10 years.

“The complete legitimacy of the global trading system has never been more in question,” she said.

In the United States, support appears to be growing among both Republicans and Democrats for more nationalist policies that would encourage domestic production and discourage imports of dirtier goods — but that would also most likely violate World Trade Organization rules.

Most Republicans do not support the idea of a national price on carbon. But they have shown more willingness to raise tariffs on foreign products that are made in environmentally damaging ways, which they see as a way to protect American jobs from foreign competition.

Robert E. Lighthizer, a chief trade negotiator for the Trump administration, said there was “great overlap” between Republicans and Democrats on the idea of using trade tools to discourage imports of polluting products from abroad.

“I’m coming at it to get more American employed and with higher wages,” he said. “You shouldn’t be able to get an economic advantage over some guy working in Detroit, trying to support his family, from pollution, by manufacturing overseas.”

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UK energy regulator proposes late payment fine for Delta Gas and Power

Reuters

OSLO, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Britain's energy regulator Ofgem said on Thursday it planned to fine Delta Gas and Power 100,000 pounds ($123,870) for late payments into a scheme to support renewable energy development, arguing the company acted deliberately.

The company missed an Oct. 31 deadline to pay a Renewables Obligation (RO) bill totalling 530,809.20 pounds despite multiple reminders, a final order, and accruing late payment interest, Ofgem said.

Delta now has 21 days to respond to Ofgem's notice of intent, after which an official decision will made on whether to issue the penalty, the regulator said.Register for free to Reuters and know the full story

"Compliance and enforcement engagement is a resource and time intensive activity, and we take a very dim view of any repeat offenders," Ofgem said.

It is the second time energy supplier, which serves 1,690 business customers in Britain, has been subject to enforcement, after late payment for the 2020/21 period as well, the regulator said.

News round-up, Wednesday, January 25, 2023

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Quote of the week…

Natural Gas Shortages Hit China…

“It’s a perfect winter storm for Xi,” said Willy Lam, a longtime analyst of Chinese politics who is a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. “Nothing seems to be working, partly because nobody seems to have much cash.”

NYT

Leopard Tank

After weeks of indecision, Ukraine's allies have finally taken a stand. Several dozen Western battle tanks will be sent to help Kyiv's forces in the coming months. They will enable Ukraine to resist the onslaught of Russian troops and above all to regain the initiative in the coming spring, when the weather conditions will be more favorable for new mechanized maneuvers. The announcement was set to be made on Wednesday, January 25, by both the United States and Germany, who have managed to agree on a coalition, despite major initial differences.

Spiegel

TURKEY'S FUTURE UNCERTAIN AN ANNOUNCED DEJA VU FOR SWEDEN

After seven years of cooperation with independent organisations in Turkey, the Palme Centre is now leaving - following a decision by Sida - a country in deep crisis. Independent organisations in particular play an important role in Turkey in raising awareness of democracy and human rights among the population. But they are working against the wind. Turkey's state apparatus is crumbling. Helin Sahin of the Palme Centre writes in Dagens Arena.

Helin Salin, 22 July 2014

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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Natural Gas Shortages Hit China as Temperatures Plunge

The post Natural Gas Shortages Hit China as Temperatures Plunge appeared first on New York Times.

January 25, 2023

For many people across China, a shortage of natural gas and alarmingly cold temperatures are making a difficult winter unbearable. For Li Yongqiang, they mean freezing nights without heat.

“We dare not turn on the heat overnight — after using it for five or six hours, the gas stops again,” Mr. Li, a 45-year-old grocer, said by telephone from his home in northern China’s Hebei Province. “The gas shortage is really affecting our lives.”

The lack of natural gas, which is used widely across China to heat homes and businesses, has angered tens of millions of people and spilled over into caustic complaints on social media.

One person in Hebei Province wrote of waking early four nights a week because she was too cold to sleep despite two comforters on her bed. A viral video on China’s internet shows a high-rise apartment building in a different northern province, Shanxi, with the windows plastered with bright red posters of the sort often seen at Lunar New Year — except that these posters say “cold.”

Already this winter, hundreds of millions of people have caught Covid since Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, abandoned his “zero Covid” policy in early December. That policy had kept infections low but required costly precautions like mass testing — measures that exhausted the budgets of local governments. Many towns and cities now lack the money they need even to pay their own employees, much less to maintain adequate supplies of gas for homes.

The crunch, experts said, has exposed systemic weaknesses in China’s energy regulations and infrastructure, while showing the reach of the global market turmoil provoked last year by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has long been a major supplier of natural gas to China and many regions, particularly Europe. When Russia halted exports to Europe last summer, nations bid up world prices as they stockpiled supplies from elsewhere. A surprisingly warm winter has since helped push gas prices lower in Europe, but the bitter cold is now pushing them even higher in China.

At the same time, China’s provincial and municipal governments have reduced customary subsidies for natural gas consumption that used to keep a lid on heating bills. The national government has responded by telling local governments to provide heat, without giving them money to pay for it. As a result, gas is effectively being rationed, with households receiving the minimum needed for cooking food but very little for heat.

“It’s a perfect winter storm for Xi,” said Willy Lam, a longtime analyst of Chinese politics who is a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. “Nothing seems to be working, partly because nobody seems to have much cash.”

This is the third grass-roots energy crisis in just five years for Mr. Xi. His government abruptly banned coal-fired boilers across large areas of northern China in 2017 in favor of gas ones. It was a quick fix for air pollution, but residents soon found there was not enough gas for all the new boilers.

Then in 2021, the price of coal jumped higher than the regulated price at which utilities could sell electricity generated from coal. Reluctant to lose money, utilities temporarily closed power plants, contributing to a wave of blackouts.

Many in Europe worried last year how they would heat their homes this winter after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia reduced and then halted natural gas shipments to the continent.

But Europe has not just had an unusually warm winter. Gas companies there have raised prices, encouraging conservation, and governments have subsidized consumers to offset at least part of the extra cost. European companies also accumulated large stockpiles of extra gas last autumn. Worries have faded that families in Europe will not have enough natural gas to heat their homes this winter.

In China, the temperature has become unusually frigid. Over the weekend, numerous weather stations in northernmost China’s Heilongjiang Province reached the lowest temperatures they had ever recorded. Mohe City, the northernmost city in China, reached lows for three straight days below minus 50 degrees Celsius. China’s meteorology agency has issued nationwide warnings this week of very cold weather.

The government has taken notice of the gas shortages.

“Some localities and enterprises have not implemented measures to ensure the supply and price of energy for people’s livelihood,” Lian Weiliang, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning agency, said at a news conference on Jan. 13.

He added that the national government would hold local officials responsible for supplying homes, but did not indicate that Beijing would provide any money to help them do so. China will also build more natural gas storage sites, he said, to try to avoid similar problems in the future.

China actually has enough natural gas to make it through the winter, said Yan Qin, a China energy specialist at Refinitiv, a data company in London. The problem is that pricing regulations and declining subsidies are preventing gas from reaching households in northern China when temperatures plunge.

Much of the world has shunned Russian energy during the war, but China has stepped up its purchases of natural gas from Russia. Imports from Russia of liquefied natural gas, which can be transported by ship, jumped 42.3 percent last year, as Chinese companies bought cargos that businesses in Japan and elsewhere were no longer willing to buy because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Much of that Russian gas was imported at very high prices. But Chinese regulations strictly limit the price at which municipal and township gas distributors are allowed to sell gas to households. This winter, the wholesale cost of gas is up to three times the price that distributors are allowed to charge residential customers, said Jenny Zhang, a natural gas expert at the Lantau Group, an energy and power consulting firm in Hong Kong that specializes in mainland China.

Distributors are allowed to pass along extra costs to industrial and business users of gas, but not to individuals. So when prices rise, the companies have a big incentive to cut off homes and sell mostly to industrial and commercial users.

The problem is particularly acute in populous Hebei Province near Beijing. Many local gas companies have been at least partly privatized in recent years.

“They don’t have deep pockets when the gas price is swinging,” Ms. Zhang said.

And local governments in places like Hebei are under severe financial strain.

Their main source of revenue, sales of land leases to developers, dried up last year as the pandemic costs skyrocketed. The acreage leased to developers plummeted 53 percent last year as the real estate sector ran into financial difficulties.

Hebei Province, which wraps around three sides of Beijing and has 74.5 million people, has fared worst of all. The national government has been particularly insistent over the past five years that Hebei homes and businesses switch to gas because air pollution from their use of coal quickly wafts into Beijing. Many residents, including Mr. Li, the grocer, no longer have coal or coal-burning stoves.

Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital, was then among the first cities to run low on money for Covid testing last autumn. It moved quickly to abandon testing late last year as soon as Beijing began signaling flexibility on the “zero Covid” policy, only to end up with an immediate wave of cases. Now temperatures in the mountainous province are falling far below freezing.

With revenue dwindling and costs rising, local governments in Hebei have little financial muscle to resume subsidizing gas quickly for their customers.

“If they would be able to subsidize,” Ms. Qin, the China energy specialist, said, “we would not have this shortage.”

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Leopard 2 Tank

Ukraine's allies consent to crucial tank deliveries

After initially hesitating, Germany is expected to send a limited number of Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv, while Washington is formalizing the delivery of some 30 Abrams tanks.

Le Monde by Thomas Wieder (Berlin (Germany) correspondent), Piotr Smolar (Washington (United States) correspondent) and Cédric Pietralunga

Published on January 25, 2023

After weeks of indecision, Ukraine's allies have finally taken a stand. Several dozen Western battle tanks will be sent to help Kyiv's forces in the coming months. They will enable Ukraine to resist the onslaught of Russian troops and above all to regain the initiative in the coming spring, when the weather conditions will be more favorable for new mechanized maneuvers. The announcement was set to be made on Wednesday, January 25, by both the United States and Germany, who have managed to agree on a coalition, despite major initial differences.

According to several US media outlets and confirmed by European sources, Washington is set to officially announce the delivery of some 30 M1 Abrams tanks on Wednesday. This announcement would constitute a shift in the American position and a disavowal for the Pentagon. According to the Wall Street Journal, American president Joe Biden made this decision following a telephone conversation on January 17 with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The equipment would be acquired through a specific security assistance program for Ukraine, without drawing on current US military stocks.

For its part, Germany would deliver a limited number of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and, above all, authorize other countries that possess them to do the same, notably Poland. According to the news website Der Spiegel, which revealed the information late on Tuesday, this decision looked set to be officially announced on Wednesday by Scholz, during a speech to the Bundestag at midday. According to the German site, Berlin intends to send at least 14 Leopard 2 tanks from the Bundeswehr's stockpile, which has a total of 320 tanks, but only 200 of which are operational.

Until very recently, the United States had been reluctant to send heavy armored vehicles to Ukraine. Difficult to maneuver, complicated to maintain and fuel-hungry, the Abrams tanks could be a poisoned chalice for the Kyiv forces, explained Colin Kahl, the Pentagon's third in command, on his return from a trip to Ukraine on January 18. "The Abrams tank is no more difficult to use than a Leopard or a Leclerc, but its turbine consumes twice as much fuel as the diesel engines of its competitors, which requires much greater refueling logistics," confirmed Marc Chassillan, a French specialist in land armaments.

Pressure on the German Chancellor

Anxious to preserve the solidity of the Western bloc, the United States decided to take the step to unblock Germany's position. Concerned about its relations with Moscow, Germany had not wanted its Leopard tanks to be the only ones sent to Ukraine. This position had been clearly explained in recent weeks by Social Democrat (SPD) Chancellor Scholz, who was adamant despite intense pressure within his governing coalition, notably from the Greens and the Liberals (FDP). If the coalition failed, Moscow could have welcomed the first serious rift between the allies in a year, according to Western sources.

The pressure being put on Scholz by European leaders also played a role. For several weeks, Poland had been saying it was ready to deliver some of its army's Leopard tanks to Ukraine, but could not do so without authorization from their manufacturer, which has a contractual right of review over the re-export of their equipment. This conditionality, combined with Berlin's reluctance, exasperated Warsaw to no end. "The Germans are delaying, procrastinating and acting in a way that is difficult to understand," said Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on January 24, explaining that he wanted to create a "coalition of countries supporting Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks."

Eager to defuse this rise in tension, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) declared on Tuesday morning that countries wishing to deliver Leopards to Kyiv could "start training" Ukrainians in how to use these tanks. At the same time, it was learned that Poland had officially asked Berlin to allow it to send 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. "The request will be examined as a matter of urgency," the German government said, clearly anxious to calm Warsaw's impatience, which had said the day before that it was ready to dispense with Berlin's authorization to send its tanks to Ukraine.

Support of the US Congress

On the American side, the pressure also intensified in recent days in Congress, particularly among senators, where support for the Ukrainian cause remains very strong. The Republican Lindsey Graham and the Democrat Richard Blumenthal spoke side by side on Tuesday on this subject. For Graham, the delivery of tanks to Kyiv "is recognition of the fact that our current objective is to stand by Ukraine until the last Russian soldier leaves its territory. For his part, Blumenthal, who led a bipartisan delegation to Kyiv a few days ago, stressed the importance of a very rapid delivery of this equipment to facilitate the Ukrainian counter-attack to the Russian border.

In addition to Poland, a number of European countries have expressed their willingness to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine, which estimates that its troops need about 300 tanks to repel the Russians. During a trip to Brussels on Tuesday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte explained that the Netherlands is considering buying 18 Leopard 2 main battle tanks, which it leases from Germany, to provide them to Ukraine. "We leased them (tanks), which means we can buy them and donate (to Ukraine)," he said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. "But there is no decision yet," he added.

According to local media, Norway is also ready to give up 8 of its 36 Leopards. Finland has also said it is available. Military experts estimate the number of Leopards currently in service in European armies at around 2,000, making them by far the largest contingent of tanks on the Old Continent.

The Elysée Palace did not wish to comment on the possibility of sending German and American tanks to Ukraine on Tuesday evening. Officially, France is studying the possibility of delivering some of the 222 Leclerc tanks in its army to Kyiv. But the military is reluctant to do so, believing that they already have too few to train properly. Ministerial sources also indicate that the maintenance of these technological monsters, manufactured by the French company Nexter, can be complicated for a country at war, especially if the number of tanks delivered is limited. The United Kingdom was not deterred by this factor. On January 14, London announced the upcoming delivery of 14 of its Challenger 2 heavy tanks to the Kyiv army.

'A race of speed'

The only certainty is that these decisions mark a new stage in the war in Ukraine. Having become stalled in the autumn, the front has seen new movements in recent weeks. The Russians say they have conquered the town of Soledar, in the east of the country, and are carrying out unconfirmed new attacks near Zaporizhzhia, further south. For their part, the Ukrainians are at work in the Kreminna region in the north of the country. Various sources also report troop movements on both sides of the front to prepare new offensives.

Above all, Ukrainian and Western intelligence services anticipate a new mobilization of conscripts in Russia, after the one announced on September 21, 2022, by Russian President Vladimir Putin. This could result in the arrival of tens of thousands of new Russian soldiers on the front line in the coming months. This reinforcement would be difficult for the Ukrainians to contain without reinforcing their equipment. "Ukraine and Russia are engaged in a race of speed, in armament for the former, in mobilization for the latter," explained a military source.

"The first one to be ready will have a chance to grab the advantage over the other."

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Swedish Prime Minister Olofo Palme assassinated in Stockholm on Friday 28 February 1986.

Sweden-Turkey Spat Means Finland Might Take Unilateral Route

After a right-wing extremist burned a copy of the Koran in Stockholm over the weekend, Ankara is even less likely to approve Sweden's NATO bid anytime soon. Finland has said it might have to move ahead on its own.

Spiegel by Anna-Sophie Schneider

24.01.2023

A few dozen people gathered on Saturday not far from the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm. Far from being a normal protest, it was a targeted provocation. The notorious right-wing extremist politician Rasmus Paludan set fire to a copy of the Koran.

Paludan, head of the Islamophobic party Stram Kurs (Hard Line), has both Danish and Swedish citizenship. He poses as a defender of basic rights and claims that his protests are aimed at countering what he claims are Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s efforts at influencing freedom of speech.

His Saturday stunt triggered furious reactions from across the Muslim world. Turkey also immediately condemned the burning of the Koran, calling it an "anti-Islam act, which targets Muslims and insults our sacred values." It was, in short, immediately clear that Paludan’s "protest" would have far-reaching political consequences.

On Monday, Erdoğan went a step further, saying that the Swedish government cannot count on Turkish support for its efforts to join NATO. "It is clear that those who allowed such vileness to take place in front of our embassy can no longer expect any charity from us regarding their NATO membership application," Erdoğan said.

Relations between Ankara and Stockholm had already been tense. Turkey has long stood in the way of efforts by Sweden and Finland to join the trans-Atlantic military alliance. Both countries decided in May 2022, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to abandon their neutrality and join NATO.

Twenty-eight of 30 member states have since rubberstamped the two countries’ applications, with Hungary saying that it would be granting its approval next month. That leaves Turkey as the only NATO member left to give its consent. But despite numerous talks, Ankara hasn’t budged in months.

Turkey’s leaders accuse the Swedish government of supporting terrorist organizations, a reference to the Kurdish militia group YPG, which Ankara sees as an arm of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is banned in Turkey. The PKK is also considered to be a terrorist organization inside the European Union, but Brussels has declined expand that classification to the YPG. The NATO membership applications from Finland and Sweden handed Erdoğan a perfect opportunity to bring the issue back into the spotlight.

In addition, the Turkish president accuses Sweden of being a sanctuary for terrorists and is demanding that Stockholm extradite several members of the PKK along with opposition and Kurdish activists. A memorandum between Sweden, Finland and Turkey last summer was supposed eliminate the differences of opinion that exist between the countries. But the sense of relief triggered by the diplomatic triumph proved short-lived.

The document is formulated in such a way that it is open to a wide variety of interpretations. And Turkish leaders are still unhappy with how the Nordic countries have construed it. Ankara has sent careful signals that It would be open to Finland initially joining NATO without Sweden, but Helsinki was long opposed to doing so.

On Tuesday, however, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said that the time had come for his country to consider moving ahead without Sweden. He also told Reuters that talks needed to be put on hold for a time, following the events of the weekend. "A time-out is needed before we return to the three-way talks and see where we are when the dust has settled after the current situation," Haavisto told Reuters in a phone interview.

First Rapprochement, then Alienation

Given Turkey’s comments thus far, however, it doesn’t look as though a solution to the impasse will present itself anytime soon.

For Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, the NATO question has become a true test. The conservative politician has only been in office since mid-October. But even before he took office, Social Democratic governments before him had made concessions to Erdoğan, such as authorizing weapons exports to Turkey for the first time in 2019. Kristersson has sought to expand this delicate rapprochement. A constitutional amendment aimed at strengthening Sweden’s anti-terrorism laws was received positively in the Turkish press.

Indeed, Kristersson’s first trip abroad, taken in November, was to Ankara – a strong signal to Erdoğan. But that trip saw an event that in hindsight could be seen as the trigger of a new escalation in the NATO confrontation. The escalation that culminated on Saturday in the burning of the Koran.

During Kristersson’s trip, Erdoğan demanded yet again that a number of alleged terrorists be extradited. Specifically, he mentioned by name the former journalist Bülent Keneş. Erdoğan accuses Keneş of having taken part in the 2016 putsch attempt in Turkey. The Swedish prime minister made it clear that political leaders have no say on extraditions and that all such decisions are made by courts of law. And not long later, the highest court in Stockholm rejected Keneş' extradition.

It was a bitter defeat for Erdoğan, to which he responded with yet more demands. He insisted on the extradition of 130 people. Kristersson, who had already become the target of criticism for his attempts at rapprochement with Ankara, saw the demand as an afront. He said the Turkish request could not be granted.

The rejection from Stockholm was accompanied by increasingly provocative protests in Sweden against Turkey. On January 13, Kurdish activists hung an Erdoğan doll upside down in Stockholm and lit it on fire. Ankara responded by summoning the Swedish ambassador.

Following the burning of the Koran, the diplomat was once again summoned – for the second time in just a few days. But both the burning of the Koran and the burning of the Erdoğan doll are covered by Sweden’s freedom-of-expression rights. The legal consequences being demanded by Ankara are thus precluded.

Over the weekend, Kristersson tried to calm the tensions. Freedom of expression is a fundamental element of democracy, he wrote on Twitter, but "burning books that are holy to many is a deeply disrespectful act." He extended his sympathies to all Muslims who were offended by the stunt.

It didn’t work. After the burning of the Koran on Saturday in Stockholm, Swedish flags went up in flames on Sunday in front of the Swedish Consulate in Istanbul. Protesters called for a boycott of Swedish products and a meeting between the defense ministers of Sweden and Turkey was cancelled.

No Hope Until After the Election

Erdoğan will likely emerge as the greatest beneficiary of the uproar. The Turkish president is up for re-election in May, and the anti- Erdoğan protests in Sweden could very well give him a boost. Erdoğan has consistently benefited from anti-Western posturing in past elections, and this time around, the opposition isn’t likely to contradict him given Paludan’s antics.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the country’s largest opposition party, the CHP, blasted the burning of the Koran on Twitter, writing: "I condemn this fascism, which is the pinnacle of hate crime."

In short, it is difficult to imagine Turkey giving the green light to Sweden’s NATO membership aspirations before the presidential election.

"What happens after that depends to a certain extent on who wins," Paul Levin, director of the Institute for Turkish Studies at the University of Stockholm, told the news agency AFP. If Erdoğan remains in power, he said, Ankara’s ratification of Sweden’s NATO application may not happen for several years. The only thing that might speed things up, Levin believes, is if other NATO members make concessions to Turkey.

News round-up, Tuesday, January 24, 2023

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Quote of the week…

Kadri Simson, EU Commissioner for Energy, said: "The unprecedented energy crisis we are facing shows that we need to adapt the shape of the electricity market for the future to deliver the benefits of clean and affordable energy to all. I look forward to contributions from a wide range of stakeholders, which will help guide our legislative proposal this year.

ABC.es

Natural gas is the new “Russian winter” as a war element…

Norway does not consider an auxiliary international economic aid to lower the price of natural gas, as stated by the first Norwegian, Jonas Gahr Støre, on his official visit to Sweden on Sunday, August 28, 2022.

Emergency tax and energy-saving measures

Germany announces emergency measures to try to regain energy sovereignty

Today, the European political leadership speaks openly of an intervention in the electricity industry market, this interference refers to setting a ceiling on the price of the final service (Price-cap) of electricity. Undoubtedly, this measure will have an immediate contagion effect on other regions of the world, due to an economic recession.

However, current electricity prices are derived from a strategically restricted supply of natural gas due to a war conflict, which has increased the cost of producing electricity to current levels. In short, the increase in the price of electricity is beyond the responsibility of the electricity sector still less of the political authority.

Germán & Co

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

Elías, Mario Vargas LLosa's intelligent virtual assistant

Artificial intelligence, Vargas Llosa and the virtue of the invisible

Logroño, La Rioja

Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel laureate, said the other day, at the inaugural event of the IX Jornadas organised by Futuro en español, that the writer must "polish the invisible prose until writing merges with reality". We could also recall here the maestro Paco de Lucia, who did win the Prince of Asturias, although he never won a Nobel Prize, simply because the Swedish Academy gets the categories wrong, leaving art aside. The maestro said that since he was a child he practised eight hours a day to master a technique with the ultimate idea of forgetting about it so that it would not limit his ability to express himself. Mastering a tool so as not to focus on it, so that it merges with his dialogue.

In the panel on artificial intelligence in Spanish

They might as well have both talked about technology: melting it down to make it invisible, giving software the value of the tool it should be, instead of raising it as the keystone and overvalued cornerstone of any current agreement on progress. We already lived through this bubble with the advent of computers, desktops, laptops, dotcoms, mobile phones and certainly before all this, according to chronicles of times past. And now it is the same circus with artificial intelligence (AI). It was born 70 or almost 100 years ago, depending on whether we assign its inception to Turing, McCarthy, IBM or any other personality.

The writer must polish the invisible prose until writing merges with reality.

Mario Vargas Llosa

As in some cases of collective progress, polygenesis over a period of time on a concept that evolves makes it impossible to give a single name and surname, no matter how much pressure is exerted by interested sectors. And in all these years we have seen a parade of concepts and techniques under this umbrella: neural networks, machine learning, learning analytics, heuristics, Bayesian networks, expert systems, cognitive modelling and a long etcetera.

On the panel on the future of education

Recently many people have been talking about AI in education and I keep thinking that, for a change, we teachers are too late. AI has been around for decades and has been applied in a very worthy way to estimate the future, to predict the most varied things: the weather, the stock market, migrations, the evolution of diseases or viruses, maintenance needs, troop movements and even chess games. Talking to my colleagues in education and research, at conferences and various meetings, we realise that teachers want to incorporate these tools, but they are afraid of the complexity of these tools. Beyond moral, ethical and legal considerations, which there are, the teacher finds any AI software complicated to learn, to configure and even to use on the ground. And this is where the bubble arises.

Mastering a tool so as not to focus on it, so that it merges with its dialogue.

Paco de Lucía

It seems that an interested sector complicates the product unnecessarily with the aim of over-pricing it, in the manner of a recalcitrant consultant, pointing out how necessary complicated and costly consultancy work is. A sector that could focus its efforts on improving and providing a service that is affordable and already translated for the average person. Advanced users will always exist, but that 20% of the market, if we listen to Pareto, should not govern the interaction with the other 80%. Just as it is not necessary to be a master mechanic to drive a car, it is not essential to learn cryptic terms to be a worthy user of artificial intelligence applied to any field, including education. The secret lies in improving the experience of teachers and students, simplifying and adapting services to their needs, and making all the technological paraphernalia transparent, like the prose of the Nobel Prize winner or the technique of the virtuoso.

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How commodity traders in Switzerland are benefiting from the war

According to the NGO Public Eye, the profits of Swiss fossil and agricultural commodity traders have soared since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

Le Monde by Serge Enderlin (Geneva (Switzerland) correspondent)

Published on January 24, 2023

War profiteer? The trading company Trafigura has made $7 billion (€ 6.45 billion) in profits in its 2022 fiscal year, twice as much as its previous record, in 2021. Covid-19, the war in Ukraine: The more the planet suffers, the more the traders cash in.

This is a paradox that does not trouble the Australian Jeremy Weir. Since 2014, he has been the boss of the company which is one of the principal brokers and charterers of black gold on the planet. Its trading activities are based in Geneva. "We have once again masterfully managed extreme market volatility across a wide range of commodities, and delivered outstanding results regardless of market conditions," he said.

The Swiss NGO Public Eye employed a less managerial language. On Thursday, January 19, it published a report on the ultra-lucrative commodities trading business in Switzerland. "While millions of people are under threat from acute food and supply insecurity caused by rising food and energy prices, commodity traders are booking historic record profits by taking advantage of market disruptions," the NGO said.

Flow growth

Just like its competitor Trafigura, the Vitol Group, the world's leading oil trading company, has also already broken through its own ceiling, with $4.5 billion in profits for the first six months of 2022, compared with $4.2 billion for the twelve months of 2021. The Gunvor company, for its part, has announced a fourfold increase in profits for the first half of 2022 compared with the first half of 2021.

It was co-founded by the Russian oligarch Gennadi Timchenko, a close associate of Vladimir Putin who is on all the Western sanctions lists. For a long time, the high society of Geneva has benefited from his generosity through Neva, his wife's philanthropic foundation. The man officially sold his shares in Gunvor to his Swedish business partner, Torbjörn Törnqvist, shortly after Russia annexed Crimea in the spring of 2014.

One commodities giant, however, outpaced  all others – Glencore (oil, gas, coal, minerals, metals, etc.). According to the Financial Times, the group based in Baar, in the mild tax climate of the Alemannic micro-canton Zug (central Switzerland), is "one of the biggest winners from the turmoil on the commodities markets unleashed by the war in Ukraine." It saw its profits grow by 846% to $12 billion in the first half of 2022 year-on-year.

Contrary to assumptions made at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, all indications are that commodity flows have not dried up, quite the opposite. The exponential increase in profits made by trading players would even tend to prove that this growth is not only due to the rise in prices. Clearly, the war has also led to an increase in the volumes traded in Switzerland.

A legal framework considered lax

Whether they "deal" in energy commodities (oil, gas, coal) or agricultural commodities (grain), none of the international operators based in the Swiss Confederation publishes precise figures that would provide details of their operations. "Because of that opacity, which is nothing other than a political choice," Public Eye has established its own estimates of the significance of the traders in the Swiss economy

In roughly a decade, the Alpine country has become the world's largest commodities trading center, overtaking London, without the goods ever physically passing through the shores of Lake Geneva. At least half of the world's grain trade takes place there, as does 40% of the coal trade, while one out of every three barrels of oil on the planet is sold in Geneva.

In roughly a decade, Switzerland has become the world's largest commodities trading center

The sector alone now accounts for 8% of Switzerland's gross domestic product, on par with the financial center, but ahead of the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. The financial center has been regulated since 2007 by a market surveillance authority, after Switzerland had gone through difficult years under double pressure from Europe and, above all, the United States. That, however, is still not the case for the trading sector, which benefits from a legal framework that is considered lax.

That Swiss exception has so far not given rise to any political will to clarify the situation. Only the Zurich Green MP Balthasar Glättli has taken up the issue. In September 2022, he submitted an initiative to the National Parliament in Bern, calling for "significant windfall profits resulting from the war against Ukraine" to be subject to a higher federal tax rate. But in Switzerland, most taxes are levied at the cantonal level, resulting in constant tax underbidding between cantons to attract international players.

France's elusive promise: Cutting nuclear power to 50% of electricity production

At first, France planned to cut the share of nuclear power in its electricity production to 50% by 2025. Then, 2035. Now, the target looks set to be scrapped altogether.

Le Monde by Adrien Pécout

Published on January 24, 2023

The French state's inconsistencies on nuclear power can be expressed in a single percentage, originally one of the 60 electoral commitments made by candidate François Hollande ahead of the 2012 presidential election. That promise was to reduce the share of nuclear power in France's electricity production to 50%. But in 2021, the figure stood at 69%, down from 75% a decade ago. Ahead of the 2012 legislative elections, this promise had also helped seal the victorious alliance between the Socialists and the Greens. The promise became law in 2015, under Hollande's presidency, with a "horizon" set for 2025. Four years later, under President Emmanuel Macron, the "horizon" was postponed to 2035.

"This measure primarily has a declarative value," explained a person familiar with the inner workings of Hollande's Socialist government. "The horizon, when you approach it, moves further away." In a speech on the environment in November 2018, Macron stated that this percentage had been "brandished as a political totem", but that after a "pragmatic expertise", it had turned out to be "unattainable" by 2025.

Pushed back by a decade, the "totem" finds itself, even today, threatened to the point of risking obliteration. Its critics are already interpreting this as a sign that nuclear energy is back in favor. Which does not necessarily mean that the goal of reducing the share of nuclear power in the electricity mix out of reach. That will also depend on the State's capacity to speed up the production of wind and solar energy.

From ceiling to floor

The question is back on the table sooner than expected. On Tuesday, January 24, the Sénat will vote on a bill aiming to simplify administrative procedures for the construction of new nuclear reactors. Amended by the right-wing Sénat majority, the bill now plans to set a new energy policy. Rather than cutting nuclear power down to half of all electricity production, the new target is to "maintain the share of nuclear power in electricity production at more than 50% until 2050". The ceiling would turn into a floor.

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According to Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher, such a decision would be premature. But the government itself proposed to remove the 50% target. Their amendment, which was rejected by the Sénat, sought to include a vaguer goal, defined as "diversifying the electricity mix, aiming for a better balance between nuclear and renewable energies". Some observers believe the proposal was primarily a political play before sending the bill to the Assemblée Nationale, as way of pleasing pro-nuclear MPs, particularly on the right.

When contacted, the minister's entourage justified its "objective of diversifying the energy mix without setting a reference figure" by saying it was better to wait for the conclusions of public debates on energy consumption and the construction of new nuclear reactors. In the second half of the year, Parliament will discuss the "programming law" on energy and climate which sets policy goals over a timespan of several years. The 2019 energy-climate law had set a deadline on July 1 for this new programming law, but the pension reform will take up most of the legislative agenda until then.

Promised shutdowns

"The share of renewable energies will increase" over the decade, according to the same government source, insofar as the inauguration of any new nuclear reactor is envisaged at the earliest for 2035 – apart from the eternally pending EPR reactor in Flamanville, Normandy, where construction began in 2007, but which will only be functional in 2024 at the earliest.

A decade ago, the mood was more one of promised closures. In November 2011, eight months after the Japanese disaster at Fukushima, the governing agreement signed by the Socialists and the Greens targeted a "progressive" closure of 24 out of the 58 working reactors. The first ones to shut down, with "immediate" effect, were meant to be the two units at Fessenheim plant along the German border. They eventually were decommissioned – in February and June 2020, well after Hollande left office.

His successor Macron initially followed in the same direction. In 2018, he announced the definitive shutdown of 14 reactors by 2035, including those at Fessenheim. These are 14 closures are written into law, as they were included in the pluriannual energy programming law of April 2020.

A disoriented industry

In the meantime, the war in Ukraine and soaring energy costs caused the matter to be reconsidered. Nearing the end of his first term, Macron announced in February 2022 that France would relaunch its nuclear industry, citing the need for low-carbon electricity.

Not only did he announce the building of six to 14 new reactors – he also opened the door for an extension of the lifetimes of all existing units beyond 50 years, contradicting his previous announcements on closures. "I hope that no nuclear reactor in a state of production will be closed in the future, given the very significant increase in our electricity needs, unless, of course, safety reasons were to prevail," he said.

"As it stands, the percentage is vague and unquantified, everyone can interpret it as they wish"– Boris Solier, lecturer at the University of Montpellier

The contradictory promises of the past decade disoriented the industry, which was more readied for closing reactors than building them, according to Jean-Bernard Lévy, who was head of the state-owned electricity company EDF until August 2022. "We were told: 'your nuclear fleet will decline,'" he said.

The frequent revisions of the 50% target "reflect the strategic hesitations of the government regarding nuclear energy," said Bruno Villalba, a professor of political science at AgroParisTech. "When Hollande gave the environmentalists a pass with Fessenheim, he did not, for all that, program a series of closures."

During his first presidential campaign, in 2017, candidate Macron took up the promise to reduce the share of nuclear energy by 2025. The energy chapter of his policy platform had been co-ordinated by former Socialist MP Arnaud Leroy, who was subsequently appointed to head ADEME, the government agency for environmental transition. The goal was "difficult" to fulfill, admitted then environment minister Nicolas Hulot as early as November 2017. "I prefer realism and sincerity to mystification," he added.

Lack of precision

The 50% figure always lacked precision, for the simple reason that the energy legislation does not define the goal with an absolute value. It was born from the need to reach a compromise between the Greens, who wanted to abandon nuclear power, and the Socialists, who wanted to preserve the industry. It was a political target more than anything – "A goal or massive and structural reduction for the first time since the installation of the nuclear facilities [in the 1970s], without new construction," said Green MEP David Cormand, who was involved in crafting the agreement with the Socialists.

Another key goal, from the outset, was to reduce dependence on nuclear energy in the event of problems (such as the corrosion observed in recent months in some reactors) and to encourage investment in renewable energy.

"As it stands, the percentage is vague and unquantified, everyone can interpret it as they wish," according to Boris Solier, lecturer at the University of Montpellier, a specialist in energy economics. And for good reason: The more electricity production increases, the heavier the 50% benchmark would weigh in absolute terms.

But since 2015, the law on the energy transition for green growth sets a better-defined ceiling: It limits the maximum power of the French nuclear fleet at 63.2 gigawatts (GW). This regulation was meant to force EDF to shut down the Fessenheim power plant in exchange for the launch of the Flamanville EPR reactor, which is still pending. "A law on energy transition that really followed the goal of reducing the share of nuclear power should have included a gradual decrease in this ceiling. That solution was not chosen," said former environment minister and Green politician Cécile Duflot.

Coupled to wind and solar energy

That ceiling is now likely to be removed by another amendment from the Sénat's right-wing majority. Some experts say that would be a non-issue, because the ceiling seemed compatible with all models for 2050, alongside a massive deployment of wind and solar power, according to the analyses from grid operator RTE.

Assuming that some of France's nuclear reactors – 37 years old on average – are still functioning by then (24 GW of the current 61 GW, with the oldest reactors due to close), and if 14 new reactors are built along with several small modular SMRs (a total of around 27 GW), the combined power of the nuclear plants would still be lower than the 63.2 GW limit currently written in law..

"Even with 14 new reactors, the share of nuclear power will not exceed 50% by 2050," Minister Pannier-Runacher told the Sénat. But for 2035, that remains to be seen.

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Is Venezuela back on its feet?

by Elias Ferrer, 20 January 2023

The oil market determines the fortunes of Venezuela’s leaders.

L.C.Nøttaasen

As I roamed around Caracas in November, I could not help but become frustrated by the traffic jams. Just two years ago, drivers could hardly get any petrol. In 2020, unable to produce its own fuel, the oil-rich country had to wait for Iranian tankers to bring the refined product. But in shops across the city, full shelves contrasted with the infamous images from just a few years ago. Prices were often displayed in US dollars rather than the national currency, bolivars. Malls, supermarkets and restaurants were full of customers. I was puzzled, as many could afford $18 for a burger and chips at Puerkos, a popular fast-food chain.

