Sunday Cutdown LIII (1 December 2024)
Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document
1) When climate changes religion
WAPO: When climate change upends sacred rituals, the faithful adapt
Fascinating bit of reporting by WAPO.
The gist:
The effects of a warming planet are changing the ways humans pray. From the peaks of Peru to the shores of Thailand, centuries-old rituals are transforming as the world continues to heat up.
Extreme heat and wildfires, melting icecaps and rising oceans are altering pilgrimages, threatening temples and endangering the sacred Andean glacier.
Believers are finding ways to preserve their traditions. But even as they adapt, older generations say much is being lost.
Any Christian worth their salt knows that Jesus wasn’t born in December but in the summer. Problem is, summer is a busy time for an agrarian society, so the church eventually married up that celebration with the old pagan ones (particularly Roman) in the middle of the non-growing season.
That’s religion accommodating climate’s calendar. And that’s happening more and more around the world.
We saw how the Sunni version of the great pilgrimage this year cost well over a thousand lives, due to the heat. Well, per this piece, the same stresses afflict the Shia version that unfolds each year in Karbala, Iraq.
We’re talking 20 million souls marching upwards of 300 miles in August in Iraq — long identified as a ground zero for climate change’s most immediately stressing effects.
Funny how that lines up with the Global War on Terror that preceded it.
Extreme climatic stress often gets you extreme politics.
Then there’s Peru:
Each year a pilgrimage to the base of Peru’s sacred Colque Punku glacier attracts around 100,000 worshipers. The Qoyllur Rit’i — or “Snow Star” — is one of the most important religious ceremonies on the Andean calendar.
The thing is, the associated sacred glacier is disappearing, with 30% already gone, leading to this:
Officials have begun to restrict who can climb to the icy top, and how much holy water can be taken from its peak.
Other examples explore Spain and Thailand.
It will be interesting to see how various religions continue to process climate change and how much changed they will be as a result.
2) Speaking of your sad devotion to that ancient religion …
GUARDIAN: Climate denial a unifying theme of Trump’s cabinet picks, experts say
The missing lede in our analyses of the incoming Trump administration:
Loyalists selected for important roles have offered staunch support to fossil fuels and downplayed climate crisis.
Does Trump 2.0 have a mandate to blow off climate change?
If Trump is only interested in satisfying his base, then I guess he does.
“With these choices it looks like Project 2025 is back with full force, and it will be the blueprint for the Trump administration 2.0,” said Daniel Esty, an environmental policy expert at Yale University, in reference to the rightwing manifesto that calls for the deletion of environmental and climate protections.
Some people didn’t think Trump would actually try to execute this but it looks like he really is going to pull back on climate change commitments, against the tide of history.”
Our Secretary of Energy nominee Chris Wright:
Wright has opined that “carbon pollution” and even “clean energy” are “nonsense terms” that have been “made up by alarmists”.
Maybe it’s all just in our heads.
Esty’s final verdict:
“Overall, I think we will see a significant pullback in the breathability of air and drinkability of water, in the protections Americans have come to expect. I don’t think Trump will dramatically shift US energy production because we are already producing a lot of oil and gas but he certainly won’t be phasing them out. It’s an administration that will cause damage.”
The industrialists will have their way under Trump, and great damage will be done.
Elections have consequences, with this one mostly pushing the externalities off to subsequent generations.
ex·ter·nal·i·ty
/ˌekˌstərˈnalədē,ˌikˌstərˈnalədē/
noun
ECONOMICS
a side effect or consequence of an industrial or commercial activity that affects other parties without this being reflected in the cost of the goods or services involved, such as the pollination of surrounding crops by bees kept for honey.
3) The empire strikes back
NYT: China Has a New Playbook to Counter Trump: ‘Supply Chain Warfare’
The gist:
A series of swipes at American companies show how China could take the initiative in a new trade war, using its economic dominance to exact pain.
The message to Trump:
Hit us and we’ll strike back harder.
We shall see.
China leveraging connectivity as a weapon:
“During Trade War 1.0, Beijing was fairly careful to meet the tariffs that the U.S. put in place,” said Jude Blanchette, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Now they are signaling their tolerance for accepting and dishing out pain,” he said. “It’s clear for political reasons that Beijing is not willing to stand by and watch as significant new waves of tariffs come in.”
