News Round-Up, August 21, 2023
Climate Change and Health Impacts by the Way of Today's California Floods
Climate change has become a significant concern of our time, with numerous implications across different realms of human existence. As the world faces the worsening outcomes of climate change, one aspect that demands urgent notice is its effects on human health. The current flooding in California serves as a clear indication of how climate change disrupts our surroundings and challenges our welfare. (1)
California, well-known for its sunny weather and barren terrain, is unfortunately accustomed to enduring periods of drought and wildfires. However, recent events have demonstrated a concerning trend: a substantial increase in severe climatic conditions, such as floods, that differ from the typical weather patterns of the region. These floods are evolving and posing significant risks to public health. (2)
Moreover, the floods themselves can cause immediate health hazards. They could create a conducive environment for waterborne diseases to spread. Microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites, can transmit diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, and gastrointestinal infections. Additionally, when the floodwater recedes, it forms stagnant pools of water acting as breeding sites for mosquitoes, which can spread vector-borne diseases like dengue fever. (3)
Floods have severe social and economic implications that have a disproportionate effect on the most susceptible communities. Lower-income communities, typically situated in flood-prone areas, are disproportionately impacted by these calamities. (4)
Meanwhile, certain regions of the world are undergoing scorching heatwaves that have transformed some cities into public saunas. At the same time, the frightening expansion of unmanageable wildfires is a bleak reminder of the link between our surroundings. In the midst of these devastating circumstances, it is essential to give priority to our well-being. Preserving ourselves through self-preservation is crucial, as our health is intertwined with that of the planet. It is our responsibility. (5)
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Biden faces calls to declare climate emergency as he heads to Maui
Climate groups and many of the president’s allies in Congress urge him to invoke emergency powers to mitigate environmental threats.
Politico Eu By MYAH WARD, August 8, 2023TROPICAL STORM HILARY LIVE UPDATESCalifornia hit with flooding, mudslides, earthquake
The Washington Post, NowEXCLUSIVE: The à la carte world: our new geopolitical order
With the US and China at loggerheads, a range of ‘middle powers’ see an opening to pursue their interests
FT by Alec Russell in London 6 HOURS Wealthy oil nation lays groundwork for ‘eye-popping’ climate fund
The United Arab Emirates has drawn a backlash from climate advocates for its role hosting the global climate talks, but the massive fund it’s considering would help countries green their economies.
POLITICO EU By ZACK COLMAN and KARL MATHIESEN, August 18, 2023 World’s first wind-powered freighter sets off on maiden voyage
Pyxis Ocean bulk carrier fitted with revolutionary 120ft fibreglass ‘sails’ has reached more than five and a half knots on wind power alone
The Telegraph By Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR21 August 2023 The AES Corporation is committed to accelerating the future of energy transitions by delivering greener and more innovative solutions. AES firmly believes that energy infrastructure plays a crucial role in ensuring the sustainability of our sector. Recently, the AES President and CEO, Andrés Gluski, had the privilege of moderating a captivating discussion titled "Harnessing Diplomacy for the Energy Transition and Universal Access" at the @EEI_Intl panel. This engaging conversation highlights the importance of collaboration and innovative approaches in driving the energy transition forward.
Image by Germán Co. via ShutterstockBiden faces calls to declare climate emergency as he heads to Maui
Climate groups and many of the president’s allies in Congress urge him to invoke emergency powers to mitigate environmental threats.
Politico Eu By MYAH WARD, August 8, 2023As President Joe Biden prepares to visit Maui, the Hawaiian island devastated by the deadliest wildfire in U.S. modern history, lawmakers and climate groups are begging the White House to do more to prevent future climate-related disasters.
Their argument: If the latest environmental catastrophe won’t spur the president into action, what will?
The fires, likely sparked by the island’s electric utility and heightened by climate change impacts, swept through the Pacific paradise last week, killing at least 110 people and leaving the famed town of Lahaina smoldering in ruins. As survivors search for missing family members and friends, and a housing crisis unfolds amid the vast destruction, climate activists and members of Congress are urging Biden to declare a national emergency over climate change.
It isn’t the first time the White House has faced calls to take this step, but the ongoing crisis in Hawaii and a string of climate events this summer — including this weekend’s first-ever tropical storm warning for southern California — have intensified the appeals, building pressure on the president ahead of his scheduled trip to the island disaster site Monday.
The fires, likely sparked by Maui’s electric utility and heightened by climate change impacts, swept through the Pacific paradise last week, killing at least 110 people | Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
“Even when I talk about this issue, I tend to say things like, ‘I want to make sure my children have clean air and water — that they have running water. That they have a livable planet when they’re my age.’ But that’s not right. Tomorrow, you could wake up and your whole community could be ashes,” said Kaniela Ing, a seventh-generation indigenous Hawaiian from Maui and the national director of the Green New Deal Network, a climate justice organization.