During this stay, I witnessed the ‘clásico’: Venezuela’s main baseball rivals, Leones and Magallanes, played before a packed stadium, with energetic fans drinking pints of beer and splashing them on each other. My local friends said it was nice to see the seats fill up again. In the depths of the crisis that wreaked havoc on the country, few could afford to enjoy themselves at stadiums.

The recovery was evidently unequal. On the wealthier east side of Caracas, where Ferrari opened a new franchise last year, locals were building new fancy homes and offices. The international front was also changing. As I landed in Venezuela, the country’s ruler Nicolás Maduro attended COP27 and had a short exchange with Emmanuel Macron. Between handshakes and smiles, the French president offered to call his counterpart after the meeting.

The new normal

Since economic troubles started around 2014, between 5 and 7 million people have left the country, with many sending much needed remittances back home. US dollars have become widespread, slowing inflation as parts of the economy stay unaffected from the local currency’s downturn. Oil production has timidly picked up and, crucially, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the US and Europe are once more interested in buying it, after having banned Venezuelan oil as part of a broader an economic blockade. The Venezuelan state has also sought to increase domestic production and, most importantly, encourage other exports.

In this vein, mining has become an important source of export revenue. The country’s soil is abundant in gold, cobalt, iron, bauxite and diamonds but, with the discovery of oil in the early 20th century, swathes of Venezuela’s interior were depopulated and much of its vast mineral wealth remained untapped. While some foreign corporations were interested in exploiting these minerals, their worth was small in comparison to the revenues brought in by black gold. I spoke to a government official from Ciudad Guayana, in the mineral-rich Orinoco basin. He told me that gold is flown from there to a Congolese mining firm, which manufactures ingots, to pay for imports in lieu of cash. Turkish firms have also been involved in processing Venezuelan gold ore. Still, given that this trade is intended to counter sanctions, it is hard to know the details. Journalists from the Wall Street Journal, the Times and the BBC have offered numbers, but they are not able to know with certainty.

Maduro’s socialist-styled government has given concessions to local and foreign businesses. Many price controls have been removed, and state-owned firms are now issuing a minority of shares in the national stock market. Special economic zones are being prepared, for instance in Tortuga Island, in a bet to bring back international tourism. In the year up to August 2022, the bolivar saw a period of surprising stability. Most investors, however, are wary of the risks, and have a bad memory of expropriations, bond defaults and hyperinflation. Even if the economy is recovering, it is still far from what it once was. At $82.15bn, Venezuela’s GDP is still 62% lower than in 2014, when the crisis began, according to IMF figures. It is true that most Latin American economies are yet to return to the abundance afforded by the commodities boom between 2000 and 2014, but no other has fallen so deep as Venezuela’s.

The official inflation rate for the first 11 months of 2022 is 145%. In relative terms, this is good news to those used to six-digit figures. According to the official rate, on January 1st, 2022 $1 was equivalent to Bs4.60, but by December 1st it had risen to 11.25 bolivars. I paid $5 for a traditional arepa plus a drink. At the start of the year, that would have been 23 bolivars. Yet as I sat down at the table, the price had become 56.25 bolivars. Many workers, especially in the public sector — including teachers and doctors — are paid in bolivars, and rapidly lose their spending power by the day. Meanwhile, business owners or the self-employed can demand to charge only in dollars, and can therefore afford to have a more stable lifestyle.

Products from global conglomerates, from Mars Incorporated and Nestlé to Mexico’s Bimbo fill the shelves to the brim in supermarkets and bodegones — local shops that flourished by selling foreign items during shortages in the economic crisis. Still, prices are only affordable to those with dollar incomes. The poor majority relies on a monthly subsidised food package and buying from street markets where they can procure fruit, vegetables and the staple corn flour. Prices are abysmally different for different people; I bought two kilograms of fresh produce for the equivalent of $1.5. This was cheap for me, and for Venezuelans who earn in dollars. However, the monthly minimum wage is Bs130, which at the end of November equalled $11.56.

All-in on oil

The political fortunes of Venezuela’s presidents have historically depended on the oil market. Hugo Chávez, whose presidency lasted from 1999 to 2013, rode the commodities boom. Under his presidency, Venezuela’s GDP quadrupled. In 1998, the year Chávez won his first election, GDP stood at $91.8bn. In 2012, the year before he passed away in office, he saw the figure reach its highest peak at $372.75bn. His project, the ‘Bolivarian revolution’, brought education, health and housing to many of the country’s poor, alongside other subsidised services. He also offered poorer countries and communities fuel at discounted prices.

In 2013, the ‘OPEC basket price’ for oil — Venezuela is a member of the club — stood at $109. Prices only fell from there, and sharply. As Chávez died, then-vice president Maduro stepped in, taking the full hit. In 2016 the same benchmark price was at $40.76. The regime that could pay for everything it wanted was now cash-strapped. At first, the response was to print bolivars to pay the exorbitant bill, but that became the catalyst for the extreme hyperinflation that has made Venezuela infamous.

From 2015, US-led international sanctions started hitting Venezuela’s economy. Individuals were targeted, but the country as a whole was effectively blockaded. Among other measures, the government was cut off from debt and equity markets, Venezuelan oil was banned in the US and overseas assets were frozen. Western banks withheld reserves and refused to process payments. Citgo, a sizable subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company (PDVSA) in the US, was seized and many of its assets liquidated. In a move that later proved ironic, Texan refineries were repurposed to process Russian oil, as it was of a similar grade. The sanctions and low oil prices not only hit government coffers, but also PDVSA’s capacity to sustain its operations. For a few years, having the world’s largest known oil reserves meant little.

In 2019, the economy was in full collapse with little export income, hyperinflation and asphyxiating sanctions. The Trump administration recognised the then-head of the national assembly and opposition figure Juan Guaidó as interim president until free and fair elections were held. A coalition of Western and Latin American countries followed suit in recognising Guaidó and sanctioning Venezuela. Maduro was no longer ‘president’ but an illegitimate ‘usurper’. Isolated and unpopular, it seemed like Maduro’s days were numbered.

Oil is back on the table

Now, Maduro’s status as a pariah seems to be ending. Most of the Latin American governments that once called for his removal have been ousted by their electorates. Brazil, Colombia and Argentina are the most notable cases. Though not allies of Maduro, they are reopening trade and embassies. This year, Macron also publicly called for the US to allow for Venezuelan fossil fuels in Europe. As recently as 2019, France had recognised Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president.

This year, the Biden administration has sent at least two delegations to negotiate with Maduro, who is once again ‘president’ in Western discourse. He was not invited to this year’s Conference of the Americas, though Guaidó was also shunned. When asked about the absence of Venezuela’s ‘interim president’ in a press conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked, ‘Who?’ and failed to acknowledge him.

The Biden administration is toeing a thin line. On one hand, it cannot simply turn around and declare Maduro a friend now that Russia is the official enemy. On the other, Texan refiners and European consumers need Venezuela’s oil and gas fields running. As of today, forcing regime change seems unlikely. By lifting some sanctions, the US has brought chavistas and the opposition together at the negotiating table in Mexico. The aim is to bring about ‘free and fair’ elections; the US could judge them not to be adequate and reimpose sanctions. So far, the Biden administration has opened up on the energy front. Chevron has been given permission to pump Venezuelan oil, and European firms Repsol and Eni to ship it home to repay debt. Additionally, frozen assets worth $3bn in Western banks have been freed up to be invested in health, education and infrastructure under the UN’s supervision.

Brussels launches public consultation on decoupling gas prices from electricity tariffs

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Background information

Natural gas is the new “Russian winter” as a war element…

by Germán & Co

Norway does not consider an auxiliary international economic aid to lower the price of natural gas, as stated by the first Norwegian, Jonas Gahr Støre, on his official visit to Sweden on Sunday, August 28, 2022.

Emergency tax and energy-saving measures

Germany announces emergency measures to try to regain energy sovereignty

Today, the European political leadership speaks openly of an intervention in the electricity industry market, this interference refers to setting a ceiling on the price of the final service (Price-cap) of electricity. Undoubtedly, this measure will have an immediate contagion effect on other regions of the world, due to an economic recession.

However, current electricity prices are derived from a strategically restricted supply of natural gas due to a war conflict, which has increased the cost of producing electricity to current levels. In short, the increase in the price of electricity is beyond the responsibility of the electricity sector still less of the political authority.

In a spokesman for the Kremlin last week where Europe was threatened about how difficult it would be to face the coming winter. Yes, we conceive this statement only by analyzing the present, we are understanding the message very badly. Why?? The underlying message was to remind European politicians of the importance of the Russian (European) winter when bogged down and then defeating the Nazi invading forces as one of the fundamental milestones to end World War II. Natural gas is the new “Russian winter” as a war element. Therefore, this is the reason why the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) issued an almost instantaneous statement referring to this issue: European Winter 2022.

(Kremlin, gas supplies hampered only by EU sanctions – Politics – Nuova Europa – ANSA.it)

(NATO – Opinion: Statement by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the International Crimea Platform, Aug 23, 2022)

What is the big question in this situation? The answer is its elongation in time. Why? This is not a short-lived war-like six-day war (June 5-10, 1967). It is understood that this was the primary idea on the part of the invading forces, a huge miscalculation. We are facing a conflict, whose strategy is worn and torn, therefore, without light at the end of the tunnel for a long time. Regarding the uncertainty of the dispute, its duration, and destination, European politicians have been categorical and have riveted and riveted on this topic to such a frequency that it is difficult for the population to forget the reality to which it is subjected.

The European Union (EU) has announced urgent measures to curb this unsustainable inflationary situation that can easily lead to a systematic crisis. As a result of the current financial situation, a decrease in the value of housing in certain economies of the continent is expected of up to 20%, in the next 12 months, mainly due to lack of demand and inability to pay mortgage loans, a fact that has been aggravated by the increase in the base interest rate by one of the central banks in the area. An economic measure that is being questioned because it is counterproductive in the current situation, as a result of the fact that the current inflationary process does not correspond to overconsumption in the private sector or to excessive spending on the part of the treasury, variants that usually lead to speculative processes. On the contrary, the bullish trigger is due to the lack of supply of basic raw materials initiated during the pandemic and now aggravated by the war.

There is an urgent need in the political sphere to adopt measures to overcome this uncertain and overwhelming environment for the population (cost of living) and costs for industry in all diversities. The electricity sector, a cardinal component in the production chain and a fundamental variable in the economic sphere, is undoubtedly the most affected by the historic increase in fuel prices.

If you keep in mind the intransigent position of Russia and the brand-new statements of the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, on an official visit to Sweden last Sunday, where the Norwegian Prime Minister affirms that his country does not contemplate international economic aid measures as a mechanism to reduce the price of natural gas. It’s a clear message to the Government authorities of non-fossil energy-producing countries that must find solutions at their own disposal so as not to further deepen the crisis and avoid the pollution effect on other sectors of the economy.

Today the main headline of the newspaper El País of Spain reports on the fiscal measure that will be coming into force from October until the end of the year with the concern of stopping the inflationary process, the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez announces the substantial reduction of the Value Added Tax (VAT) from 25 to 5% to the price of natural gas in line with the provisions assumed in this matter for Germany and France. In contrary to Spain, the latter two included a strong energy-saving component in their packages. The appropriate measures are perhaps, insufficient in view of the magnitude of the current economic crisis. I understand that the fiscal provision adopted today by the Spanish government should have a broader significance that includes the entire chain of the electricity industry to have some reasonable expectations to navigate the current storm.

Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

Henry Kissinger Warns That AI Will Fundamentally Alter Human Consciousness

“I’ve become convinced that AI and the surrounding disciplines are going to bring a change in human consciousness, like the Enlightenment.”

Gizmodo.com

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Spain has already presented its proposal, harshly criticised by the electricity and wind energy sectors.

Written in Spanish by Javier González Navarro

ABC.es

Translation by Germán & Co

Madrid

23/01/2023

The European Commission today launched the announced public consultation on the reform of the European Union's electricity market. Spain submitted its proposals for this last week.

The consultation will run until 13 February and will focus on four main areas: reducing the dependence of electricity bills on the short-term price of fossil fuels - especially gas - and boosting the deployment of renewables; improving the functioning of the market to ensure security of supply and making full use of alternatives to gas, such as storage and demand response; strengthening consumer protection and empowerment; and improving market transparency, monitoring and integrity, a European Commission spokesperson explained yesterday.

Electricity companies criticise the energy reform proposed by the government because it generates "regulatory uncertainties".

The Spanish and European wind power industry cries out against the market reform proposed by Teresa Ribera

Kadri Simson, EU Commissioner for Energy, said: "The unprecedented energy crisis we are facing shows that we need to adapt the shape of the electricity market for the future to deliver the benefits of clean and affordable energy to all. I look forward to contributions from a wide range of stakeholders, which will help guide our legislative proposal this year.

News round-up, Monday, January 23, 2023

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Quote of the week…

NYT The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

The war in Ukraine has entered a new, more deadly and fateful phase, and the one man who can stop it, Vladimir Putin, has shown no signs that he will do so.

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

---

Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

---

Cooperate with ethical thinking…

---

What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

Henry Kissinger Warns That AI Will Fundamentally Alter Human Consciousness

“I’ve become convinced that AI and the surrounding disciplines are going to bring a change in human consciousness, like the Enlightenment.”

Gizmodo.com

Henry Kissinger Warns That AI Will Fundamentally Alter Human Consciousness

By George Dvorsky

Published, November 5, 2019

GIZMODO.com

Speaking in Washington, D.C. earlier today, former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger said he’s convinced of AI’s potential to fundamentally alter human consciousness

—including changes in our self-perception and to our strategic decision-making. He also slammed AI developers for insufficiently thinking through the implications of their creations.

Kissinger, now 96, was speaking to an audience attending the “Strength Through Innovation” conference currently being held at the Liaison Washington Hotel in Washington, D.C. The conference is being run by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which was set up by Congress to evaluate the future of AI in the U.S. as it pertains to national security.

Kissinger, who served under President Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War, is a controversial figure who many argue is an unconvicted war criminal. That he’s speaking at conferences and not spending his later years in a cold jail cell is understandably offensive to some observers.

“I’ve become convinced that AI and the surrounding disciplines are going to bring a change in human consciousness, like the Enlightenment.”

Moderator Nadia Schadlow, who in 2018 served in the Trump administration as the Assistant to the President and as Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy, asked Kissinger about his take on powerful, militarized artificial intelligence and how it might affect global security and strategic decision-making.

“I don’t look at it as a technical person,” said Kissinger. “I am concerned with the historical, philosophical, strategic aspect of it, and I’ve become convinced that AI and the surrounding disciplines are going to bring a change in human consciousness, like the Enlightenment,” he said, adding: “That’s why I’m here.” His invocation of the 18th-century European Enlightenment was a reference to the paradigmatic intellectual shift that occurred during this important historical period, in which science, rationalism, and humanism largely replaced religious and faith-based thinking. 

Though Kissinger didn’t elaborate on this point, he may have been referring to a kind of philosophical or existential shift in our thinking once AI reaches a sufficiently advanced level of sophistication—a development that will irrevocably alter the way we engage with ourselves and our machines, not necessarily for the better.

Kissinger said he’s not “arguing against AI” and that it’s something that might even “save us,” without elaborating on the details.

The former national security advisor said he recently spoke to college students about the perils of AI and that he told them, “‘You work on the applications, I work on the implications.’” He said computer scientists aren’t doing enough to figure out what it will mean “if mankind is surrounded by automatic actions” that cannot be explained or fully understood by humans, a conundrum AI researchers refer to as the black box problem.

Artificial intelligence, he said, “is bound to change the nature of strategy and warfare,” but many stakeholders and decision-makers are still treating it as a “new technical departure.” They haven’t yet understood that AI “must bring a change in the philosophical perception of the world,” and that it will “fundamentally affect human perceptions.”

AI Could Dramatically Increase Risk of Nuclear War by 2040, Says New Report

The common conception of a technologically enabled apocalypse foresees a powerful artificial…

A primary concern articulated by Kissinger was in how militarized AI might cause diplomacy to break down. The secret and ephemeral nature of AI means it’s not something state actors can simply “put on the table” as an obvious threat, unlike conventional or nuclear weapons, said Kissinger. In the strategic field, “we are moving into an area where you can imagine an extraordinary capability” and the “enemy may not know where the threat came from for a while.”

Indeed, this confusion could cause undue chaos on a battlefield, or a country could mistake the source of an attack. Even scarier, a 2018 report from the RAND Corporation warned that AI could eventually heighten the risk of nuclear war. This means we’ll also have to “rethink the element of arms control” and “rethink even how the concept of arms control” might apply to this future world, said Kissinger.

Kissinger said he’s “sort of obsessed” with the work being done by Google’s DeepMind, and the development of AlphaGo and AlphaZero in particular—artificially intelligent systems capable of defeating the world’s best players at chess and Go. He was taken aback by how AlphaGo learned “a form of chess that no human being in all of history ever developed,” and how pre-existing chess-playing computers who played against this AlphaGo were “defenseless.” He said we need to know what this means in the larger scheme of things, and that we should study this concern—that we’re creating things we don’t really understand. “We’re not conscious of this yet as a society,” he said.

Kissinger is confident that AI algorithms will eventually become a part of the military’s decision-making process, but strategic planners will “have to test themselves in war games and even in actual situations to ensure the degree of reliability we can afford to these algorithms, while also having to think through the consequences.”

Kissinger said the situation may eventually be analogous to the onset of World War I, in which a series of logical steps led to a myriad of unanticipated and unwanted consequences.

AI will be the “philosophical challenge of the future.”

“If you don’t see through the implications of the technologies... including your emotional capacities to handle unpredictable consequences, then you’re going to fail on the strategic side,” said Kissinger. It’s not clear, he said, how state actors will be able to conduct diplomacy when they can’t be sure what the other side is thinking, or if they’ll even be able to reassure the other side “even if you wanted to,” he said. “This topic is very important to think about—as you develop weapons of great capacity...how do you talk about it, and how do you build restraint on their use?”

To which he added: “Your weapons in a way become your partner, and if they’re designed for a certain task, how can you modify them under certain conditions? These questions need to be answered.” AI will be the “philosophical challenge of the future,” said Kissinger, because we’ll be partnered with generally intelligent objects that have “never been conceived before, and the limitations are so vast.”

Scary words from a scary guy. The future looks to become a very precarious place.

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Imagen: by Germán & Co inspired in the illustration of Rebecca Chew/The New York Times

A Brutal New Phase of Putin’s Terrible War in Ukraine

Jan. 21, 2023

NYT The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

The war in Ukraine has entered a new, more deadly and fateful phase, and the one man who can stop it, Vladimir Putin, has shown no signs that he will do so.

After 11 months during which Ukraine has won repeated and decisive victories against Russian forces, clawed back some of its lands and cities and withstood lethal assaults on its infrastructure, the war is at a stalemate.

Still, the fighting rages on, including a ferocious battle for the city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region. Cruel, seemingly random Russian missile strikes at civilian targets have become a regular horror: On Jan. 14, a Russian missile struck an apartment building in Dnipro, in central Ukraine. Among the at least 40 dead were small children, a pregnant woman and a 15-year-old dancer.

Both sides are now said to be bracing for a fierce new round of offensives in the late winter or spring. Russia has mobilized 300,000 new men to throw into the fray, and some arms factories are working around the clock. Ukraine’s Western arms suppliers, at the same time, are bolstering Kyiv’s arsenal with armor and air defense systems that until recently they were reluctant to deploy against Russia for fear of escalating this conflict into an all-in East-West war.

Over the past two months, the United States has pledged billions in new arms and equipment, including a roughly $2.5 billion package announced this week that, for the first time, includes Stryker armored combat vehicles. Other American weapons on their way to Ukraine include the Patriot, the most advanced American ground-based air defense system; Bradley fighting vehicles; armored personnel carriers; and artillery systems. NATO allies have thrown more weapons into the mix, including the first heavy tank pledged to Ukraine, the Challenger 2 heavy tank from Britain. Germany, historically reluctant to have its tanks used against Russia, is under heavy pressure to allow its allies to export its first-rate Leopard tank to Ukraine.

Germany did not make a decision at a meeting with Ukraine’s allies on Friday, in which countries reiterated their support for sending more advanced arms to Ukraine. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who led the gathering, noted that this was “not a moment to slow down” but to “dig deeper.”

That means the broad, muddy fields of Ukraine will soon again witness full-scale tank-and-trench warfare, this time pitting Western arms against a desperate Russia. This was never supposed to happen again in Europe after the last world war.

Ukraine and its backers hope that the Western arms will be decisive, giving Ukraine a better chance to blunt a Russian offensive and drive the Russians back. How far back is another question. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine talks of chasing Russia out of Ukraine altogether, including the territory seized by Russia in 2014 in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. The United States and its allies may prefer a less ambitious outcome, although U.S. officials are reportedly considering it as a possibility. But so long as Mr. Putin shows no readiness to talk, the question is moot. The job at hand is to persuade Russia that a negotiated peace is the only option.

This is why the coming fight is critical. But as Mr. Putin digs himself ever deeper into pursuing his delusions, it is also critical that the Russian people be aware of what is being done in their name, and how it is destroying their own future.

How much of this do Russians know or question? It is difficult to ascertain what Russians are privately saying or thinking, given how dangerous any open criticism of the “limited military operation” has become. Independent media have been stifled, thousands of protesters have been arrested, and many foreign correspondents, including those of The Times, were compelled to leave when it became illegal to dispute the official line about the war.

Still, at the very least, most Russians should be asking when and how this war will end. That is why this editorial is addressed in part to the Russian people: It is in their name that their president is waging this terrible and useless war; their sons, fathers and husbands are being killed, maimed or brutalized into committing atrocities; their lives are being mortgaged for generations to come in a state distrusted and disliked in many parts of the world.

The Kremlin’s propaganda machinery has been working full time churning out false narratives about a heroic Russian struggle against forces of fascism and debauchery, in which the Western arms are but more proof that Ukraine is a proxy war by the West to strip Russia of its destiny and greatness. Mr. Putin has concocted an elaborate mythology in which Ukraine is an indelible part of a “Russkiy mir,” a greater Russian world.

Isolated from anyone who would dare to speak truth to his power, Mr. Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine last year, convinced that the Ukrainians would promptly shed their “fascist” government. The start of the war stunned Russians, but Mr. Putin seemed convinced that a West wasted by decadence and decline would squawk but take no action. He and his commanders were apparently unprepared for the extraordinary resistance they met in Ukraine, or for the speed with which the United States and its allies, horrified by the crude violation of the postwar order, came together in Ukraine’s defense.

Mr. Putin’s response has been to throw ever more lives, resources and cruelty at Ukraine. And with the deplorable support of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, the president has elevated what he insists on calling his “limited military offensive” into an existential struggle between a spiritually ordained Great Russia and a corrupt and debauched West.

But Russians are aware that Ukraine was not widely perceived as an enemy, much less a mortal enemy, until Mr. Putin seized Crimea and stirred up a secessionist conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Until then, Russians and Ukrainians traveled freely across their long border, and many of them had family, acquaintances or friends on the other side.

And after all the poverty, repression and isolation under Soviet rule, Russians need to remember that until Mr. Putin began trying to change Ukraine’s borders by force in 2014, they were finally enjoying what those in other industrialized countries had long considered normal — the opportunity to earn decent salaries, buy consumer goods and enjoy vastly expanded freedoms to travel abroad and speak their mind.

The West they visited was not the caricature of depravity presented by Mr. Putin or Patriarch Kirill. And their Russia was hardly a pure and spiritual model, with the alcoholism, corruption, drug abuse, homophobia and other sins so familiar to all Russians.

In the end, the question is whether any of Mr. Putin’s lectures on history really provide a justification for the death and destruction he has ordained. Russians know the horrors of all-out war; they must know that nothing Mr. Putin has concocted remotely validates the leveling of towns and cities, the murder, rape and pillaging, or the deliberate strikes against power and water supplies across Ukraine. Like the last great European war, this one is mostly one man’s madness.

If Ukraine was not an enemy before, Mr. Putin has ensured it is one now. Battling an invader is among the most potent methods of forging a national identity, and for Ukraine, Russia as its enemy and the West as its future have become indelible elements. And if the West was indeed divided and indecisive on how to deal with Russia or Ukraine before, Moscow’s invasion has unified the United States and much of Europe in relegating Russia to a threat and an outcast, and raising a heroic Ukraine to a friend and ally.

Claiming to champion Russian greatness, Mr. Putin has turned Russia into a pariah state in many parts of the world. He claims Russia has everything it needs to withstand the cost of the war and sanctions. But according to a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank, Russia faces decades of economic stagnation and regression even if the war ends soon. Industrial production, even military, is likely to continue falling because of its reliance on high-tech goods from the West that it can no longer get. Many Western companies have left, trade with the West has dwindled, and financing the war is draining the budget. Numerous foreign airlines have ceased service to Russia. Add to that the millions of Russia’s best and brightest who have fled, and the future is bleak.

The true scope of Russia’s casualties is also being kept from its people. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in November that Moscow’s casualties were “well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded.” About 300,000 men have been pressed into cannon-fodder duty in the army and many more may follow.

It is possible that Mr. Putin might eventually seek a negotiated settlement, though that becomes ever more remote as the Ukrainians suffer ever greater destruction and loss, and as their determination not to cede an inch of their country deepens. For now, Mr. Putin seems to still believe he can bring Ukraine to its knees and dictate its fate, cost be damned.

In his public appearances, Mr. Putin still cultivates the image of a self-confident strongman. Where there are failures, it is the fault of underlings who do not obey his will. He played out that scene on Jan. 11, in his first televised meeting with government ministers in the new year, when he tore into Denis Manturov, deputy prime minister, over aircraft production figures Mr. Putin insisted were wrong and Mr. Manturov defended. Mr. Putin finally exploded, “What are you doing, really, playing the fool?” “Yest’,” Mr. Manturov finally said, the Russian equivalent of “Yes, sir.”

Russians have seen this act before in the Kremlin. They might do well to ponder whether, in this version, Mr. Putin is the omniscient czar and Mr. Manturov the bumbling functionary — the intended lesson — or whether they are being played for fools by Mr. Putin’s vanity, delusions and spitefulness.

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Image: Germán & Co

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White House Aims to Reflect the Environment in Economic Data

The Biden administration has set out to measure the economic value of ecosystems, offering new statistics to weigh in policy decisions.

NYT by Lydia DePillis

Jan. 20, 2023

Forests that keep hillsides from eroding and clean the air. Wetlands that protect coastal real estate from storm surges. Rivers and deep snows that attract tourists and create jobs in rural areas. All of those are natural assets of perhaps obvious value — but none are accounted for by traditional measurements of economic activity.

On Thursday, the Biden administration unveiled an effort to change that by creating a system for assessing the worth of healthy ecosystems to humanity. The results could inform governmental decisions like which industries to support, which natural resources to preserve and which regulations to pass.

The administration’s special envoy for climate change, John Kerry, announced the plan in a speech at the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland. “With this plan, the U.S. will put nature on the national balance sheet,” he said.

The initiative will require the help of many corners of the executive branch to integrate the new methods into policy. The private sector is likely to take note as well, given rising awareness that extreme weather can wreak havoc on assets — and demand investment in renewable energy and sustainable agriculture.

In the past, such undertakings have been politically contentious, as conservatives and industry groups have fought data collection that they saw as an impetus to regulation.

A White House report said the effort would take about 15 years. When the standards are fully developed and phased in, researchers will still be able to use gross domestic product as currently defined — but they will also have expanded statistics that take into account a broader sweep of nature’s economic contribution, both tangible and intangible.

Those statistics will help more accurately measure the impact of a hurricane, for example. As currently measured, a huge storm can propel economic growth, even though it leaves behind muddied rivers and denuded coastlines — diminishing resources for fishing, transportation, tourism and other economic uses.

“You can look at the TV and know that we’ve lost beaches, we’ve lost lots of stuff that we really care about, that makes our lives better,” said Eli Fenichel, an assistant director at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “And you get an economist to go on and say, ‘G.D.P.’s going to go up this quarter because we’re going to spend a lot of money rebuilding.’ Being able to have these kinds of data about our natural assets, we can say, ‘That’s nice, but we’ve also lost here, so let’s have a more informed conversation going forward.’”

Taking nature into economic calculations, known as natural capital accounting, is not a new concept. As early as the 1910s, economists began to think about how to put a number on the contribution of biodiversity, or the damage of air pollution. Prototype statistics emerged in the 1970s, and in 1994, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis proposed a way to augment its accounting tools with measures of environmental health and output.

But Congress ordered the bureau to halt its efforts until an independent review could be completed. States whose economies depend on drilling, mining and other forms of natural resource extraction were particularly worried that the data could be used for more stringent regulation.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.

“They thought that anything that measured the question of productivity of natural resources was inherently an environmental trick,” a Commerce Department official said afterward.

Five years later, that independent review was completed in a report for the National Academy of Sciences. The academy panel — led by the Yale economist William Nordhaus, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for his work on the economic impact of climate change — said the bureau should continue.

“Natural resources such as petroleum, minerals, clean water and fertile soils are assets of the economy in much the same way as are computers, homes and trucks,” the report read. “An important part of the economic picture is therefore missing if natural assets are omitted in creating the national balance sheet.”

While the United States lagged, other countries moved ahead with incorporating nature into their core accounting. The United Nations developed a framework for doing so over the last decade that supported decisions such as assessing the impact of shrinking peat land and protecting an endangered species of tree. Britain has been publishing environmental-economic statistics for several years as well. International groups like the Network for Greening the Financial System, which includes most of the world’s central banks, use some of these techniques for assessing systemic risk in the financial system.

Skepticism about including environmental considerations in economic and financial decision-making remains in the United States, where conservatives have disparaged investing guidelines that put a priority on a company’s performance along environmental, social and governance lines. The social cost of carbon, another measurement tool for assessing the economic impact of regulations through their effect on carbon emissions, was set close to zero during the Trump administration and has been increased significantly under President Biden.

Benjamin Zycher, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, expressed concern Thursday that the new approach would introduce a degree of subjectivity.

“I think there’s a real danger that if in fact they’re trying to put environmental quality values into the national accounts, there’s no straightforward way to do that, and it’s impossible that it wouldn’t be politicized,” Dr. Zycher said in an interview. “That’s going to be a process deeply fraught with problems and dubious interpretations.”

Few economic statistics are a perfect representation of reality, however, and all of them have to be refined to make sure they are consistent and comparable over time. Measuring the value of nature is inherently tricky, since there is often no market price to consult, but other sources of information can be equally illuminating. The Bureau of Economic Analysis has undertaken other efforts to measure the value of services that are never sold, like household labor.

“That’s exactly why we need this sort of strategy,” said Nathaniel Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a research and advocacy group. “To really develop the data we need so that it’s not subjective, and make sure we are really devoting the same quality control and focus on integrity that we do to other areas of economic statistics.”

The strategy does not pretend to cover every aspect of nature’s value, or solve problems of environmental justice simply by more fully incorporating nature’s contribution, particularly for Indigenous communities. Those concerns, said Rachelle Gould, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Vermont, will need to be prioritized separately.

“There are a lot of other ways nature matters that can’t be accounted for in monetary terms,” Dr. Gould said. “It’s appropriately cautious about what might be possible.”

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France will lower gas reservoir levels to provide 'breathing room'

Gas reservoirs, which are historically high, will be reduced for technical reasons, while risk of shortages in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war is declining.

Le Monde

Published on January 23, 2023

It's all a bit confusing. For months, gas reservoirs in France had to be filled at all costs, as quickly as possible, in order to compensate for the cessation of Russian gas supplies. Today, with that mission accomplished, with French underground gas stocks hovering at fill rates of around 79% (and 81% in Europe), industry experts are announcing that they will now have to lower the levels. The move is necessary in order to meet regulatory requirements and preserve the efficiency of their storage facilities.

The move is not surprising within the gas industry, which is used to carrying out this procedure – known as "underdrawing" – every year, especially between January and March. "This is part of the normal life of storage," said Thierry Trouvé, managing director of the transmission system provider GRTGaz, which, on Wednesday 18 January, outlined the outlook for the current winter. "Some storage facilities, namely aquifer formations, which are complicated to operate, require this kind of "breathing room" in order to maintain their performance for the coming winters," he said.

According to a spokesman for Storengy, Engie's storage-focused subsidiary, French reservoirs – currently at historically high levels – could see their rates drop to around 35% and 40%, by the end of this winter for aquifers, which represent three-quarters of French reservoirs. What is not subjected to the procedure, is the gas stored in the saline layers, which should be maintained at high levels of nearly 80%.

'Transported to neighboring countries'

What will happen to this gas if it cannot be fully used? "We are not going to burn it, nor put it in huge Butagaz bottles," one expert said ironically, pointing out that the winter is far from over. Moreover, imports could be reduced. "Shippers have the possibility to reduce the arrival of ships, which can be rerouted to other destinations," said Trouvé.

Another option is to "maintain deliveries and transport them to neighboring countries to contribute to the supply there. Along with Spain in particular, France took on the role of a "gateway" during the Russian crisis [following the invasion of Ukraine at the end of February 2022]," he added. After reaching record levels, in November and December 2022, deliveries of liquefied natural gas, which represents 75% of gas consumption in France as of January 15, have already begun to decline in 2023.

According to GRTGaz, the situation is therefore more serene than in September 2022, even if caution remains the order of the day. The same is true for electricity and its supply. "There is still a period (...), around the second half of February, [with] some risks, if we were to go through a significant and long cold snap, because the nuclear power plants will begin to decrease production," agreed Xavier Piechaczyk, chairman of the board of the electricity network manager RTE, on FranceInfo radio on Wednesday, January 18.

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In Lima, police violently storm a campus hosting protesters

Two hundred people were arrested during a police raid of San Marcos University, which was hosting protesters demanding the resignation of Peruvian president, Dina Boluarte.

Le Monde by Amanda Chaparro (Lima (Peru) correspondent)

Published on January 23, 2023

On Saturday, January 21, a police armored vehicle smashed through the doors of the campus of the National University of San Marcos in Lima. Maria (her first name has been changed), a 17-year-old student, was preparing meals for protesters who had come from various regions of Peru, mostly from the Andes. They had been staying for three days on the university campus. They had come to participate in the protest convened on Thursday in the capital to demand the resignation of Dina Boluarte. Boluarte is the acting president who succeeded Pedro Castillo after he was ousted, on December 7th, 2022.

Maria then started to run. Behind her, a column of a hundred men entered. They were determined to expel the protesters. Maria heard screams and saw people falling, while others were being beaten. Luckily, she managed to escape through one of the gates. "We were very scared," she explained on the phone. She was still shocked by the brutality of the operation. "Police officers threw tear gas canisters, we heard gunfire, I saw a peasant woman being hit in the head with batons, there was a helicopter flying over the campus. It was completely excessive and a disproportionate amount of violence."

A few moments later, tens of people were spread out on the ground, face down and handcuffed with their hands behind them. Most of them were taken to the criminal police department in Lima's historic center. A mother and her eight-year-old daughter were among them. The protesters were detained for theft and damage to public property. A smaller group of about 30 people was sent to the anti-terrorism police department.

"San Marcos" is one of the oldest public universities in South America, a melting pot of intellectual debates. Currently, in the university gardens, there are tents, mattresses and mountains of food that the inhabitants of Lima have brought in solidarity with the movement. Near the wall's gate, torn banners lay on the ground. You could see the messages written by the students: "The blood that has been spilled will never be forgotten." Next to them were photos of the faces of the protesters who have died in the south of the country since the conflict began on December 7. There are now at least 46 of them, most of them shot dead by the police and army.

Excessive intervention and arbitrary arrests

The violent police action at San Marcos University is evidence of the authoritarian turn taken by Dina Boluarte's government, which does not hesitate to intimidate, arrest and criminalize the protesters and their supporters. The government is doing this with the complicity of the country's main media groups. "The aim is to break the morale of the protesters and to break the movement. The government is sending them a message: don't come to the capital, you have no place to stay, we are going to arrest you and prosecute you," explained Omar Coronel, a sociologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

On Saturday, human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, denounced an excessive intervention without the presence of the Public Prosecutor's Office, arbitrary arrests (almost 200), and the lack of respect for the presence of lawyers and human rights violations. Some protesters have come from the south of the country on the Bolivian border and speak only Aymara. They have not had access to translators. Some women were forced to strip naked "to look for drugs in their private parts," said Jennie Dador of the National Coordination for Human Rights.

The intervention has sparked a wave of outrage in the country and may have the effect of increasing sympathy for the protest movement. According to the latest survey by the Institute of Peruvian Studies in January, 60% of the population said they understand the protesters. In Lima, only 52%, but "the urban middle classes of the capital" could take more action, said Omar Coronel.