China has had time to prepare. During Mr. Trump’s first term, officials in Beijing began drafting laws that mirror U.S. tactics, allowing them to create blacklists and impose sanctions on American companies, cutting them off from critical resources. The goal has been to use China’s status as the world’s factory floor to exact punishment.
The new approach:
Since 2019, China has created what it called an “unreliable entity list” to penalize companies that undermine national interests, introduced rules to punish firms that comply with U.S. restrictions on Chinese entities and expanded its export-control laws. The broader reach of these laws enables Beijing to potentially choke global access to critical materials like rare earths and lithium — essential components in everything from smartphones to electric vehicles.
Trade wars are easy, we are told.
We are likely to learn otherwise in Trump 2.0.
4) America’s Middle Earth member-states are already feeling it
AL.COM: Three Alabama counties have been named ‘natural disaster areas’
I define Middle Earth as basically demarcated by the old “horse latitudes”
The horse latitudes are two subtropical regions of high pressure, calm winds, and little precipitation that occur at around 30° north and south of the equator:
High pressure, calm winds, little precipitation, sunny skies
Arid climates in the areas below them
The term "horse latitudes" comes from a legend about ships sailing to the New World that would get stuck in these areas and run out of water. The crews would sometimes throw the horses they were transporting overboard to conserve water.
Our Southern tier states fall roughly at or below that 30 degree mark:
So, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and — most of all — Florida are geographically attached to this emerging climate reality in which Middle Earth increasingly (as in, for more days each year) feels like the Saharan Desert in terms of temp range and precipitation.
That gets you — already — three Alabama counties basically written off as disaster drought areas in a preview of coming attractions.
Who made the declaration? US Dept. of Agriculture, because that’s where the hit is first felt, like across all of Middle Earth: can’t grow food and ultimately forced off the land … or compensated by the Federal government acting so as to spread out the latitudinal risk among our 50 member-states — a microcosm of future North-South relations already being expressed by Middle Earth nations seeking aid every year at the COP.
5) The centaur solution is already a given in the military realm
AXIOS: Epirus CEO: Brace for "centaur warfare"
You know my take on AI:
AI beats human, but …
Human + AI beats AI.
From the piece:
Ask Epirus CEO Andy Lowery about robots on the battlefield and he'll tell you about a mythical mix of human and horse.
Lowery sees "full-on centaur warfare" — that is, humans and machines working intimately together — dominating the next decade.
"You can actually optimize what humans are good at ... and then pair that with the best and most capable of machines that can be operated independently," he told Axios in an interview.
The big point I make in my Military Singularity concept:
The “horse” part gets so good that the public becomes unwilling to put the “human” part at risk.
So, yeah, the man in the loop alright, but not actually on the battlefield except under the most necessary conditions.
Other bit I liked from this CEO:
Q: When you hear "future of defense," what comes to mind?
A: Irregular, asymmetrical warfare will become the regular, symmetrical warfare that we'll be fighting. And it's here to stay.
Back when I was working The Pentagon’s New Map, that was my core message about the future.
The pushback from the brass back then: Barnett lives in some future world while we’re stuck dealing with warfare as it really is.
Not so much anymore, huh?
Don’t try this at home if you want to be right — right now.
6) Ambassador to the EU Elon Musk?
FT: Musk is the right man in the wrong continent
Interesting and accurate point:
Europe’s bloated governments need his efficiency revolution much more than Washington does.
I have often said that Trump correctly identifies problems but is totally the wrong guy for executing the solution.
He now gets a second chance to prove me wrong.
With Musk, he may well be the right guy — just not for US.
If anything, Musk is wasted in the US. Whatever is wrong with the federal government hasn’t kept the nation from outrageous economic success. Taxes are complex, but competitive by western standards. Public debt is high, but the issuer of the premier world currency can get away with a lot. Government intervention, on antitrust in particular, stiffened under Joe Biden, but not to a European extent. As for the “deep state”, the president, who can make around 4,000 appointments, has more control over the executive than in other democracies.
The story in the EU fits Musk’s narrative better.
I would have to agree with that assessment.