“That’s the urgency we’re operating under,” he added, “so if there was ever a moment to declare a climate emergency, it is right now.”
Alongside climate groups, many of Biden’s allies in Congress have urged him to invoke emergency powers, which would enable the president to take sweeping action to restrain greenhouse gas production, implement large-scale clean transportation solutions and finance distributed energy projects, among other actions.
“The devastation in Maui is a clear sign that the president must declare a climate emergency — now. While FEMA is providing resources to the local heroes on the ground fighting for the lives and livelihoods of Hawaiians, the underlying climate-driven conditions of drought, extreme heat, environmental injustice, and non-resilient infrastructure will remain,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement to POLITICO.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who has long called on Biden to take this step, said that if the devastation in Hawaii isn’t a national emergency, “what is?”
“I refuse to accept that people choosing between burning alive or jumping into the ocean for hours on end is our new normal. This is a crisis and we need to treat it that way. That starts with President Biden declaring a national climate emergency to unlock vast federal resources and emergency powers to help our communities prepare for and recover from these deadly climate disasters,” he added.
Declaring a climate emergency could come with political risks for an incumbent president heading into an election year, potentially spurring a spike in already high gas prices. Plus, any executive action Biden takes would likely face legal challenges, including going up against a conservative Supreme Court that has already ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the broad authority to rein in carbon pollution.
Biden says he and first lady will visit Hawaii ‘as soon as we can’
Still, advocates and lawmakers are pushing the president to be bold amid the latest crisis, arguing that the move would also reap political benefits among disillusioned young voters, as well as communities of color who have been disproportionately harmed by the effects of climate change.
While polls show that many Americans say they have heard little about the Inflation Reduction Act — the largest climate-focused investment in U.S. history — headlines on climate events have been continuous, and Biden’s approval for a massive oil drilling project in Alaska known as Willow earlier this year drew fierce opposition. Declaring a climate emergency would send a clear signal to these voters, Ing said.
“If he did that next week in Hawaii, I’d be standing right next to him. I’d be telling all my friends. I’d be campaigning for him all the way up until November. Because the stakes are too high to not. This is our last chance. There are six years left to really hit the transition — to decarbonize at the rate we need to. So this election, this is it,” he said.
The White House has so far avoided committing to an official declaration, while the president earlier this month said he has already “practically” declared a climate emergency.
Last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the president has called the climate crisis an emergency since “day one,” noting that Biden has used the Defense Production Act to jumpstart heat-pump manufacturing and the building of the electric grid. He’s also used the DPA to deploy money to stand up solar manufacturing and source needed materials for electric vehicles.
“While we’re trying to deal with this existential threat, this climate change crisis, the president is doing everything that he can to make sure that we are dealing with this … in a way that actually leads to results,” Jean-Pierre said Monday when asked if the president was considering declaring a national emergency. “And that’s what the president is going to continue to do.”
She also pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act’s investment in combating climate change, which the White House celebrated last week on the legislation’s one-year anniversary.
The work of the Sunrise Movement and other climate organizations has been credited with playing a key role in the passage of the country’s first climate law, which Evan Weber, a co-founder of Sunrise, says is his life’s greatest accomplishment.
Weber lives in Oahu and has been working to assist with recovery efforts in his state, as his friends in Lahaina continue to search for family members. Watching the anniversary celebration in Washington this week while his state burned and survivors provided DNA swabs to identify the ashes of their loved ones was painful, said Weber, who co-founded the nonprofit Our Hawai’i.
“The president and his Cabinet members often talk about the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law as once-in-a-generation investments. And I think if that’s true, we are going to see a lot more Lahainas in the future,” Weber said, adding that Biden has done a lot of work on climate. “But we also really need him to know that just being the greatest president on climate action in United States history is the lowest bar in the world to clear, and it is not the same as acting at the scale of what science and the reality of our people on the ground demands.”
The federal response in Hawaii has been strong, Ing said, and the community is grateful for Biden’s upcoming visit. The president moved quickly to declare a major disaster declaration: There are over 1,000 federal responders on Maui and Oahu, and the government has provided over $7 million in financial assistance to nearly 2,200 households, Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters Saturday.
There are also 450 search and rescue teams on the ground, with 60 percent of the affected area searched as of Saturday afternoon. The shelter population also continues to fall, Criswell said, as FEMA, the Red Cross and the state pay for residents to transition into hotels.
Details of the president’s trip are still in flux, Criswell said, so it’s not yet clear if Biden will survey damage on the ground or fly over the path of destruction.
The president has vowed that Hawaii will get “everything it needs” and wants to meet with survivors who have been directly affected Monday, Criswell said. The hope among activists is that after the president sees the devastation in person, and hears directly from the people of Maui and Lahaina, that his promise will also include an official climate emergency declaration.