On Saturday afternoon, another campus was the target of an operation of intimidation. Trucks full of police and military personnel were deployed in large numbers in front of the National University of Engineering, in the northeast of the city. This university has also been hosting protesters, students who have come from other regions. They were invited there by the rector himself, Pablo Alfonso Lopez-Cahu. The rector opened his arms to them as soon as they arrived in the capital on Wednesday. "You are welcome," he said. "This is your home, take care of it." Since then, a hundred young people have been sleeping on the premises every night.

'Democracy has been flouted'

Inside, volunteers were busy sorting the donations received and redistributing them: blankets, clothes and food. "It's crazy to see this solidarity," said Delia Valencia, a 21-year-old psychology student. "Look, this room is full, we're receiving food, cookies, drinks, and also first aid material, alcohol and bicarbonate" to treat the injured.

"The students come from Arequipa, Cusco and Puno," explained Leandro Gamez, a representative of the students from the National University of Engineering in Lima. These regions in the south of the country are the epicenter of the protests. "The police want to intimidate us to try and sabotage this impulse to give mutual aid," said the young woman, who explained that officers give traffic tickets to residents who stop in front of the building to leave their donations. These are maneuvers that do not frighten some people: "The protesters have come from far away and with very little stuff," explained an old lady who came to leave clothes. "Moreover, the police have confiscated some people's bags."

Victoria is holding her baby in one arm, a pack of water in the other. "It's the least we can do to help them," she said. "Dina Boluarte must resign. Democracy has been flouted. Where is the respect for human rights? Believe me, if I didn't have my baby and I had to die for my country, I would."

Saturday, in Lima, the protesters were at the city center for the third consecutive day. Some had gathered until late in the night in front of the premises of the criminal police department to demand the prisoners' release. But the protests show signs of running out of steam, and morale is down in the ranks. Some delegations are preparing to leave for the provinces to reorganize the troops and regain their strength.

In the south of the country, protests continue and the situation remains tense. A 62-year-old man was killed Friday evening in Ilave, in the region of Puno, where policemen were filmed shooting at protesters with pistols. Access to the Incan site of Machu Picchu has been closed until further notice, because the railroad was damaged there.

Dina Boluarte still refuses to resign. The majority right-wing Parliament supports her, while an investigation has been opened against her and three of her ministers for homicide.

Amanda Chaparro(Lima (Peru) correspondent)

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Frederick Florin/AFP

To go or not to go? Von der Leyen’s COVID committee dilemma

A European Parliament session on vaccines would refocus attention on von der Leyen’s texts with Pfizer’s CEO.

POLITICO EU bY CARLO MARTUSCELLI

JANUARY 20, 2023

There won’t be any severed horses’ heads but the European Commission president may soon receive an offer that she can’t refuse — at least without causing an institutional dust-up.

Last week, the coordinators of the European Parliament’s special committee on COVID-19 voted to invite Ursula von der Leyen to appear in front of the panel to answer their questions on vaccine procurement. 

It’s not a courtesy call. EU lawmakers want to shine a light on exactly what happened during those hectic months at the height of the pandemic in 2021, when the bloc was frantically searching for vaccine doses to protect its population from the coronavirus.

The committee’s chair, Belgian MEP Kathleen Van Brempt has said she wants full transparency on the “preliminary negotations” leading up to vaccine purchases — a reference to the Commission president's unusual personal role in negotiating the EU's biggest vaccine contract, signed with Pfizer and its partner BioNTech. An appearance would refocus attention on von der Leyen's highly contentious undisclosed text messages with Pfizer's chief executive.

By Clea Caulcutt

It's a topic von der Leyen has so far fiercely resisted opening up about — but the COVI committee invite could put the Commission president in a sticky situation.

All bark, no bite? 

On the face of it, von der Leyen could just say no. European Parliament committees don’t have many formal powers. They have no rights to compel witnesses to appear or to get them to tell the truth — and there’s no recourse if someone refuses to appear or lies in front of the committee.

Indeed, Pfizer’s Chief Executive Albert Bourla — with whom von der Leyen is reported to have conducted personal negotiations via text message — thumbed his nose at the committee more than once, and sent one of his employees instead.

Even when the Parliament does reel in a big name, the performance can be lackluster — like in the case of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who agreed to show up but then avoided answering most questions. That’s a far cry from how the U.S. Senate’s commerce and judiciary committees grilled the tech titan for hours. 

And the Commission president has already shown a penchant for being evasive when it comes the Pfizer negotiations, earning the Commission a verdict of maladministration from the European Ombudsman for its lack of transparency.

However, the fact that von der Leyen is an inter-institutional figure gives the Parliament more bite than with external guests — and may help tip the balance in the committee’s favour.

First, there’s precedent. While the Commission President usually appears in front of all MEPs at a plenary session such as in the annual State of the European Union speech, Commission presidents have appeared in front of committees in the past. Von der Leyen’s predecessor, Jean-Claude Juncker, for example, appeared in front of a special committee to answer uncomfortable questions over his role in making Luxembourg a tax haven. 

Secondly, the European Parliament is tasked with overseeing the EU’s budget. With billions of euros spent in the joint purchase of the vaccines, and part of those funds coming straight from the EU’s pockets, it’s hard to argue that there aren’t important financial considerations at play, and ones that the elected representatives of the EU should be allowed to scrutinize.

Then there’s Article 13 of the EU’s founding treaty, which calls for “mutual sincere cooperation” between the EU’s institutions. It’s a point that’s repeated in an inter-institutional agreement between the Parliament and the Commission, which states that the EU’s executive should also provide lawmakers with confidential information when it’s requested — like, for example, the contents of certain text messages.

The Commission has so far been tight-lipped. When asked last week about Ursula von der Leyen’s upcoming invite to the COVID-19 committee, a Commission spokesperson said “No such invitation has been received.”

Don’t shoot the messenger 

And, in fact, it's now up to European Parliament president Roberta Metsola to decide whether the invite will ever reach von der Leyen’s hands. The request is on her desk and, per protocol, any invitation to appear must come from the president’s office.

Metsola, who belongs to the same political group as von der Leyen (the center-right European People’s Party), confirmed to POLITICO that she has received a letter from the COVI committee and “will look at it.” “I cannot pre-empt what my reply will be to that committee,” she said.

As long as proper form is followed, Metsola should "pass on the message," said Emilio De Capitani, a former civil servant who for 14 years was secretary of the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee (LIBE).

“The question isn’t abusive,” said De Capitani.  

In theory, von der Leyen, who was elected to her role by the Parliament, relies on its mandate to stay there.

“There’s nothing strange about meeting with an organ of the Parliament,” the former Parliamentary official added. “Then it will be up to von der Leyen to ask whether the hearing is in public or, behind closed doors. She could also choose to address it in plenary.” 

For political operatives such as Metsola and von der Leyen, the optics of their actions are likely to play a major role in any decision. And this invite comes at the same time as the biggest scandal in the European Parliament’s history.

An assistant for one of the MEPs in the COVI committee said the drive for transparency produced by the unfolding "Qatargate" influence scandal gave extra force to the invite.

“It wouldn't have had the same result without Qatargate,” said the assistant. “If she says no, it will only make the problem worse.” 

Not everyone agrees. Detractors say the Parliament has lost its moral standing. And that even if none of the MEPs in the COVID-19 committee are implicated, the institution is still weakened on the whole.

“I think this [Qatargate] will make it less likely for von der Leyen to cooperate with the Parliament,” said Camino Mortera-Martinez, head of the Brussels office at the think tank Centre for European Reform. She said the Commission president is riding high after weathering a pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine.

“The European Parliament in theory could force von der Leyen to appear by threatening to dismiss her — but how can they do that in the current climate?”

This article was updated Friday morning to include comment from Roberta Metsola.

Eddy Wax contributed repoclosing Documents Quickly

“I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there,” the president told a reporter who asked if he regretted not divulging that classified material was found at his office before the midterms.

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News round-up, Tuesday, February 28, 2023

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Quote of the week…

—-Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in Davos, caught between radical environmentalists on one hand and pressure from Ukraine for Leopard heavy tanks on the other, sought to distance himself from the fray. The only head of state of a G7 country to have made the trip to Switzerland this year, he detailed his battle plan to make his country the world leader in the fight against climate change even while restoring its industrial competitiveness. He presented the strategy in martial terms.

"Most importantly, our transformation toward a climate-neutral economy – the fundamental task of our century – is currently taking on an entirely new dynamic," the chancellor said. "Not in spite of, but because of the Russian war and the resulting pressure on us Europeans to change." As proof of his country's dynamism and of Russian President Vladimir Putin's failure, he emphasized that Germany, which had been dependent on Russian gas supplies in the run-up to the offensive, had managed to become almost completely free of them in less than a year. (Le Monde)

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

Shocking: This is what Chile would be like if climate change continues, according to A.I. (La Tercera)

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Egor Kraft’s ‘Content Aware Studies’ series uses AI-generated videos and 3D printing to explore how machine learning reconstructs damaged antiquities

Trevor Good, courtesy of the artist and Alexander Levy Gallery, Berlin

Bringing a human touch to digital innovation in Europe

The artist in the science lab

The S+T+ARTS programme funds collaborations between science, technology and the arts. It’s enabling artists to tackle urgent issues, including our relationship to nature, big data and artificial intelligence.

by Maya Jaggi 

January 2023

Le Monde Diplomatique

Egor Kraft’s ‘Content Aware Studies’ series uses AI-generated videos and 3D printing to explore how machine learning reconstructs damaged antiquities

Trevor Good, courtesy of the artist and Alexander Levy Gallery, Berlin

When climate change protesters hurled tomato soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in London last October, they shouted, ‘What is worth more? Art or life [and] the protection of our planet?’ One Just Stop Oil activist claimed the protests kickstarted the conversation ‘so that we can ask the questions that matter’.

Whatever the publicity from these symbolic acts of vandalism, the implied opposition between art and environmental ethics is misleading. Artists have long been in the vanguard of raising public awareness of the fragility of nature. Judging by the fruits of a Europe-wide scheme to immerse artists in cutting-edge science and technology (roughly half these EU projects involve ecology) (1), the questions posed by this rising avant-garde are arguably more nuanced, profound and conducive to behavioural and political change than protesters’ shock tactics.

At the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels last month, laboratory-like installations by Haseeb Ahmed, an American artist based in Belgium, warned of the pharmaceutical pollution of water through human urine — a counterpoint to the city’s landmark Manneken Pis fountain with its urinating cherub near the Grand Place. One of these, The Fountain of the Amazons (alluding to legendary female warriors), demonstrates unintended effects on aquatic life of contraceptive hormones entering the water system: an artificial vagina squirts a pill per day into a vat of orange urine in which a mutant creature floats as though plucked from a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

In a companion artwork, A Fountain of Eternal Youth, human growth hormones ingested for their putative anti-ageing properties are dripped via an IV tube into a circular pool whose mirror surface (evoking Narcissus) invites viewers to weigh the costs of their own habits and desires.

Ahmed’s artistic ‘scenarios’ convert research on large-scale phenomena ‘to a scale the body can experience, addressing our senses,’ he told me. His aim is not protest ‘art against pharmaceuticals, because it’s complex; we rely on them to maintain our quality of life. The pill brought social freedom for women, but it’s also affecting the androgynisation of fish. So I create machines to help us think together about our ambivalence.’

‘Thinking machines’

Ahmed’s intriguing, disturbing ‘thinking machines’ were part of a Bozar group show, Faces of Water, resulting from artists’ residencies with scientists and engineers around Europe to explore phenomena from toxins to melting glaciers. He worked closely with pharma companies, and also water treatment and public policy experts: ‘Because knowledge has become hyper-specialised, we’re trying to tie knots between fields, to understand the world we’re producing.’ While not without friction, these collaborations can spark dialogue. One company, he recalled, was ‘unhappy with an accusation in the press that they’re not doing enough, so they took out an ad to say what they are doing.’

The residencies were instigated by S+T+ARTS, a European Commission programme funding collaborations between science, technology and the arts since 2016. The aim of embedding artists in R&D teams in industry and universities is not only to raise awareness of global challenges through exhibitions, but to act as a catalyst to tomorrow’s digital innovations. ‘It’s important to bring in new ideas to change mindsets,’ said Ralph Dum of DG Connect (the EC’s directorate general for information and communications technology). Dum, the founding head of the S+T+ARTS programme, is a quantum physicist who joined the Commission 20 years ago, pioneering interdisciplinary programmes that combined experts, such as biologists with data scientists. ‘Now it’s standard, but that didn’t exist then.’

It's important to bring in new ideas to change mindsets ... Artists profit from technology but engineers also profit from artistsRalph Dum

In the Renaissance and Baroque Kunst- und Wunderkammer (the cabinet of arts and curiosities that presaged the modern museum), art objects were viewed alongside scientific instruments and natural marvels. However, 18th-century Enlightenment rationalism and empiricism sundered arts from sciences. By 1959 the British scientist and writer CP Snow, in his famous Cambridge lecture The Two Cultures, lamented the ‘gulf of mutual incomprehension’ between science and the humanities; even engineers and pure scientists were unable to communicate. Now, Dum said, ‘people know more and more about less and less ... it’s almost impossible to bridge the gaps.’ Yet, he argued, ‘science and art are not so different; both relate to curiosity.’

The Manneken Pis fountain was a 17th-century sculptor’s solution to the challenge of providing urban drinking water — a union of aesthetics and engineering explicitly embraced by the Bauhaus movement in 1920s Germany. For Dum, ‘artists are very practical people; they address issues in concrete ways.’ He cites a product emerging from Project Alias by Bjørn Karmann and Tore Knudsen, tackling the invasion of privacy of smart home assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa: ‘There’s no way of making Alexa deaf. So they manipulated the software to ensure Alexa only listens when you want.’ That project won the S+T+ARTS annual Grand Prix for Artistic Exploration in 2019. The previous year’s winning project for Innovative Collaboration, the 3D-printed steel MX3D Bridge,now spans an Amsterdam canal. Besides S+T+ARTS funding for research projects and residences (150 to date, with 70 more this year), more than 200 prizewinners have been chosen from among 15,000 open-call submissions.

For Gerfried Stocker, artistic director of Ars Electronica, at the interface of culture and tech in the Austrian city of Linz since 1979, S+T+ARTS has become a ‘driving force influencing how Europe is going into the digital future. It’s reached critical mass. Art-and-science is cool now.’

‘Artists see things we don’t’

Until the pandemic, S+T+ARTS prizewinners were exhibited annually at Bozar. Emma Dumartheray, exhibitions coordinator for Bozar Lab, views the programme’s residencies as a distinct model of art sponsorship, with companies donating employees’ time and knowledge. Partners such as Ars Electronica contribute experience of brokering collaborations, negotiating patent agreements in case of lucrative breakthroughs. For Dum, ‘artists profit from technology but engineers also profit from artists. Now people understand we don’t interfere with the art.’

‘Artists see things we don’t ... because you need distance,’ Christophe De Jaeger, director of another key partner, Gluon in Brussels, told me. Before starting Bozar Lab in 2017, he founded Gluon (in 2009) to send artists into industrial R&D labs. ‘Employees gain holistic perspectives, talking to other experts in a non-competitive environment; artists can be very weird — emotionally engaged, radical, intuitive, serendipitous, and they don’t care if they make mistakes ... they don’t have to prove things.’ Art ‘can only be useful if it’s allowed to be totally useless,’ said Stocker, who sees the programme’s unique value as enabling experimentation free from ‘a creative industries focus on going to market’.

We rely on pharmaceuticals to maintain our quality of life. The pill brought social freedom for women, but it's also affecting the androgynisation of fish. So I create machines to help us think together about our ambivalenceHaseeb Ahmed

‘It’s not just about painting the iPhone pink,’ Dum told me. Instead of using regulation and ethical committees to rein in technology, the goal is for artists to ‘humanise its whole development’, raising ethical and green concerns at each stage of innovation. In shaping interaction between people and machines, ‘engineers are sometimes very nerdy; they don’t have the human touch.’ Yet do artists necessarily introduce moral perspectives? ‘It’s a touchy subject,’ the physicist replied. ‘I wouldn’t claim artists are more moral than scientists, but they’re very critical in different ways.’

The artist’s critical eye is ubiquitous in Navigating the Digital Realm, (2) a S+T+ARTS group exhibition at DG Connect until 28 February, which explores frontier technology and big data — from deepfakes, surveillance and dating apps to Artificial Intelligence (AI). The AI-generated videos of Egor Kraft’s Content Aware Studies (2019) show how machine learning reconstructs lost fragments of classical sculptures using datasets of thousands of scanned antiquities. The ‘speculative restorations’ are 3D-printed and CNC-routed in marble and synthetic materials but the algorithms can produce grotesque errors, such as creating a face on the back of a caryatid’s head. One of his aims, Kraft told me, was to ‘destroy the romanticism of AI’ — a fabulous but dangerously fallible tool.

New avant-garde is ‘proposing alternatives’

‘It’s not just artistic commentary; they’re also proposing alternatives,’ Stocker said. Between the ‘super data capitalism of the US’ and the ‘electronic totalitarianism of China,’ he asked, ‘what remains for Europe? We can try to do it differently.’ Climate change and CO2 emissions have become paramount concerns as the EU strives through the European Green Deal to create the first climate-neutral continent. ‘The Internet, AI, blockchain,’ De Jaeger said, ‘all these technologies might have positive or negative impacts on the larger challenges of climate justice, equality, migration.’

Pre-Enlightenment Wunderkammern projected the power of their collectors, but were also cabinets of wonder. They may share something with a 21st-century avant-garde that aims through frontier technology to revive awe and respect for nature. Olga Kisseleva’s Cities Live Like Trees: Green Index Formula drives an app that connects citizens to green zones in their city, based on ‘deep listening between humans and trees.’ John Palmesino, co-founder of Territorial Agency, uses open-access data (‘sensors accumulating trillions of terabytes every day’) to help create a new understanding of the ocean as a ‘sensorium’ of human activity.

‘All life in the universe exists in a thin layer of atmosphere which has its dynamic,’ said Ahmed, whose solo show 18 Winds uses AI and wind machines to track the cultural and historical connotations of the Sirocco, and other winds. ‘How do we relate to natural environments without imposing ourselves?’ he asked me. These are vital questions: ‘By separating nature from what we make it mean to us, maybe we can start to think again.’

Maya Jaggi is a writer, critic, artistic director and cultural consultant. She was a DAAD Art and Media fellow in Berlin and is a judge of the 2023 EBRD Literature Prize.

Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

Scholz details acceleration of Germany's energy transition at Davos

The German chancellor, the only leader of a G7 country present at the World Economic Forum, presented his plan on Wednesday in Switzerland.

Le Monde by Philippe Escande

Published on January 19, 2023

The controversy had to be washed away. Climate activist Greta Thunberg had been arrested by the German police during a demonstration against the expansion of a lignite coal mine on Tuesday, January 17, which was inconsistent with a country in which the Greens form part of the executive, even if they share power with the liberal Free Democrats (FPD) and Social Democrats (SPD) allies. Half an hour before the head of the German government took to the podium at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 18, former US vice president Al Gore, a veteran of the climate movement, had given his support to the demonstrators.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz, caught between radical environmentalists on one hand and pressure from Ukraine for Leopard heavy tanks on the other, sought to distance himself from the fray. The only head of state of a G7 country to have made the trip to Switzerland this year, he detailed his battle plan to make his country the world leader in the fight against climate change even while restoring its industrial competitiveness. He presented the strategy in martial terms.

"Most importantly, our transformation toward a climate-neutral economy – the fundamental task of our century – is currently taking on an entirely new dynamic," the chancellor said. "Not in spite of, but because of the Russian war and the resulting pressure on us Europeans to change." As proof of his country's dynamism and of Russian President Vladimir Putin's failure, he emphasized that Germany, which had been dependent on Russian gas supplies in the run-up to the offensive, had managed to become almost completely free of them in less than a year.

Great national cause

"It took us a few months to install two liquefied gas import terminals when we took 20 years to build the Berlin airport," said German Finance Minister Christian Lindner the day before, also at Davos. The great national cause is now that of renewable energies and hydrogen. By 2030, 80% of the country's electricity will be generated by renewables.

Scholz qualified that "at the same time, our electricity requirements are increasing – from 600 terawatt hours today to 750 by the end of the decade. And we are expecting them to double, yet again, in the 2030s." This development is driven by the needs of its powerful industrial sector. According to him, this represents an investment of €400 billion.

In order to increase the number of solar and, above all, wind power installations, the government has passed its own energy transition acceleration law, similar to the one passed in France on January 10. The law aims to reduce administrative formalities and shorten the granting of authorizations for connection to the network by two years. "The obstacles have been swept aside," the chancellor said. The government will support what Scholz called an "electrolysis boom," a hydrogen economy that will make Germany, and Europe behind it, independent of fossil fuels.

In the short term, until mid-2024, the government will maintain its €180-billion tariff shield so that companies no longer suffer the pangs of skyrocketing prices: "It is now crystal-clear to each and every one of us that the future belongs solely to renewables," said Scholz. "For cost reasons, for environmental reasons, for security reasons, and because in the long run, renewables promise the best returns."

Preventing industrial relocation

With some companies such as BASF threatening to relocate to the US because of energy prices, the pressure for domestic industry to stay on German soil was evident. Similarly, in order to alleviate job shortages that will be exacerbated by demographic decline, the Scholz government will modernize its immigration legislation before the end of the year.

"If we want to remain competitive as a leading industrial nation, we need experienced practitioners – qualified engineers, tradesmen and mechanics," said Scholz. "Those who want to roll up their sleeves are welcome in Germany."

It is no coincidence that the German chancellor remains a regular at Davos when the other big shots are away. He is also one of the last unconditional supporters of free trade and dislikes the concept of trade between friends, or "friendshoring," popularized by the Americans to mean that everyone must choose sides.

Although the country is hesitating about sending its battle tanks to Kyiv, Chancellor Scholz gathered international experts in October 2022 to think about a "Marshall Plan" to help rebuild the country. It was a bold proposal but also amounted to yet another opportunity for German industry, something that a worthy chancellor always keeps in mind.

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Image: Germán & Co

'International climate aid is insufficient, ineffective and unfairly allocated'

After COP27, held in Egypt in November 2022, four economists analyze the true impact of international aid funded through climate negotiations.

Le Monde by Group letter

Published on January 19, 2023

Participants are pictured at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Convention Center during the COP27 climate conference, in Egypt's Red Sea resort city of the same name, on November 9, 2022. MOHAMMED ABED / AFP

It is now well established that the world's least developed countries and island countries are most affected by climate change while bearing the lowest historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions.

To address this injustice, developed countries have set up so-called "climate aid" transfers to help developing countries protect themselves from the effects of climate change and encourage them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet international climate aid is insufficient, ineffective and unfairly allocated. In particular, the most vulnerable countries receive less aid than developing countries. Between 1995 and 2020, the countries that received the most aid were India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh and China. How can we explain this disparity between less developed countries' needs and the aid they receive?

Commercial interests

To restore climate justice, rich countries attending the 2009 climate negotiations in Copenhagen committed to mobilizing jointly $100 billion per year (about €93.20 billion) in new and additional aid to address climate change issues, in addition to development assistance already provided.

In the 2015 Paris Agreement, developed nations confirmed they would renew this yearly aid of at least $100 billion until 2025. The latest figures show that donors did not keep their promises: Only $83.3 billion was mobilized in 2020, and that sum includes private financing mobilized by the public sector. Public funding amounted to only $68.3 billion in 2020.

Aid transfers for climate change adaptation accounted for only 34% of the $83.3 billion. This percentage is larger for island and least developed countries, but mitigation remains the primary climate aid for these countries, whose emissions are low. These numbers should be compared to United Nations Environment Program estimates that developing nations will need $140 billion to $300 billion by 2030 for annual climate adaptation costs.

We can draw some lessons from this climate aid.

First, there is a link between the allocation of bilateral climate aid and the commercial interests of donor countries, particularly their export levels. Is this aid being diverted from its initial target? It appears that climate aid, like other development aid, builds on historical, cultural and commercial links (former colonies, migration, etc.).

'Greenwashing'

Climate aid allows developing nations to rebuild production structures damaged by climate change, structures that affect the production of goods consumed by rich countries. Such aid also helps poor countries maintain their incomes and thereby keep buying goods produced by rich countries. This comes dangerously close to being disguised aid to exporting companies. In any case, it cannot be considered entirely neutral.

Secondly, studies have not been able to show that climate aid effectively reduces emissions or increases resilience to climate change or leads to adopting ambitious climate policies. One explanation for this lack of results could be that allocations are too modest: Since the projects financed are small-scale or unambitious, their effects are negligible. The content of climate aid could also explain why its effects are so limited or even nonexistent.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect, if we look at the details of the projects financed under the climate aid label, is that many of them have no link, direct or indirect, with climate issues. Donor countries declare as "climate projects" various development, education or health projects that may be beneficial but have no climate component.

For example, in 2018, a donor country cited a project to support elections and oversight institutions in Kenya as a climate change initiative. This can be construed as the "greenwashing" of climate aid: The donor country presents development aid as climate aid to boost its pro-environmental reputation without actually meeting the "additional" climate aid requirement.

Just words?

Countries attending the climate conference, held November 6-18, 2022, in Sharm El-Sheikh, agreed to establish a "loss and damage" fund to compensate least developed and island countries already suffering from the effects of climate change.

While this is a step in the right direction, it only partially solves the problem, since it simply creates a new international fund on top of existing funds (Adaptation Fund and Green Climate Fund), without correcting the flaws in climate aid design.

This decision also raises questions about implementation. Who will contribute to this new mechanism and what will be the amounts and origins of funds? To be precise, will they be private investments or real subsidies from rich countries to the most vulnerable countries?

Why not increase the amount of aid for climate change adaptation and set quotas for the most affected countries? The vagueness surrounding the creation of this new fund makes us fear it is all just words. A proposal for the organization of this fund will be presented at the COP28 in December 2023, and we hope it will prove us wrong.

Signatories: Basak Bayramoglu, research director at the French National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRAE) and deputy director of the Paris-Saclay Applied Economics (PSAE) unit; Jean-François Jacques, professor at the Université Gustave-Eiffel and attached to the Erudite unit; Clément Nedoncelle, research fellow at INRAE and attached to the PSAE unit; Lucille Neumann-Noël, doctoral student at the Université Paris-Saclay and INRAE, and attached to PSAE.

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Biden Says He Has ‘No Regrets’ About Not Disclosing Documents Quickly

“I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there,” the president told a reporter who asked if he regretted not divulging that classified material was found at his office before the midterms.

NYT by Katie Rogers

Jan. 19, 2023

WASHINGTON — President Biden said on Thursday that he had “no regrets” that the White House did not disclose before the midterm elections that classified documents from his time as vice president were found in his private office in early November.

After Mr. Biden toured Capitola, Calif., a beach town that has been ravaged by weeks of winter storms, the president took a question from a reporter, saying he felt that the “American people don’t quite understand” why journalists were asking about the documents and not his tour, which was focused on storm recovery.

“As we found a handful of documents were failed, or filed, in the wrong place, we immediately turned them over to the archives and the Justice Department,” Mr. Biden said, referring to the National Archives and Records Administration. “We’re fully cooperating, looking forward to getting this resolved quickly. I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there. I have no regrets. I’m following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do. It’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no ‘there’ there.”

Mr. Biden and his advisers, who were at first reluctant to release information about the discovery of the documents, have faced an onslaught of questions about why the White House kept quiet about the material for so long. Mr. Biden’s lawyers discovered the first batch of classified papers on Nov. 2, six days before the midterm elections, and later found a second set in a room next to the garage in his home in Wilmington, Del., in December.

The existence of the documents became public only last week.

Last Thursday, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel, Robert K. Hur, to investigate how the documents were handled.

The White House has tried to draw a clear contrast between Mr. Biden’s retention of classified documents and a case surrounding former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump is under criminal investigation for taking several hundred documents with classified markings from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his private residence in Palm Beach, Fla., and failing to fully comply with a subpoena.

Mr. Biden’s team appears to have acted swiftly and in accordance with the law upon the discovery of the documents, immediately summoning officials with the National Archives to retrieve the files. The archives then alerted the Justice Department. Officials have described the documents found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, the think tank established as Mr. Biden’s private office after leaving the vice presidency, as “a small number of documents with classified markings.”

Mr. Biden’s remarks on Thursday closely echoed those made earlier in the week by Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, who assured reporters that Mr. Biden was fully cooperating with the investigation.

“It’s important to really understand the distinction here: President Biden is committed to doing the responsible thing and acting appropriately,” Mr. Sams said on Tuesday. “His team acted promptly to disclose information to the proper authorities and is cooperating fully.”

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The promise of living in the here and now… (El País)

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In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

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Written in Spanish by José Andrés Rojo

El País

20 JAN 2023

Translation by Germán & Co

The weight of guilt for mistakes made and the helplessness of those who cannot find a job are notes of this era that Saul Bellow already captured in his short novel 'Carpe diem'.

Bad times. There is a war that is disrupting everything, inflation is high, the price of the shopping basket has risen alarmingly. There are many people without jobs, young people without great expectations, sometimes there is no way out of the hole. These complications are usually reduced to a few figures in the newspapers, the ones that show how the economy is doing, the number of new contracts or the number of unemployed, percentages of all kinds. Be that as it may, this dance of numbers does not look inward, little is known of the experience of each of those who are suffering the slaps of life. Let's take a guy in his early 40s, he's lost his job, and every morning he's already shaved at eight o'clock in the morning. He thinks that getting up early might help him in the arduous task of looking for a way out.

A typical day, from the moment he goes down to breakfast until the end of the afternoon, when this man bursts into an endless stream of tears at the funeral of a stranger: this is what Saul Bellow tells in a short story, Carpe diem. Literature is still a good instrument for peering into what is really going on inside people and, as Martin Amis says in his latest book, "novelists are hosts, people who open the door and invite you in". So let's jump right in and see what happened to this Tommy Wilhelm, who as a young man fell out with his family and went to Hollywood to try his luck. It seems he "happened to be stunningly handsome", so someone persuaded him that his future lay in the Mecca of cinema.

It didn't go well. The agent who dragged him in soon dumped him (he would later be accused of pimping, he had a network of hookers who set him up on the phone). And this is what happens. Deceit, crazy dreams, manipulation, cheating, bad decisions. In the end, many end up in a mess, the doors close, and the certainty that it is one's own fault prevails. And that is precisely what the figures do not show: the hell of settling accounts with one's past and good intentions. Tommy Wilhelm, for example, "thought he should, could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the simple, easy things in life". A psychologist he met at the hotel where he lived - a charlatan, according to his father - encouraged him to gamble his money on the stock market. He did. He gave him what he had left and signed a power of attorney for him to invest it in shares and fix his future.

Carpe diem is a short novel from a long time ago and takes place in circumstances that have nothing to do with the present. Saul Bellow simply opens the door and lets us see what is going on inside his protagonist: the desolation of feeling lost, the certainty that over time he has only made mistakes and, above all, the discovery that even those closest to him - his father - disown him as a stinker. Suddenly, someone talks to him about living in the here and now, about taking advantage of opportunities - "with all that money around, you don't want to play the Indian while others take advantage" - and he decides to take the plunge. It's just another story, one of many that shows the helplessness of not finding a job.

News round-up, Thursday, January 19, 2023

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

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Cooperate with ethical thinking -

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Shocking: This is what Chile would be like if climate change continues, according to A.I. (La Tercera)

“For what purpose do we exist, and why are we required? Is artificial intelligence already more advanced than us?”

— Germán & Co

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China Returns to Davos With Clear Message: We’re Open for Business

Emerging from coronavirus lockdown to a world changed by the war in Ukraine, China sought to convey reassurance about its economic health.

NYT by Mark Landler and Keith Bradsher

Jan. 17, 2023

DAVOS, Switzerland — China ventured back on to the global stage Tuesday, sending a delegation to the World Economic Forum to assure foreign investors that after three years in which the pandemic cut off their country from the world, life was back to normal.

But the Chinese faced a wary audience at the annual event, attesting to both the dramatically changed geopolitical landscape after Russia’s war on Ukraine, as well as two data points that highlighted a worrisome shift in China’s own fortunes.

Hours before a senior Chinese official, Liu He, spoke to this elite economic gathering in an Alpine ski resort, the government announced that China’s population shrank in 2022 for the first time in 61 years. A short time earlier, it confirmed that economic growth had slowed to 3 percent, well below the trend of the past decade.

Against that backdrop, Mr. Liu sought to reassure his audience that China was still a good place to do business. “If we work hard enough, we are confident that growth will most likely return to its normal trend, and the Chinese economy will make a significant improvement in 2023,” he said.

Mr. Liu, a well-traveled vice premier who is one of China’s most recognizable faces in the West, insisted that the Covid crisis was “steadying,” seven weeks after the government abruptly abandoned its policy of quarantines and lockdowns. China had passed the peak of infections, he said, and had sufficient hospital beds, doctors and nurses, and medicine to treat the millions who are sick.

He did not mention the 60,000 fatalities linked to the coronavirus since the lockdowns were lifted, a huge spike in the official death toll that China announced three days ago.

Onstage at the World Economic Forum

The annual gathering of world leaders takes place in Davos, Switzerland, from Jan. 16 to 20.

•  China’s Message: China ventured back on to the global stage at the World Economic Forum, sending a delegation to assure foreign investors about its economic health after three years of pandemic isolation.

•  A New Buzzword: So many global troubles have arisen in recent months that the word “polycrisis” is everywhere in Davos — even in the organization’s annual report.

• Going Nuclear: The filmmaker Oliver Stone, who has a history of jabbing the political, business and social elite with controversial projects, received a warm reception in Switzerland for a film promoting nuclear power.

Mr. Liu’s mild words and modest tone were in stark contrast to those of his boss, President Xi Jinping, who came to Davos in 2017 to claim the mantle of global economic leadership in a world shaken up by the election of Donald J. Trump in the United States and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

Since then, the United States and Europe have united to support Ukraine against Russia, leaving the Russians isolated with the Chinese among their few friends. Russia’s revanchist campaign has raised questions among Europeans about whether China might have similar designs on Taiwan, and escalated security concerns among the world’s democracies.

Mr. Liu steered clear of political issues like the war in Ukraine or China’s tensions with the Biden administration. But he did say, “We have to abandon the Cold War mentality,” echoing a frequent Chinese criticism of the United States for attempting to contain China’s influence around the world.

But it is China’s demographics and economic growth that are raising the biggest questions among businesspeople. The decline in population lays bare the country’s falling birthrate, a trend that experts said was exacerbated by the pandemic and will threaten its growth over the long term. The 3 percent growth rate, the second weakest since 1976, reflects the stifling effect of the government’s Covid policy.

“The Chinese are worried, and they should be,” said Evan S. Medeiros, a professor of Asia studies at Georgetown University. “The entire international business community is way more negative about China over the long-term. A lot of people are asking, ‘Have we reached peak China?’”

Professor Medeiros, who served as a China adviser in the Obama administration, said, “For the past 20 years, China has benefited from both geoeconomic gravity and geopolitical momentum, but in the last year it has rapidly lost both.”

The signposts of China’s economic weakness are everywhere: the government announced on Friday that exports fell 9.9 percent in December relative to a year earlier.

“China has an export slowdown, construction is in crisis, and the local governments are running out of money,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University. “China needs the world: to boost its economy, to accompany the return to more normalcy.”

Mr. Liu laid out a familiar set of economic policies, from upholding the rule of law to pursuing “innovation-driven development.” He insisted that China was still attractive to foreign investors, who he said were integral to China’s plan to achieve the government’s goal of “common prosperity.”

“China’s national reality dictates that opening up to the world is a must, not an expediency,” Mr. Liu said. “We must open up wider and make it work better. We oppose unilateralism and protectionism.”

But China’s delegation was a reminder of how the government has sidelined some of its own best-known entrepreneurs as it has reined in powerful technology companies. Jack Ma, a co-founder of the Alibaba Group, used to be one of the biggest celebrities at the World Economic Forum, holding court in a chalet on the outskirts of Davos. Now shunted out of power, Mr. Ma is absent from Davos.

Instead, China sent less well-known executives from Ant Group, an affiliate of the Alibaba Group, as well as officials from China Energy Group and China Petrochemical Group. Unlike other countries, notably India and Saudi Arabia, which plastered buildings in Davos with advertisements for foreign investment, China has been low-key, holding meetings at the posh Belvedere Hotel.

After his speech, Mr. Liu, who has a command of English and holds a graduate degree from Harvard, met privately with business executives. Some expected him to be more candid in that session about the challenges China has faced.

Mr. Liu did not meet top American officials in Davos, though he will meet Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in Zurich on Wednesday. Martin J. Walsh, the labor secretary who is at the conference, said he welcomed China’s return. “China’s in the world economy,” he said. “We need to engage with them.”

Though Mr. Liu, 70, has a significant international profile — having led trade negotiations with the Trump administration — China experts noted that he is not in Mr. Xi’s innermost circle. He is also no longer a member of the Chinese government’s ruling Politburo, though analysts said he retained the trust of Mr. Xi.

When he spoke at Davos in 2018, Mr. Liu’s speech was among the best attended of the conference. This year, however, about a quarter of the hall emptied before Mr. Liu spoke, after having been packed for a speech by Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.

