Sunday Cutdown XLIV (29 September 2024)
Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document
1) Climate changing behavior
COLLEGE FIX: Climate change making people of color feel ashamed to have kids: professor
CNBC: Gen Z and millennials are increasingly ‘doom spending.’ Here’s what it is and how to stop it
As a Cold War baby, I remember the vibe rather vividly: How can I bring a child into this world that could blow up any minute?
Over-population fears worked a similar angle, as does the ever-steady standby of we’re ruining the planet!
So, no surprise, climate change is wreaking similar psychic havoc today, particularly among people of color.
A U. California prof recently had this book come out: Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question. From the cited article describing the book:
“So … it almost feels, like, kind of shameful to want to have children,” a young Native American woman named Melanie said.
“I think I may not have children although I do want them,” she told Sasser. “Just because, with all of the things we see going on in the world, it seems unfair to bring someone into all of this against their will.”
Another young adult, Victoria, said she would love to have a big family like the one she grew up in, but her college education made her rethink that desire.
“I got a degree in sustainability, and I’ve always questioned bringing people into an environment [where] so much is going on politically, socially, health-wise …” she told Sasser.
Not hard to imagine why. Climate change impacts people of color more, both globally and within the West (with its declining fertility freaking it out).
Victoria’s instinct is sadly on-target:
Now, Victoria said she is considering becoming a foster parent instead, saying, “It’s a little selfish on my end to think I’m going to have all these kids when there are already kids in the world who would probably make me a better parent.”
My point about climate change creating geo-political “orphans” (migrants, failed states, etc.): it triggers these types of thought, these empathetic responses accompanied by instincts for personal sacrifice.
This is fundamentally why my spouse and I adopted three girls from overseas: we sensed a profound need and wanted to put our money, our time, and our ever-lengthening careers (I am 62 and we still have 3 kids to get through college) where our mouths were, so to speak, by offering a lifetime sponsorship to immigrants three.
Not a trivial sacrifice, but, on another level, the least we could do — seriously. Like I could enjoy the second vacation home anyway under these conditions.
So, yeah, I get it and don’t condescend whatsoever.
Still, it depresses me that we older generations are creating and sustaining this very negative vibe.
Even more disturbing to me? Doom spending as an instinct.
That feels like giving up. But I get the YOLO instinct there, as well. It’s just so corrosive.
It’s younger people looking at how older generations are choosing not to deal with climate change … that is the original corrosion. Deal with that before pointing fingers.
This global transformation we’ve set in motion … it will re-order everything. Older people block out the scenarios; they just want to finish up without any unreasonable hassles. Younger people can’t stop running the scenarios through their heads, and they just sense doors closing.
Dangerous, dangerous stuff … especially when it comes to national identity, citizenship, a sense of belonging to the “right side.”
Being an American today doesn’t feel — to so many young people — like being on the right side of things. These people are as mission-driven as any other generation, of this I am certain. We’re just not providing them with national missions worth pursuing right now, instead choosing far more “important” topics like how can we make the lives of transgender people as miserable as possible.
It does feel insane at times — pointlessly cruel and stupid. This is how we choose to re-arrange deck chairs on the Titanic.
Don’t like what you see from younger generations? Then look in the mirror, I say.
Every kid grows up thinking the world is exactly like their family.
We live with the consequences.
2) Overthinking the linking
FOREIGN AFFAIRS: The Battle for the BRICS
CNBC: India rules out joining world’s largest trade deal, accuses China of ‘very opaque’ trade practices
ASIA TIMES: BRIC by BRIC, de-dollarization only a matter of time
Our need to clump-ify all challengers into a comprehensive threat package is just so … predictable and pathetic.
The US abandons its market-making role within globalization.
Fine. It had to happen sometime and it was the price of our success in fostering a multipolar world, which we thought we wanted right up to the moment when we realized it had arrived. And then … it scared us.
So we get defensive … even a bit paranoid.
We built this huge military Leviathan with a global footprint (over 90% of the great-power overseas military facilities in the world) and now, as globalization surpasses our ability to control the world anymore, we’re stuck with our almost pathological belief that we must defend state sovereignty the world over — just as globalization goes digital and presents us with a very different threat profile.
So, yeah, Russia goes into Ukraine and it’s the end of the US-led order!
China going into Taiwan would seal the deal — totally.
Meanwhile, Putin has captured a big chunk of the GOP and we’re good with that.
It is our self-binding choice to think along these lines: brain-dead Cold War thinking kept alive and kicking by our Cold War baby generations of leadership — Boomers and Xers.
This loss-of-control vibe will only get worse with time, our great fear being that de-dollarization will finally force some sense of fiscal discipline upon ourselves (which it will, however slowly it drags out over the years/decades).
The more we dig in on these fears and instinctively cast anybody who wants a say in running this world as a dangerous threat, the more those “threats” are incentivized to gang up and protest all the more.
Admittedly, some of these calculations are a bit absurd. But that far right one isn’t. America no longer drives global growth like it once did.
From America’s New Map:
Remember when, in the 1990s, cable business network analysts were always saying that as long as US consumer spending remained strong, the global economy would be fine? Nobody says that anymore. Now, economists speak of Chinese consumers with such reverence. A good example: Hollywood self-censoring its films to avoid offending China’s vast audience.