“It’s all coming to a head, and we’re just in a moment now where this makes the most sense,” said Michele Weindling, electoral director at Sunrise. “From every angle that you look at it, it is so clear that Biden making a climate emergency official is the no-brainer choice.”
Source: MediaTROPICAL STORM HILARY LIVE UPDATESCalifornia hit with flooding, mudslides, earthquake
The Washington Post, NowTropical Storm Hilary is deluging Southern California, with much of the damage expected to become clear at daybreak Monday. Hilary is likely to bring “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding” to portions of the Southwestern United States and the Baja California region in Mexico through Monday, the National Hurricane Center warned. Tens of millions of people were under a tropical storm warning, the first of its kind issued for Southern California. Heavy rainfall and flooding are expected in parts of Arizona and Nevada.
Here’s what to know
The storm is moving northeast from landfall in Southern California, and is forecast to reach Nevada early Monday, the NHC said in an advisory late Sunday local time. “A brief tornado or two will be possible” in southeastern California, northwest Arizona, southern Nevada and southwestern Utah, the NHC said.
Much of Southern California was under a tropical storm warning, from the border with Mexico up to Point Mugu, up the coast from Malibu. Catalina Island, a popular tourist destination, was also under the warning.
A man was killed Sunday in Mexico’s Baja California Sur, authorities said, after water swept away his car.
A magnitude-5.1 earthquake shook parts of Southern California on Sunday afternoon, triggering an emergency mobile alert to residents in Los Angeles County and surrounding areas. The National Weather Service said a tsunami was not expecte
When will the rain subside?
Torrential rain and severe flooding are ongoing, hitting the mountains north and east of Los Angeles hardest, where rainfall totals have reached 4 to 8 inches. Downpours will continue for another few hours in these areas but should start to ease a little Monday after midnight local time.
The rain will take longer to relent in the Sierra Nevada, where it won’t dry out until closer to dawn Monday. This also holds true for central and southern Nevada.
Source: FTThe à la carte world: our new geopolitical order
With the US and China at loggerheads, a range of ‘middle powers’ see an opening to pursue their interests
FT by Alec Russell in London 6 HOURS For a telling insight into the seismic changes reshaping the global order, it is worth a glance at the official schedule of Kenya’s diplomats. There was a time when they were called upon to host delegations from global powers relatively rarely. No longer. Now there is barely a slot free in their calendar.
In the early summer Nairobi hosted in quick succession US officials to discuss a free trade deal, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to address parliament, and EU officials to sign a trade agreement.
Kenya’s military commanders have an impressively full dance card too: in May, for example, an Indian frigate anchored off Mombasa for a joint naval exercise, even as British Royal Marines trained Kenya’s first commando unit.
All the while China, which two decades ago identified Kenya as a vital partner in Africa, in its then fledgling courtship of the continent, is investing in infrastructure leading from the Indian Ocean coast to the interior. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, popped by in July. Oh yes, and Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi had a red-carpet reception in Kenya in July at the start of an African tour.
Welcome to the à la carte world. As the post-cold war age of America as a sole superpower fades, the old era when countries had to choose from a prix fixe menu of alliances is shifting into a more fluid order. The stand-off between Washington and Beijing, and the west’s effective abandonment of its three-decade dream that the gospel of free markets would lead to a more liberal version of the Chinese Communist party, are presenting an opportunity for much of the world: not just to be wooed but also to play one off against the other — and many are doing this with alacrity and increasing skill.
The rise of the middle powers This is the first in a series on how the stand-off between America and China has ushered in a new era of opportunity for countries across the world Part II tomorrow: Beijing’s blueprint for an alternative world order
“For Kenya and others it’s not a question of picking sides. It’s a question of picking everyone,” says Michael Power, a Cape-Town based investment analyst, most recently for Ninety One, who has devoted his career to following emerging markets.
“We should no longer talk of the non-aligned movement,” he adds, referring to the group of African, Asian and Latin American countries, formed in the cold war, and avowedly neutral in the contest between the west and the Soviet Union.
“But of the multi-aligned movement.”
It is 15 years since the first round of this phenomenon when the G20 found its voice and role in shoring up the global economy during the financial crisis — as captured by the commentator Fareed Zakaria in his 2008 essay, The Rise of The Rest. Now, however, with the US and China at loggerheads, the G20 is more divided and less effective and a new more opportunistic era is under way.
One senior western policymaker, privy to thinking in the west and China, sees it as a “once-in-a-generation shift”. Western diplomats talk of the era of “fence-sitters” and “swing states”. For Ivan Krastev, the political scientist, it is the age of the middle powers. The word “middle”, he stresses, refers to their position — in between the US and China — rather than their weighting.
His vision encompasses a range of distinctly un-middling countries including traditional US allies such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel and even Germany, as well as titans of the global south, such as Indonesia and India, patently a rising great power.