The difference in crowd sizes reflected the reshuffled priorities of the West, now focused on exhibiting unity against Russian aggression.

Ms. von der Leyen, who celebrated that solidarity in her remarks, did not exactly warm up the audience for Mr. Liu. She accused the Chinese government, in its drive to dominate the clean-energy industries of the future, of unfairly subsidizing its companies at the expense of Europe and the United States.

“Climate change needs a global approach,” she said in a chiding tone, “but it needs to be a fair approach.”

Mark Landler reported from Davos, Switzerland and Keith Bradsher from Beijing.

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Sweden pledges to send Archer artillery to Ukraine

Sweden's announcement comes a day before the US convenes a meeting of around 50 countries – including all 30 members of the NATO alliance – in Germany to discuss military aid to Ukraine.

Le Monde with AFP

Published on January 19, 2023

Sweden on Thursday, January 19, pledged to send its Archer artillery system, a modern mobile howitzer requested by Kyiv for months, to Ukraine along with armored vehicles and anti-tank missiles.

Speaking at a press conference, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said his government had agreed on a three-part military support package for Ukraine, including "the first decision on starting deliveries of the artillery system Archer to Ukraine."

Sweden, which has broken with its doctrine of not delivering weapons to a country at war, will also send 50 CV-90 armored vehicles and NLAW portable anti-tank missiles, the government said.

Every morning, a selection of articles from Le Monde In English straight to your inbox

"Military support is decisive," Kristersson said, as "it can change who retakes the initiative this winter" on the front in Ukraine.

The domestically developed Archer artillery system is composed of a fully-automated howitzer mounted on an all-terrain vehicle, which allows the gun to be remotely operated by the crew sitting in the armored cab.

Thursday's decision meant the Swedish Armed Forces would be given the task to "make the preparations to begin delivery of the artillery system Archer to Ukraine."

Defence Minister Pal Jonson said the government had also asked the armed forces to come back with a recommendation on how many of the Archers currently in storage could be sent.

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Why progressives must push for a transformation of the media

The left goes on dancing to the media’s tune

The media insists politicians and campaigners become entertainers to connect with the public. The left has too willingly bought into a game it can’t win. A complete media strategy reset is long overdue.

by Serge Halimi & Pierre Rimbert 

Le Monde Diplomatique

Student activist Louis Boyard got noticed for his combative attitude and became a regular guest on the crowd-pleasing television show Touche pas à mon poste (‘Don’t touch my TV’, a play on Don’t Touch my Buddy, a French antiracist NGO created in 1994 to fight the National Front). His new fame helped him get selected as a candidate for the leftwing La France Insoumise (LFI, Unsubmissive France) and he won a seat in parliament. When Boyard returned as a guest on the show in November, the host, television personality Cyril Hanouna, called him ‘a piece of shit,’ a ‘loser’ and a ‘complete moron’ for daring to criticise Vincent Bolloré, the channel’s billionaire owner. It’s hard to imagine a more telling illustration of the balance of power between politics and the media.

The scandal boosted the show’s ratings and guests in subsequent weeks kept up the attacks on the ungrateful ‘kid’ who, they claimed, had ‘betrayed his friend’. ‘Frankly, [Boyard] showed a lack of respect,’ one guest even dared say. The show had been praised by several LFI leaders keen to reach its large audience of young, working-class viewers. ‘We go wherever we can take our message’, LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon explained after the incident. But at what cost?

The relationship that political organisations, campaign groups and trade unions have with the media, which has a monopoly on how public life is presented, contains an essential contradiction: rarely has the entanglement of the press and money been so pronounced, yet never has the radical left’s critique of the media seemed so opportunistic. Any organisation that challenges the established order knows that the press and power are linked. ‘Journalists must remember they aren’t mere observers, but part of the elite whose role is also to protect the country from chaos,’ warned two academic opponents of social movements (1). Nor are protesters unaware of the unpopularity of those who produce media content. Yet they accept, to varying degrees, the media’s demands, whether it’s to help fill the schedules of 24-hour news channels or appear as regulars on entertainment shows. But is it possible to use the mainstream media without merely dancing to their tune? What compromises are inevitable if you decide to work with the media?

Political theatre

Dealing with the media means first endorsing the idea that the big media companies are society’s distributors of speech: it’s journalists who popularise some movements, ignore others, and select spokespeople. For a fledging movement, the stakes are huge because it’s about breaking through the glass partition to join the public debate. However, the press prioritises organisations that can offer some sort of media performance: coming across as young, funny, punchy or divisive; planning actions where the shock value of the images compensates for the small number of participants — demonstrating naked, dressing up, flinging soup on a painting. The slogans that are part of this political theatre sound more like advertising jingles or newspaper headlines — tongue-in-cheek, offbeat, witty — than slogans that express demands, which bore journalists.

This kind of action sometimes pays off: ACT UP, the association which campaigned to end the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, achieved notable results. More recently, environmental activists’ stunts have highlighted the fight against global warming. But not all protests can be turned into stunts. Quirkier forms of action are generally the work of the educated urban middle class. In 2004 the Parisian press instinctively supported striking academics; Le Monde put them on its front page six times (3-11 March). Two months later, when striking energy sector workers at EDF caused power cuts, a front-page cartoon in the same paper compared them to American torturers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (9 June 2004). In both strikes, however, the aim was to protect a public service.

Students planned symbolic events to attract the media spotlight ... The media helped recruit new members and backers who expected to find there what they saw on television or read in the papers ... They smoked dope, read less, and went for brokeTodd Gitlin

To get media attention, therefore, ordinary employees in ordinary companies have done extraordinary things, such as threaten to blow up their factory, as Cellatex workers did in the Ardennes in 2000 and staff at GMS in the Creuse in 2017; hold company directors hostage; or ransack local government offices. Or storm the Champs-Élysées, as the Gilets Jaunes did in 2018. But the risks differ: academics who protested by lying down on the pavement in white coats just risked catching a cold, while nearly 2,300 Gilets Jaunes were convicted and 400 imprisoned; some suffered life-changing injuries.

The selective nature of media attention can alter a movement’s behaviour: actions with an immediate media payoff are more likely to go ahead, sometimes regardless of whether the presence of cameras helps to achieve long-term political goals. It’s easier to pull off a mention on the TV news than it is to get employers or the government to capitulate. When appearing in the papers becomes an end in itself, an organisation’s strategy is reduced to a series of stunts designed to attract journalists. A French activist’s handbook, Guerilla Kit (La Découverte, 2008), explained that journalists ‘are busy people. You have to make their work easier. The more boxes you can tick in the following list, the likelier your action is to get into the media.’ The list included novelty, drama, conflict, disruption, celebrities, surprise, scandal and controversy.

Not only does media strategy change a movement’s direction, it can also change its composition. Recalling his experience in 1960s America with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), sociologist Todd Gitlin observed that the organisation ‘began to organise symbolic events deliberately to attract the media spotlight ... The media helped recruit into SDS new members and backers who expected to find there what they saw on television or read in the papers ... They smoked dope, they had read less, they went for broke’ (2). Sixty years later, an ‘exclusive investigation’ into the campaign against a new airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes (M6, 29 March 2015) echoed Gitlin’s thoughts. Entitled ‘Environmentalists, extremists or marginals: who are these nimbies who defy the state?’, the report sought out eccentric contributors, including a man who boasted he drank petrol and another who wielded a hatchet...

Obsessed with novelty

The way a journalistic world obsessed with novelty works poses a challenge for those who engage in the media competition: how to keep up the pace long-term? From feminist movements in the 1970s to environmental activists who stage actions in museums, each new campaign, with its own methods and tools, can quickly attract the media spotlight, but become passé just as quickly. In 2011 the celebration of Twitter and Facebook activism sometimes gave the impression that Arab revolts were happening online rather than on the streets; 12 years later, activist use of social media is part of the standard playbook. Dozens of collectives that organised spectacular actions to promote progressive causes have been adored, then neglected, and finally buried by the media.

‘When an editor rings,’ said a representative of the now unfashionable association Agir Ensemble Contre le Chômage (AC!, an organisation which campaigns on behalf of the unemployed), ‘it’s not to ask our opinion on something fundamental, but to find “typical” unemployed people: “We’re looking for someone out of work between such and such an age.” It’s social casting. They aren’t interested in what we do.’ Maurad Rabhi, who was a CGT delegate during the Cellatex dispute in 2000, formed the same view: ‘During the conflict, you’re in the limelight, you represent a cause. And then it’s all gone. When the spotlight’s turned off, you’re back in the shadows, on your own’ (3).

Every time there's a major strike, the reporting's the same. With refuse collectors, it's rubbish piling up in the streets. With postal workers, it's the absence of mail. With railway workers, it's the lack of trains. This shows that these are really useful jobs. That should make it possible for us to discuss the need to pay them properlyPhilippe Poutou.

The inherent risk in competing for media attention is all too obvious: if an organisation’s visibility depends above all on the airtime it gets from the mainstream media, they also have the power to make it invisible. After Olivier Besancenot, then spokesperson for the LCR (the forerunner of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA)), appeared on Philippe Bouvard’s Grosses Têtes comedy show, the organisation’s founder, Alain Krivine, said, ‘Even if Olivier doesn’t like doing it, it’s best not to turn down these programmes, otherwise we’ll disappear.’ Go on a comedy show or disappear: it’s hardly an appealing choice. ‘We’ve gone out of fashion,’ Subcomandante Marcos admitted in 2007, looking back on 13 years of insurrection in Chiapas (Mexico). ‘If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing, except perhaps be less present on the media scene’ (4).

Because getting the media’s attention isn’t enough. Maintaining their goodwill means not crossing the ‘yellow lines’ that journalists set in advance. According to journalists, overstepping them (by, for example, picketing, interrupting exams, cancelling festivals, blocking motorways or occupying buildings) means sacrificing public support. And then journalists will turn on protesters and call them extremists, hostage-takers, populists and wreckers of the economy. Thereafter, the media will focus on a perennial question: ‘Do you condemn violent protests?’

Challenging the law

But almost no social movement would have succeeded, even in a democracy, without at some point challenging the legitimacy of the law — not the trade union struggle, or the US civil rights movement, or the fight to legalise abortion, or the LGBT associations’ fight for equal rights. This fact leaves powerful journalists indifferent; their knowledge of history is often minimal. The social order is a given. The media is not designed to offer dissenters a platform to explain why they want to change the world: its aim is to produce journalist-arbitrated ‘debate’, soundbites to feed the 24-hour news channels or, better still, Twitterstorms.

Since the early 1960s, many movements — often outside France — have been interested in the question of their relationship with the media, without the knowledge of what’s been learnt necessarily being passed on. Speaking of the civil rights struggle in the US, a close friend of Martin Luther King, J Hunter O’Dell, explained, ‘It was disastrous for us to rely primarily upon these corporate forms of mass communication to get our message and analysis out to the public. In the end, it means a new kind of addiction to media rather than being in charge of our own agenda and relying on mass support as our guarantee that ultimately the news-covering apparatus must give recognition to our authority’ (5). Forgetting this conclusion, intentionally or not, gives a few personalities the chance to experience first the thrill of media fame, and then its backlash.

Just as they select protest movements, journalists choose the spokespeople who best fit their preconceptions and most willingly comply with their demands. Participants, obliged to fit the mould, have learned to work with journalists’ ‘constraints’. Former LFI spokesperson Raquel Garrido described her experience: ‘When you get a call at 6pm to come in at 10pm, 11pm or midnight, of course you have to say yes. And when a journalist calls you at midnight to record an interview that will be broadcast on the radio from 5am, you have to drop everything and make yourself available.’

Being ready to drop everything means responding before there has been collective deliberation about what position to take or the conditions for participating in a programme. The media’s schedule differs from that of a democratic organisation: when a journalist calls a trade union spokesperson for a reaction to a news story, the union has rarely had time to meet and agree its stance. However, if the union representative refuses to oblige, to avoid the fallout from an improvised response, he or she knows the journalist will contact a rival union or someone more willing to speak off the cuff. As most members of collectives now have a Twitter account where they mix self-promotion with (more or less informed) commentary on the news, centrifugal forces can destabilise an organisation.

While protest organisations mobilise collective action to win their battles, political journalism personalises collective struggles to tell their stories. Interviewees are asked to divulge aspects of their family life, their tastes and personal experience more often than they are interviewed about their objectives, or the struggles and thinking of the movements they represent.

In 2001 the Confédération Paysanne (agricultural union) spokesman, José Bové, agreed to appear on Michel Drucker’s programme Vivement Dimanche (Roll on Sunday). Following his example, many radical leftwing figures have revealed themselves in magazines or on talk shows, sometimes even donning costumes, which has annoyed many activists. Twenty years ago, an activist asked Besancenot, ‘What are you going to do on stupid TV shows?’ A party representative responded, ‘We must always bear in mind the wide angle, a broad audience ... We mustn’t be afraid of the general public and we mustn’t have a contemptuous attitude towards a whole slew of popular programmes’ (6).

Such a stance assumes that the depoliticisation of the working class has reached a point where politicians need to appear on entertainment shows to establish a rapport with the social groups they hope to appeal to. Accepting this, however, means ignoring the fact that the way these programmes work is based on depoliticising issues and recasting them as interpersonal battles. The media was quick to reframe anti-capitalist LFI MP Louis Boyard’s criticism of billionaire Vincent Bolloré (mentioned earlier) as the ‘Boyard-Hanouna clash’.

‘What people are, not what they do’

This focus on the individual marginalises common causes. Luc Le Vaillant, the journalist responsible for Libération’s ‘Portraits’ section for over 20 years, acknowledges they ‘focus on what people are, not what they do’ (Libération, 13 November 2015). The profile format prioritises individual psychology over collective interests; social forces take a back seat to individual characteristics. The image of a lone man standing up to a column of tanks has become the symbol of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, to the point of airbrushing out the large crowd that took part. Through the press’s lens, a mass movement is transformed into acts of personal bravery.

‘I’m the first to deplore the superficiality this imposes on the message,’ Garrido, the former LFI spokesperson, concedes in her Manuel de Guérilla médiatique (Guerrilla Media Manual, Michel Laffont, 2018). ‘But I’m not the one who makes the rules, and my only options were to opt out or comply.’ Some people do opt out. Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the US had major successes between 2015 and 2020 without following the rules; their subsequent failure had other causes. Jean-Luc Mélenchon has alternated the ‘wide angle, broad audience’ strategy with temporary boycotts of media outlets he considers hostile (France Inter, Libération, Mediapart). At the same time, these three leaders encouraged the independent media, in the hope that they would allow them a degree of autonomy compared with the mainstream press.

But the creation and growth of a market in personalities self-fuelled by social networks and clips of confrontations have not made things easier. To promote their own brand within their organisation and differentiate themselves from competitors, many politicians willingly react to the controversies of the moment as chosen by the media. This decision takes its toll on organisations’ cohesion and their democratic life, especially when access to friendly journalists becomes a weapon for settling internal scores — and risks the media having greater influence on the debates within a party than its own activists.

How can you claim to break the system when you yourself contribute to perpetuating it? This question was posed by the rise of Podemos in Spain. In 2011 the Indignados movement rejected the idea of having a media spokesperson. But three years later, the Podemos party was created from the grassroots movement and a leader emerged: the young, brilliant, telegenic Pablo Iglesias, who hosted an online debate show. ‘We chose Iglesias,’ said the party’s head of international affairs, ‘because he was a guy who spoke very well on TV, who was beginning to create social identification around him’ (7).

Podemos soon saw the limits of this strategy. Iglesias himself admitted, ‘The first months of Podemos were strongly marked by the role I played in the media. Its dependence on me always being in the media was so great that the campaign team took the decision to put my face on ballot papers ... We [now] want the collective to play a leading role, which we think is more reasonable and, above all, more interesting’ (8). But it was already too late: the media, which had loved Iglesias, turned around and cast the strategic conflict between him and another leader, Inigo Ejerón, as a power struggle.

Criteria for media excellence

The media operates in a way that gives journalists excessive power to ‘elect’ a movement’s representatives, who are themselves pre-selected from the pool of those willing to play the media game. The criteria for media excellence differ radically from political excellence. In the former case, what matters is appearing at ease on air, and coming up with striking soundbites that will be picked up by the press and social media. In contrast, activists’ authority is based on experience, expertise, camaraderie, being ready to put yourself on the line etc. While the media rewards the telegenic with fame, platforms and travel — and amplifies their message — it completely overlooks those who keep movements alive through ‘ordinary’ struggles.

Analysing the American protest movement of the 1960s, the sociologist Todd Gitlin made an enlightening comparison between the alienation of workers from what they produce and that of activists from the (media) representation of their political action: ‘Just as people as workers have no voice in what they make, how they make it, or how the product is distributed and used, so do people as producers of meaning have no say in what the media make what they say or do, or in the context within which the media frame their activity. The resulting meanings, now mediated, acquire an eery substance in the real world, standing outside their ostensible makers and confronting them as an alien force’ (9).

Although avoided by the leaders of most political organisations, associations and trade unions, the question of relationships with the media has become increasingly acute within social movements. During the French strikes of spring-summer 2003, teachers and entertainment industry workers initially agreed to play the journalistic game of vox pops, profiles and other staged events. Then, seeing that their goodwill only led to feeding the preconceived image that the media had created for their movement, they targeted media premises, sometimes occupying them and interrupting broadcasts.

In 2018 the Gilets Jaunes did likewise, as the students opposed to the ‘contrat première embauche’ (first employment contract, with reduced rights) had done in 2006. In several universities, organisers had drafted charters regulating relations with the press. And several union general assemblies voted to ban journalists from debates on the grounds that their presence altered participants’ behaviour. Nearly a century earlier, the secretary general of the CGT union, Léon Jouhaux, wondered in La Bataille syndicaliste (The Union Battle) ‘whether we should continue to welcome into our midst people who systematically, with their bias, denigrate our action and disfigure our discussions, or whether we should not instead ruthlessly refuse them entry to our meetings’ (10). Such readiness to challenge the media has remained the exception.

Yet contemporary history provides important examples of political mobilisations that achieved their goal without the mainstream media’s help, and even in spite of it, not least the French referendum against the European Constitution Treaty in 2005. Patient, obstinate activist work won out over journalistic theatrics. Throughout the campaign, hostility to the press even strengthened the mobilisation.

‘The free communication of ideas’

The media has an obligation to ensure ‘the free communication of ideas and opinion’. This guarantee, enshrined in France’s constitution, is not a favour that anyone should beg for by accepting airtime in the dead of night, unreasonable demands and demeaning formats. Nor, above all, on condition that they keep quiet about the media’s ideological role, the monopoly of a handful of oligarchs, and the declining quality of the information they provide.

When political leaders stop fearing the power of the media, we see scenes that are both gratifying and instructive. Asked by BFMTV to react to the endless vox pops on strikers as ‘hostage takers’, Philippe Poutou said last October, ‘Every time there’s a major strike, the reporting’s the same. When it’s refuse collectors, it’s rubbish piling up in the streets. When it’s postal workers, it’s the absence of mail. When it’s railway workers, it’s the lack of trains. This shows that these are really useful jobs. That should make it possible to discuss the need to pay them properly ... If there was a strike by the shareholders of the CAC40 [French stock market], not many people would be bothered. And if BFM commentators went on strike for a fortnight, not many people would be bothered either.’

Gilets Jaunes, unions, parties and associations all have the power to turn things around, to remind the media of its obligations and, if necessary, force it to respect them. They can consider the conditions of their media coverage: which programmes to go on, how much speaking time to demand without being interrupted, which subjects to discuss, which other guests to appear with. This would be an apt counterpart to the endless list of demands the Élysée makes of the broadcasters who give the president a platform on television. Forcing the press to fulfil its mission means radically transforming it rather than cajoling it.

Over 40 years ago, the sociologist and historian Christopher Lasch advised against ‘abstract theorising about the mass media’ and grounding discussion ‘in the concrete historical experience of those who have tried to use mass media for critical, subversive, and revolutionary purposes’, which has largely proved to be ‘self-defeating. Political activists who seek to change society would do better to stick to the patient work of political organising instead of trying to organise a movement “with mirrors” ’ (11). His conclusion is as relevant as ever.

Serge Halimi & Pierre Rimbert

Serge Halimi is president and editorial director of Le Monde diplomatique; Pierre Rimbert is a member of its board of directors.

News round-up, Wednesday, January 18, 2023

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

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Cooperate with ethical thinking -

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Shocking: This is what Chile would be like if climate change continues, according to A.I. (La Tercera)

“For what purpose do we exist, and why are we required? Is artificial intelligence already more advanced than us?”

— Germán & Co

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Elon Musk’s Appetite for Destruction

A wave of lawsuits argue that Tesla’s self-driving software is dangerously overhyped. What can its blind spots teach us about the company’s erratic C.E.O.?

NYT By Christopher Cox

Jan. 17, 2023

Early on, the software had the regrettable habit of hitting police cruisers. No one knew why, though Tesla’s engineers had some good guesses: Stationary objects and flashing lights seemed to trick the A.I. The car would be driving along normally, the computer well in control, and suddenly it would veer to the right or left and — smash — at least 10 times in just over three years.

For a company that depended on an unbounded sense of optimism among investors to maintain its high stock price — Tesla was at one point worth more than Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Ford and General Motors combined — these crashes might seem like a problem. But to Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, they presented an opportunity. Each collision generated data, and with enough data, the company could speed the development of the world’s first truly self-driving car. He believed in this vision so strongly that it led him to make wild predictions: “My guess as to when we would think it is safe for somebody to essentially fall asleep and wake up at their destination: probably toward the end of next year,”

Musk said in 2019. “I would say I am certain of that. That is not a question mark.”

The future of Tesla may rest on whether drivers knew that they were engaged in this data-gathering experiment, and if so, whether their appetite for risk matched Musk’s. I wanted to hear from the victims of some of the more minor accidents, but they tended to fall into two categories, neither of which predisposed them to talk: They either loved Tesla and Musk and didn’t want to say anything negative to the press, or they were suing the company and remaining silent on the advice of counsel. (Umair Ali, whose Tesla steered into a highway barrier in 2017, had a different excuse: “Put me down as declined interview because I don’t want to piss off the richest man in the world.”)

Then I found Dave Key. On May 29, 2018, Key’s 2015 Tesla Model S was driving him home from the dentist in Autopilot mode. It was a route that Key had followed countless times before: a two-lane highway leading up into the hills above Laguna Beach, Calif. But on this trip, while Key was distracted, the car drifted out of its lane and slammed into the back of a parked police S.U.V., spinning the car around and pushing the S.U.V. up onto the sidewalk. No one was hurt.

Key, a 69-year-old former software entrepreneur, took a dispassionate, engineer’s-eye view of his own accident. “The problem with stationary objects — I’m sorry, this sounds stupid — is that they don’t move,” he said. For years, Tesla’s artificial intelligence had trouble separating immobile objects from the background. Rather than feeling frustrated that the computer hadn’t figured out such a seemingly elementary problem, Key took comfort in learning that there was a reason behind the crash: a known software limitation, rather than some kind of black-swan event.

Last fall, I asked Key to visit the scene of the accident with me. He said he would do me one better; he would take me there using Tesla’s new Full Self-Driving mode, which was still in beta. I told Key that I was surprised he was still driving a Tesla, much less paying extra — F.S.D. now costs $15,000 — for new autonomous features. If my car had tried to kill me, I would have switched brands. But in the months and years after his Model S was totaled, he bought three more.

We met for breakfast at a cafe in Laguna Beach, about three miles from the crash site. Key was wearing a black V-neck T-shirt, khaki shorts and sandals: Southern California semiretirement chic. As we walked to our table, he locked the doors of his red 2022 Model S, and the side mirrors folded up like a dog’s ears when it’s being petted.

Key had brought along a four-page memo he drafted for our interview, listing facts about the accident, organized under subheadings like “Tesla Full Self-Driving Technology (Discussion).” He’s the sort of man who walks around with a battery of fully formed opinions on life’s most important subjects — computers, software, exercise, money — and a willingness to share them. He was particularly concerned that I understand that Autopilot and F.S.D. were saving lives: “The data shows that their accident rate while on Beta is far less than other cars,” one bullet point read, in 11-point Calibri. “Slowing down the F.S.D. Beta will result in more accidents and loss of life based on hard statistical data.”

Accidents like his — and even the deadly ones — are unfortunate, he argued, but they couldn’t distract society from the larger goal of widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles. Key drew an analogy to the coronavirus vaccines, which prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths but also caused rare deaths and injuries from adverse reactions. “As a society,” he concluded, “we choose the path to save the most lives.”

We finished breakfast and walked to the car. Key had hoped to show off the newest version of F.S.D., but his system hadn’t updated yet. “Elon said it would be released at the end of the week,” he said. “Well, it’s Sunday.” Musk had been hinting for weeks that the update would be a drastic improvement over F.S.D. 10.13, which had been released over the summer. Because Musk liked to make little jokes out of the names and numbers in his life, the version number would jump to 10.69 with this release. (The four available Tesla models are S, 3, X and Y, presumably because that spells the word “sexy.”)

Key didn’t want to talk about Musk, but the executive’s reputational collapse had become impossible to ignore. He was in the middle of his bizarre, on-again-off-again campaign to take over Twitter, to the dismay of Tesla loyalists. And though he hadn’t yet attacked Anthony Fauci or spread conspiracy theories about Nancy Pelosi’s husband or gone on a journalist-banning spree on the platform, the question was already suggesting itself: How do you explain Elon Musk?

“People are flawed,” Key said cautiously, before repeating a sentiment that Musk often said about himself: If partisans on both sides hated him, he must be doing something right. No matter what trouble Musk got himself into, Key said, he was honest — “truthful to his detriment.”

As we drove, Key compared F.S.D. and the version of Autopilot on his 2015 Tesla. Autopilot, he said, was like fancy cruise control: speed, steering, crash avoidance. Though in his case, he said, “I guess it didn’t do crash avoidance.” He had been far more impressed by F.S.D. It was able to handle just about any situation he threw at it. “My only real complaint is it doesn’t always select the lane that I would.”

After a minute, the car warned Key to keep his hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. “Tesla now is kind of a nanny about that,” he complained. If Autopilot was once dangerously permissive of inattentive drivers — allowing them to nod off behind the wheel, even — that flaw, like the stationary-object bug, had been fixed. “Between the steering wheel and the eye tracking, that’s just a solved problem,” Key said.

Soon we were close to the scene of the crash. Scrub-covered hills with mountain-biking trails lacing through them rose on either side of us. That was what got Key into trouble on the day of the accident. He was looking at a favorite trail and ignoring the road. “I looked up to the left, and the car went off to the right,” he said. “I was in this false sense of security.”

We parked at the spot where he hit the police S.U.V. four years earlier. There was nothing special about the road here: no strange lines, no confusing lane shift, no merge. Just a single lane of traffic running along a row of parked cars. Why the Tesla failed at that moment was a mystery.

Eventually, Key told F.S.D. to take us back to the cafe. As we started our left turn, though, the steering wheel spasmed and the brake pedal juddered. Key muttered a nervous, “OK. … ”

After another moment, the car pulled halfway across the road and stopped. A line of cars was bearing down on our broadside. Key hesitated a second but then quickly took over and completed the turn. “It probably could have then accelerated, but I wasn’t willing to cut it that close,” he said. If he was wrong, of course, there was a good chance that he would have had his second A.I.-caused accident on the same one-mile stretch of road.

Three weeks before Key hit the police S.U.V., Musk wrote an email to Jim Riley, whose son Barrett died after his Tesla crashed while speeding. Musk sent Riley his condolences, and the grieving father wrote back to ask whether Tesla’s software could be updated to allow an owner to set a maximum speed for the car, along with other restrictions on acceleration, access to the radio and the trunk and distance the car could drive from home. Musk, while sympathetic, replied: “If there are a large number of settings, it will be too complex for most people to use. I want to make sure that we get this right. Most good for most number of people.”

It was a stark demonstration of what makes Musk so unusual as a chief executive. First, he reached out directly to someone who was harmed by one of his products — something it’s hard to imagine the head of G.M. or Ford contemplating, if only for legal reasons. (Indeed, this email was entered into evidence after Riley sued Tesla.) And then Musk rebuffed Riley. No vague “I’ll look into it” or “We’ll see what we can do.” Riley receives a hard no.

Like Key, I want to resist Musk’s tendency to make every story about him. Tesla is a big car company with thousands of employees. It existed before Elon Musk. It might exist after Elon Musk. But if you want a parsimonious explanation for the challenges the company faces — in the form of the lawsuits, a crashing stock price and an A.I. that still seems all too capable of catastrophic failure — you should look to its mercurial, brilliant, sophomoric chief executive.

Perhaps there’s no mystery here: Musk is simply a narcissist, and every reckless swerve he makes is meant solely to draw the world’s attention. He seemed to endorse this theory in a tongue-in-cheek way during a recent deposition, when a lawyer asked him, “Do you have some kind of unique ability to identify narcissistic sociopaths?” and he replied, “You mean by looking in the mirror?”

But what looks like self-obsession and poor impulse control might instead be the fruits of a coherent philosophy, one that Musk has detailed on many occasions. It’s there in the email to Riley: the greatest good for the greatest number of people. That dictum, as part of an ad hoc system of utilitarian ethics, can explain all sorts of mystifying decisions that Musk has made, not least his breakneck pursuit of A.I., which in the long term, he believes, will save countless lives.

Unfortunately for Musk, the short term comes first, and his company faces a rough few months. In February, the first lawsuit against Tesla for a crash involving Autopilot will go to trial. Four more will follow in quick succession. Donald Slavik, who will represent plaintiffs in as many as three of those cases, says that a normal car company would have settled by now: “They look at it as a cost of doing business.” Musk has vowed to fight it out in court, no matter the dangers this might present for Tesla. “The dollars can add up,” Slavik said, “especially if there’s any finding of punitive damages.”

The many claims of the pending lawsuits come back to a single theme: Tesla consistently inflated consumer expectations and played down the dangers involved.

Slavik sent me one of the complaints he filed against Tesla, which lists prominent Autopilot crashes from A to Z — in fact, from A to WW. In China, a Tesla slammed into the back of a street sweeper. In Florida, a Tesla hit a tractor-trailer that was stretched across two lanes of a highway. During a downpour in Indiana, a Tesla Model 3 hydroplaned off the road and burst into flames. In the Florida Keys, a Model S drove through an intersection and killed a pedestrian. In New York, a Model Y struck a man who was changing his tire on the shoulder of the Long Island Expressway. In Montana, a Tesla steered unexpectedly into a highway barrier. Then the same thing happened in Dallas and in Mountain View and in San Jose.

The arrival of self-driving vehicles wasn’t meant to be like this. Day in, day out, we scare and maim and kill ourselves in cars. In the United States last year, there were around 11 million road accidents, nearly five million injuries and more than 40,000 deaths. Tesla’s A.I. was meant to put an end to this blood bath. Instead, on average, there is at least one Autopilot-related crash in the United States every day, and Tesla is under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Ever since Autopilot was released in October 2015, Musk has encouraged drivers to think of it as more advanced than it was, stating in January 2016 that it was “probably better” than a human driver. That November, the company released a video of a Tesla navigating the roads of the Bay Area with the disclaimer: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.” Musk also rejected the name “Copilot” in favor of “Autopilot.”

The fine print made clear that the technology was for driver assistance only, but that message received a fraction of the attention of Musk’s announcements. A large number of drivers seemed genuinely confused about Autopilot’s capabilities. (Tesla also declined to disclose that the car in the 2016 video crashed in the company’s parking lot.) Slavik’s legal complaint doesn’t hold back: “Tesla’s conduct was despicable, and so contemptible that it would be looked down upon and despised by ordinary decent people.”

The many claims of the pending lawsuits come back to a single theme: Tesla consistently inflated consumer expectations and played down the dangers involved. The cars didn’t have sufficient driver monitoring because Musk didn’t want drivers to think that the car needed human supervision. (Musk in April 2019: “If you have a system that’s at or below human-level reliability, then driver monitoring makes sense. But if your system is dramatically better, more reliable than a human, then monitoring does not help much.”) Drivers weren’t warned about problems with automatic braking or “uncommanded lane changes.” The company would admit to the technology’s limitations in the user manual but publish viral videos of a Tesla driving a complicated route with no human intervention.

Musk’s ideal customer was someone like Key — willing to accept the blame when something went wrong but possessing almost limitless faith in the next update. In a deposition, an engineer at Tesla made this all but explicit: “We want to let the customer know that, No. 1, you should have confidence in your vehicle: Everything is working just as it should. And, secondly, the reason for your accident or reason for your incident always falls back on you.”

After our failed left turn in Laguna Beach, Key quickly diagnosed the problem. If only the system had upgraded to F.S.D. 10.69, he argued, the car surely would have managed the turn safely. Unfortunately for Musk, not every Tesla owner is like Dave Key. The plaintiffs in the Autopilot lawsuits might agree that the A.I. is improving, but only on the backs of the early adopters and bystanders who might be killed along the way.

Online, there’s a battle between pro-Musk and anti-Musk factions about Autopilot and F.S.D. Reddit has a forum called r/RealTesla that showcases the most embarrassing A.I. screw-ups, along with more generic complaints: squeaky steering wheels, leaky roofs, haywire electronics, noisy cabins, stiff suspensions, wrinkled leather seats, broken door handles. The Musk stans tend to sequester themselves in r/TeslaMotors, where they post Tesla sightings, cheer on the company’s latest factory openings and await the next big announcement from the boss.

I found David Alford on YouTube, where he posted a video called “Tesla Full Self-Driving Running a Red Light.” In it, we see the view through the windshield as Alford’s car approaches an intersection with a left-turn lane that has a dedicated traffic signal. With a few hundred yards remaining, the light shifts from green to red, but the car doesn’t stop. Instead, it rolls into the intersection, where it’s on track to collide with oncoming traffic, until Alford takes over.

In the comments, Tesla fans grow angry with Alford for posting the video, but he pushes back: “How does it help put pressure on Tesla to improve their systems if you are scared to post their faults?” Replying to one comment, he writes that F.S.D. is “unethical in the context they are using it.”

When I called Alford, I was expecting someone suited for r/RealTesla, but he ended up having more of an r/TeslaMotors vibe. He told me that he would be willing to take me to the site of his video and demonstrate the failure, but first I had to make a promise. “The only thing I ask is try not to put me in a bad light toward Tesla,” he said. “I don’t want anybody to think that I hate the company or whatnot, because I’m a very, very big supporter of them.”

Alford lives in Fresno, Calif., and before I went to meet him one day last fall, he told me some exciting news: He had just received the F.S.D. 10.69 update. Our drive would be his first attempt to navigate the intersection from the YouTube video with the new system.

The morning I met him, he was wearing a black T-shirt that showed off his tattoos, black sunglasses and faded black jeans with holes in the knees. Hollywood would typecast him as a white-hat hacker, and indeed he’s a software guy like Key: He is a product engineer for a Bay Area tech company.

His white 2020 Tesla Model 3 had a magnetic bumper sticker he found on Etsy: CAUTION FULL SELF-DRIVING TESTING IN PROGRESS. He said he drives in F.S.D. mode 90 percent of the time, so his car is always acting a bit strange — the sticker helped keep some of the honking from other cars at bay. He seemed to be, like Key, an ideal F.S.D. beta tester: interested in the software, alert to its flaws, dogged in his accumulation of autonomous miles.

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I climbed into the passenger seat, and Alford punched in our first destination: a spot a few blocks away in downtown Fresno. We were lucky it was overcast, he said, because the car behaved well in these conditions. On days when it was sunny out and there was a lot of glare, the car could be “moody.” And when it was foggy, and it was often foggy in Fresno, “it freaks out.”

After a few minutes, we approached a crosswalk just as two parents pulling a child in a wagon began to cross. A screen next to the steering wheel showed that the A.I. had registered the two pedestrians but not the wagon. Alford said he was hovering his foot over the brake, but the car stopped on its own.

After the wagon came a woman in a wheelchair. The car stayed put. Alford told me that the automotive jargon for anyone on the street who is not in a car or a truck is a “V.R.U.,” a vulnerable road user. And it’s true: Pedestrians and cyclists and children in strollers and women in wheelchairs — they are so fragile compared with these giant machines we’ve stuffed into our cities and onto our highways. One wrong move, and a car will crush them.

We turned on to Van Ness Avenue, which cuts through downtown. It had been newly paved, and instead of lines on the street, there were little yellow tabs indicating where the lines would eventually go. The Tesla hated this and dodged worriedly right and left, looking for something to anchor it. There were no other cars around, so Alford let it get that out of its system and eventually find a lane line to follow.

“You build a tolerance to the risks it takes,” he said. “Yes, it’s swerving all over the place, but I know it’s not going to crash into something.” Still, the experience of the beta had changed the way he approached his own work. “It’s actually made me, as a software developer, more hesitant to put my software in the hands of people” before it’s fully ready, he said, “even though it’s not dangerous.”

Seconds later, we drove through an intersection as two V.R.U.s — a man walking a dog — entered the crosswalk. They were a safe distance away, but the dog started to strain against its leash in our direction. Alford and I knew that the pet wasn’t in peril because the leash would stop it. But all the Tesla saw was a dog about to jump in front of us, and it came to an abrupt stop. It was a good outcome, all things considered — no injuries to any life-form — but it was far from a seamless self-driving experience.