Now consider Europe. Its major economies, including Britain, have tax burdens that are high by their own peacetime standards, never mind America’s. Apart from Germany, they have debt that equals or exceeds their GDP, without the exorbitant privilege of the dollar. At the same time, cutting entitlements or raising taxes is political hell, as Britain’s Labour government is learning and as Emmanuel Macron could have told them. If there is a way out of this circular trap of fiscal pressure and low growth, it is a redesign of the state from first principles.
Goes to the usual point: We think we have it bad but, in truth, we have it least bad.
7) Yes, it’s just nuclear saber rattling, but …
AXIOS: 1 big thing: Oreshnik's fallout
So we give ATACMs to Ukraine and they’re already striking targets significantly over the Russian border, which means we’re — by proxy — firing US missiles into the territory of a nuclear power — pretty G.D. bold.
For now, yes, Putin’s moves are symbolic, but ask yourself where’s the payoff here — at this point — for the US, given the strategic risk?
Two years of stalemate isn’t going to be broken with ATACMS, it’s just going to be extended.
The end is coming and it’s clear enough: Ukraine loses those territories for good. That’s how history divides up the “kids” in this nasty divorce.
The ask is also clear enough: get Ukraine into the EU and NATO pronto.
Trump 2.0 will deliver the first but pass on the second, and that’s why it will feel like a defeat for the West, no matter how this gets packaged diplomatically.
You know, Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize for “ending” the Vietnam War.
8) First they came for the produce pickers, then the roofers, and I said nothing
MINNESOTA REFORMER: One graph that show how mass deportation could affect the nation’s food supply
CNN: Here’s how mass deportations could change the housing market
Some excellent analysis:
Undocumented immigrants make up only 5% of the total labor force, according to the most recent federal data from the U.S. Census Bureau and analysis from the Pew Research Center. However, the share of undocumented workers across the nation’s food supply chain is at least 16%.
A significant portion of food- and agriculture-related jobs are filled by immigrants, which include naturalized citizens, green-card holders, permanent residents, people on long-term temporary work visas, refugees, people who have received asylum and undocumented immigrants.
In some industries, the number is much higher. In Idaho, the third-largest dairy-producing state in the country, the Idaho Dairymen’s Association estimates that nearly 90% of the state’s on-site dairy workers were born outside of the U.S. Nationally, undocumented people made up roughly 45% of all hired crop farmworkers in 2017, but that number has declined to 41.2% in 2020, according to the USDA.
A study conducted by the Peterson Institute, released in September, found that mass deportation could affect agricultural labor and lead to a 10% increase in food prices.
“If we lost half of the farmworker population in a short period of time, the agriculture sector would likely collapse,” Mary Jo Dudley, the director of the Cornell Farmworker Program, told Investigate Midwest. “There are no available skilled workers to replace the current workforce should this policy be put into place.
We are told that America needs to build about 1-2 million new homes — affordably.
That equation will also not compute without migrant workers.
So we shall see how much pain America will endure to rid itself of these “blood-poisoning” types.
9) The “last battlefield” long predicted
POLITICO: Top counterterrorism official warns of ISIS’ rapid rise in Africa
It’s been my contention for a long time in both print and my strategic advice to the USG: The Middle East is strong enough and rich enough and motivated enough to drive out radical Salafi jihadist groups over time. But, when you squeeze that balloon, it expands in two directions: into Central Asia above and into the Trans Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa below.
Simple calculation says the latter is the last great battlefield for radical Islam. Why? Too many interested great/superpowers willing to kill as many as necessary to prevent any such outcomes in Central Asia.
As for Africa … not so much, thus the center of gravity inexorably moves in a southwesterly direction from the PG into the Trans Sahel and below.
“The ISIS threat in Africa, in our view, is potentially one of the greatest long-term threats to U.S. interests,” Brett Holmgren, the head of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC, said in an interview. “They’ve clearly prioritized Africa as a growth opportunity.”
It’s not rocket science; it’s simply the path of least resistance.
10) Adaptation catches mitigation
WAPO: A strange new climate era is beginning to take hold
This is why I’m not the CO2 mitigation “grand strategist.”
Earth’s climate this century is already baked in. Nothing we do in the near and medium terms will impact that much at all. We’re really talking about next century’s climate — the landing spot and not the journey.