“This geostrategic entrepreneurialism reflects the evolution of the global order into an archipelago over the past decade,” says Nader Mousavizadeh, an adviser to Kofi Annan, when he was UN secretary-general, and who is the chief executive of Macro Advisory Partners, a strategic advisory firm.
“The shift has to be seen as structural, secular and not cyclical.” “The fact that the relationship between Washington and Beijing has become adversarial rather than competitive has opened up space for other actors to develop more effective bilateral relationships with each of the big powers but also to develop deeper strategic relationships with each other.”
Beyond the Brics
This new less regimented landscape most obviously benefits the global south, the loose term broadly synonymous with the developing economies of Latin America, Africa and Asia. Their heightened ambitions will be on display in South Africa in mid-August at the summit of the Brics nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
The Brics was formalised in the aftermath of the financial crisis drawing on a classic jazzy bankers’ acronym — it was coined by Goldman Sachs economists — when their interests were more aligned than now. The founding four later invited South Africa, a relative economic minnow, to join; its inclusion brought Africa into the group. Now after some years treading water, the Brics is gathering momentum. Symbolically at least the summit has the potential for being seen as the 21st-century equivalent of the Bandung conference of 1955, which launched the non-aligned movement.
Top of the agenda is the application of 22 countries to join, and which if any to accept. The eclectic roll call of suitors includes global south ideological stalwarts such as Venezuela and Vietnam, but also Middle East actors such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran, and powerhouses from other regions, including Indonesia, Nigeria and Mexico.
Add all of them, and the block would represent 45 per cent of the global economy. Even a more limited expansion would create a behemoth accounting for almost half the world’s population and 35 per cent of its economy, says Anil Sooklal, South Africa’s ambassador to the Brics who is co-ordinating the summit. He anticipates “a more ambitious agenda and more forceful position, including a strong push for reform of the global political, economic and financial architecture”.
The anticipated arguments behind the scenes over who should join underline that it may be easier to articulate the Brics’ ambitions than realise them. They and potential new members have very different and in some cases rivalrous interests. China, for example, has no desire to see India or Brazil join them on the top table at the UN Security Council — nor is it in favour of a multipolar world, whatever it may say in public.
But however the Brics develops, the summit does underline the broader phenomenon. To understand the new room for manoeuvre, Krastev argues that talk of the rise of a new cold war between America and China is misleading.
“Don’t focus on US-China competition, as they are not going to be able to discipline fragmentation as Russia and America did in the cold war,” he says.
“The middle powers may not be big enough or strong enough to shape the international order, but their ambition is to increase their relevance.
“Their overactivity is going to make them unpredictable,” he adds. “Their activism is contagious. When I think of them, I am reminded of a line from a nonsense novel I read as a child: ‘Lord Ronald flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.’”
In its stance over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Turkey is a case study of a country choosing sometimes to align itself with the west and sometimes to stand against it. Its unpredictability was to the fore this summer at the Nato summit when it did a U-turn in allowing Sweden to join the alliance.
Western officials see Saudi Arabia and the UAE very much in this category of states behaving more assertively on the global stage and more independently of their traditional ally, America. Policymakers in Brussels have noted their intensified engagement in the politics of the Horn of Africa, for example, and also of course Saudi Arabia’s hosting of a Ukrainian peace talks, and concluded that the EU needs to rethink its foreign policy priorities and focus. “We need to be engaging more with such countries,” says a senior EU official. “A large part of our foreign policy structures are 20 years out of date.”
The spirit of activism will certainly be to the fore in Johannesburg. Much of the pre-summit argument focused on whether Vladimir Putin would attend. This posed a dilemma for South Africa over its international obligations to arrest him given that the Russian leader has been indicted by the International Criminal Court. Putin’s decision to stay at home was a boon for Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, whose refusal to criticise Moscow has exasperated some in the Biden administration. It also suited many other countries attending which faced awkward encounters with Putin. While loath to join with the west in denouncing Moscow, many African states are upset by Russia’s ending of the deal on safe transport for Ukrainian grain supplies.
Instead it will be the other autocracy among the Brics founders, China, which will overshadow the summit, via the looming argument over expansion.
China’s desire to be the de facto head of the developing world is undisputed. Sir Danny Alexander, a former British government minister who is in Beijing as vice-president for policy and strategy at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, says China clearly sees itself as the natural leader of the global south.
“At a meeting of the China International Development Co-operation Agency there was a lot of discussion about the different kinds of collaboration going on. They talked about south south, north south and triangular co-operation. What is clear is there is a multiplicity of discussions on development and investment issues and these conversations no longer all flow through a western lens.”
For Beijing, a beefed-up Brics would be a counterweight to the G20, although some of the leading players at the Brics summit — India in particular — have no interest in allowing the Brics to segue into a China “club”. Indian diplomats have made clear that India is not in favour, for example, of developing a Brics currency.