Alford nudged the steering wheel just often enough that the car never warned him to pay attention. He didn’t mind the strict driver monitoring: He never tired of studying the car’s behavior, so he was never tempted to tune out. Still, he knew people who abused the system. One driver tied an ankle weight to the steering wheel to “kick back and do whatever” during long road trips. “I know a couple of people with Teslas that have F.S.D. beta,” he said, “and they have it to drink and drive instead of having to call an Uber.”

We left downtown and got on the highway, headed toward an area northeast of the city called Clovis, where the tricky intersection was. Alford pulled up his F.S.D. settings. His default driver mode was Average, but he said he has found that the two other options — Chill and Assertive — aren’t much different: “The car is just really aggressive anyway.” For highway driving, though, he had the car set to something called Mad Max mode, which meant it would overtake any vehicle in front of him if it was going even a few miles per hour slower than his preferred speed.

We exited the highway and quickly came to a knot of cars. Something had gone wrong with the traffic light, which was flashing red, and drivers in all four directions, across eight lanes, had to figure out when to go and when to yield. The choreography here was delicate: There were too many cars to interweave without some allowances being made for mercy and confusion and expediency. Among the humans, there was a good deal of waving others on and attempted eye contact to see whether someone was going to yield or not.

We crept toward the intersection, car by car, until it was our turn. If we were expecting nuance, there was none. Once we had come to a complete stop, the Tesla accelerated quickly, cutting off one car turning across us and veering around another. It was not so much inhuman as the behavior of a human who was determined to be a jerk. “That was bad,” Alford said. “Normally I would disengage once it makes a mistake like that.” He clicked a button to send a snapshot of the incident to Tesla.

Later, at a four-way stop, the car was too cautious. It waited too long, and the other two cars at the intersection drove off before we did. We talked about the old saying about safe driving: “Don’t be nice; be predictable.” For a computer, Tesla’s A.I. was surprisingly erratic. “It’s not nice or predictable,” Alford said.

A few miles down the road, we reached the intersection from the video: a left turn onto East Shepherd Avenue from State Route 168. The traffic light sits right at the point where the city’s newest developments end and open land begins. If we drove straight, we would immediately find ourselves surrounded by sagebrush, on the way up into the Sierra.

To replicate the error that Alford uncovered, we needed to approach the intersection with a red left-turn arrow and a green light to continue straight. On our first pass, the arrow turned green at the last second. On the second pass, though, on an empty road, the timing was right: a red for our turn and green for everyone else.

As we got closer, the car moved into the turning lane and started to slow. “It sees the red,” I said.

“No,” Alford said. “It always slows down a little here before plowing through.” But this time, it kept slowing. Alford couldn’t believe it. “It’s still going to run the light,” he said. But he was wrong: We came to a tidy stop right at the line. Alford was shocked. “They fixed it!” he said. “That one I’ve been giving them an issue about for two years.” We waited patiently until the light turned green, and the Tesla drove smoothly onto Shepherd Avenue. No problem.

It was as clear a demonstration of Musk’s hypothesis as one could hope for. There was a situation that kept stumping the A.I. until, after enough data had been collected by dedicated drivers like Alford, the neural net figured it out. Repeat this risk-reward conversion X number of times, and maybe Tesla will solve self-driving. Maybe even next year.

On the drive back to the center of Fresno, Alford was buoyant, delighted with the possibility that he had changed the Tesla world for the better. I asked him whether the F.S.D. 10.69 release met the hype that preceded it. “To be honest, yeah, I think so,” he said. (He was even more enthusiastic about the version of F.S.D. released in December, which he described as nearly flawless.)

A few minutes later, we reached a rundown part of town. Alford said that in general Tesla’s A.I. does better in higher-income areas, maybe because those areas have more Tesla owners in them. “Are there data biases for higher-income areas because that’s where the Teslas are?” he wondered.

We approached an intersection and tried to make a left — in what turned out to be a repeat of the Laguna Beach scenario. The Tesla started creeping out, trying to get a clearer look at the cars coming from our left. It inched forward, inched forward, until once again we were fully in the lane of traffic. There was nothing stopping the Tesla from accelerating and completing the turn, but instead it just sat there. At the same time, a tricked-out Honda Accord sped toward us, about three seconds away from hitting the driver-side door. Alford quickly took over and punched the accelerator, and we escaped safely. This time, he didn’t say anything.

It was a rough ride home from there. At a standard left turn at a traffic light, the system freaked out and tried to go right. Alford had to take over. And then, as we approached a cloverleaf on-ramp to the highway, the car started to accelerate. To stay on the ramp, we needed to make an arcing right turn; in front of us was a steep drop-off into a construction site with no guard rails. The car showed no sign of turning. We crossed a solid white line, milliseconds away from jumping off the road when, at last, the wheel jerked sharply to the right, and we hugged the road again. This time, F.S.D. had corrected itself, but if it hadn’t, the crash would have surely killed us.

Peter Thiel, Musk’s former business partner at PayPal, once said that if he wrote a book, the chapter about Musk would be called “The Man Who Knew Nothing About Risk.” But that’s a misunderstanding of Musk’s attitude: If you parse his statements, he presents himself as a man who simply embraces astonishing amounts of present-day risk in the rational assumption of future gains.

Musk’s clearest articulation of his philosophy has come, of course, on Twitter. “We should take the set of actions that maximize total public happiness!” he wrote to one user who asked him how to save the planet. In August, he called the writings of William MacAskill, a Scottish utilitarian ethicist, “a close match for my philosophy.” (MacAskill, notably, was also the intellectual muse of Sam Bankman-Fried, though he cut ties with him after the FTX scandal came to light.)

Musk’s embrace of risk has produced true breakthroughs: SpaceX can land reusable rockets on remote-controlled landing pads in the ocean; Starlink is providing internet service to Ukrainians on the front lines; OpenAI creeps ever closer to passing the Turing test. As for Tesla, even Musk’s harshest critics — and I talked to many of them while reporting this article — would pause, unbidden, to give him credit for creating the now-robust market in electric vehicles in the United States and around the world.

And yet, as Robert Lowell wrote, “No rocket goes as far astray as man.” In recent months, as the outrages at Twitter and elsewhere began to multiply, Musk seemed determined to squander much of the good will he had built up over his career. I asked Slavik, the plaintiffs’ attorney, whether the recent shift in public sentiment against Musk made his job in the courtroom any easier. “I think at least there are more people who are skeptical of his judgment at this point than were before,” he said. “If I were on the other side, I’d be worried about it.”

Some of Musk’s most questionable decisions, though, begin to make sense if seen as a result of a blunt utilitarian calculus. Last month, Reuters reported that Neuralink, Musk’s medical-device company, had caused the needless deaths of dozens of laboratory animals through rushed experiments. Internal messages from Musk made it clear that the urgency came from the top. “We are simply not moving fast enough,” he wrote. “It is driving me nuts!” The cost-benefit analysis must have seemed clear to him: Neuralink had the potential to cure paralysis, he believed, which would improve the lives of millions of future humans. The suffering of a smaller number of animals was worth it.

This form of crude long-term-ism, in which the sheer size of future generations gives them added ethical weight, even shows up in Musk’s statements about buying Twitter. He called Twitter a “digital town square” that was responsible for nothing less than preventing a new American civil war. “I didn’t do it to make more money,” he wrote. “I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love.”

Autopilot and F.S.D. represent the culmination of this approach. “The overarching goal of Tesla engineering,” Musk wrote, “is maximize area under user happiness curve.” Unlike with Twitter or even Neuralink, people were dying as a result of his decisions — but no matter. In 2019, in a testy exchange of email with the activist investor and steadfast Tesla critic Aaron Greenspan, Musk bristled at the suggestion that Autopilot was anything other than lifesaving technology. “The data is unequivocal that Autopilot is safer than human driving by a significant margin,” he wrote. “It is unethical and false of you to claim otherwise. In doing so, you are endangering the public.”

I wanted to ask Musk to elaborate on his philosophy of risk, but he didn’t reply to my interview requests. So instead I spoke with Peter Singer, a prominent utilitarian philosopher, to sort through some of the ethical issues involved. Was Musk right when he claimed that anything that delays the development and adoption of autonomous vehicles was inherently unethical?

“I think he has a point,” Singer said, “if he is right about the facts.”

Musk rarely talks about Autopilot or F.S.D. without mentioning how superior it is to a human driver. At a shareholders’ meeting in August, he said that Tesla was “solving a very important part of A.I., and one that can ultimately save millions of lives and prevent tens of millions of serious injuries by driving just an order of magnitude safer than people.” Musk does have data to back this up: Starting in 2018, Tesla has released quarterly safety reports to the public, which show a consistent advantage to using Autopilot. The most recent one, from late 2022, said that Teslas with Autopilot engaged were one-tenth as likely to crash as a regular car.

That is the argument that Tesla has to make to the public and to juries this spring. In the words of the company’s safety report: “While no car can prevent all accidents, we work every day to try to make them much less likely to occur.” Autopilot may cause a crash WW times, but without that technology, we’d be at OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Singer told me that even if Autopilot and human drivers were equally deadly, we should prefer the A.I., provided that the next software update, based on data from crash reports and near misses, would make the system even safer. “That’s a little bit like surgeons doing experimental surgery,” he said. “Probably the first few times they do the surgery, they’re going to lose patients, but the argument for that is they will save more patients in the long run.” It was important, however, Singer added, that the surgeons get the informed consent of the patients.

Does Tesla have the informed consent of its drivers? The answer might be different for different car owners — it would probably be different for Dave Key in 2018 than it is in 2022. But most customers are not aware of how flawed Autopilot is, said Philip Koopman, the author of “How Safe Is Safe Enough? Measuring and Predicting Autonomous Vehicle Safety.” The cars keep making “really crazy, crazy, surprising mistakes,” he said. “Tesla’s practice of using untrained civilians as test drivers for an immature technology is really egregious.”

Koopman also objects to Musk’s supposed facts. One obvious problem with the data the company puts out in its quarterly safety report is that it directly compares Autopilot miles, which are mainly driven on limited-access highways, with all vehicle miles. “You’re using Autopilot on the safe miles,” Koopman said. “So of course it looks great. And then you’re comparing it to not-Autopilot on the hard miles.”

In the third quarter of 2022, Tesla claimed that there was one crash for every 6.26 million miles driven using Autopilot — indeed, almost 10 times better than the U.S. baseline of one crash for every 652,000 miles. Crashes, however, are far more likely on surface streets than on the highway: One study from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation showed that crashes were five times as common on local roads as on turnpikes. When comparing Autopilot numbers to highway numbers, Tesla’s advantage drops significantly.

Tesla’s safety claims look even shakier when you try to control for the age of the car and the age of the driver. Most Tesla owners are middle-aged or older, which eliminates one risky pool of drivers: teenagers. And simply having a new car decreases your chance of an accident significantly. It’s even possible that the number of Teslas in California — with its generally mild, dry weather — has skewed the numbers in its favor. An independent study that tried to correct for some of these biases suggested that Teslas crashed just as often when Autopilot was on as when it was off.

“That’s always been a problem for utilitarians,” Singer told me. “Because it doesn’t have strict moral rules, people might think they can get away with doing the sums in ways that suit their purposes.”

Utilitarian thinking has led individuals to perform acts of breathtaking virtue, but putting this ethical framework in the hands of an industrialist presents certain dangers. True utilitarianism requires a careful balancing of all harms and benefits, in the present and the future, with the patience to do this assessment and the patience to refrain from acting if the amount of suffering and death caused by pushing forward wasn’t clear. Musk is using utilitarianism in a more limited way, arguing that as long as he’s sure something will have a net benefit, he’s permitted to do it right now.

In the past two decades, Musk has somehow maneuvered himself into running multiple companies where he can plausibly claim to be working to preserve the future of humanity. SpaceX can’t just deliver satellites into low orbit; it’s also going to send us to Mars. Tesla can’t just build a solid electric car; it’s going to solve the problem of self-driving. Twitter can’t just be one more place where we gather to argue; it’s one of the props holding up civilization. With the stakes suitably raised, all sorts of questionable behavior begin to look — almost — reasonable.

“True believers,” the novelist Jeanette Winterson wrote, “would rather see governments topple and history rewritten than scuff the cover of their faith.” Musk seems unshakable in his conviction that his approach is right. But for all his urgency, he still might lose the A.I. race.

Right now in San Francisco and Austin, Texas, and coming soon to cities all over the world, you can hail a robotaxi operated by Cruise or Waymo. “If there’s one moment in time where we go from fiction to reality, it’s now,” Sebastian Thrun, who founded Google’s self-driving car team, told me. (“I didn’t say this last year, by the way,” he added.) Thrun was no r/RealTesla lurker; he was on his fifth Tesla, and he said he admired the company: “What Tesla has is really beautiful. They have a fleet of vehicles in the field.” But at this point, Tesla’s competitors are closer to achieving full self-driving than any vehicle equipped with F.S.D.

In recent months, Musk has stopped promising that autonomous Teslas are just around the corner. “I thought the self-driving problem would be hard,” he said, “but it was harder than I thought. It’s not like I thought it’d be easy. I thought it would be very hard. But it was actually way harder than even that.”

On Dec. 29, 2019, the same day a Tesla in Indiana got into a deadly crash with a parked fire truck, an off-duty chauffeur named Kevin George Aziz Riad was driving his gray 2016 Tesla Model S down the Gardena Freeway in suburban Los Angeles. It had been a long drive back from a visit to Orange County, and Riad had Autopilot turned on. Shortly after midnight, the car passed under a giant sign that said END FREEWAY SIGNAL AHEAD in flashing yellow lights.

The Autopilot kept Riad’s Tesla at a steady speed as it approached the stoplight that marked the end of the freeway and the beginning of Artesia Boulevard. According to a witness, the light was red, but the car drove straight through the intersection, striking a Honda Civic. Riad had only minor injuries, but the two people in the Civic, Gilberto Alcazar Lopez and Maria Guadalupe Nieves, died at the scene. Their families said that they were on a first date.

Who was responsible for this accident? State officials have charged Riad with manslaughter and plan to prosecute him as if he were the sole actor behind the two deaths. The victims’ families, meanwhile, have filed civil suits against both Riad and Tesla. Depending on the outcomes of the criminal and civil cases, the Autopilot system could be judged, in effect, legally responsible, not legally responsible or both simultaneously.

Not long ago, I went to see the spot where Riad’s Tesla reportedly ran the red light. I had rented a Tesla for the day, to find out firsthand, finally, what it felt like to drive with Autopilot in control. I drove east on surface streets until I reached a ramp where I could merge onto State Route 91, the Gardena Freeway. It was late at night when Riad crashed. I was taking my ride in the middle of the day.

As soon as I was on the highway, I engaged Autopilot, and the car took over. I had the road mostly to myself. This Tesla was programmed to go 15 percent above the speed limit whenever Autopilot was in use, and the car accelerated quickly to 74 miles per hour, which was Riad’s speed when he crashed. Were his Autopilot speed settings the same?

The car did a good job of staying in its lane, better than any other traffic-aware cruise control I’ve used. I tried taking my hands off the wheel, but the Tesla beeped at me after a few seconds.

As I got closer to the crash site, I passed under the giant END FREEWAY SIGNAL AHEAD sign. The Autopilot drove on blithely. After another 500 feet, the same sign appeared again, flashing urgently. There was only a few hundred feet of divided highway left, and then Route 91 turned into a surface street, right at the intersection with Vermont Avenue.

I hovered my foot over the brake. What was I doing? Seeing if the car truly would just blaze through a red light? Of course it would. I suppose I was trying to imagine how easy it would be to do such a thing. At the end of a long night, on a road empty of cars, with something called Autopilot in control? My guess is that Riad didn’t even notice that he had left the highway.

The car sped under the warning lights, 74 miles an hour. The crash data shows that before the Tesla hit Lopez and Nieves, the brakes hadn’t been used for six minutes.

My Tesla bore down on the intersection. I got closer and closer to the light. No brakes. And then, just before I was about to take over, a pickup truck swung out of the far right lane and cut me off. The Tesla sensed it immediately and braked hard. If only that truck — as undeniable as any giant chunk of hardware can be — had been there in December 2019, Lopez and Nieves would still be alive.

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Ursula von der Leyen's plan to win the green industry battle

Looking to challenge China and the US, the European Commission is outlining an EU industrial policy.

Le Monde by Virginie Malingre (Brussels, Europe bureau)

Published on January 18, 2023

Now that China and the United States have opened hostilities in the battle of green technologies, the European Union (EU) is preparing its response. "We Europeans have a plan," said Ursula von der Leyen in Davos on Tuesday, January 17, which will enable Europe to take point in this race for innovation that will reshape the industry of tomorrow.

In her speech, Ms. von der Leyen denounced "aggressive attempts" to attract European industrial capacities away, particularly those working in clean energy, "to China and elsewhere." She also mentioned the "concerns" raised by the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a $369 billion (342 billion euros) climate investment plan that provides for large-scale aid for companies based in the United States. "We won't hesitate to open investigations if we feel that our procurement of other markets is being distorted by such subsidies," Ms. von der Leyen promised.

The European Commission has been in discussions with Washington, hoping to get the US to modify the IRA, but no one in Brussels nor in the European capitals imagine that this will make a substantial difference. "The reaction of other countries shouldn't be, 'oh my god, you shouldn't be doing that, that's putting us in an unfair position'. Do it, too. Everybody's got to do the same thing to accelerate this process even more," US special envoy for climate change John Kerry said in Davos.

Race for subsidies

Certainly, but the EU is now concerned that its industrialists will surrender to the sirens of Washington or Beijing and abandon Europe. It is true that the EU has a number of weaknesses. First of all, its green industry is very dependent on China, India and the United States. "For rare earths, which are vital for manufacturing key technologies, like wind power generation and hydrogen storage. Europe is today 98% dependent on one country, China," said Ms. von der Leyen. "To produce green electricity in 2050, Europeans will have to spend 450 billion euros per year. This money should not be used to buy non-European products and export our jobs," summarized Thierry Breton, the Commissioner for the Internal Market.

Moreover, the EU is very slow when it comes to authorizing certain state aid measures which strategic projects may depend on. Industrial alliances, for example, generally take two years to establish. Finally, the 27 Member States do not have the same resources, and a subsidy race between them to attract investment would be devastating for the internal market. In fact, it has already begun: over the next 10 years, Germany plans to help its companies make the climate transition with 100 billion euros, the Netherlands with 40 billion and France with 50 billion.

In this context, Ms. von der Leyen wants to send a strong message of support to European companies, and is laying the foundations of a community industrial policy. She has announced legislation for "a net zero emissions industry" in greenhouse gases, which will be inspired by what the Commission has already proposed to double European semiconductor production. The objective is "how to simplify and fast-track the permitting of projects for cleantech production sites" and "to focus investments on strategic projects" and green innovations, which would be eligible for substantial state aid, she explained.

To avoid only rich countries such as Germany benefiting from it, this act will particularly incentivize projects carried out by a number of member states. It could also allow Europeans to align themselves under certain conditions with American or Chinese practices in terms of subsidies.

Legislation on critical raw materials

The Commission is also preparing draft legislation on critical raw materials, which aims to secure the EU's supplies of materials essential to the electrification of industry and green infrastructure. For example, it could set the objective that at least 30% of European demand for refined lithium should come from the EU by 2030. The Commission President also envisages the EU in "a critical raw materials club working with like-minded partners from the United States to Ukraine."

To help countries that do not have the means to massively subsidize their industry and to avoid "fragmenting the Single Market," Ms. von der Leyen continued, "we must also step up EU funding." In fact, the temporary relaxation of the state aid rules, intended to help the EU-27 deal with the consequences of the war in Ukraine, has mainly benefited the rich countries. In 2022, the Commission authorized 672 billion euros of state aid, 53% for Germany (or more than 9% of its GDP) and 24% for Paris. The same is true for the arrangements made during the COVID-19 crisis: between March 2020 and December 2021, Brussels authorized 3,000 billion euros of state aid, 52.8% of which was for Germany, 16.9% for Italy and 10.6% for France.

Faced with the challenge of greening the economy, "Italy and Spain can count on the loans still available from the Next Generation-EU recovery plan," said Mr. Breton. But for small countries, such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia or Slovenia, the EU will have to do something, by giving them access to loans at preferential rates from the European Investment Bank or the Commission, which will be guaranteed by the EU-27.

In the longer term, Ms. von der Leyen mentions establishment of a European sovereignty fund, which is not yet well defined and whose scope could be broader than green industry. "It could take equity in a strategic company" threatened with closure or acquisition by a non-European entity, Mr. Breton explained. It could also support the development of a European player "in sectors where the EU is lagging in terms of sovereignty," a source noted.

Virginie Malingre(Brussels, Europe bureau)

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Former head of the Mexican police on trial for drug trafficking with the “El Chapo” cartel

Genaro Garcia Luna's trial for cocaine trafficking is expected to reveal the relationship between drug traffickers and the Mexican government under President Felipe Calderon.

Le Monde by Anne Vigna (Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) correspondent) and Arnaud Leparmentier (New York (United States) correspondent)

Published on January 17, 2023

Genaro Garcia Luna was the most senior security official in Mexico 15 years ago, in charge of the fight against drug cartels. Now 54, he will appear in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, in a trial starting on Tuesday, January 17, charged with cocaine trafficking. The trial is expected to bring to light the relationship between drug traffickers and the Mexican government under President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), and also the cross-border traffic that supplies the United States from South America via Mexico.

Mr. Garcia Luna's fall came in 2019, during the trial of Joaquin Guzman, known as "El Chapo," boss of the Sinaloa cartel, the largest in Mexico, who was sentenced to life in the United States. A cartel member testified how he had paid suitcases of cash to the former minister of security, leading to his arrest a few months later in Dallas, Texas, in December 2019.

In exchange for the bribes, the cartel received "safe passage for its drug shipments, sensitive law enforcement information about investigations into the cartel, and information about rival drug cartels," the US Department of Justice charged, the day after Mr. Garcia Luna's December 2019 arrest in Dallas. According to the DoJ, "on two occasions, the cartel personally paid bribes to Garcia Luna in briefcases containing between three and five million dollars."

The charge claims that the former police chief, who had settled in Florida in 2012, had "amassed millions of dollars in personal wealth." To prosecute him in the United States, the US prosecutors are using the cross-border drug trafficking charge and accusing him of lying when he applied for naturalization in 2018. "He allegedly lied about his past criminal acts on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel."

Mr. Garcia Luna pleaded not guilty, claiming he was the victim of revenge by cartel members and unfounded accusations. If convicted, he faces between 10 years and life in prison. "Today's arrest demonstrates our resolve to bring to justice those who help cartels inflict devastating harm on the United States and Mexico, regardless of the positions they held while committing their crimes," said Brooklyn federal prosecutor Richard P. Donoghue.

A 'mediocre' police officer who did the 'dirty work"

This is the first time a Mexican politician of such high rank has been brought to justice in the United States. For more than a decade, Mr. Garcia Luna was the main architect of the "war against the cartels" launched by President Felipe Calderon when he came to power in 2006. A policy that would turn Mexico into a huge graveyard.

Mr. Garcia Luna became the face of this war and the closest collaborator of the head of state, obtaining a record budget for the federal police, and in particular for the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), which he had been the head of during the term of President Vincente Fox (2001-2006). He had previously worked in the Mexican intelligence services for a decade.

"This policeman, who has always been very mediocre, reached the highest positions by doing the dirty work. He got his hands dirty for his bosses, climbing the ladder in the administration and in organized crime. According to my investigations, he has been in the criminal world since the 1990s, protecting kidnapping gangs in exchange for juicy payments," investigative journalist Anabel Hernandez, author of several books on the war, said in a phone interview.

A stocky man with a closed face, whose press conferences were almost incomprehensible because of his strong stammer, he enjoyed the unwavering support of the two presidents from the PAN (National Action Party), Mexico's Catholic right wing. He represented Mexico in high-level bilateral security meetings with Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, former FBI Director Robert Mueller and Eric Holder, Attorney General under Barack Obama.

War on all cartels except Sinaloa

As soon as he took over in 2001, the methods of the AFI and the federal police were denounced by both the victims of organized crime and its perpetrators. Mr. Garcia Luna was supposedly waging a war against all the cartels, but it soon became apparent that this did not include the Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, whose influence was growing steadily in the territory. For example, the Zetas – a criminal group formed by former elite soldiers of the Mexican army that rules the state of Tamaulipas on the border with Texas – repeatedly accused Mr. Garcia Luna of protecting their enemies in Sinaloa.

Kidnapped people also tell of media stunts at the time of their release, to the point where the Mexican press referred to the AFI as the "agency of invented films." The minister and his team would often resort to these media tricks to claim credit for the results before the Mexican public. Suspects and innocents are forced to confess their supposed crimes on camera, even though they have been previously arrested and tortured. Those subjected to Mr. Garcia Luna's methods include Frenchwoman Florence Cassez – released in 2013 after the Supreme Court overturned her conviction – and her Mexican companion Israel Vallarta, who has been in prison awaiting trial for kidnapping for 18 years.

The trial of Mr. Garcia Luna should provide arguments for current Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who dissolved the AFI and has repeatedly criticized the corruption under his predecessors. Mexico has de facto approved the New York lawsuit by demanding that Mr. Garcia Luna repay $250 million that he allegedly fraudulently acquired. President López Obrador has repeatedly urged the media to follow the trial closely, as it should reveal the rot within the Mexican state. "It is very important that all of this be known, that it be told, so that it does not happen again," Mr. Lopez Obrador said recently.

Not all trials have the same support in Mexico – the 2020 arrest of General Salvador Cienfuegos caused such an outcry that the United States sent him back. The trial, which is expected to last two months, will include hearings over whether to produce or not produce evidence about the relationship between Mr. Garcia Luna and the highest US officials who supported the war on drugs at the time.

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‘Tax us now’: ultra-rich call on governments to introduce wealth taxes

Disney heiress and actor Mark Ruffalo among ‘patriotic millionaires’ who addressed world’s elite at Davos

The Guardian by Rupert Neate Wealth correspondent

@RupertNeate

Wed 18 Jan 2023 00.01 GMT

More than 200 members of the super-rich elite are calling on governments around the world to “tax us, the ultra rich, now” in order to help billions of people struggling with cost of living crisis.

The group of 205 millionaires and billionaires, including the Disney heiress Abigail Disney and The Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo, on Wednesday called on world leaders and business executives meeting in Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) to urgently introduce wealth taxes to help tackle “extreme inequality”.

“The current lack of action is gravely concerning. A meeting of the ‘global elite’ in Davos to discuss ‘cooperation in a fragmented world’ is pointless if you aren’t challenging the root cause of division,” they said in an open letter published on Wednesday. “Defending democracy and building cooperation requires action to build fairer economies right now – it is not a problem that can be left for our children to fix.

“Now is the time to tackle extreme wealth; now is the time to tax the ultra rich.”

In the letter entitled “the cost of extreme wealth”, the millionaires, from 13 countries, said: “The history of the last five decades is a story of wealth flowing nowhere but upwards. In the last few years, this trend has greatly accelerated …The solution is plain for all to see. You, our global representatives, have to tax us, the ultra rich, and you have to start now.”

The super-rich signatories, who brand themselves as “patriotic millionaires”, warned that inaction could lead to a catastrophe. “There’s only so much stress any society can take, only so many times mothers and fathers will watch their children go hungry while the ultra rich contemplate their growing wealth. The cost of action is much cheaper than the cost of inaction – it’s time to get on with the job.”

It comes as new research shows that almost two-thirds of the new wealth amassed since the start of the pandemic has gone to the richest 1%. The development charity Oxfam found that the best-off had pocketed $26tn (£21tn) in new wealth up to the end of 2021. That represented 63% of the total new wealth, with the rest going to the remaining 99% of people.

Oxfam said for the first time in a quarter of a century the rise in extreme wealth was being accompanied by an increase in extreme poverty, and called for new taxes to be levied on the super-rich.

Oxfam said a tax of up to 5% on the world’s multimillionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7tn a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.

Marlene Engelhorn, a multimillionaire heiress, co-founder of campaign group taxmenow, and a signatory of the letter, said: “The whole world – economists and millionaires alike – can see the solution that is staring us all right in the face: we have to tax the ultra rich. If we care about the safety of democracy, about our communities, and our planet we have to get this done. And yet our decision-makers either don’t have the gumption or don’t feel the need to listen to all of these voices. It begs the question, ‘What, or who, is stopping them?’

News round-up, Tuesday, January 17, 2023

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

“For what purpose do we exist, and why are we required? Is artificial intelligence already more advanced than us?”

— Germán & Co

NYT, CreditCredit...By Shira Inbar

America’s Must-Win Semiconductor War

Jan. 16, 2023

NYT

By Steven Rattner

Mr. Rattner was a counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration. Intent on reversing America’s decline in the world’s production of cutting-edge semiconductors, the federal government has begun what is arguably the government’s largest foray into the private sector since World War II.

That’s just one piece of a larger, more muscular approach to industrial policy. It’s a road filled with hope but also pockmarked with risks. On balance, the record of government trying to improve the functioning of the private sector is poor, and particularly in complex sectors like semiconductors, the challenges are great.

Nonetheless, for the first time in memory, even many free-market conservatives seem to recognize that unfettered capitalism can lead to imperfect results.

Put chips high on that list. American scientists invented transistors, the key component in chips, shortly after World War II, and for decades we dominated the design and production of semiconductors as they quickly became smaller and more powerful.

Then companies in Asia, particularly in Taiwan, entered the industry, and America began to lose to cheaper labor, strong local governmental support and better corporate management. Worse, today the United States does not manufacture any of the highest-performing chips; 92 percent of those are produced by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, 100 miles from mainland China. (The rest are manufactured in South Korea.)

This presents enormous economic and national security risks for the United States and the rest of the world. If China took control of Taiwan and cut off our chip supply, that would be economically devastating, akin to (or worse than) the loss of oil exports from a major Middle Eastern producer.

In that context, we should be heartened that Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which, among other things, will provide $52 billion for investment in facilities, as well as for more research and development.

In part as a result, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s biggest maker of advanced computer chips, has broken ground on a major plant in Phoenix and announced that it will increase its investment there to $40 billion; Intel has announced plans for a $20 billion facility outside Columbus, Ohio; Micron is building a fab (as chip factories are known) complex in Syracuse, N.Y.; GlobalFoundries is expanding in New York and Vermont; and Samsung is considering the construction of 11 facilities in Texas.

That’s all great, but let’s not be blind to the challenges. For one thing, these new facilities are just a tiny first step. The output of the Phoenix facility will amount to only a single-digit percentage of TSMC’s total output. For another, TSMC has historically insisted on producing its most cutting-edge chips in Taiwan, at least partly to ensure that the United States, whose official policy toward Taiwan is one of strategic ambiguity, will nonetheless protect the island against any mainland aggression.

Our ability to truly compete with Asia remains uncertain. In a recent submission to the Commerce Department, TSMC complained that the cost of the Phoenix facility would be much greater than its equivalent in Taiwan (partly because of regulatory requirements), wage costs substantially higher, productivity lower, construction delays more likely and taxes higher.

In a podcast interview, Morris Chang, the 91-year-old founder of TSMC, who was born in China and made his early career in the United States, acknowledged the national security considerations while calling America’s semiconductor efforts “a wasteful and expensive exercise in futility.” He noted that his company has had a smaller facility in Oregon for 25 years and chips produced there cost 50 percent more than those it manufactures in Taiwan.

Europe is marching forward with its own set of chip subsidies, and Asian countries have been providing aid to their semiconductor makers for decades. The result is a financial version of an arms race.

The quest for an industrial policy in America goes back to our earliest days. George Washington wore a suit of American-woven broadcloth to his first inauguration to emphasize the importance of domestic production. Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures advocated tariffs and trade restrictions to encourage domestic industry.

Over the ensuing 230 years, we’ve had both successes (transportation facilities like the Erie Canal and the interstate highways) and failures (pretty much everything we’ve tried to do to retain manufacturing jobs).

Those failures include chips. In 1987, alarmed by Japan’s growing dominance of the semiconductor industry, the federal government created Sematech, a public-private partnership that was intended to restore American prowess in the sector.

According to a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the $1 billion spent by the federal government over a decade succeeded in temporarily — emphasis on “temporarily” — stanching the loss of market share and American jobs but at a yearly cost of about $29,000 per job, roughly the same as the then-average annual wage in the sector, $27,000.

As the head of President Barack Obama’s auto task force, I saw the positives and the risks of industrial policy. Importantly, we did not try to protect old, inefficient factories or to create uncompetitive jobs. We insisted that the companies produce viability plans as a condition of receiving government assistance and left the companies to run their businesses.

So I believe government can pursue an industrial policy — but we need to put substantial guardrails around that effort.

The most successful governmental interventions are often around research and development, such as the funding of the creation of the internet by the Department of Defense and Operation Warp Speed, the emergency program to develop Covid vaccines. In that context, I applaud the inclusion of $11 billion for semiconductor research and development in the CHIPS and Science Act.

In some cases, like semiconductors, government grants may be necessary to accomplish our goals. But whenever feasible, we should favor market-based incentives, like tax credits, in order to lessen the government’s role in picking winners.

Finally, let’s remember that we have other means of promoting our economic interests. As part of its increased spending in Phoenix, TSMC also announced that the facility would be making more advanced chips than previously planned. That reportedly occurred at the behest of Apple, TSMC’s largest customer. When public and private interests align, leveraging the influence of the corporate sector should very much be a part of a wise industrial policy.

With the dangers of overdoing industrial policy evident, President Biden should ask his staff to put together clearer and narrower rules of the road to govern when and how the United States should undertake adventures in industrial policy.

In that regard, a recent speech by Brian Deese, the able director of the National Economic Council, provided a good beginning — though he was a bit overly enthusiastic about the merits of industrial policy and a bit disingenuous about the dangers.

While Mr. Deese contended that the Biden industrial policy was not about picking winners and losers, any policy that includes awarding federal funds to some applicants and not to others is obviously a process of picking winners and losers. That will be the case in the dispensing of $28 billion of direct aid for semiconductor facilities as states, localities and companies jockey to be selected.

This approach to industrial policy — in contrast to approaches like tax incentives that allow the market to pick the winners — would benefit by being removed as much as practicable from politics, much as we have used an independent commission to choose which military bases in the U.S. should close.

And as we did in the auto rescue, subsidies should be, to the maximum extent feasible, as close to commercial terms as possible, potentially including equity participation in the recipient.

I agree that in today’s more globally competitive and insecure world, a more robust industrial policy is called for. I just hope that logic and prudence will prevail in the ongoing debate.

China’s Population Falls, Heralding a Demographic Crisis

Deaths outnumbered births last year for the first time in six decades. Experts see major implications for China, its economy and the world.

NYT By Alexandra Stevenson and Zixu Wang

Published Jan. 16, 2023

HONG KONG — The world’s most populous country has reached a pivotal moment: China’s population has begun to shrink, after a steady, yearslong decline in its birthrate that experts say will be irreversible.

The government said on Tuesday that 9.56 million people were born in China last year, while 10.41 million people died. It was the first time deaths had outnumbered births in China since the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment that led to widespread famine and death in the 1960s.

Chinese officials have tried for years to slow down the arrival of this moment, loosening a one-child policy and offering incentives to encourage families to have children. None of those policies worked. Now, facing a population decline, coupled with a long-running rise in life expectancy, the country is being thrust into a demographic crisis that will have consequences not just for China and its economy but for the world.

Over the last four decades, China emerged as an economic powerhouse and the world’s factory floor. The country’s transformation from widespread poverty to the world’s second largest economy led to an increase in life expectancy that contributed to the current population decline — more people were getting older while fewer babies were being born.

That trend has hastened another worrying event: the day when China will not have enough people of working age to fuel the high-speed growth that made it an engine of the global economy.

“In the long run, we are going to see a China the world has never seen,” said Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine who specializes in China’s demographics. “It will no longer be the young, vibrant, growing population. We will start to appreciate China, in terms of its population, as an old and shrinking population.”

Births were down from 10.6 million in 2021, the sixth straight year that the number had fallen, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. By 2035, 400 million people in China are expected to be over 60, accounting for nearly a third of its population. Labor shortages that will accompany China’s rapidly aging population will also reduce tax revenue and contributions to a pension system that is already under enormous pressure.

Whether or not the government can provide widespread access to elder care, medical services and a stable stream of income later in life will affect a long-held assumption that the Communist Party can provide a better life for its people.

The news of China’s population decline comes at a challenging time for the government in Beijing, which is dealing with the fallout from the sudden reversal last month of its zero-tolerance policy toward Covid.

Understand the Situation in China

The Chinese government cast aside its restrictive “zero Covid” policy, which had set off mass protests that were a rare challenge to Communist Party leadership.

Rapid Spread: Since China abandoned its strict Covid rules, the intensity and magnitude of the country’s outbreak has remained largely a mystery. But a picture is emerging of the virus spreading like wildfire.