As that journey becomes more inescapably obvious to the world, we will adjust.
For almost a decade, climate scientists and environmental leaders have coalesced around a rallying cry: “Keep 1.5 alive.” It’s a reference to the historic pact nations reached in Paris in 2015 to try to limit Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Now, in a year expected to be the hottest on record, the aspiration of that era appears dead. Instead, the world has entered a new one, where clean energy is rapidly growing — but not fast enough to keep temperatures in check.
Planet-warming emissions — which need to go to zero to stop the rising temperatures on the planet — are instead plateauing at historically high levels, thanks to increasing global energy demands and political resistance to phasing out oil and gas.
This is why my grand strategy is all about adaptation and not mitigation. The former has huge implications for the future of global security, the latter not so much (winning the RE War is good for business but not a threat to anybody).
The truth of the matter:
The world has hit a strange point in the climate story — veering away from catastrophe, but not fast enough to avoid some dangerous climate impacts.
This is still a world in which 40% of Africans don’t have access to electricity, so yeah, we can be going great guns on the entirely necessary and profitable Green Revolution and STILL be producing record CO2 emissions.
This is why North-South integration is the key: the faster it happens, the sooner the world’s comprehensive energy transition can be.
11) Some good news on the energy transition front
WAPO: These batteries could harness the wind and sun to replace coal and gas
The world is adding renewable energy capacity like crazy, but the big hurdle remains our ability to store that energy.
The world is working that problem:
Power companies are experimenting with new ways to hold on to that clean electricity,from stashing heat in vats of sand to supersizing the lithium-ion batteries that power laptops and cars. Some 30 miles from Sapporo, the Hokkaido Electric Power Network (HEPCO Network) is deploying flow batteries, an emerging kind of battery that stores energy in hulking tanks of metallic liquid.
But the technology faces a raft of challenges, including high up-front costs and skeptical financiers. China and Russia dominate the market for vanadium, the metal that makes flow batteries durable and easy to maintain. “The supply chain for vanadium is extremely precarious,” said Kara Rodby, a battery analyst at the investment firm Volta Energy Technologies.
Still, flow batteries are making their debut in big real-world projects. Sumitomo Electric, the company that built the Hokkaido plant, has also built flow batteries in Taiwan, Belgium, Australia, Morocco and California. Hokkaido’s flow battery farm was the biggest in the world when it opened in April 2022 — a record that lasted just a month before China built one that is eight times bigger and can deliver as much energy as an average U.S. natural gas plant.
A flow battery is a rechargeable battery that stores energy in liquid electrolytes and uses electrochemical cells to convert chemical energy into electricity. Flow batteries are useful for storing excess energy from renewable sources like solar and wind power for later use.
The lynchpin, as so often is the case, remains China:
“It looks like flow batteries are finally about to take off with interest from China,” said Michael Taylor, an energy analyst at the International Renewable Energy Agency, an international group that studies and promotes green energy. “When China starts to get comfortable with a technology and sees it working, then they will very quickly scale their manufacturing base if they think they can drive down the costs, which they usually can.”
Well then, we better de-couple ASAP to avoid being part of those advances in renewable energy!
Drill, baby, drill!
12) My kids have long cruelly predicted I would fall victim to this
NYT: Taxing Farm Animals’ Farts and Burps? Denmark Gives It a Try.
To date I have not been named by anyone as a significant source of methane — at least by anyone other than my kids.
In stride the Danes:
Denmark, known for its inventive restaurants and elegant design studios, is about to become known for something more basic: the world’s first belch and manure tax.
That’s because there are five times as many pigs and cows in Denmark as there are people. Nearly two-thirds of its land is taken up by farming. And agriculture is becoming its largest share of climate pollution, putting lawmakers under intense public pressure to reduce it.
So now, Denmark’s unlikely coalition government, made up of three parties from across the political spectrum, has agreed to tax the planet-heating methane emissions that all those animals expel through their poop, farts and burps. The measure, under negotiation for years, was passed by the Danish Parliament this month, making it the only such climate levy on livestock in the world.
My children have already begun campaigning for some sort of ICC-like warrant on me.
I will never visit Denmark again.