As the two Asian giants warily eye each other up, New Delhi has this year made unprecedented strategic overtures to the west, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi making state visits to Washington and Paris. Indian officials talk though of being “aligned with our own interests” and in its stance towards Russia, including buying its oil, New Delhi has resolutely avoided taking the west’s line.
Brazil too is wary of the implications of expanding the Brics, diplomats involved in the preparations for the summit have said, for all the anti-western rhetoric of its leftwing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on a recent visit to Beijing.
Such diplomatic dexterity and juggling are on display daily by middle powers around the world, not least by Singapore, which feels the squeeze between China and America acutely.
De-dollar diplomacy
And yet for all the discordance behind the scenes in Johannesburg, most of the participants share a frustration that the global economic order is tilted in the west’s favour, and believe that now finally is the time to change it.
Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, spoke for many developing countries at a summit hosted by President Emmanuel Macron in June when she called for a transformation of the World Bank and IMF. “When these institutions were founded [in 1944] our countries did not exist,” she said.
Zoltan Pozsar, head of the macroeconomic advisory firm, Ex Uno Plures, believes that system is at a tipping point. “The global east and south are renegotiating the world order,” he says, highlighting the drive in the global south for de-dollarisation and a rethink of the IMF and World Bank. “The west dreamt of the Brics as a lapdog, that they would accumulate dollars and recycle them into Treasuries, but instead of that they are renegotiating how things are done.”
The US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has confidently pushed back against this, reflecting the view of many market participants that the ambition to dethrone the dollar as the global reserve currency, is a very long-term bet. “There is a very good reason why the dollar is used widely in trade, and that’s because we have deep, liquid, open capital markets, rule of law and long and deep financial instruments,” she said at the Paris summit.
But politically at least the context is more propitious to push for change than ever. In the heyday of the cold war, the non-aligned movement had to rely on moral and emotional rather than economic or political clout. Now the Brics and aspirant members run an ever-larger share of the global economy and control many of the critical minerals the west so badly needs.
Moreover, some of the most influential “middle powers” who are wary of China share Beijing’s concerns over America’s weaponisation of financial sanctions. The signal moment for them in the past 18 months, argues the former Kofi Annan aide Mousavizadeh, was not Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 nor Nato’s rediscovery of its purpose, but the freezing of Russian central bank reserves, which dramatically underlined once again the power of the US dollar.
“For middle powers, it was the equivalent of someone going in and seizing embassy property. It was a reminder that you can have this sense of opportunity in the archipelago but that the alternatives to a US dollar world do not exist.
“Many thought we have to do whatever it takes to avoid being in the position of having reserves of this magnitude frozen in the future. That was Modi’s main response and many other middle power governments including in the Middle East were obsessed about this too.”
In Washington and west European capitals, officials are all focused on the rise of the middle powers and the need to reassess their world view. German officials even posit that Germany too can be seen as a middle power. “Our clear idea is that the world is not a G2 world,” said one. “It should be a multipolar world. The task of Germany could be more in the middle.”
Biden administration officials talk of the need not to react when old allies adopt positions close to China or Russia, but rather to make their case privately and stress the long-term advantages of America’s values over China’s. All the while Washington is busy working away at new constellations of regional alliances, including the trilateral Aukus defence pact and the Quad grouping of Indo-Pacific powers.
At times the rhetoric emanating from Johannesburg will sound like a reheating of the old anti-imperialist language of Bandung. But western officials accept it would be wrong to dismiss it all out of hand as their 20th-century predecessors might have been tempted to do. The age of the western set menu is over. And the new menu, while heavily influenced by two lead chefs, is still being written.
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The UAE and Sultan al-Jaber, who is leading the COP 28 climate talks, have drawn criticism from environmental advocates for hosting the international gathering despite being one of the world’s largest contributors of greenhouse gases. | Pool Photo by John MacDougallWealthy oil nation lays groundwork for ‘eye-popping’ climate fund
The United Arab Emirates has drawn a backlash from climate advocates for its role hosting the global climate talks, but the massive fund it’s considering would help countries green their economies.
POLITICO EU By ZACK COLMAN and KARL MATHIESEN, August 18, 2023 The United Arab Emirates is considering creating a multibillion-dollar fund to spur clean energy investments across the world that it plans to unveil at this year’s U.N. climate talks in Dubai, according to people familiar with the plan.
The fund could amount to tens of billions of dollars, with a sizable slice of the money coming from the UAE’s sovereign wealth reserves, according to seven people with knowledge of the discussions. A G-7 government official said envoys from the oil-rich Mideast nation had privately mentioned the idea of a fund of at least $25 billion.
“It’s an eye-popping figure,” one of the people familiar with the concept said.
Creation of the fund would be one of the largest ever state-sponsored financial efforts to help countries fight climate change. And it comes as the UAE and Sultan al-Jaber, the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. who is leading the climate talks, have drawn criticism from environmental advocates and some U.S. and European lawmakers for hosting the international gathering despite being one of the world’s largest contributors of greenhouse gases.