Rural Communities: As Lunar New Year approaches, millions are expected to travel home in January. They risk spreading Covid to areas where health care services are woefully underdeveloped.

Digital Finger-Pointing: The Communist Party’s efforts to limit discord over its sudden “zero Covid” pivot are being challenged with increasing rancor on the internet.

Economic Challenges: Years of Covid lockdowns took a brutal toll on Chinese businesses. Now, the rapid spread of the virus after a chaotic reopening has deprived them of workers and customers.

The data on Tuesday showed a small increase in mortality last year, to 10.41 million deaths compared to around 10 million in recent years, raising questions about how a recent Covid surge may have contributed to the numbers.

Last week, officials unexpectedly revised the Covid death figures for the first month after reporting single-digit daily deaths for weeks. But experts have questioned the accuracy of the new figure — 60,000 deaths between Dec. 8 and Jan. 12.

On Tuesday, Kang Yi, the commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics, said the Covid death figures for December had not yet been incorporated into the overall death totals for 2022.

China also on Tuesday released data that showed the depth of its economic challenges. The country’s gross domestic product, the broadest measure of its commercial vitality, grew just 2.9 percent in the last three months of the year after widespread lockdowns and the recent surge in Covid infections. Over the whole year, China’s economy grew only 3 percent, its slowest rate in nearly four decades.

This historical demographic moment was not unexpected. Chinese officials last year conceded that the country was on the verge of a population decline that would likely begin before 2025. But it came sooner than demographers, statisticians and China’s ruling Communist Party had anticipated.

China has followed a trajectory familiar to many developing countries as their economies get richer — fertility rates fall as incomes rise and education levels increase. As the quality of life improves, people live longer.

“It’s the kind of situation that economists dream of,” said Philip O’Keefe, the director of the Aging Asia Research Hub, ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Aging Research.

But the government shortened its timeline to prepare for this moment by moving too slowly to loosen restrictive birth policies. “They could have given themselves a little more time,” said Mr. O’Keefe.

Officials have taken several steps in recent years to try to slow the decline in births. In 2016, they relaxed the one-child policy that had been in place for 35 years, allowing families to have two children. In 2021, they raised the limit to three. Since then, Beijing has offered a range of incentives to couples and small families to encourage them to have children, including cash handouts, tax cuts and even property concessions.

China’s situation is a stark contrast with India, whose total population is poised to exceed China’s later this year, according to a recent estimate from the United Nations. But India’s fertility rate is also declining rapidly.

Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, recently made the country’s demographic challenges a priority, pledging “a national policy system to boost birthrates.” But in reality, experts said, China’s plunging birth figures reveal an irreversible trend.

“The aggregate decline in population and decline in working-age population — both of those are irreversible,” Mr. O’Keefe said. “I don’t think there is a single country that has gone as low as China in terms of fertility rate and then bounced back to the replacement rate.”

Together with Japan and South Korea, China has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, below what demographers call the fertility replacement rate required for a population to grow. That figure would require every couple, on average, to have two children.

So far, the government’s measures have failed to change the underlying fact that many young Chinese people simply do not want children. They often cite the increasingly high cost of raising them, especially with the economy in a precarious state.

Rachel Zhang, a 33-year-old photographer in Beijing, decided before she married her husband that they would not have children. Sometimes, elders in the family nag them about having a baby.

“I am firm about this,” Ms. Zhang said. “I have never had the desire to have children all along.” The rising costs of raising a child and finding an apartment in good school district have hardened her resolve.

Other factors have contributed to such reluctance to have more children, including the burden that many younger adults face in taking care of aging parents and grandparents.

China’s strict “zero Covid” policy — nearly three years of mass testing, quarantines and lockdowns, resulting in some families being separated for long periods of time — may have led even more people to decide against having children.

Luna Zhu, 28, and her husband have parents who are willing to take care of their grandchildren. And she works for a state-owned enterprise that provides a good maternity leave package. But Ms. Zhu, who got married five years ago, is not interested.

“Especially the past three years of the epidemic, I feel that many things are so hard,” Ms. Zhu said.

Li You contributed research and Keith Bradsher contributed reporting.

French nuclear power: 'Accelerate the laws, the rallying cry has been issued'

Philippe Escande

Le Monde Today

The French parliament is looking at two bills, one for nuclear power and the other for wind power, with a view to removing obstacles to the deployment of these energies.

Bureaucracy is a French problem. In a country that concocts a law as soon as a new problem appears, they now have to legislate to combat administrative delays resulting from previous laws. In the field of energy, in order to ensure that society accepts a scary technology (nuclear power), or one which is said to spoil the landscape (wind power), they are piling up legal guarantees, each of which also provides a foothold for opponents of all kinds.

In the case of France's first offshore wind farm near Saint-Nazaire, it took seven years to complete the procedure before the facility was built in just three years. The same goes for nuclear power. So the rallying cry has been issued and, in two weeks, two "acceleration" laws are coming to Parliament. One for renewable energies, the other for nuclear power.

In the nuclear case, however, only a small part of the problem will have been solved, since there are so many other obstacles. The first is construction time. Nuclear reactors have become so complex that it is difficult to build them. The law presented to the Sénat on Tuesday, January 17, is supposed to accelerate the time taken for nuclear reactors to be operational. Thanks to this law, the said new reactors are now expected to start in around 2040. Twenty years for six reactors! As a consequence of this timeframe and sophistication, costs are soaring. The current estimates are €50 billion for these first machines.

European industrial geography

As a result, the cost of the energy produced is now at least twice that of renewable energies. Today, wind farms in the North Sea have capacities 10 to 20 times greater than those of these reactors, even taking into account the intermittency.

According to The Economist, all the projects planned between now and 2050 in this region represent nearly 260 gigawatts of capacity, the equivalent of what is needed to provide power for 200 million Europeans. A development that could disrupt the industrial geography of the continent, similar to what happened in the hydro and coal regions in the 19th century.

Major technological uncertainties remain both for nuclear power (safety, waste, simplicity) and renewable power (storage). It is therefore in the interest of the nuclear industry to accelerate its transformation if it wants to stay in the race.

Davos looks ahead to a fragmented world after pandemic and Ukraine invasion

The World Economic Forum holds its annual session amid signs of a reshaping of the world order and a retreat from globalisation.

Written in Spanish by ANDREA RIZZI (SPECIAL ENVOY)

El País

Davos - 17 JAN 2023

The Davos Forum, the great annual liturgy of the globalised world, is holding its traditional annual meeting in the Alpine town this week under worrying signs. In the immediate term, although the last few months have yielded some encouraging data in terms of inflation and growth, the majority consensus of experts still foresees a gloomy 2023. Deep down, perhaps more importantly, the disintegrating forces that are fragmenting the world seem unstoppable. The great expansionary phase of globalisation of the past three decades is undergoing a radical shift.

There are two major triggers for this trend. First came the pandemic, which profoundly disrupted global supply chains and underlined the importance of maintaining a degree of self-sufficiency in certain strategic commodities. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a major focus of the forum, a huge geopolitical shock that has completely severed ties between the West and Russia and stimulated reflection on whether it is appropriate for liberal democracies to maintain a high degree of dependence on China, another adversary that could one day become an enemy.

Driven by these two shocks, the protectionist race is on, with huge subsidies to prop up domestic industries in strategic sectors such as energy transition or cutting-edge digital technologies. The United States has approved large aid packages for microchips and green technologies (more than 400 billion euros between them); the European Union has done the same for the former (some 40 billion) and is preparing to do the same for the latter (some 350 billion is planned to counteract the US support plan and prevent the flight of energy investments to the transatlantic partner). Other developed countries will undoubtedly follow suit.

Washington is also promoting tough restrictions on exports to China in key areas to develop pioneering technologies, and is looking for other Western countries to follow suit. At the same time, it is encouraging private companies to reshape their supply chains to be less dependent on Chinese manufacturing and more reliant on friendly countries.

Protectionism, restrictions on free trade, segmented reorganisation of production, geopolitical blocs: this, then, is the background scenario being scrutinised by the world's elite gathered this week in the Swiss Alpine resort.

The World Economic Forum resumes with this edition of its traditional winter meeting after the disruption caused by the pandemic and a spring edition held last year. The organisation reports that more than 2,600 delegates will be present, including some 50 heads of state or government - including the leader of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez - more than 100 foreign, finance and trade ministers and more than 600 company presidents - from Nadella of Microsoft to Dimon of JP Morgan - as well as some 20 central bank governors, media executives and leading figures from academia and civil society.

Of course, in addition to the major geostrategic transformation, short-term issues will undoubtedly play a major role in the forum.

On the one hand, the future of the war in Ukraine, with important decisions pending on the delivery of battle tanks and the prospect of a new round of sanctions against Russian oil, in this case refined products.

Economic outlook

On the other, the more immediate economic scenario, with the corresponding decisions that will have to be taken by public authorities - executive or monetary - and private companies. In this area, the outlook has become less catastrophic than most experts expected following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, thanks in part to a particularly mild autumn and early winter in Europe, which has allowed less gas to be spent. Overall, inflation has been easing in many countries, and growth has exceeded expectations. Labour markets remain buoyant. However, the outlook is not clear.

A survey published by the forum on the eve of the start of the programme suggests that two-thirds of the leading economists consulted - public or private - consider a global recession in 2023 to be likely. This is double the figure recorded in the previous survey, conducted in September.

Another survey by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) of 4,400 chief executives in 105 countries found that more than 70 per cent foresee an economic downturn. Even so, most do not plan to reduce staff or salaries.

As for inflation, levels are moderating in many countries, but core inflation remains threatening. There is no guarantee that a return to normalcy will be swift. Meanwhile, the blow to the purchasing power of so many has been severe, as wages almost everywhere have lagged far behind price increases.

This is therefore a new risk factor that can exacerbate inequality, one of the fundamental problems that has marked the era of globalisation. Globalisation has undoubtedly lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in emerging countries, with China at the forefront; but, together with the technological revolution, it has made the position of so many within advanced societies more fragile. This has eroded popular support for the idea of an interconnected, free-trade world, giving rise to political proposals that advocate other kinds of policies.

Oxfam released a report on global inequality on Monday, arguing that "since 2020, the richest 1% have captured nearly two-thirds of the world's new wealth, almost twice as much as the other 99%", and lamenting the dismal efficiency of tax systems that allow elites to pay too little tax.

In the midst of the polycrisis that the world has been facing in recent years, many voices are warning of the neglect of one of the most threatening challenges: climate change. A report on future risks published by the Davos Forum on the eve of the official programme highlights this issue as one of the most problematic.

Extraordinary problems precipitating a new epoch of the world are piling up on the discussion and business tables in Davos. A bitter cold - with expected lows as low as -15 degrees Celsius - will envelop the event, as a sort of physical reminder of the hibernation phase facing the globalisation of which this forum is the flagship.

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Actress and photographer Gina Lollobrigida has died at the age of 95.

Italian cinema mourns one of its greatest stars.

By David Mouriquand  & Agencies  •  Updated: 16/01/2023 - 15:42

Best known to the public for her films in the 1950s, including Christian Jaque’s Fanfan La Tulipe (1952) and the Silver Bear winning Italian film Pane, amore e fantasia (Break, Love and Dreams) (1953), Lollobrigida became an international star and one of the highest-profile European actresses of her generation.

Born on 4 July 1927 in Subiaco (Italy), Lollobrigida was noticed by the film world in a photo-novel in which she posed under the pseudonym Diana Loris, while she was studying at the Beaux-Arts and taking part in beauty contests.

For years, she was cast for her physical assets and status as a sex symbol, leading many to say that she was "the best thing that has happened since the invention of spaghetti" and describing her as "the most beautiful woman in the world."

Her performance in Bread, Love and Dreams led to it becoming a box-office success and she continued to work in the French cinema industry on such films as Les Belles de nuit (Beauties of the Night) (1952) and Le Grand Jeu (1954).

She was then directed by John Huston in Beat the Devil (1953) in which she played the wife of Humphrey Bogart. Roles in Crossed Swords (1954), co-starring Errol Flynn, Beautiful But Dangerous (1955), Carol Reed’s Trapeze (1956), as well as her turn as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, led to more critical acclaim.

Over the next few years, she would star with the likes of Yves Montand (The Law - 1959), Frank Sinatra (Never So Few - 1959) and Yul Brynner (Solomon and Sheba - 1959). She won a Golden Globe Award for her turn in the romantic comedy Come September (1961), in which she had a leading role alongside Rock Hudson.

"I knew right away that Rock Hudson was gay," she told one reporter, "when he did not fall in love with me."

She is also remembered for starring alongside Sean Connery in the thriller Woman of Straw (1964) and with Alec Guinness in Hotel Paradiso (1966).

By the 1970s, her film career had slowed down and in 1973, she stopped filming for good in order to and take up photography. She had a successful second career as a photographic journalist and photographed, among others, Salvador Dalí, Henry Kissinger, Audrey Hepburn and Ella Fitzgerald.

She did, however, make occasional appearances afterwards, notably at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1986 where she was president of the jury.

She came back to the screen in 1995 for a part in the French comedy Les cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma (One Hundred and One Nights) directed by Agnès Varda, alongside Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Catherine Deneuve, Robert De Niro, Jane Birkin and Michel Piccoli.

She was made a Chevalière de la Légion d'honneur and an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by Jack Lang in 1985 for her achievements in photography, and was awarded the Légion d'honneur by François Mitterrand.

Appointed Goodwill Ambassador in 1999 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, she ran in the same year for the European elections as number 2 on the list of Antonio Di Pietro, the former anti-corruption magistrate, without being elected.

Lollobrigida is survived by her son, Milko, and grandson, Dimitri.

Thierry Breton: EU will mobilise 350 billion for its green energy industry.

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In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

The Internal Market Commissioner believes Europe needs a common framework and matching funding for the 27 to respond to the US.

Written in Spanish by SAMUEL SÁNCHEZ

Xavier Vidal-Folch

El País

Barcelona - 16 JAN 2023

Translation by Germán & Co

Europe will invest some 350 billion in the manufacture of industrial products to generate green energy. And to compete successfully against Chinese and US protectionism. This is what the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton (Paris, 1955), believes in an interview with this newspaper during his recent stay in Spain.

Breton is a key player in the formulation of the Commission's imminent proposal on the matter, which is due in January. He recalls that "the internal market is the quintessence of what we do best: pooling a common good, which reaps more benefits than if we were each managing our own little perimeter". And that at the beginning of the pandemic it fizzled out, because some "closed their borders", but "we reopened, we won".

Question. Europe is subject to a US-China pincer. What will be the outcome?

Answer. Europe is strengthened in crises. As the founding fathers said. It works together. It is strengthened together. We saw it in the Great Recession and in the pandemic. Now we have a major energy and industrial crisis, resulting from the war in Ukraine.

P. The first war on our continent after the Balkans, even if this one was less global in scope.

R. That's right. And it affects the way we live, the way we feed ourselves, the way we produce... And the dependency relations that have been established with Russia. We give all our support to Ukraine, with the US and others. We will continue to do so. And then there are the autocracies, Russia. And China, that's why we call it a systemic rival, which does not mean not trading, but defending our values. We know where we stand. And we are a great democracy, 450 million people. And we are moving forward.

P. Yes, but at every opportunity it seems to forget the progress we have made together, without accumulating the solutions applied, and it returns to divisions, to ground zero, to having to relearn that joint action is essential. We spend a lot of time building consensus, making decisions.

R. I understand that point of view. But I must focus on what is my responsibility, the internal market. It is the quintessence of what we do best: pooling a common good, which reaps much better benefits than if we were each managing our own little perimeter. The internal market is a never-ending struggle. There are always forces that in times of crisis look backwards. I have to be here to remind us that we are stronger by pooling our resources than by closing in on ourselves.

Q. What example would you highlight?

R. At the beginning of the covid crisis, the internal market was closed. Some countries closed their borders to keep the masks on their people, and to prevent others from coming in and infecting them. I called the ministers one by one and urged them to reverse this action. There were strong discussions, but we reopened. We agreed to manufacture and distribute the vaccines. We won. Europe was the first continent to vaccinate its citizens and to export vaccines. We learned. Now we have the consequences of the energy crisis, which had started before the Ukrainian war, and the Ukrainian war amplified it enormously.

P. And history repeated itself.

R. It is true that some countries decided to intervene on their own and inject resources to protect their companies. I understand that intention. We have to make it easier for our companies to overcome the shock. Especially when other continents like the US and China inject considerable subsidies especially for new, green technologies: batteries, photovoltaic solar panels, wind power. I understand that governments are saying: we have to do something similar to retain and attract companies. That's why I'm going to see everyone. That is why I am coming to Spain, to Poland, to Belgium, to Denmark... To find an instrument, a general framework that maintains a similar capacity to react for all Member States, whatever their economic, financial, industrial or social situation. Especially in view of the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 14 August, which came into force on 1 January, and which supports strategic clean technologies such as hydrogen and photovoltaics. And which not only subsidises investment, but also the operation of companies [with 369 billion euros]. The response must be coordinated. Without it many of our companies will leave....

Q. ... to the US.

R. Of course, because it is more advantageous than staying here, given the better financial support. This is very dangerous for Europe. We have been discussing it for months, perhaps many months, since September, although it is true that this law is only dated 14 August.

P. You come to Spain, to Poland, to Belgium, but the problem of individual reaction with hundreds of billions of euros is rather in Berlin. Or in Paris.

R. I have already been to Berlin, I met with Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck. And in Paris, before Christmas, with the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron.

P. Give us the good news that they understand that they should not act on their own.

R. Macron has said it clearly in public. He said it to Joe Biden. And at the European Council in December, he stressed that a coordinated response was needed on the general framework and on financing, he was very precise. And the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, insisted. And he asked us - all 27 Member States asked us - the Commission to come back with a proposal. That's why I'm doing this tour of capitals.

P. I see you as less optimistic about Berlin, as if Germany is in its usual diesel mode: slow start and then constant speed.

R. He raises the question of relaxing state aid regulation. And he is very active on "permitting", facilitating and speeding up the procedures for setting up new technology factories. It often takes up to three years before they are opened.

Q. Your conclusion?

R. We are finalising the proposal. On the one hand, the idea of the general regulatory framework is advanced: speeding up authorisations, formalities and procedures for setting up new new technology plants; and speeding up the validation of public aid. We will make a specific Clean Tech Act for the green energy technologies industry, industrial decarbonisation and mobility. Just as we did the Chip Act, to encourage not only the deployment of new technologies but also to accelerate production in Europe. Because without a manufacturing base, our security of supply, our export capacity and our European jobs are at risk. It will be a horizontal rule, so that everyone who wants to can, with the same instruments, get on board in these industries and no one will be left by the wayside. We are working intensively on the financing chapter.

P. It is the one that can most distort the equality of each partner in the same market, due to its different capacity for public support, especially in the North-South line.

R. We are working on this issue to find a solution that works for everyone. For the time being, the financing is provided by the states. Those with the greatest capacity for debt, such as Germany, have announced that they will inject 200 billion. The Netherlands, 40 billion, which is a lot for that country. We are discussing how the figures will be specified. I estimate that in the German case, between 80,000 and 100,000 million will be dedicated to this industry [apart from those destined for families].

P. Much more than others, absolutely and relatively speaking.

R. We are at the moment evaluating and weighing it up. Other countries will be able to use the undrawn part of the Next Generation-EU recovery plan. Especially loans, rather than direct subsidies. This is the case of Spain. Or Italy. These are credits that were foreseen for this plan, it is necessary to verify if they fit well in the new Clean Tech Act. Other countries, such as Belgium, hope to be able to use increased specific support from the European Investment Bank. Others suggest gaining access to additional borrowing capacity, at an equivalent interest rate for all, through a mechanism similar to the SURE fund [for reinsuring unemployment insurance]: not all countries used it, but it was a success for those that did. With the guarantee of each state.

Q. Are you suggesting a variety of financial instruments?

R. Exactly. The idea I'm working on is that there will not be a single, stand-alone mechanism. But a set, a panoply of instruments. On the one hand, they should be able to respond to the different needs of each country. On the other hand, they should enable each and every one of them to provide a similar industrial investment response. It is not a proposal for a new Next-Generation, which would be difficult to accept, but a box of different financial instruments available.

P. Spain proposes that flexibility in State aid should be temporary, until 2026, and that it should be "imperative" to link it to the Nex Generation plan: what do you think?

R. These are structural changes. The US IRA is not a transitional measure; China's policy is long-term. So the framework we put in place cannot be limited to short-term temporary solutions. That is why we believe that a combination of regulatory measures and financial support must be prepared. And we are looking for solutions that work across the European Union, depending on different circumstances. In some Member States, NextGenerationEU can, with the necessary flexibilities, help. But this is not the case for all Member States. Some have already allocated their entire budget and used all possible loans. We need a package of national and EU measures to address the challenge of deindustrialisation linked to energy costs and the race for clean technologies: state aid, the best possible use of existing instruments (RFF, Repower), but also new European instruments to support in the very short term companies facing high energy costs and help them invest in clean technology manufacturing capacities.

P. Does this ensure that we do not turn the internal market into a patchwork of unconnected pieces and unequal players, which would denature the Union?

R. Yes, the idea is to guarantee a common ground for the participation of all, a regulatory level playing field, and the financial capacity for the States to intervene according to their needs, in a roughly similar way according to their specificities.

P. But the relaxation of state aid could stifle the single market.

R. This is a real risk, because some states would have deeper pockets to help their companies, even if they are only temporary exceptions. And they would be likely to distort competition. Only a framework that specifies for which companies, which sector, in what form, in terms of investment or operating subsidies, for how long, etc., will make it possible to respond to this risk, because the rules will be the same for everyone. But if only competition rules are opened up without further requirements, the risk would be higher.

Q. Will we avoid a Frankenstein-like Internal Market?

R. It seems to me that this is the only way to keep Europe competitive on the outside and at the same time harmonious on the inside. This is my fight.

Q. How much in total resources do you estimate?

R. Roughly speaking, and taking into account the American experience, it will be close to 2% of the Community's GDP, or some 300,000 or 350,000 million euros, but only in this specific industry, industrial production for clean energy equipment. These figures are an approximation, an order of magnitude.

Q. Is that all?

P. And then we have another mechanism, REPower-EU, to finance energy infrastructures that contribute to the Green Deal. From electricity grids to interconnections, renewable energy fields, or regasification terminals. It is a parallel device, but a different one. The Clean Tech Act aims to stimulate the industrial manufacture of energy products, such as batteries and photovoltaic panels, which are hardly produced in Europe today. The regulatory framework and financing comparable to that of our competitors will allow us to create an industry for renewable energies that is competitive with the American and Chinese industries.

P. We are starting almost from scratch.

R. Europe produces barely 2% of the world's solar panels. The overwhelming majority is made in China.

P. There is some in Germany.

R. Less and less. The president of one of the companies involved has just confessed to me that if he cannot count on support, he is about to rethink and look for another location for the investments he had planned in our continent. We must avoid this exodus. The Polish Prime Minister rightly commented to me the other day: "we Europeans must export our products, not our jobs" in these sectors of the future. For my part, I would add that these new productions require very select raw materials, rare earths, specific minerals such as nickel or cobalt or manganese. Many of these materials are extracted or processed in China.

P. Also in Ukraine.

R. Yes, but the processing, the lithium refineries, for example, are 90% in China. Chile produces, but has to send it by ship there, and then we import it. We depend on where it is produced. We have to set up factories in Europe and make import agreements with producers, such as Chile, Namibia or Canada, to diversify access to the raw material. We must also set up our own extraction mines. We should not rely entirely on others because we are wary of possible pollution: today there are sufficient technologies for clean production, while respecting the environment and biodiversity. Morally, we should not close our eyes in such a way that only others extract.

P. Europe's subsoil is less rich.

R. We have a lot of minerals in Europe. Lithium, cobalt, zinc. Roughly speaking, we could meet at least 30% of our needs. And now we have to add the recent discovery in Sweden. We are in the process of preparing another regulation, the Raw Materials Act. I will present it in March. We have unanimity in principle from the industry ministers on its various components: safety, research, recycling and circular economy.

P. President Von der Leyen has proposed a sovereign wealth fund for more global industrial investments, how does that fit in with the package we are talking about?

R. It is a longer-term proposal. We are working on it. It will be about sectors that need to be protected. And it will clearly require funding from the Commission. It will be an important element for the mid-term review of the financial perspectives.

Q. What is the status of the Chips Act?

R. The Council has already approved it. It is now in Parliament and then the trialogue between the three institutions begins. I am confident that it will be finished this year.

Q. How slow!

R. Our democracy is like that. Democracies are slower than autocracies. Dictatorships are very summary. But the key is that, as the roadmap is already sketched out, the companies have already proposed many projects. And they are signed.

P. This effect of anticipating the full effect of the regulation is significant; it is also happening in Spain with the projects of the Next Generation plan.

R. Yes, it is. I am at the disposal of all those who want to see me to adapt and to anticipate their projects. I have seen many of them, including Elon Musk from Twitter, Airbnb, all the big platforms; we have started voluntary audit tests...

P. On the new European digital regulation, will Musk obey you in your demand to moderate Twitter content and disinformation?

R. He doesn't have to obey me or not. I am very clear. Europe is the first big economic space and the first digital market in the free world: one and a half times more than the Americans in terms of users. It is normal that the big platforms want to come and take advantage of our market. We don't force them to come, they are welcome, but we tell them: here are our rules. In continental Europe you drive on the right. It's OK to drive or to send cars to us. That's all. They understand very well what the conditions of access to our market are, you have to comply with them and if you don't, there will be a scale of sanctions. It is not personal obedience. It is the law.

P. This is how European standards spread around the world, thanks to the regulatory power of the EU, as the legal scholar Anu Bradford has written in The Brussels effect.

R. Sure, but my responsibility is Europe. I have had that discussion with Musk. He has told me that he understands the approach and that he is comfortable and will comply. And I said that if they want to apply the same rules to their activities outside Europe, no problem.

P. Isn't that good for the EU? It exports rules.

R. In a way the US faces the same challenge, because it suffers from the consequences of excessive deregulation of the digital space, on social networks, on the protection of individuals, which ends up leading to a monopolisation that amounts to rentier-like monopolisation.

News round-up, Monday, January 16, 2023

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Reforestation day…

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Cooperate with ethical thinking -

“Just as teachers will have to change how they give students exams and essay assignments in light of ChatGPT, governments will have to change how they relate to lobbyists.”

— NYT

“For what purpose do we exist, and why are we required? Is artificial intelligence already more advanced than us?”

— Germán & Co

How ChatGPT Hijacks Democracy

Jan. 15, 202

CreditCredit...By David Szakaly

By Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier

Mr. Sanders is a data scientist. Mr. Schneier is a security technologist.

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Launched just weeks ago, ChatGPT is already threatening to upend how we draft everyday communications like emails, college essays and myriad other forms of writing.

Created by the company OpenAI, ChatGPT is a chatbot that can automatically respond to written prompts in a manner that is sometimes eerily close to human.

But for all the consternation over the potential for humans to be replaced by machines in formats like poetry and sitcom scripts, a far greater threat looms: artificial intelligence replacing humans in the democratic processes — not through voting, but through lobbying.

ChatGPT could automatically compose comments submitted in regulatory processes. It could write letters to the editor for publication in local newspapers. It could comment on news articles, blog entries and social media posts millions of times every day. It could mimic the work that the Russian Internet Research Agency did in its attempt to influence our 2016 elections, but without the agency’s reported multimillion-dollar budget and hundreds of employees.

Automatically generated comments aren’t a new problem. For some time, we have struggled with bots, machines that automatically post content. Five years ago, at least a million automatically drafted comments were believed to have been submitted to the Federal Communications Commission regarding proposed regulations on net neutrality. In 2019, a Harvard undergraduate, as a test, used a text-generation program to submit 1,001 comments in response to a government request for public input on a Medicaid issue. Back then, submitting comments was just a game of overwhelming numbers.

Platforms have gotten better at removing “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Facebook, for example, has been removing over a billion fake accounts a year. But such messages are just the beginning. Rather than flooding legislators’ inboxes with supportive emails, or dominating the Capitol switchboard with synthetic voice calls, an A.I. system with the sophistication of ChatGPT but trained on relevant data could selectively target key legislators and influencers to identify the weakest points in the policymaking system and ruthlessly exploit them through direct communication, public relations campaigns, horse trading or other points of leverage.

When we humans do these things, we call it lobbying. Successful agents in this sphere pair precision message writing with smart targeting strategies. Right now, the only thing stopping a ChatGPT-equipped lobbyist from executing something resembling a rhetorical drone warfare campaign is a lack of precision targeting. A.I. could provide techniques for that as well.

A system that can understand political networks, if paired with the textual-generation capabilities of ChatGPT, could identify the member of Congress with the most leverage over a particular policy area — say, corporate taxation or military spending. Like human lobbyists, such a system could target undecided representatives sitting on committees controlling the policy of interest and then focus resources on members of the majority party when a bill moves toward a floor vote.

Once individuals and strategies are identified, an A.I. chatbot like ChatGPT could craft written messages to be used in letters, comments — anywhere text is useful. Human lobbyists could also target those individuals directly. It’s the combination that’s important: Editorial and social media comments only get you so far, and knowing which legislators to target isn’t itself enough.

This ability to understand and target actors within a network would create a tool for A.I. hacking, exploiting vulnerabilities in social, economic and political systems with incredible speed and scope. Legislative systems would be a particular target, because the motive for attacking policymaking systems is so strong, because the data for training such systems is so widely available and because the use of A.I. may be so hard to detect — particularly if it is being used strategically to guide human actors.

The data necessary to train such strategic targeting systems will only grow with time. Open societies generally make their democratic processes a matter of public record, and most legislators are eager — at least, performatively so — to accept and respond to messages that appear to be from their constituents.

Maybe an A.I. system could uncover which members of Congress have significant sway over leadership but still have low enough public profiles that there is only modest competition for their attention. It could then pinpoint the SuperPAC or public interest group with the greatest impact on that legislator’s public positions. Perhaps it could even calibrate the size of donation needed to influence that organization or direct targeted online advertisements carrying a strategic message to its members. For each policy end, the right audience; and for each audience, the right message at the right time.

What makes the threat of A.I.-powered lobbyists greater than the threat already posed by the high-priced lobbying firms on K Street is their potential for acceleration. Human lobbyists rely on decades of experience to find strategic solutions to achieve a policy outcome. That expertise is limited, and therefore expensive.

A.I. could, theoretically, do the same thing much more quickly and cheaply. Speed out of the gate is a huge advantage in an ecosystem in which public opinion and media narratives can become entrenched quickly, as is being nimble enough to shift rapidly in response to chaotic world events.

Moreover, the flexibility of A.I. could help achieve influence across many policies and jurisdictions simultaneously. Imagine an A.I.-assisted lobbying firm that can attempt to place legislation in every single bill moving in the U.S. Congress, or even across all state legislatures. Lobbying firms tend to work within one state only, because there are such complex variations in law, procedure and political structure. With A.I. assistance in navigating these variations, it may become easier to exert power across political boundaries.

Just as teachers will have to change how they give students exams and essay assignments in light of ChatGPT, governments will have to change how they relate to lobbyists.

To be sure, there may also be benefits to this technology in the democracy space; the biggest one is accessibility. Not everyone can afford an experienced lobbyist, but a software interface to an A.I. system could be made available to anyone. If we’re lucky, maybe this kind of strategy-generating A.I. could revitalize the democratization of democracy by giving this kind of lobbying power to the powerless.

However, the biggest and most powerful institutions will likely use any A.I. lobbying techniques most successfully. After all, executing the best lobbying strategy still requires insiders — people who can walk the halls of the legislature — and money. Lobbying isn’t just about giving the right message to the right person at the right time; it’s also about giving money to the right person at the right time. And while an A.I. chatbot can identify who should be on the receiving end of those campaign contributions, humans will, for the foreseeable future, need to supply the cash. So while it’s impossible to predict what a future filled with A.I. lobbyists will look like, it will probably make the already influential and powerful even more so.

German anti-coal protesters accuse police of violence

Organizers said that 35,000 protesters demonstrated on Saturday. Police put the figure at 15,000.

Le Monde with AFP

Published on January 15, 2023

Climate activists on Sunday, January 15, accused police of "pure violence" after clashes during a demonstration at a German village being razed to make way for a coal mine expansion.

In an operation that began on Wednesday, hundreds of police have been removing activists from the doomed hamlet of Luetzerath in western Germany.

The site, which has become a symbol of resistance to fossil fuels, attracted thousands of protesters on Saturday, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Protest organizers reported that dozens had been injured in clashes with police. Indigo Drau, a spokeswoman for the organizers, on Sunday told a press conference the police had gone in with "pure violence." Officers had "unrestrainedly" beaten protesters, often on the head, she said.

Activists on Saturday had accused the police of using "massive batons, pepper spray... water cannons, dogs and horses."

At least 20 activists had been taken to hospital for treatment, said Birte Schramm, a medic with the group. Some of them had been beaten on the head and in the stomach by police, she said. Organizers said that 35,000 protesters demonstrated on Saturday. Police put the figure at 15,000.

A police spokesperson said on Sunday around 70 officers had been injured since Wednesday, many of them in Saturday's clashes.

Criminal proceedings have been launched in around 150 cases, police said, including for resistance against police officers, damage to property and breach of the peace. The situation on the ground was "very calm" on Sunday, the police spokesperson said.

About a dozen activists were still holed up in tree houses and at least two were hiding in an underground tunnel, according to the police.

Luetzerath – deserted for some time by its former inhabitants – is being demolished to make way for the extension of the adjacent open-cast coal mine. The mine, already one of the largest in Europe, is operated by energy firm RWE.

The expansion is going ahead in spite of plans to phase out coal by 2030, with the government blaming the energy crisis caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Le Monde with AFP

Chile: Pardon granted to prisoners of 2019 revolt sparks political crisis

President Gabriel Boric pardoned 12 people convicted in connection with the violence that plagued the demonstrations. This measure was marred by 'errors' and led to the resignation of the Minister of Justice and the head of the cabinet.

By Flora Genoux (Buenos Aires (Argentina) correspondent)

Published on January 16, 2023

It was a campaign promise of President Gabriel Boric (left), who came to power in Chile in March 2022. But, in trying to fulfill it, the government is now facing a major political crisis. The resignation of Minister of Justice Marcela Rios was confirmed on Saturday, January 7, as well as that of the chief of staff Matias Meza-Lopehandia, a close friend of the president.

The resignations come after Mr. Boric's decision on Dec. 30, 2022, to grant presidential pardons to people who had been convicted in connection with the violence that marred the historic 2019 anti-inequality movement. The head of state had made it one of his priorities, motivated by the need to "heal the scars" of the protests, which were violently repressed by the police. According to figures from the Chilean gendarmerie, requested by the Senate and disclosed in January 2022, 211 people were convicted or in pre-trial detention for crimes related to the demonstrations.

But the choice of the individuals pardoned – twelve men in total – immediately sparked controversy. The release of Luis Castillo, 37, was particularly shocking. Beyond his participation in the demonstrations, this man is a repeat offender, convicted several times including for robbery with violence, all of which occurred well before the social revolt, according to revelations of the television channel T13.

On Saturday, January 7, Mr. Boric acknowledged "errors" and "flaws in the execution of [his] decision" without going into detail. The measure does not meet the criteria "set by the president (...) to exclude [from the pardon] people who had a complex criminal record prior to the revolt," admitted Camila Vallejo, government spokeswoman, on Monday, without specifying how many ex-detainees are affected by this error. Nevertheless, the pardon has no legal defect and "it is not possible to revoke it," she stressed.

About thirty deaths

The right was opposed in principle to the concept of pardoning those prosecuted in connection with the protests. "The priority is to be on the side of the victims, not the offenders," said Diego Schalper, deputy and secretary general of Renovacion Nacional (right), who condemned what he called a "huge mistake." The opposition left the "security table," a space for dialogue between the government and the opposition launched in November 2022 to establish strategies to combat insecurity, which according to opinion polls is the number one concern of Chileans.

The unpopular release of some of the social revolt prisoners has become an issue since the presidential campaign at the end of 2021 and even more so since Mr. Boric took office. The ruling left-wing coalition is following in the footsteps of the 2019 movement against inequality, which in particular raised demands for new social rights. Mr. Boric echoed these demands and the corresponding need to write a new constitution. Although the project formulated during a year was amply rejected in a referendum in September 2022, its drafting must now be relaunched.

However, while the social revolt was marred by the outbursts of violent individuals, it also involved the "excessive use of force" by the police, as condemned by the UN. In all, some 30 people lost their lives and over 400 sustained eye injuries. It is in this context that Amnesty International has denounced the "disproportionate use of pre-trial detention."

Initially, the government had set its sights on an amnesty law, which was to be debated in Parliament. But without a majority or political consensus, the project floundered, finally leading to this pardon, which depends only on the will of the president. According to the Cadem institute, 64 percent of those polled were opposed to it.