The summit, known as COP28, starts on Nov. 30.
The fund would help fill a financial chasm to shift nations’ energy economies off fossil fuels, with the aim of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. Experts have said the effort will require trillions of dollars in spending to avoid catastrophic, irreversible effects of climate change.
In Washington, Republicans in Congress have vowed to block any U.S. effort to fulfill President Joe Biden’s promise to contribute $11 billion annually to international climate finance efforts.
Ron Johnson: Climate change is bad in Africa, but U.S. in ‘good shape’
But the UAE’s initiative would fail to plug other gaps in the system, most notably the need to aggressively deliver funding to clean up the economies of less wealthy nations that are crucial to stabilizing the world’s rapidly warming climate.
The people POLITICO spoke to regarding the fund were granted anonymity to discuss the confidential matter.
The UAE team organizing the climate summit declined to comment.
While its exact design is not settled, one person who had seen the UAE’s plan described the initiative as an investment fund to develop climate transition projects around the globe, ranging from greener cement-making to clean energy to electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
The person said the goal of the fund was to help attract massive amounts of private capital to climate-friendly initiatives. Previous programs were seen as too scattered and too small to realign the broader financial sector to invest in reaching governments’ net-zero goals.
But the focus of the fund on making investments at market rates risks creating tensions with wealthy governments in the U.S. and Europe, which expect the UAE to join their club of donors, and the world poorest countries, which may find themselves unable to compete for financing for their own projects.
The oil-rich UAE is under pressure to use its wealth to help prepare the world’s poorest countries to adapt to climate change that has been primarily caused by rich, developed economies. U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry has openly pushed for the Gulf nation to join the list of countries that are climate donors.
U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry has openly pushed for the UAE to join the list of countries that are climate donors. | Andy Wong/AP Photo
But climate finance experts and officials from low-income countries fear that this fund would inject cash into profitable projects largely in North America, Australia or Europe, rather than riskier economies in Africa or South Asia that have a massive clean energy funding deficit. customary for the summit host.
The “prevailing view” of the UAE government and sovereign wealth funds is that anything less than commercial terms was “charity” and shouldn’t be a priority, said a second person familiar with the discussions of the fund.
The government in Abu Dhabi, one of the seven emirates in the UAE, is considering basing the fund entirely on commercial terms, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions.
That doesn’t sit well with advocates for less developed nations.
“It’s not just about funding — it’s about justice and recognizing the vast disparities intensified by climate change,” said Madeleine Diouf Sarr, the Senegalese official who chairs a group representing 46 of the world’s poorest countries. “Concessional finance is instrumental in unlocking opportunities for our countries to leapfrog to cleaner, more sustainable energy sources.”
The person who had seen the plan said the UAE is considering measures within that fund to encourage investment in poorer countries where investor returns are less certain.
The UAE has tapped a longtime World Bank official, Samir Suleymanov, to lead the climate finance program. He comes from a background of development finance, which has left some people optimistic that the UAE can unlock more money for developing nations.
This year's U.N. climate talks will take place in Dubai, starting on Nov. 30. | Kamran Jebreili/AP Photo
Many of those developing countries have made their commitments to reduce their own emissions contingent on access to cheap finance, but they have long struggled to attract interest from the private sector for clean energy investment. That situation has worsened since the pandemic, combined with global energy and food crises, which drove much of the developing world into deeper debt distress.
Offering grant-based free money is not the only way to steer finance to such countries, the G-7 official said. Other options for encouraging investment in traditionally riskier environments include loan guarantees, lenders taking a secondary repayment position in investments with multiple creditors, or fixing interest rates for longer loan lifetimes.
The goal is getting that finance from countries long averse to providing it, the G-7 official said. Swiftly deploying enough clean energy outside the richest countries to combat climate change will be difficult without adding new finance contributors — but could be a role the Middle East’s cash-flush nations could play, the official said.
In a speech to African ministers in Ethiopia on Thursday, the summit president al-Jaber lamented “the chronic lack of available, accessible and affordable climate finance.” But his own government’s commitment to helping plug that hole is unclear.
Traditional sources for so-called concessional finance are tapped out. Nations this year must replenish the $19.2 billion Green Climate Fund and International Development Association funds — which both benefit low-income and climate vulnerable nations — while making cash available for a new “loss and damage” fund to pay for irreversible climate harm in vulnerable countries.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has also created major demand from developing nations for finance on favorable terms at a time when some rich governments, such as the U.K., are reducing rather than expanding their overseas aid budgets.
But the UAE has been clear which countries it believes should be volunteering cheap climate finance.
“To get from hundreds of billions to trillions, we know we need that concessional component,” COP28 Director General Majid Al Suwaidi told POLITICO in an interview last month. “We need the likes of the U.S., U.K., Canada, all of the Europeans, et cetera, to provide more concessional finance.”
Sovereign wealth funds and private pension plans could pile in after that, he said. “We can’t talk about who is contributing until we fix the system that allows and encourages them to come in.”
The governing structure of the potential UAE fund is unclear. The Emirates have avoided channeling finance through the U.N. process, seeking distance from rich governments expected to make regular financial contributions to fighting climate change.
But it’s unclear which nations would want to sign up for a UAE-developed investment vehicle. It’s also uncertain such an entity would add to total available finance for clean energy development, since countries could instead simply shift capital flows to the new fund, the G-7 official said.
Three people familiar with the UAE government’s moves said officials have shopped the idea to institutions in countries such as Canada, Denmark, Norway and Singapore. Those nations possess large sovereign wealth and pension funds capable of steering billions of dollars toward clean energy.
The Export and Investment Fund of Denmark’s senior communications director, Kim Bove, said he could not confirm an approach by the UAE. Funds in Canada, Norway and Singapore did not respond to requests for comment.
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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…
…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.
Pyxis Ocean left Singapore en route to Paranagua in Brazil in first major test to see if technology will work on a real voyageWorld’s first wind-powered freighter sets off on maiden voyage
Pyxis Ocean bulk carrier fitted with revolutionary 120ft fibreglass ‘sails’ has reached more than five and a half knots on wind power alone
The Telegraph By Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR21 August 2023 It may not have the romance of the billowing multi-masted clippers, but the world’s first wind-powered freighter has embarked on her maiden voyage.
Mitsubishi’s Pyxis Ocean bulk carrier has been fitted with giant “wings” ushering in a new era of cargo-ladened sailing boats, borne to their destination on favourable tradewinds.
Although the sails are designed to work alongside the engine, engineers were delighted to find that during initial sea trials, the bulk carrier began to sail on wind power alone – reaching more than five and a half knots, before the crew intervened to bring her back under engine control.
Last week Pyxis Ocean – chartered by Cargill – left Singapore en route to the port of Paranagua in Brazil in the first major test to see if the technology will work on a real voyage.
If successful hundreds more ships will be retrofitted with the wings.
The revolutionary fibreglass aerofoils – which loom 123ft above deck – have been designed by engineers at BAR Technologies, a spin-off of Ben Ainslie Racing, the British team formed by the Olympic gold medalist.
Digital projections show they should deliver enough propulsion to cut the ship’s fuel use by at least three tonnes per day – about 30 per cent – helping to decarbonize the shipping industry without having to scrap existing vessels.
WindWings being retrofitted on Pyxis Ocean at the COSCO shipyard in Shanghai, China.
“I’m super excited about this,” said Jan Dieleman, president of Cargill’s Ocean transportation business. “We’re finally at the point where this ship is going to be on the water.
“We need to find out if everything is going to function. Is it safe? Is it going to work? Are the wings able to move as they should, can they fold? Does this actually work in port and then are we actually getting the fuel savings?
“It’s a huge project. This has never been done before. But you have to be willing to take some risks otherwise everything continues to be a theoretical exercise, so it’s time to showcase what is possible.”
The technology could change current shipping routes, making it more profitable to follow the old trading routes with favourable winds, rather than travelling in the straight lines most cargo ships do today.
Mr Dielman added: “We’ve always been working on the assumption that going from A to B is the quickest way, but we might need to deviate because there is more wind in certain areas, or you might get better returns at different times of year.
“We need to think differently to what we’ve done traditionally.”
Getting to the first voyage has not been easy. Cargill initially trialled kites but found they simply did not work and subsequently joined forces with Portsmouth-based BAR Technologies for the WindWings project.
That too has not been plain sailing.
Hampered visibility from the bridge
Placing the huge cambered aerofoils on the deck hampered visibility from the bridge, forcing the team to install cameras to see ahead. They also needed to build in a tilting mechanism that enabled the sails to be stowed during dockside operations, when passing under structures, or in stormy sea conditions.
In yachting, the size of the sail can be made smaller to cope with heavy weather, so engineers had to come up with a similar way of depowering the wings in case of a sudden storm.
As well as being able to pivot, each wing has three moveable elements that can be adjusted to spill the wind or exploit its power, in the same way that an aircraft wing changes its shape during take-off and landing.
Wind sensors on board pick up wind angle and speed, automatically reorienting the sail in the event of unexpected gusts. Above 40 knots – gale force conditions – the wings can be folded onto the deck.
There are also sensors which detect the lean – or heel – of the ship, how far it is drifting off the set course and the rudder angle.
“We don’t have Ben on board, so it has to be automatic,” said John Cooper, the CEO of BAR Technologies.
“If we see excess rudder angle, or leeway or heel, then the wings start, taking them out of a camber shape and pushing them into the wind angle.”
‘Sail away without the engine on’
So far, early sea trials have surpassed all expectations.