'Tactical and timing error'

The release of the detainees "was used by the right to undermine the government and get its [candidate for the post of] national prosecutor," according to human rights lawyer Karinna Fernandez. The January 9 appointment of the new head of the prosecutor's office, an autonomous body responsible for conducting investigations, was the subject of arduous negotiations, while the position remained vacant for 100 days. Ms. Fernandez herself was a candidate before withdrawing from the race in November 2022. The head of the prosecutor's office "is an authority that will have an influence on the cases of police violence of the social revolt, he has, for example, the possibility of not following up on the investigations," explained the lawyer.

According to Marco Moreno, a political scientist at the Central University of Chile, the government made "a tactical and timing error. It has governed for its political tribe [the leftmost wing of the coalition] and deprived itself of a start to the year with good news about the work of the security table." As the government approaches its first year in office, "it lacks clarity and direction," argued Mr. Moreno.

When he took office on Wednesday, January 11, the new Minister of Justice, Luis Cordero, said that "since their application in the 1990s until today, grounds [for pardons] have been a source of conflict." The controversy has further undermined the president's image, which had benefited from a very relative improvement at the end of the year. According to the Cadem institute, 70% of those polled disapproved of Mr. Boric's leadership at the beginning of January, representing a peak of negative opinion.

Flora Genoux(Buenos Aires (Argentina) correspondent)

US says Venezuela President Maduro is still illegitimate

The US said Tuesday it would maintain sanctions after the fledgling opposition dissolved its 'interim government.' Joined by most Western and Latin American nations, Washington recognized Juan Guaido as interim president four years ago.

Le Monde with AFP

Published on January 4, 2023

The United States said Tuesday, January 3, it still did not consider Nicolas Maduro to be the legitimate president of Venezuela and would maintain sanctions after the fledgling opposition dissolved its "interim government."

President Joe Biden's administration said that Venezuelan government assets in the United States, notably of the state oil company, would remain legally under the authority of the opposition-led National Assembly, which was elected in 2015 but has been disempowered by Mr. Maduro's leftist government.

"Our approach to Nicolas Maduro is not changing. He is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters. "We continue to recognize what is the only remaining democratically elected institution in Venezuela today, and that's the 2015 National Assembly," Mr. Price said. Mr. Price said that existing sanctions "remain in place" and that the United States was in touch with the National Assembly on whether a new individual, group or committee would oversee government assets.

More than seven million Venezuelans have fled

The United States, under former president Donald Trump, set a goal of toppling Mr. Maduro in 2019 following elections widely seen as fraudulent and as an economic crisis wreaked havoc with shortages of basic necessities. More than seven million Venezuelans have fled their country, most to neighboring countries but with a growing number making the dangerous trek to the United States.

Joined by most Western and Latin American nations at the time, the United States four years ago recognized the National Assembly's Juan Guaido as interim president. Mr. Maduro has remained in power with backing from some segments of the population as well as the military, Russia, China and Cuba. The National Assembly – now largely a symbolic force in Caracas – on Friday voted to dissolve Mr. Guaido's "interim government."

In an interview broadcast Sunday on state television, Mr. Maduro proposed top-level talks with the Biden administration. "Venezuela is ready, totally ready, to take steps towards a process of normalization of diplomatic, consular and political relations with the current administration of the United States and with administrations to come," Maduro said.

'An exercise in political realism'

Despite not recognizing his legitimacy, the Biden administration sent a delegation that met Mr. Maduro in March and in November it gave the green light for US oil giant Chevron to resume operations in Venezuela following a spike in crude prices due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Chevron move came after the Maduro government and opposition reached an agreement in talks in Mexico to let the United Nations administer government funds for a variety of social spending in the country.

In Caracas, National Assembly member Tomas Guanipa, whose opposition party Primero Justicia pushed to end the interim government, told reporters that last week's decision was "an exercise in political realism." "Whether Maduro is illegitimate is not up for discussion; what cannot exist is an alternative government that doesn't exercise its functions and that had been set up to achieve change quickly," said Mr. Guanipa, who served as the interim government's ambassador to Colombia.

Political support for Mr. Guaido had eroded further outside the United States, where fervent anti-communists of Cuban and Venezuelan descent are a potent political force, although generally tilting toward Mr. Trump's Republican Party.

The sharpest shift has been in Colombia, long a vociferous opponent of Mr. Maduro, where President Gustavo Petro has pursued reconciliation since he was elected last year as Colombia's first-ever leftist leader.

The European Union, while not dropping support for Mr. Guaido, since mid-2021 stopped referring to him as interim president after Mr. Maduro pushed aside the National Assembly. A French foreign ministry spokeswoman, asked Tuesday about the end of the interim government, said France "supports the democratic forces of Venezuela who will organize themselves as they so wish."

Le Monde with AFP

Whisper it, but Europe is winning the energy war with Putin

Mild weather, lower consumption and supplies from elsewhere have helped Europe take an advantage.

BY CHARLIE COOPER

JANUARY 13, 2023

Halfway through the first winter of Europe’s energy war with Russia, only one side is winning.

When Vladimir Putin warned in September that Europeans would “freeze” if the West stuck to its energy sanctions against Russia, Moscow’s fossil fuel blackmail appeared to be going exactly to plan.

European wholesale gas prices were north of €200 per megawatt hour, around 10 times higher than they had been for most of 2021. Plans were drawn up to cut gas demand and ensure supplies could move across borders to countries with the worst shortages. Regular rolling blackouts in the EU were a very real prospect.

Putin’s strategy — to make life miserable for the European public by shutting off their gas, forcing them to drop their support for Ukraine — looked a potent one.By Joshua Posaner

Boosting supplies

At great expense, European countries hoovered up global supplies of LNG in mid to late 2022, increasing imports from 83 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2021 to 141 bcm in 2022, according to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. That offset about three-quarters of the 80 bcm that Europe was no longer receiving from Russia’s pipelines. New LNG import infrastructure is springing up across Europe, including in Germany where six floating terminals will be operational by the end of this year.

Much of the LNG already imported — the bulk of it shipped from the U.S. — is now sitting in Europe’s network of underground storage facilities. Mild weather, combined with steep falls in gas consumption driven by higher prices, mean that those storages are still 82 percent full. That's roughly where they were when Putin made his “freeze” threat four months ago.

On January 1, European stocks were around 31 bcm higher than they had been a year earlier, according to Jack Sharples of the Oxford Institute. “That’s put us in a very good position to start the year.”

Moscow, meanwhile, is starting to feel the effects of the West’s energy countermeasures.

One analysis from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air estimated that the EU’s ban on Russian crude oil imports and the G7’s $60 per barrel price cap are together costing Russia €160 million a day.

Despite sanctions and supply cuts, Moscow made €155 billion from oil and gas exports in 2022 — 30 percent higher than the previous year. But with global oil and gas prices falling, in 2023 the Kremlin’s own estimates say that those revenues will be down 23 percent — a figure some experts think is optimistic.

So has Europe already won the energy war?

“The word ‘won’ is too bold. It’s still early winter and there are lots of things that could still go wrong,” said Dieter Helm, professor of economic policy at New College, Oxford and a former energy adviser to the European Commission. “But Europe has done vastly better than most of the commentators expected.”

“For now, things look good,” an EU diplomat agreed. “The Russians only had one weapon in the energy war: gas. It’s a strong weapon, with strong short-term impact. But they’ve used it already." The diplomat said that the EU's "arsenal" was more diverse, including: boosting renewables, getting supplies from elsewhere and taking steps to use less energy. "But we can’t afford to be complacent.”

That is a message echoed across EU capitals.

“It’s Europe 1, Russia 0,” said one EU energy minister — but the contest is far from over. For months now, European leaders have warned that next winter could be more dangerous than this one, with a tight global LNG market and the possibility of a resurgent China, reopening after COVID lockdowns, competing for a limited supply.

Paying a price

Europe’s strong position in January has also come with a cost.

Industrial output has held up reasonably well but energy-intensive sectors are taking a particularly hard hit, with production down by almost 13 percent year-on-year in November, according to ING.

Governments are also on the hook for vast energy bill support payments to consumers and businesses — totaling €705 billion across Europe according to the Bruegel think tank. Such huge sums will weigh on national budgets for years to come.

But on perhaps the key measure — public and political support for Ukraine — Russia has certainly failed in its attempt to break European resolve. Eurobarometer polling conducted in October and November and released this week shows that 73 percent of EU citizens backed the bloc’s support for Kyiv and sanctions against Russia.

There a few signs that views have changed over the course of the winter. Germany’s far right has spear-headed protests against sanctions and Hungary’s government has frequently pushed back against the EU’s stance on Ukraine — but so far such sentiments have remained a minority pursuit in Europe.  

“This is political as well as economic and I think Europeans have shown a remarkable degree of solidarity,” said Helm. “This is a European project, it needs European strategies, and the strength of the European Union has been on great display.”

News round-up, Friday, January 13, 2023

“Exxon scientists predicted there would be global heating of about 0.2C a decade due to the emissions of planet-heating gases from the burning of oil, coal and other fossil fuels. The new analysis, published in Science, finds that Exxon’s science was highly adept and the “projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models”.”

— The Guardian

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US Republicans determined to track down Hunter Biden scandal

An investigation is already targeting the son of US President Joe Biden in a tax evasion case, but it is his business activities in Ukraine and China that fuel most of the theories around him.

By Piotr Smolar (Washington (United States) correspondent)

Published on January 13, 2023

Le Monde

US Congressman Jim Jordan shows an email from Hunter Biden during a press conference on the Biden family business investigation on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, November 17, 2022. EVELYN HOCKSTEIN / REUTERS

Hunter Biden, 52, had his first drink when he was 8 at an election night party celebrating his father. He had lost his mother and sister in a car accident when he was 2, then witnessed his older brother, Beau, die of cancer at age 46. His first marriage fell apart and he struggled then with drug and alcohol addictions.

But beyond his personal misfortunes, Mr. Biden represents a vulnerability for his father, the incumbent President of the United States. The Republicans, who won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives after the midterms elections last November, decided to attack Mr. Biden through his son over his questionable financial activities.

The White House has already stated that it does not intend to cooperate with a future House committee focused on Hunter Biden whereas it has said it would do so in other proposed topics of investigation such as the military withdrawal from Afghanistan or immigration at the Mexican border.

The president wants his son to keep a low profile so that his opponents have no leg to stand on and to reinforce the idea that he is being persecuted. But whether the strategy holds in the longer term is another question.

"This is an investigation into US President Joe Biden and why he lied to the American people about his knowledge of and involvement in his family's business schemes," James Comer, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, told journalists in November to justify the launch of the battle against the Biden family.

Democrats for their part point out the Grand Old Party's lack of interest in another matter that heightens suspicions of conflict of interest on a completely different scale. The matter covers a $2 billion investment by a Saudi fund in a new company, Affinity Partners, created by Jared Kushner, son-in-law and former adviser to Donald Trump, six months after he left the White House. Mr. Kushner had developed a close relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Business activities in Ukraine and China

President Biden's son is already under investigation. Media reported that FBI and IRS agents have gathered strong evidence of tax evasion and a lie about purchasing a handgun in 2018 when Hunter Biden failed to mention his drug use. It was up to the Delaware attorney general to issue a possible indictment.

But the Republicans have a different idea. They claim to be exposing a mafia-type "family". Their conclusions are written down already even though there is no evidence that the president has taken part in any wrongdoing or questionable actions.

This is why Hunter Biden would have been better off never spilling liquid on his computer. In April 2019, he visited a repair store in Wilmington, Delaware, to save his personal files and data but he seemed to forget about going to collect the machine. This was when the drama started before becoming the greatest obsession of the MAGA – Make America Great Again – supporters.

The MacBook, which is now in the hands of the FBI, contained nearly 129,000 emails and a large number of instant messages, as well as photos and videos, mixing mundane, sordid and professional content. Bank documents, hotel bills, family chats and videos of Hunter Biden's parties with crack and prostitutes. The most controversial content, however, was about his business activities in Ukraine and China.

'Poor judgment'

The Washington Post wrote in March last year that Hunter Biden and his uncle James had received $4.8 million in 14 months in 2017 from the Chinese energy group CEFC. The newspaper reported that there was no evidence that Joe Biden was involved or personally benefited from this, although the financial relationship seemed questionable at a time when the US and China were already engaged in a systemic confrontation.

That said, an elected official's son using his name for personal gain is nothing new in Washington DC, the world's lobbying capital.

But another matter triggered the biggest suspicions: The presence of Hunter Biden on the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, between 2014 and 2019, while his father served as vice president for former US president Barack Obama (2008-2016).

At the time, Joe Biden was responsible for monitoring Ukraine now torn apart by war. In an interview with ABC in late 2019, Hunter Biden denied any wrongdoing but he admitted: "In retrospect, look, I think that it was poor judgment on my part," he said, adding the Ukrainian gas sector was a "swamp."

In July 2019, Mr. Trump exerted pressure on Ukraine's then new President, Volodymyr Zelensky, to "look closely" at the role of Joe Biden and his son after Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma, was dismissed. In reality, Mr. Shokin was considered by Washington as an opponent of judicial reform in Ukraine. The first impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump were launched following this intervention in early 2020.

Multiple conspiracy theories

In mid-October 2020, the New York Post, a pro-Trump publication at the time, ran a front-page story on the president's son's emails. The article revealed an email sent to Hunter Biden by Vadym Pozharskyi, a senior executive at Burisma, thanking him for his invitation to Washington and the opportunity to meet his father.

The newspaper reported that, as a member of the company's board, Hunter Biden was then earning $50,000 a month. In April 2015, Joe Biden's campaign team investigated the matter and determined that no such meeting with Mr. Pozharskyi had ever taken place.

With three weeks to go before the presidential election, it was an important moment for the Democrats, even though the confusing details of the scandal were difficult to understand. A few days after the report by the New York Post, about 50 veterans from the security and intelligence services signed an open letter to denounce a possible manipulation coming from Russia.

This was not beyond the realm of reality due to prior Russian involvement, such as the cyberattack against French President Emmanuel Macron's campaign team in 2017 or the attack on the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

Those who signed the letter acknowledged later that they did not know whether the emails were authentic and could not substantiate the rumor of Russian involvement. But they said they were "highly suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role."

Since then, the Hunter Biden controversy has grown out of control. It seems unlikely that any hard truths will emerge given so many fantasies and conspiracy theories have piled up. The responsibilities are shared. The mainstream media was accused of hiding the truth and protecting Joe Biden while tech giants like Facebook and Twitter were believed to censor conservatives' posts.

Elon Musk recently revealed how Twitter was moderated behind the scenes. In doing so, Republicans were quick to denounce conspiracy and expose federal pressure on these companies. US Republican congressman James Comer said he intended to devote first hearings to this issue from early next month.

By trying to prevent the release of information from Hunter Biden's computer at the end of the 2020 presidential campaign for fear of externally orchestrated manipulation, these private companies – who are free to do as they please, but find themselves caught in the act of hypocrisy – have fueled the idea that there was some sort of coalition of elites working against the people to hide the truth.

The reality is more nuanced than that. Fox News political commentator Tucker Carlson – who promoted the racist "Great Replacement" theory of white Americans – released an accusatory documentary called Biden, Inc.

While promoting the film on Fox News, he explained that he became very close with Hunter Biden when he was living in Washington and had asked him for a letter of recommendation for his son Buckley's application to the prestigious Georgetown University in Washington.

Piotr Smolar(Washington (United States) correspondent)

Russia-Ukraine WarRussia Says It Has Taken Soledar as Kyiv Denies the Claim

A Russian victory in Soledar would be a symbolic win but have limited strategic value, analysts say.

Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.

NYT, today news

A Ukrainian soldier pointing toward smoke near Soledar, in the eastern Donetsk region, on Wednesday.Credit...Libkos/Associated Press

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday that its troops had captured the eastern salt-mining town of Soledar, a claim quickly rejected by Ukraine’s military, which said that its soldiers were hanging on.

After a string of setbacks for Russia, capturing Soledar would represent the biggest success for Moscow’s forces in Ukraine in months, though military analysts have cautioned that the small town is of limited strategic value.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday that its troops had “completed” their capture of the town overnight.

But Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for Ukrainian troops fighting in the east, denied that Soledar had been captured.

“This is not true,” Mr. Cherevaty said in remarks to Ukrainian news outlets on Friday afternoon. “The fighting is ongoing.”

Earlier on Friday, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, said that Kyiv’s troops were still “bravely trying to hold the defense” of the town under a “high intensity” Russian offensive.

Over the last several days there have been conflicting reports about who controls Soledar, while losses mount on both sides. This week, the head of the Wagner mercenary group fighting in Ukraine claimed that his fighters had seized control of the town. Ukraine denied the reports, and the Kremlin walked back the assertion at the time.

Weeks of intense fighting have devastated Soledar, which has taken on outsize attention despite its small size and limited strategic value, as Russia sought a win after months of setbacks.

The town lies near Bakhmut, the focal point of the Kremlin’s quest to take control of the entire eastern Donbas region. The battle for Soledar, where hundreds of civilians are trapped in a town that has largely been reduced to rubble, has put into sharp relief Moscow’s costly and grinding offensive in eastern Ukraine.

Taking Soledar would give Moscow’s forces new locations to place artillery and put pressure on Ukrainian supply lines that run toward Bakhmut. But military analysts say that even if Soledar were to fall, it would not necessarily mean that Bakhmut — or the whole of the Donbas — is next.

The Russian claim came after the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in an analysis on Thursday that geolocated footage indicated that Moscow’s forces “likely control most if not all of Soledar.” It called the capture “at best a Russian Pyrrhic tactical victory” after Moscow had committed significant resources, adding that the battle will have contributed to “Russian forces’ degraded combat power and cumulative exhaustion.”

“All available evidence indicates Ukrainian forces no longer maintain an organized defense in Soledar,” the institute said, adding that the fall of the town “is not an operationally significant development and is unlikely to presage an imminent Russian encirclement of Bakhmut.”

The White House’s national security spokesman, John Kirby, echoed those sentiments on Thursday when asked about the status of Soledar, cautioning that it was important to “keep this in perspective.”

“We don’t know how it’s going to go, so I’m not going to predict failure or success here,” he told reporters. “But even if both Bakhmut and Soledar fall to the Russians, it’s not going to make a — it’s not going to have a strategic impact on the war itself.”

He added: “If you look at what’s been happening over the last 10 and a half months, particularly in the Donbas, towns and villages have swapped hands quite frequently.” 

About 559 civilians — including 15 children — are trapped in the town as the brutal battle unfolds, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the local Ukrainian military administration, said on Ukrainian state television on Thursday.

Revealed: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

Oil company drove some of the leading science of the era only to publicly dismiss global heating

Oliver Milman in New York

Thu 12 Jan 2023

The Guardian

The oil giant Exxon privately “predicted global warming correctly and skilfully” only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business, new research has found.

A trove of internal documents and research papers has previously established that Exxon knew of the dangers of global heating from at least the 1970s, with other oil industry bodies knowing of the risk even earlier, from around the 1950s. They forcefully and successfully mobilized against the science to stymie any action to reduce fossil fuel use.

A new study, however, has made clear that Exxon’s scientists were uncannily accurate in their projections from the 1970s onwards, predicting an upward curve of global temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions that is close to matching what actually occurred as the world heated up at a pace not seen in millions of years.

Exxon scientists predicted there would be global heating of about 0.2C a decade due to the emissions of planet-heating gases from the burning of oil, coal and other fossil fuels. The new analysis, published in Science, finds that Exxon’s science was highly adept and the “projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models”.

Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years

Geoffrey Supran, whose previous research of historical industry documents helped shed light on what Exxon and other oil firms knew, said it was “breathtaking” to see Exxon’s projections line up so closely with what subsequently happened.

“This really does sum up what Exxon knew, years before many of us were born,” said Supran, who led the analysis conducted by researchers from Harvard University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “We now have the smoking gun showing that they accurately predicted warming years before they started attacking the science. These graphs confirm the complicity of what Exxon knew and how they misled.”

The research analyzed more than 100 internal documents and peer-reviewed scientific publications either produced in-house by Exxon scientists and managers, or co-authored by Exxon scientists in independent publications between 1977 and 2014.

Photograph: Supran, et al., 2023, “Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections”

The analysis found that Exxon correctly rejected the idea the world was headed for an imminent ice age, which was a possibility mooted in the 1970s, instead predicting that the planet was facing a “carbon dioxide induced ‘super-interglacial’”. Company scientists also found that global heating was human-influenced and would be detected around the year 2000, and they predicted the “carbon budget” for holding the warming below 2C above pre-industrial times.

Armed with this knowledge, Exxon embarked upon a lengthy campaign to downplay or discredit what its own scientists had confirmed. As recently as 2013, Rex Tillerson, then chief executive of the oil company, said that the climate models were “not competent” and that “there are uncertainties” over the impact of burning fossil fuels.

“What they did was essentially remain silent while doing this work and only when it became strategically necessary to manage the existential threat to their business did they stand up and speak out against the science,” said Supran.

“They could have endorsed their science rather than deny it. It would have been a much harder case to deny it if the king of big oil was actually backing the science rather than attacking it.”

Climate scientists said the new study highlighted an important chapter in the struggle to address the climate crisis. “It is very unfortunate that the company not only did not heed the implied risks from this information, but rather chose to endorse non-scientific ideas instead to delay action, likely in an effort to make more money,” said Natalie Mahowald, a climate scientist at Cornell University.

Mahowald said the delays in action aided by Exxon had “profound implications” because earlier investments in wind and solar could have averted current and future climate disasters. “If we include impacts from air pollution and climate change, their actions likely impacted thousands to millions of people adversely,” she added.

Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University, said the new study was a “detailed, robust analysis” and that Exxon’s misleading public comments about the climate crisis were “especially brazen” given their scientists’ involvement in work with outside researchers in assessing global heating. Shindell said it was hard to conclude that Exxon’s scientists were any better at this than outside scientists, however.

The new work provided “further amplification” of Exxon’s misinformation, said Robert Brulle, an environment policy expert at Brown University who has researched climate disinformation spread by the fossil fuel industry.

“I’m sure that the ongoing efforts to hold Exxon accountable will take note of this study,” Brulle said, a reference to the various lawsuits aimed at getting oil companies to pay for climate damages.

A spokesperson for Exxon said: “This issue has come up several times in recent years and, in each case, our answer is the same: those who talk about how “Exxon Knew” are wrong in their conclusions. In 2019, Judge Barry Ostrager of the NY State Supreme Court listened to all the facts in a related case before him and wrote: “What the evidence at trial revealed is that ExxonMobil executives and employees were uniformly committed to rigorously discharging their duties in the most comprehensive and meticulous manner possible….The testimony of these witnesses demonstrated that ExxonMobil has a culture of disciplined analysis, planning, accounting, and reporting.”

News round-up, Thursday, January 12, 2023

“Young people have an important role to play in the green transition, according to European Commission’s Director-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Joost Korte: “It is not a coincidence that we move from the European Year of Youth to the Year of Skills. The skills of the future generations and in future sectors are essential to anything we want to do to successfully”

— EU

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

Here Are All the Ways Republicans Plan to Investigate Biden

House Republicans are preparing a cascade of investigations, some overlapping, into the Biden administration and its policies. Right-wing lawmakers have said the ultimate goal is to impeach the president.

By Luke Broadwater

NYT

Jan. 11, 2023

WASHINGTON — With Washington in a state of divided government, newly empowered House Republicans are all but certain to be unable to enact their legislative agenda into law. Instead, they have made it clear that their primary mission in the 118th Congress will be investigating the Biden administration, including inquiries they say could lead to the potential impeachment of President Biden and several cabinet members.

Preparing to use their new subpoena power, Republicans have already created three special investigative committees or subcommittees, but they expect to carry out many more inquires under existing committees they now control. Some of the investigations may involve multiple panels, and top Republicans are jockeying for the biggest and most prominent pieces.

While Speaker Kevin McCarthy said last year that he had not yet seen grounds for impeaching Mr. Biden, Republicans have already introduced a host of impeachment articles against the president and members of his cabinet, and some influential members on the right have said they relish the prospect of trying him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Here is a road map of the investigations:

The ‘Weaponization’ of Government

What committee is involved: A special subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, led by Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio.

Substantive policy questions: This remains to be seen. The text of the resolution establishing the subcommittee gives the panel essentially open-ended jurisdiction to scrutinize any issue related to civil liberties or to examine how any agency of the federal government has collected, analyzed and used information about Americans — including “ongoing criminal investigations.” It also gives the subcommittee the authority to obtain classified information typically only provided to the Intelligence Committee, including some of the government’s most protected secrets.

Political agenda: During the 2022 campaign, Republicans promised to use their new power in Congress to scrutinize what they said was a concerted effort by the government to silence and punish conservatives at all levels, from protesters at school board meetings to former President Donald J. Trump. The panel could become a venue for targeting federal workers accused of carrying out a partisan agenda. It could also re-litigate revelations about Mr. Trump’s conduct, including the facts surrounding his effort to overturn the 2020 election or his removal of classified material from the White House, and failure to return it.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, called the new panel the “Select Committee on Insurrection Protection.”

Biden Family Businesses

What committees are involved: The Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is led by Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky, and potentially the new Judiciary subcommittee.

Substantive policy questions: The Oversight Committee says the purpose of its inquiry is to inform legislation to strengthen federal ethics laws and to ensure that financial institutions have the proper internal controls and compliance programs to alert federal agencies of potential money-laundering activity.

Political agenda: Mr. Comer has pledged for months to investigate Mr. Biden’s family and its business connections. His staff has already obtained the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, the president’s son, whose business activities are under federal investigation. Mr. Comer and Mr. Jordan held a news conference on Capitol Hill detailing their plans to take the inquiry’s focus beyond the younger Mr. Biden. “This is an investigation of Joe Biden,” Mr. Comer has said.

Origins of the Covid Pandemic

What committees are involved: A special subcommittee of the Oversight Committee, and the Energy and Commerce Committee, led by Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington.

Substantive policy questions: Lawmakers say they want to explore whether the U.S. government should be funding so-called gain-of-function research, a narrow sliver of scientific inquiry that can involve tinkering with viruses in a way that could make them more dangerous. Such research is at the heart of Republican assertions that the pandemic may have been caused by a laboratory leak — a suggestion disputed by scientists whose research shows the outbreak most likely originated at a live animal market in Wuhan, China.

Political agenda: Republicans including Mr. Comer and Mr. Jordan have asserted, without evidence, that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Mr. Biden’s former medical adviser, covered up a lab leak that they allege may have caused the pandemic. They have said repeatedly that they will investigate Dr. Fauci, who is a political target for Republicans seeking to woo Trump voters. Dr. Fauci has said he has a “completely open mind” about whether the outbreak originated in a lab, but that the preponderance of evidence shows it was a natural occurrence.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.

China Competitiveness

What committee is involved: A new select committee focused on the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese government, led by Representative Mike Gallagher, Republican of Wisconsin.

Substantive policy questions: The committee’s purpose is to investigate the Chinese government’s “economic, technological and security progress, and its competition with the United States.” It will examine many topics, including the economic dependence of the United States on Chinese supply chains, the nation’s security assistance to Taiwan and lobbying efforts by the Chinese government to influence local and state government, as well as academic institutions. The panel will then make recommendations for how the United States can avoid being overtaken by China in those areas.

Political agenda: This committee received bipartisan support and is unlikely to become as politically charged as other Republican-led investigations. Still, some Democrats worried that an intense focus on China could lead to xenophobic rhetoric intensifying anti-Asian sentiment in the United States.

The Withdrawal From Afghanistan

What committees are involved: The Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas; the Armed Services Committee, led by Representative Mike D. Rogers, Republican of Alabama; and the Oversight Committee.

Substantive policy questions: Republicans on Mr. McCaul’s committee have already released an interim report titled “A Strategic Failure: Assessing the Administration’s Afghanistan Withdrawal,” and he plans to continue the investigation, now with subpoena power. It is expected to focus on planning in the run-up to the evacuation, botched efforts to extract Afghan interpreters and contractors who aided the U.S. government, and the consequences of the withdrawal.

Political agenda: Seen as among the House Republicans’ most serious investigations, the inquiry can also be used to undermine faith in the Biden administration’s competency.

Border Enforcement

What committees are involved: The Homeland Security Committee, led by Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee; the Judiciary Committee; and the Oversight Committee.

Substantive policy questions: Investigating the Biden administration’s approach to the border will be a large focus of Republicans’ efforts for the next two years, but it is yet to be determined what policy recommendations they will make. With Congress in a state of divided power, any immigration legislation is unlikely to pass.

Political agenda: The investigations are aimed at countering the record-breaking surges of migration at the southern border that have strained resources as the Biden administration scrambles to address what members of both parties call a crisis.

At the same time, Republicans have sought to use Mr. Biden’s border policies as a political weapon against him and Democrats, blaming them for crime and capitalizing on fears among some in their hard-right base that immigrants of color will dilute their voting power. They have called for the impeachment of the homeland security secretary, Alejandro N. Mayorkas. Mr. McCarthy has said that Mr. Jordan and Mr. Comer would lead an investigation into Mr. Mayorkas to “determine whether to begin an impeachment inquiry.”

Treatment of Jan. 6 Defendants

What committees are involved: Unclear. Most likely the Oversight Committee or the Judiciary Committee and its new subcommittee.

Substantive policy questions: In a closed-door meeting in November, right-wing lawmakers including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia extracted a promise that their leaders would investigate Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, and the Justice Department for the treatment of defendants jailed in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Ms. Greene has released a report on conditions at the D.C. jail, and local officials have acknowledged there are longstanding issues at the facility.

Political agenda: The topic has been a focus for hard-right Republicans in Congress, who have tried to downplay or distort what happened during the deadly assault, saying that the real victims are the ordinary people who entered the Capitol and, they say, are being persecuted for their political beliefs. Many of them want retribution for Democrats’ extensive investigation into the riot, which laid out in a series of public hearings and a voluminous report the extent of Mr. Trump’s plot to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election, with help from allies inside and outside Congress.

But some Republicans would prefer not to focus on the topic, which would inevitably involve rehashing what happened during the assault and their roles in Mr. Trump’s election subversion efforts.

“We’re focused on a lot of investigations,” Mr. Comer told reporters recently, adding, “That wasn’t one of them.”

Mr. Jordan has been vague about whether he would pursue that angle in his investigation. “We’re focused on how political our Justice Department has become,” he said.

Catie Edmondson and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

The fall of Li Hejun, formerly China's richest man

The founder of Hanergy, a thin-film solar panel company, was arrested by the Liaoning police on December 17, 2022, and has not been seen since.

By Frédéric Lemaître (Beijing (China) correspondent)

Published on January 12, 2023

Le Monde

Li Hejun, the former Chinese solar panel king, has disappeared. This entrepreneur, ranked as the richest Chinese in 2014, was arrested by the Liaoning police on December 17, 2022, and has not reappeared since, revealed the magazine Caixin on Wednesday, January 11. Born in 1967, Li Hejun managed at the age of 22 to borrow 50,000 yuan (a little less than €7,000 at the current rate). According to him, his sufficiently wise investments led him to amass a fortune of some 80 million yuan in five years.

In 1994, he set his sights on energy. His company Hanergy found success through investments in hydraulics. But in 2011, he took a new direction. He moved Hanergy into the thin-film solar panel space. Listed in Hong Kong in 2013, the company saw its value increase tenfold in two years. In 2015, Hurun magazine, which publishes the list of China's richest people, placed Mr. Li at the top of its ranking, valuing his fortune at 160 billion yuan.

But in May of the same year, as he explained to his shareholders that he intended to build an empire bigger than Apple, Hanergy's shares collapsed by 47% in a few dozen minutes. The listing was suspended. The company was officially taken off the stock exchange four years later.

Aura of corruption

The reason was that investors and market authorities gradually discovered that Hanergy's solar panels had only one customer: the solar parks operated by the company's subsidiaries. Mr. Li was therefore both the seller and the buyer of its products. More importantly, it turns out that the farms were primarily supplying electricity to Hanergy and almost no one else.

According to the business daily Jemian News, Mr. Li's arrest may be a consequence of the setbacks of one of his main creditors, the Bank of Jinzhou, an institution located in the northeastern province of Liaoning. The bank had officially lent 10 billion yuan to Hanergy, but according to Caixin, was actually much more invested in the company. The Bank of Jinzhou had not been able to present its 2018 balance sheet due to the resignation of its auditors, the company EY.

The bank has since been recapitalized by ICBC, a large state-owned bank, but this operation revealed the fragility of some regional banks and the aura of corruption that surrounds them. According to the Chinese press, more than 63 officials from financial institutions in Liaoning have been arrested since 2020 in anti-corruption investigations.

The US and Japan strengthen their military alliance as tensions rise in Asia

The two nations are revising their joint defense posture as they confront rising threats from North Korea and increasing aggressiveness from China.

Le Monde with AFP

Published on January 12, 2023

The United States said Wednesday, December 11, that attacks in space would invoke its defense treaty with Japan and announced the deployment of a more agile Marine unit in its ally as alarm grows over China.

Weeks after unveiling plans to ramp up defense spending, Japan sent its defense and foreign ministers to Washington for talks on updating the decades-old alliance. They will be followed two days later by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is touring Group of Seven nations to kick off Japan's leadership year of the elite club and earlier Wednesday signed a deal with Britain to increase defense ties.

"We agree that the PRC is the greatest shared strategic challenge that we, our allies and partners face," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a four-way news conference with the Japanese ministers, referring to the People's Republic of China. His counterpart, Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, said that the United States and Japan together have "a vision of a modernized alliance to acquire the posture to win in the new era of strategic competition."

As China makes rapid advances in satellites, Mr. Blinken said that the Washington and Tokyo agreed that attacks "to, from or within space" could invoke Article Five of their mutual defense treaty which considers an attack on one an attack on both.

The talks finalized a plan by the US to send a so-called Marine Littoral Regiment, a more agile unit that can boost defenses both by sea and air, to Okinawa, the southern Japanese island strategically close to Taiwan. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the unit would be in place by 2025 from a reorganization of an existing artillery regiment. "I think this is going to contribute in a major way in our effort to help defend Japan and also promote a free and open Indo-Pacific," Mr. Austin said, using the US turn of phrase for an Asia without Chinese dominance.

Taiwan risks but no 'imminent' invasion

Okinawa, under US control until 1972, is home to more than half of the 50,000 US troops in Japan, whose leaders for decades have spoken of easing the burden on a local population often resentful of the bases. Mr. Hayashi said that the Japanese government would keep working to address the concern of residents.

But Japan's calculus has shifted with the growing assertiveness of China under President Xi Jinping. Mr. Kishida's government said last month that Japan would increase defense spending by 2027 to 2% of GDP, in line with a separate goal by NATO nations, whose security concerns have also spiked due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

China claims Taiwan, a self-governing democracy, as part of its territory and last year carried out exercises seen as a test run for an invasion after a defiant visit to Taipei by Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the US House of Representatives. "I won't second-guess Mr. Xi but what I will tell you that what we are seeing recently is some very provocative behavior on the part of China's forces," Mr. Austin said. "We believe that they endeavor to establish a new normal but whether or not that means that an invasion is imminent, you know, I seriously doubt that."

The Center for Strategic and International Studies recently released findings from wargames to chart out a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and found that Beijing would strike Japanese bases, inflicting heavy losses, although China would ultimately fail to take Taiwan.

Europe’s climate ambitions should be met with socially just and inclusive policies

Rising living costs are the number one concern for Europeans as energy supplies become a priority due to war in Ukraine — the social dimension of the green transition has never been more important.

In November, the European Commission hosted the inaugural European Employment & Social Rights Forum | via the European Commission

BY EUROPEAN COMMISSION

DECEMBER 6, 2022

Brussels, Belgium. As Europe takes more and more concrete steps to make the Green Deal become a reality, over 1,200 participants and 75 speakers came together to discuss the social dimension of the green transition at the inaugural European Employment and Social Rights Forum.

Across two days, President Ursula von der Leyen , European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights Commissioner Nicolas Schmit, former Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the Belgian and Greek governments, policymakers from the European Parliament, the Czech Presidency, as well as academics, citizens and companies came together to discuss how to manage a fair, inclusive and sustainable green transition for all.

The European approach to social rights

The forum was an opportunity to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the European Pillar of Social Rights and its 20 principles, which are grouped around three key topics: equal opportunities; fair working conditions; and social protection and inclusion.

The right policies, as inspired by the European Pillar of Social Rights, can help Europeans overcome the crisis.

In her opening speech, President Ursula von der Leyen showed optimism in the face of economic recession and a difficult winter ahead, highlighting that the right policies, as inspired by the European Pillar of Social Rights, can help Europeans overcome the crisis.

Since the introduction of the Pillar of Social Rights under former president Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission has put forward more than 130 measures to implement the pillar across the EU and deliver a social Europe that is fair, inclusive and full of opportunities. Among the most significant initiatives are the Directive for adequate minimum wages in the EU, the Pact for Skills which provides workers with quality training and lifelong learning through public-private partnerships, and the European Gender Equality Strategy supporting women’s participation in the labor market.

Many speakers underlined that commitments to social rights are and should be complementary to the green transition.

A social contract to achieve green growth

Many speakers underlined that commitments to social rights are and should be complementary to the green transition. Participants agreed that social aspects should be more deeply integrated in environmental, fiscal and economic policies. An “intergenerational approach is necessary for ensuring that young people are part of upcoming EU policies,” according to Romanian MEP and chair of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs in the European Parliament Dragoș Pîslaru.