Mr Cooper added: “My senior engineer, who is normally very serious, phoned me up on the sea trials giggling like a 10-year-old and actually explaining they had just free-sailed.
“We’re all about wind-assisted propulsion, but it was super cool to lift the anchor and sail away without the engine on.
“And that’s only with two sails, we’ve got one right behind it with four sails on. They are still calculating it but we were well over five and half knots before we decided to stop acceleration, that was not terminal velocity, and we had an 18 knot wind not the strongest, so we know we can free-sail pretty damn well.”
The whole project was tested on a “digital twin” inside a computer before the wings were built by Yara Marine Technologies.
If the Pyxis Ocean’s journey is a success the team plan to test the wings on a Newcastlemax bulk carrier – one of the world’s largest cargo ships which is used to transport coal, iron ore, and grain across the world’s oceans.
Illustrations by Germán & Co.Will the rest of the world feel China’s deflation pain?
Falling prices will lower cost of imports but are unlikely to have a dramatic impact elsewhere
Financial Times by Chris Giles in London YESTERDAYBeijing’s economic woes worsened last week after it emerged China had fallen into deflation. The news highlights how the country is struggling to live up to expectations of a strong recovery after emerging from extended Covid lockdowns.
But will falling prices have an impact beyond China’s borders, in places where the bigger risk is still that an extended period of high inflation will endure?
For now, economists say there is little reason for concern, as:
Chinese deflation is likely to prove temporary
Deflation is primarily a concern when it is pervasive and caused by companies desperate to sell to consumers who are unwilling or unable to buy because they have fallen on hard times.
This describes neither China’s economy nor its price movements.
The economic recovery following the reopening has disappointed — the property sector remains a serious concern — but output is still growing and an expansion of close to 5 per cent this year is still on the cards.
“China’s consumption recovery remains soft and uneven, but this a far cry from Japan-style deflation,” said Duncan Wrigley, chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, referring to the country’s decades-long experience with falling prices.
While Chinese consumer prices fell 0.3 per cent in the year to July, a small fall in costs also occurred in 2021. Now as then, the deflation appears temporary — more the result of base effects than any deep problems.
A rise in core inflation signals Chinese deflation is unlikely to linger
In July alone, prices rose by 0.2 per cent and they have increased 0.5 per cent in the first seven months of 2023. The measured deflation arose because prices — particularly of pork, which has fallen in price by 26 per cent over the past 12 months — did not rise at the pace seen during 2022, when China endured several major lockdowns.
Neil Shearing, chief economist of Capital Economics, said the rise in core inflation — which excludes food and energy, and is seen as a better measure of underlying price pressures — from 0.4 per cent in June to 0.8 per cent in July demonstrated the lack of entrenched deflation in China. “To the extent that chronic demand weakness shows up in the inflation data, it will do so in the core numbers,” he said.
Inflation is seldom as contagious as it seems
The world — bar China — has appeared to suffer an inflation boom during the past couple of years. While the pace of price rises has been high in most countries, the reasons why differ markedly.
Price rises triggered by snarl-ups in global supply chains may have been universal. But they were amplified in the US by extremely strong consumer demand growth. The surge in demand followed a huge fiscal expansion in 2020 and 2021, when the Trump and Biden administrations sent large cheques to households to combat the Covid-19 crisis.
The US's economic recovery has been far stronger than elsewhere
Change in GDP between Q4 2019 and Q1 2023
Strong demand was much less an issue in Europe and in emerging economies. These suffered much more from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In Europe, the pinch came from soaring natural gas prices. In poorer countries, higher food prices and energy costs sparked a wider rise in the price level.
Paul Donovan, chief economist of UBS, said in the case of Chinese deflation, price pressures were as likely to prove “intensely local”.
While the price of Chinese imports was likely to fall as a result of the country’s economic woes, Donovan noted that “an awful lot happens” to exports before they reach their final destination. “Generally most of the price of something made in China and sold in the US will be paid to US workers — in transport or advertising costs, and so on,” he said.
Chinese deflation can help in Europe
The big inflation problem, especially in Europe and emerging economies, has been the higher cost of imports, lowering living standards and sparking a process in which domestic companies try to defend their profit margins by raising prices and workers struggle to catch up.
Chinese factory goods prices were 4.4 per cent lower in July than a year earlier. To a minor extent, this has an effect abroad.
European countries will benefit from a weaker Chinese economy that places less competition on supplies of natural gas as it adjusts to weaning itself off from Russian supplies.
It would be wrong, of course, to suggest that everyone else benefits (at least a little) from a weak Chinese economy.
Recommended Unhedged podcast19 min listen China slows down China has contributed 40 per cent to global growth rates over the past 10 years, according to Dhaval Joshi, chief strategist at BCA Research. Any economic troubles in Beijing will weigh on world output.
But at the moment, the fallout from Chinese deflation looks manageable both for the country itself and the rest of the world.