Speakers at the event also agreed that jobs must be as much about quality as quantity. The chair of the European Commission’s High-Level Group on the future of social protection and of the welfare state in the EU, Anna Diamantoupoulou, underlined that the labor market is undergoing significant changes, and a new charter for social and labor rights will be essential for Europe to keep up.

The labor market is undergoing significant changes, and a new charter for social and labor rights will be essential for Europe to keep up.

The keynote speech from renowned economist Mariana Mazzucato stressed that achieving social goals will take true commitment and investment — on all levels. She highlighted the need for different sectors to work together in order to ensure the green transition is fair.

The need for more energy-efficient buildings was a clear example. Buildings account for 30 percent of the EU’s energy consumption, and many Europeans face soaring energy costs and deteriorating living conditions this winter.

Skills needed for the green transition

As next year has been designated as the European Year of Skills, Commissioner Schmit underlined the importance of lifelong learning and Europe’s role in facilitating it. It is essential for workers and their employers to gain new skills in order to meet the demands of the green transition.

Young people have an important role to play in the green transition, according to European Commission’s Director-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Joost Korte: “It is not a coincidence that we move from the European Year of Youth to the Year of Skills. The skills of the future generations and in future sectors are essential to anything we want to do to successfully

Author(s):

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

News round-up, Wednesday, January 11, 2023

“Strained by the need to finance its war machine, the Russian government said on Tuesday that it had posted a $47 billion budget deficit in 2022, which is the second-highest since the break up of the Soviet Union.

The budget gap reached 3.3 trillion rubles in 2022, or 2.3 percent of the size of the Russian economy, Anton Siluanov, the country’s finance minister, said during a government meeting.”

— NYT

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

Russian Mercenary Force Claims to Capture Town in Eastern Ukraine

NYT

Here’s what we know:

Ukraine denied losing control of Soledar, in the Donbas region. A victory there would be Russia’s first in months, after a string of humiliating losses.

The founder of a Russian mercenary force leading Moscow’s assault on the town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine claimed late Tuesday that his troops had seized control of the town, which Ukrainian defense officials denied.

The claim that Soledar had fallen to soldiers-for-hire working for Wagner Group could not be verified, and Ukraine’s defense ministry said on Twitter just before midnight local time that Russia was still trying to capture the town. At close to 1 a.m. on Wednesday, Robert Magyar, a commander of a Ukrainian air reconnaissance group, said in a statement on Telegram that Ukrainian forces were still holding the town.

“True — it’s hell” he wrote, adding the claims were “psychological pressure and propaganda.”

The assault is part of Russia’s broader push in the area around the city of Bakhmut that Moscow sees as important to achieving its goal of occupying all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. If true, the fall of Soledar, a relatively small municipality, would be Russia’s first significant victory in months, after a string of humiliating losses. Ukraine changed the course of the war with its capture of the Kharkiv region in September and then the city of Kherson in November, successes of far greater magnitude.

Military experts say that although taking Soledar is significant, it does not signal that the city of Bakhmut is about to fall into Russian hands. Ukraine has strongly reinforced its positions in and around Bakhmut, presenting a formidable obstacle to further progress by Moscow.

The entrepreneur who started the Wagner Group, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, maintained in a post on the Telegram messaging app that his troops had control of all of Soledar, though he added that fighting continued.

“A cauldron has been formed in the center of the city, in which urban battles are being fought,” Mr. Prigozhin said.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, said claims that Russia had taken all of Soledar were false, citing another comment from Mr. Prigozhin earlier Tuesday on Telegram: “The Ukrainian army bravely fights for Bakhmut and Soledar. On the western outskirts of Soledar there are heavy bloody battles.”

In his nightly address on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine thanked the troops defending Soledar. “Today, I would like to pay special tribute to the warriors of the 46th separate airmobile brigade for their bravery and steadfastness in the defense of Soledar!” he said.

How a tiny, salt-mining town with a prewar population of 10,000 people became a focus of such a sustained assault by Wagner’s forces has been an open question. In his overnight address on Monday, Mr. Zelensky asked, “What did Russia want to gain there?”

The most critical factor is perhaps what Mr. Prigozhin and his mercenaries fighting there have to gain in terms of reputation. In Bakhmut, the Wagner Group, a private military contracting company that has recruited prisoners into its ranks, has become the main force leading the offensive for Russia, and the fighting has become bloodier.

Before the emergence of the Wagner Group’s claims on Tuesday, Britain’s defense ministry said in its daily intelligence update that Russian forces and the Wagner Group were likely now in control of most of Soledar after intense fighting over the past four days. The capture of the city, which is about six miles north of the city of Bakhmut, was likely to be part of “an effort to envelop Bakhmut from the north, and to disrupt Ukrainian lines of communication,” the update said.

A spokesman for the eastern group of Ukraine’s army, Serhiy Cherevatyi, said on national television on Tuesday that Russian artillery had struck Soledar 86 times over the past day. He described the situation as “very challenging.”

The tactics employed by the Wagner Group have resulted in a high number of casualties. In recent days, reporters for The New York Times embedded with a Ukrainian drone crew on the front line saw the bodies of Russian fighters scattered across open ground in the area around Bakhmut. Images and videos on Ukrainian social media in recent days also appear to have come from these aerial reconnaissance missions and show similar scenes.

A correction was made on 

Jan. 10, 2023

An earlier version of this article misstated the timing of the Russian claim of taking the town of Soledar. It was made on Tuesday, not Thursday.

— Megan Specia, Ivan Nechepurenko and Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Russia posts a $47 billion budget deficit for 2022, its second highest in the post-Soviet era.

Strained by the need to finance its war machine, the Russian government said on Tuesday that it had posted a $47 billion budget deficit in 2022, which is the second-highest since the break up of the Soviet Union.

The budget gap reached 3.3 trillion rubles in 2022, or 2.3 percent of the size of the Russian economy, Anton Siluanov, the country’s finance minister, said during a government meeting.

Russia’s revenues increased by 2.8 trillion rubles in 2022, or $40 billion, but that was not enough to cover rapidly increasing expenditures, which skyrocketed by 6.4 trillion rubles, or $92 billion, officials said.

At the meeting, government officials presented the economic situation as positive, with Mikhail Mishustin, the Russian prime minister, saying that “overall, those indicators aren’t bad.”

Making no specific reference to the war, Mr. Silanov, the finance minister, said: “Despite the geopolitical situation, the restrictions and sanctions, we have fulfilled all our planned goals.”

Still, the posted deficit for 2022 is second only in Russia’s post-Soviet history to the one reported for 2020, the year the coronavirus pandemic unfolded.

In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many experts predicted a catastrophic collapse of the country’s economy from the Western sanctions and other restrictive measures. Yet the Russian economy performed above expectations, buoyed by high commodity prices. And some sanctions, like a cap of $60 per barrel on the price for Russian oil, were introduced later in the year, softening their effect on the economy.

The Russian government has not published a detailed breakdown of its expenditures in 2022, but it is widely assumed that the bulk of the rise can be attributed to increased military spending. The government has financed the deficit by issuing bonds and using money from its rainy-day fund.

A high deficit is likely for this year, too. Russia plans to increase its military spending by a third, and Moscow’s oil revenues are expected to be pressured by the oil price cap, which compels Russian traders to sell crude at a discount.

— Ivan Nechepurenko

India launches deep-sea mining project to develop 'blue economy'

Despite the inherent environment risks, New Delhi has launched the deep-sea mining initiative valued at more than €460 million, with hopes of fulfilling its need for rare minerals.

By Sophie Landrin (New Delhi (India), correspondent)

Published on January 11, 2023

Le Monde

With a 7,517 kilometers long coastline and 1,382 islands, India has potentially priceless deposits of unique minerals in the depths of its waters. Despite the inherent environmental risks, New Delhi is determined to tap into them through its Deep Ocean mission, launched in June 2021. With a budget of more than €460 million over five years, the initiative will develop deep-sea mining technologies and resource exploration, study marine biodiversity, purchase a research vessel for ocean exploration and conduct research on ocean climate change.

The subcontinent joined the group of countries allowed to explore the ocean's depths in 2016, receiving the 25th permit granted by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an autonomous organization within the United Nations Common System. It was awarded a 75,000-square-kilometer site in the central Indian Ocean basin, corresponding to its expanded exclusive economic zone. India will therefore be able to explore its marine resources, including polymetallic sulphides and nodules, gas hydrates and hydrothermal vents.

The government is not hiding its intentions. "The mineral exploration studies will pave the way for commercial exploitation in the near future, once the commercial exploitation code is developed by the International Seabed Authority. This component will contribute to the priority area of the 'blue economy,' namely the exploration and exploitation of minerals and energy of the deep seabed," it said in a statement at the launch of the mission.

Superabundance

The Ministry of Earth Sciences has claimed that by using only 10% of the reserve of these polymetallic nodules available in the region, India will be able to satisfy all its future needs for producing batteries. The figures put forward by the government are staggering: Per preliminary estimates, the country would have 380 million tons of polymetallic nodules, including copper, nickel, cobalt and manganese, worth about $110 billion, within this area.

To explore the depths, the Deep Ocean mission must develop a manned, self-propelled submersible capable of carrying at least three crew members and scientific equipment to a depth of 6,000 meters in the Indian Ocean. It will take four hours to descend and the same amount of time to return to the surface.

India is one of the countries that have severely criticized the French stance of prohibiting all exploitation of the seabed

The vehicle will need to have a range of 12 hours in normal operation and 96 hours in an emergency to ensure crew safety and provide oxygen. The first tests in shallow waters should begin in 2024. India will join the United States, Russia, China, Japan and Australia in the race to the bottom of the ocean.

The design and development of a submersible vehicle, the Matsya 6000 – named after the first avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu – has been entrusted to the Madras (Chennai)-based National Institute of Ocean Technology, a government agency under the Ministry of Earth Sciences that will work in collaboration with the Indian space agency. The project is to be completed by 2026, according to the minister of earth sciences.

Speaking in Parliament on December 21, Minister Jitendra Singh said that the "preliminary design of the vehicle is complete and the various components of the vehicle are being built." In addition, the Indian Maritime University has been tasked with building a low-energy river- sounding drone.

India is one of the countries that have severely criticized the French position of banning all seabed mining and is calling for discussions to ensure responsible and sustainable exploitation of the seabed. The deep-sea mining project is part of its program to develop the "blue economy," a catch-all concept, but one that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hopes will describe one of the engines of economic growth by 2030.

Above all, with its 1.4 billion inhabitants, India has a considerable need for rare metals, electronic products, electric car batteries and more. The government has set itself the goal of having an all-electric car fleet by 2030. In the capital alone, more than 13 million gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles are currently in use. To reduce its dependence on China, New Delhi is banking on its oceans.

Sophie Landrin(New Delhi (India), correspondent)

Bolsonaro's Mob

The Predictable Attack on Brazil's Democracy

Radical followers of Brazil's ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro, stormed the government district of Brasilía on Sunday. It was entirely predictable, and raises serious questions about the country's security forces.

By Jens Glüsing in Rio de Janeiro

09.01.2023

They were scenes reminiscent of the storming of the United States Capitol almost exactly two years ago, a violent and predictable assault on Brazil’s state institutions that was supported by numerous police officers. Since Friday, followers of right-wing radical ex-President Jair Bolsonaro had been gathering in Brasilía, allegedly for a protest in front of the National Congress. Bolsonaro’s hardcore supporters refuse to accept his defeat at the hands of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in late October. For the past several weeks, they have been demanding that the military take over.

On Saturday alone, hundreds of buses full of Bolsonaro supporters from around the country arrived in the capital. The justice minister warned security officials of the impending danger and asked that the Esplanada dos Ministerios, the vast mall leading to the National Congress, and Three Powers Plaza – so named because it is home to the Congress, the presidential office and the country’s highest court – be closed to demonstrators.

But the Civil Police of the Federal District, which is in charge of security in Brasilía, did nothing. Indeed, they even escorted the "demonstrators" in the direction of the seat of government. And those gathered in the crowd had made no secret that they were planning a raid of the kind undertaken by supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021. For days, Bolsonaro supporters had been discussing the storming of the National Congress in WhatsApp groups.

When the Bolsonaro followers then assaulted the building on Sunday, some police officers could be seen laughing and taking photos with their mobile phones. The chief of security for the Federal District, Anderson Torres, who had served as justice minister under Bolsonaro, has since been sacked. He was on his way to Florida, likely to meet with his former boss, who relocated to the U.S. state after losing the election. It is considered possible that Torres had known about the coming assault on the country’s parliament, or even took part in planning it.

The governor of the Federal District, Ibaneis Rocha, also a former Bolsonaro ally, promised that he would mobilize more police officers. By then, though, it was already too late. Some security personnel, armed with pepper spray, tried in vain to hold back the mob.

Thousands of people stormed Three Powers Plaza, with hundreds of them forcing their way into the National Congress building, the presidential palace and the seat of the Supreme Federal Court. They laid waste to offices and plenary halls, posing in the Senate and filming with their mobile phones. Only after about an hour were the police able to drive the vandals out of the presidential palace and the high court with the help of teargas. Thousands of people were still gathered out in front of the National Congress building.

Late Sunday night, the Supreme Federal Court suspended Rocha for 90 days, saying he did too little to prevent the violence.

Brazil’s parliament and highest court are on summer break until the end of the month. Lula was also out of the capital when the raids commenced, visiting victims of severe recent rainfall in the city of Araraquara in the state of São Paulo. His face flushed with anger, Lula addressed the press on Sunday night prior to returning to Brasilía, saying the federal government would intervene in the security apparatus of the Federal District, essentially placing the capital’s security in the hands of the president. "These people are fascists," Lula said of the vandals, promising that all those who participated in or helped plan the raids would be "found and penalized." He accused Bolsonaro of having inspired the storming of Brazil’s democratic institutions. "Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the Republic," he said.

Questions about the Security Forces

Lula only took over the presidency a week ago. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians celebrated his return to power, with Brasilía gripped by a party atmosphere. But that atmosphere has now vanished. The threat to Brazil’s democracy did not come to an end with Lula’s inauguration and is likely to continue hanging over the country for the next several months. The most pressing question is how the country’s security forces and military will respond.

Sunday’s riot has once again demonstrated the degree to which the country’s militarily organized police forces, which are under the control of the state governors, have been infiltrated by Bolsonaro supporters. Lula can really only trust the federal police force, but even there, he must be wary. The military has thus far stayed in the background and there doesn’t appear to be an imminent threat of a military putsch. But that doesn’t mean that the troops will readily obey all orders from the president, who is the commander-in-chief of Brazil’s armed forces.

Lula’s justice minister twice ordered the military to clear the tent camp that Bolsonaro followers established in front of army headquarters in Brasilía after Lula’s election on October 30. That tent camp is where radical Bolsonaro followers prepared the "protests" against Lula’s victory ceremony on Dec. 13, during which numerous buses and cars were set on fire. The radical Bolsonaro acolyte who placed an explosive device on a tanker truck intending to blow it up at the Brasilía airport also claims to have planned his attack here. But the military did nothing.

A week ago, tent-camp occupants threatened DER SPIEGEL correspondent Jens Glüsing when he visited the site. Guards from army headquarters escorted the journalist out, but they told him they could not guarantee his safety.

Bolsonaro's Reaction

The radical Bolsonaro fans are a minority among the ex-president’s supporters. They resemble a religious sect and live in a parallel world – and are incited by radical pastors from Pentecostal churches that support Bolsonaro. Lula’s government is led by "demons," said one camp occupant who called herself "Eva." "We are experiencing the day of the Apocalypse." Whereas many of Bolsonaro’s former political allies have distanced themselves from him in recent weeks, his hardcore supporters remain loyal. And they forgive him for having left the country for Florida. "I would have fled as well," Eva told DER SPIEGEL. After all, she added, Bolsonaro is being persecuted.

Initially on Sunday, Bolsonaro remained silent about the violence in Brasilía. Late last night, though, he turned to Twitter to reject Lula’s contention that he had incited the riots. Peaceful demonstrations, he wrote, are part of democracy, but the storming of government buildings went too far.

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If it is proven that Bolsonaro had incited the mob’s raid on Brazil’s democratic institutions, he could be arrested immediately upon his return to the country. It remains unclear how the U.S. might react to Bolsonaro’s presence on American soil given the suspicions that he may have been behind what amounts to an attempted putsch. Bolsonaro likely feels relatively safe in proximity to Trump in Florida, but U.S. President Joe Biden, one suspects, isn’t pleased about hosting right-wing radicals from Brazil.

On Sunday evening, governments from across Latin America and Europe expressed their solidarity with President Lula and the Brazilian democracy. The gesture of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who met Lula before he was sworn in and was photographed arm-in-arm with the Brazilian president-elect, carries new meaning against the backdrop of Sunday. And it is clear that Lula is dependent on the international support of all democracies.

Belgien och franska Engie sluter avtal om att förlänga livslängden för två kärnkraftsreaktorer (Le Monde)

“Nuclear Power: The Road to a Carbon Free Future - konstateras att 30 länder för närvarande driver kärnkraftverk och att mer än två dussin andra länder tittar på kärnkraft för att tillgodose sina el- och klimatbehov.”

— EnergyCentral

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

Vad är kärnkraft?

Kärnkraft är ett rent och effektivt sätt att koka vatten till ånga, som driver turbiner och producerar elektricitet.

Kärnkraftverk använder lågt anrikat uranbränsle för att producera elektricitet genom en process som kallas fission - delning av uranatomer i en kärnreaktor. Uranbränsle består av små, hårda keramiska pellets som är förpackade i långa, vertikala rör. Buntar av detta bränsle sätts in i reaktorn.

​​​​​​​Reaktorerna Doel 4 och Tihange 3 ska vara i drift i ytterligare tio år från och med 2026. Fram till dess måste landets elförsörjning hanteras.

Av Jean-Pierre Stroobants (Bryssel, Europabyrån)

Publicerad den 10 januari 2023

Le Monde

Belgiens kärnkraftsavveckling, som tillkännagavs för tjugo år sedan och sköts upp flera gånger, kanske aldrig blir verklighet. Ironiskt nog var det Tinne Van der Straeten, landets energiminister, en miljöaktivist, som tillsammans med premiärminister Alexander De Croo förhandlade fram en fortsättning av två kärnkraftsreaktorer med Engie-Electrabel, den enhet som driver Belgiens kärnkraftverk och som är en del av franska Engie.

Måndagen den 9 januari, i slutskedet av månader av häftiga förhandlingar, kom Belgiens regering och Engie överens om att förlänga reaktorerna Doel 4 och Tihange 3, de nyaste i landet, i tio år med början i november 2026.

Engie, som vid upprepade tillfällen har betonat svårigheten, för att inte säga omöjligheten, av en sådan livstidsförlängning, har lite mindre än fyra år på sig att anpassa de två enheterna.

Denna tidsram väckte frågor. Experter påpekade att det fanns en risk för bristande försörjning i landet under vintern 2025-2026, med ett möjligt underskott på cirka 1 000 megawatt. Innan de anpassas kommer de två enheterna att stängas av 2025. Och det kommer förmodligen att bli en annan regering som måste undvika ett eventuellt strömavbrott, eftersom De Croos mandat löper ut i mitten av 2024.

Kostnadsfördelning

"Vi tar vår försörjningstrygghet tillbaka i våra egna händer", sade regeringschefen. De Croo såg sig tvungen att ta upp en energifråga som alla hans föregångare noggrant hade försummat. Under två decennier har Belgiens regeringar godtagit krav från De gröna utan att förbereda alternativ till att lämna kärnkraften.

Den här gången skapade den belgiska regeringen och Engie en gemensam juridisk struktur som kommer att ansvara för förvaltningen av de två reaktorerna. Investeringar, risker och vinster kommer att delas, även om det i detta skede inte var klart om den producerade elen skulle säljas till ett fast pris. Engie kommer att fortsätta att driva anläggningarna, men den belgiska staten kommer att delta i de strategiska besluten.

"Det är ett komplicerat avtal, men det saknar motstycke", sade Van der Straeten, som tvingades överge Groen, det flamländska miljöpartiets doktrin, för att förhandla med den franska koncernen.

Engie inledde förhandlingarna från en stark position. Genom att inledningsvis säga att man vägrade en förlängning kunde man föra fram frågan om kostnadsfördelningen för nedmonteringen av fem andra reaktorer, som ska stängas 2025, samt frågor som rör avfallshantering och använt kärnbränsle.

I utbyte mot ett löfte om att "göra allt som är möjligt" för att återstarta de två enheterna inom den planerade tidsramen fick Engie en summa för kostnaden för detta "nukleära ansvar".

Förkortad tidsram

Avvecklingen ska förbli Engies ansvar, men ekonomiska tak kommer att införas för avfallshanteringen, en annan fråga som försummats av de belgiska myndigheterna. Om taken överskrids - vilket olika specialister anser vara troligt - kommer räkningen att betalas av skattebetalarna. Miljövännerna hoppades till en början att Engie skulle stå för alla kostnader.

De belgiska förhandlarna betonade att den viktigaste aspekten av diskussionen var att få en garanti från Engie om att förlänga livslängden för de två enheterna, medan Engie sade att det kunde ta minst fem år att skaffa fram det nödvändiga bränslet, inleda anbudsförfaranden och lägga fram en säkerhetsdokumentation.

I slutändan kommer det bara att ta mindre än fyra år. I gengäld fick den franska koncernen ett löfte om ett kostnadstak för avfallshanteringen.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) förklarar kärnkraftens viktiga roll i en koldioxidfri framtid

“Om IAEA
IAEA är världens centrum för samarbete på kärnkraftsområdet och strävar efter att främja en säker, trygg och fredlig användning av kärnteknik.”

— IAEA

“Nuclear Power: The Road to a Carbon Free Future - konstateras att 30 länder för närvarande driver kärnkraftverk och att mer än två dussin andra länder tittar på kärnkraft för att tillgodose sina el- och klimatbehov.”

— EnergyCentral

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

Vad är kärnkraft?

Kärnkraft är ett rent och effektivt sätt att koka vatten till ånga, som driver turbiner och producerar elektricitet.

Kärnkraftverk använder lågt anrikat uranbränsle för att producera elektricitet genom en process som kallas fission - delning av uranatomer i en kärnreaktor. Uranbränsle består av små, hårda keramiska pellets som är förpackade i långa, vertikala rör. Buntar av detta bränsle sätts in i reaktorn.

​​​​​​​IAEA förklarar kärnkraftens viktiga roll i en koldioxidfri framtid

NOAM MAYRAZ

Konsultingenjör Future Power, Inc.

Noam Mayraz, PE, är en ledande konsult för kraftverksindustrin.  Mayraz har över fyrtio års erfarenhet av konstruktion, ingenjörsarbete och fälttjänster som projektledare, projektledare för IPP-projekt,...

10 januari 2020

EnergyCentral

IAEA förklarar kärnkraftens viktiga roll i en koldioxidfri framtid, 08 januari 2020

Kärnkraften står för 10 % av den globala elektriciteten, men för att hejda klimatförändringarna kommer världen att behöva mycket större mängder ren och tillförlitlig energi, säger Internationella atomenergiorganet (IAEA) i en kortfilm som det publicerade idag. För att hantera klimatförändringarna måste 80 procent av all el vara koldioxidsnål år 2050.

I videon - Nuclear Power: The Road to a Carbon Free Future - konstateras att 30 länder för närvarande driver kärnkraftverk och att mer än två dussin andra länder tittar på kärnkraft för att tillgodose sina el- och klimatbehov. Ryssland, Indien och Kina leder för närvarande utvecklingen av kärnkraft. Kina har nio reaktorer under uppbyggnad, vilket är det största antalet i hela landet. Länder på andra håll bygger också nya reaktorer, till exempel Finland, och Förenade Arabemiraten och Vitryssland är nära att ta sina första kärnkraftverk i drift, medan Bangladesh och Turkiet nyligen påbörjade byggandet av sina egna kärnkraftverk.

Juha Poikola från TVO kraftbolag i Finland säger i filmen: "Vår största klimathandling i Finland kommer att vara när den nya reaktorn startar i Olkiluoto." Ibrahim Halil Dere från Turkiets energiministerium säger: "Vi anser att kärnkraft är ett oumbärligt alternativ för Turkiet eftersom det är utsläppsfritt, miljövänligt, hållbart och en pålitlig el-källa."

För närvarande är 450 kärnkraftsreaktorer i drift i världen, men för att möta nya behov och utmaningar ser kärnkraftsindustrin framåt mot innovativa lösningar för långsiktig drift av befintliga reaktorer, en snabb utbyggnad av pågående kärnkraftsprogram och införandet av ny reaktorteknik, heter det i filmen. Flera länder utvecklar små modulära reaktorer (SMR) och en har redan byggts i Ryssland, tillägger filmen och hänvisar till det flytande kärnkraftverket Akademik Lomonosov.

http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/IAEA-explains-nuclears-vital-role-in-a-carbon-freeIAEA explains nuclear's vital role in a carbon-free future

News round-up, Tuesday, January 10, 2023

“The World Bank has cast a further shadow over the already worrying expectations for the performance of the global economy in 2023. The World Economic Outlook report released on Tuesday by the institution downgraded its forecast for global economic growth this year from 3% to 1.7% after revising downwards its forecasts for 95% of developed economies and 70% of emerging economies.”

— ABC.es

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

The World Bank warns that the global economy faces two recessions in the same decade for the first time in 80 years.

Downgrades its global growth scenario for 2023 from 3% to 1.7%, but warns that any setback would push the economy into recession.

He downgrades his forecasts for 95% of developed economies and 70% of emerging economies, for which he predicts a bleak future.

US economist and president of the World Bank, David Malpass

The US economist and President of the World Bank, David Malpass ABC

B. P. V.

Madrid

10/01/2023

ABC.es

The World Bank has cast a further shadow over the already worrying expectations for the performance of the global economy in 2023. The World Economic Outlook report released on Tuesday by the institution downgraded its forecast for global economic growth this year from 3% to 1.7% after revising downwards its forecasts for 95% of developed economies and 70% of emerging economies.

Its forecast for the advanced economies has gone from an expected growth of 2.5% a few months ago to a pyrrhic 0.5%, with a forecast of a 0.5% decline for the US economy, stagnation for the euro area, which includes Spain (previously 1.9%) and growth of 4.3% for China (compared with 5.2% previously).

However, the most worrying aspect is not the new forecasts revealed this Tuesday by the World Bank but the expectation that these may deteriorate further throughout 2023. The note released by the World Bank points out that "given fragile economic conditions, any further adverse developments, such as higher-than-expected inflation, abrupt interest rate hikes to contain it, a resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic, or an increase in geopolitical tensions, could push the global economy into recession".

If this scenario were to occur, the phenomenon would take on historic proportions, as the global economy would chain two economic recessions in the same decade, something that has not happened since World War II or, as the World Bank points out, since 80 years ago.

The IMF warns of the risk of global recession and lowers the growth forecast for Spain to 1.3%.

The stagnation of the world economy, which will ease somewhat in 2024 when the institution forecasts growth of 2.7%, will have very negative effects on emerging economies, partly because the high indebtedness of developed economies will concentrate a large part of the available capital, which is more reduced in a context of monetary policy contraction. "Emerging and developing countries face a multi-year period of slow growth driven by heavy debt burdens and weak investment as global capital is absorbed by advanced economies facing extremely high public debt levels and rising interest rates. Weak growth and business investment will exacerbate already devastating setbacks in education, health, poverty and infrastructure and the growing demands of climate change," says World Bank president David Malpass in a statement in the Bank's release.

Biden Lawyers Found Classified Material at His Former Office

The White House said it was cooperating as the Justice Department scrutinizes the matter.

“A small number” of classified documents were discovered in President Biden’s former office at a Washington think tank, the White House said.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

By Peter Baker, Charlie Savage, Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman

Jan. 9, 2023

NYT

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s lawyers discovered “a small number” of classified documents in his former office at a Washington think tank last fall, the White House said on Monday, prompting the Justice Department to scrutinize the situation to determine how to proceed.

The inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter, is a type aimed at helping Attorney General Merrick B. Garland decide whether to appoint a special counsel, like the one investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive documents and failure to return all of them.

The documents found in Mr. Biden’s former office, which date to his time as vice president, were found by his personal lawyers on Nov. 2, when they were packing files at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, according to the White House. Officials did not describe precisely how many documents were involved, what kind of information they included or their level of classification.

The White House said in a statement that the White House Counsel’s Office notified the National Archives and Records Administration on the same day the documents were found “in a locked closet” and that the agency retrieved them the next morning.

Mr. Biden had periodically used an office at the center from mid-2017 until the start of the 2020 presidential campaign, and the lawyers were packing it up in preparations to vacate the space. The discovery was not in response to any prior request from the archives, and there was no indication that Mr. Biden or his team resisted efforts to recover any sensitive documents.

Mr. Garland has assigned John R. Lausch Jr., the U.S. attorney in Chicago who was appointed by Mr. Trump, to look into the matter, according to two people familiar with the decision, confirming a CBS News report. Mr. Lausch has been scrutinizing the situation since November, according to one of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Two people familiar with the matter said that Mr. Lausch has been conducting a so-called initial investigation under a Justice Department regulation that allows an attorney general to appoint a special counsel, a special prosecutor who operates with a measure of day-to-day independence to conduct a particularly sensitive investigation.

Under the regulation, an initial investigation consists of “such factual inquiry or legal research as the attorney general deems appropriate” to “be conducted in order to better inform the decision” about whether a matter warrants the appointment of a special counsel.

The White House statement said that it “is cooperating” with the department but did not explain why Mr. Biden’s team waited more than two months to announce the discovery of the documents, which came a week before the midterm congressional elections when the news would have been an explosive last-minute development.

It also came shortly before Mr. Garland’s Nov. 18 appointment of Jack Smith as a special counsel to take over the criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s failure to return a large number of classified documents that were sent to his Florida residence and club, Mar-a-Lago, when he left office — even after being subpoenaed.

At the time, Mr. Garland cited the fact that Mr. Trump had just announced he was running for president again, and that Mr. Biden had indicated that he is likely to run as well, as justification to transfer control of the investigation to Mr. Smith. (An attorney general retains final say over whether anyone is charged with a crime by a special counsel.)

Mr. Trump jumped on Monday’s disclosure. “When is the FBI going to raid the many houses of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. “These documents were definitely not declassified.”

That appeared to refer to Mr. Trump’s disputed claim that before leaving office he declassified all the documents the F.B.I. found when it searched Mar-a-Lago in August. No credible evidence has emerged to support that claim, and his lawyers have resisted repeating it in court, where there are professional consequences for lying. In any case, the potential charges the F.B.I. cited in its search warrant affidavit do not depend on whether intentionally mishandled documents were classified.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.

But while Mr. Trump tried to suggest a parallel, the circumstances of the Biden discovery as described appeared to be significantly different. Mr. Biden had neither been notified that he had official records nor been asked to return them, the White House said, and his team promptly revealed the discovery to the archives and returned them within a day.

“The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the archives,” Richard A. Sauber, a special White House counsel, wrote in the statement. “Since that discovery, the president’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden administration documents are appropriately in the possession of the archives.”

By contrast, in 2021 the archives repeatedly asked Mr. Trump to turn over large numbers of documents it had determined were missing. He put the agency off for months, then allowed it to retrieve 15 boxes of material in early 2022, including scores of classified documents, but it was later discovered that he kept more.

Eventually, the Justice Department obtained a grand jury subpoena for documents with classification markings remaining in Mr. Trump’s possession, and a lawyer for Mr. Trump turned over several more and told the department there were none left. But an August search by the F.B.I. found 103 more marked as classified — along with thousands of other official records.

The search warrant affidavit that the Justice Department submitted suggested that Mr. Trump was under investigation for obstruction, along with possible violations of the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the willful unauthorized retention of national security documents and failure “to deliver them on demand” to a government official entitled to take custody of them.

Still, whatever the legal questions, as a matter of political reality, the discovery will make the perception of the Justice Department potentially charging Mr. Trump over his handling of the documents more challenging. As a special counsel, Mr. Smith is handling that investigation, along with one into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, under Mr. Garland’s supervision.

Moreover, the discovery will fuel the fires on Capitol Hill, where Republicans who have just taken the House majority were already planning multiple investigations of the Biden administration, including the decision to have the F.B.I. search Mar-a-Lago.

Representative James R. Comer, the Kentucky Republican who is in line to become the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said on Monday that he would investigate the discovery of the classified documents in Mr. Biden’s office, vowing to send letters demanding information within 48 hours.

“How ironic,” Mr. Comer said in an interview. “Now we learn that Joe Biden had documents that are considered classified. I wonder, is the National Archives going to trigger a raid of the White House tonight? Or of the Biden Center?” He added, “So now we’re going to take that information that we requested on the Mar-a-Lago raid, and we’re going to expand it to include the documents that Joe Biden has.”

The top Democrat on the committee, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, downplayed the matter, saying that he had confidence that Mr. Garland had taken appropriate steps to review the circumstances and that Mr. Biden’s lawyers “appear to have taken immediate and proper action” to notify the archives of the documents.

The department’s leadership decided to make the unusual choice of assigning the case outside the jurisdictions involved because Mr. Lausch was a Republican appointee and his work would likelier be seen as impartial, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Mr. Biden had kept Mr. Lausch in office at the request of the two Democratic senators from Illinois, Richard J. Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, because he was investigating Michael J. Madigan, the former speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, during the presidential transition in 2021. In March, a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Madigan, a Democrat, on 22 counts of racketeering and corruption charges.

A former top prosecutor appointed during President Barack Obama’s administration said the attorney general should turn the Biden matter over to a special counsel, just as he did the Trump investigation.

“The circumstances of Biden’s possession of classified documents appear different than Trump’s, but Merrick Garland must appoint a special counsel to investigate,” said John P. Fishwick Jr., who served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017. “Merrick Garland waited too long to let us know he had opened this investigation,” he added. “To keep the confidence of the country, you need to be transparent and timely.”

A department spokesman had no comment on the matter, and would not say whether the national security division, which has spearheaded the investigation into Mr. Trump’s retention of documents at his Florida residence and resort, was also involved.

With Mr. Lausch investigating the handling of classified information in Mr. Biden’s office, and David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, investigating the president’s son, Hunter Biden, both Trump-appointed U.S. attorneys who have remained at the department are now scrutinizing the Biden family.

Luke Broadwater and Katie Benner contributed reporting.

Supporting Ukraine to ensure peace

Editorial

The decision of France, the United States and Germany to deliver light armored combat vehicles to Ukraine reflects a shared commitment but also raises questions about the danger of escalation.

Published on January 10, 2023

Le Monde

In the war imposed on them by Vladimir Putin, one that puts the survival of their country at stake, the Ukrainians need the steadfast and appropriate support of the West. France's January 4 decision to deliver light armored combat vehicles to Ukraine marks a new stage in the assistance provided by democratic countries, as it was followed the next day by the United States and Germany. It is no longer just a matter of supplying Kyiv with defensive weapons, such as troop transport vehicles or artillery equipment, but with the means to support offensives. The French AMX-10 RCs, like the American Bradleys and German Marders, are vehicles armed with guns designed to be used as close to the front line as possible.

This evolution of the equipment delivered does not reflect a desire for escalation, but appears to be in line with the progression of Ukrainian war objectives. It is a question of helping the attacked country not only defend itself and reach a negotiation in the best possible situation, but to recover its entire territory by driving back the Russian army, and subjecting those responsible for crimes to international justice.

Russia's retreat on the ground since the summer of 2022 and Mr. Putin's pullback from red lines that are supposed to trigger retaliation seem to justify this strategy. The same goes for the worrying prospect of a large-scale Russian offensive at the end of winter, made possible by the new mobilization decreed this fall by Moscow. While the front seems to have stabilized, with more than 100,000 dead and wounded on each side according to various estimates, everything is happening as if the combatants were engaged in a race for equipment, training and personnel. The example of the false truce announced by Mr. Putin for Orthodox Christmas only reinforced the Western will to give Ukraine all the means to counter new aggressions.

Danger of escalation

While the almost simultaneous announcement of the French, American and German decisions to deliver light armored vehicles reflects a joint and coordinated commitment at a crucial moment, such a development is not without risk. It raises the question of the danger of escalation and the point at which the current proxy war could degenerate into a direct confrontation between the West and Russia. This threshold has shifted since the conflict began, but it cannot rise indefinitely. The whole point is to help the Ukrainians, without feeding the Russian rhetoric presenting Western democracies as aggressors.

Although the French decision has the benefit of removing any ambiguity about the position of Paris in the conflict, it also raises the question of its political framework and the information provided to our fellow citizens. Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, Parliament has never discussed the French position in depth. It is time to involve the national legislature in decisions that engage the country in a matter that is fundamental to its security. In order to avoid any risk of extended confrontation on European soil, the West has no other choice than to do everything possible to prevent Mr. Putin from succeeding in his invasion.

The rapid end of the significant suffering linked to this war requires unwavering support for Ukraine. Because it needs to be approved over the long term, this difficult balance deserves to be clarified and debated.