That is a big part of explaining America’s recent loss of self-confidence, along with growing fears of globalization itself. The future just does not look like us anymore. That can be particularly unnerving for older Americans who, looking around their country today, no longer see “the America I grew up in.”
The good news? Our younger generations (Millennial, 1981–95; Gen Z, 1996–2010; and Gen Alpha, 2011–25) have already experienced our shared demographic future, growing up in an America that far more approximates the world’s diversity. As such, their concerns for the future are eminently more practical, while their deepest fears center on climate change—as they should.
The bad news? The Boomers are still largely in charge of our political system (we have yet to elect a post-Boomer president) and seem stubbornly reluctant to cede authority to succeeding generations.
Why that matters: Boomers, those inveterate weaponizers of nostalgia, are inherently attracted to the notion of resurrecting America’s golden age— namely, their childhood and youth. Cold War Boomers also have a tough time detaching themselves from that era’s enemy archetypes—Russia and China. While we clearly face genuine threats from each power, the Boomers’ tendency to view both competitions in entirely existential terms only pushes Beijing and Moscow into confrontational stances with America and—worse— each other’s arms.
Our growing angst over the BRICS constellation is overwrought.
Russia, under Putin, clearly wants a non-US-led order, as does Iran. But China? China only wants what’s best for China and could care less about those minion powers. Beijing knows full well it’s not nearly up to the task of stepping into America’s shoes as either security Leviathan or what used to be our generous, market-making role.
What China seeks right now is mostly insulation from our threats — as recently made real for Russia. So it seeks safety in numbers, which the BRICS supply, even though (1) China makes up the vast majority of those numbers, and (2) the way forward for the group is accepting and enabling India’s demographic dividend-fueled rise — the fissure that will haunt this group going forward.
Up to now, the BRICS have been a Beijing-led club — China as the market-maker within those ranks. But that capacity and thus that role will shift to India over time.
And India is no fool, arguing right now on trade and investment integration with China exactly as it should: China’s economy is too un-transparent for India to trust its rise with it. This is a great prod, along with many others from the West, seeking to get China back in the game of economic reforms.
The global system we built is easy to join and incredibly hard to quit. We need to remember that as our collective power to steer globalization continues to dissipate.
3) Trump’s plan to kill off small farmers in America
STATISTA: U.S. Farmers Lost Billions to Trump-Era Retaliatory Tariffs
The last time Trump launched a tariff war, he cost US farmers plenty, with the USG picking up the tab in terms of farmer support.
But you know what? All that USG farmer support went overwhelmingly to the ag corporations and not the small farmers, who suffered mightily as a result.
The true story:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said that if reelected, he would impose new tariffs on China reaching 60 percent of the goods’ value. After Trump’s tariffs aimed at China in early 2018, retaliation from the country and other nations affected hit the U.S. economy and especially agricultural producers hard. A report from the USDA shows that between mid-2018 and the end of 2019, more than $27 billion, thereof $25.7 billion tied to China, had to be compensated with government payments to farmers. Tariff rates never exceeded 30 percent of goods value in that time period and were as low as 7.5 percent for some products, so an even higher and uniform tariff rate of 60 percent would be sure to send another shock wave through the U.S. business and farming communities.
Back then, the Trump Administration addressed concerns earmarking federal aid worth $28 billion for farmers. Under current President Joe Biden, relief payments continued to rise. Yet, farmer advocates pointed out that the subsidies were going to large farms predominantly, leaving smaller producers out in the rain.
The GOP has long been adept at leveraging culture wars to get people to vote against their own economic interests, and the US farming community is no exception.
4) Going short on corn
VISUAL CAPITALIST: 150 Years of Corn, Wheat, and Soy Yields in America
YAHOO FINANCE: ‘Short corn’ could replace the towering cornfields steamrolled by a changing climate
Having grown up in corn country, I remember offering prayers each week in church for good weather. If it came, then our community prospered. It if did not, then we suffered from that loss of income/spending within our local economy.
So, yeah, we prayed. It was the difference between my lawyer dad getting paid in actual money versus something else.
To its credit, the US ag industry has done an amazing job of growing so much more corn today while occupying a far smaller land footprint. Absolutely stunning.
But lately, in corn country, we find climate change generating this derechos, and these derechos are corn killers.
derecho
noun [ C ]
ENVIRONMENT US specialized
US /dɪˈreɪ.tʃoʊ/
a storm that moves fast, usually in a straightline, and that brings strong winds that can cause damage across a wide area of land:
Derechos are thunderstorms punctuated by long-duration, damaging winds that hit a wide area.
Again, I never heard this term once when growing up. Now, I hear it all the time, and I see it all over the place: driving through long stretches of Midwest farmland after a derecho and seeing all the treetops snapped off and vast chunks of corn fields totally flattened — all by those high winds.
Apparently, that’s gotten the US ag industry thinking …
They’ve already packed in the corn stalks about as much as they can, so, in recent years, it’s all been about growing taller corn to get still higher yields.
But that taller corn is more vulnerable to derechos, so now … the new thing is thicker, shorter corn that packs the same number of ears but offers a strong defense:
“As you drive across the Midwest, maybe in the next seven, eight, 10 years, you're going to see a lot of this out there,” said Cameron Sorgenfrey, an eastern Iowa farmer who has been growing newly developed short corn for several years, sometimes prompting puzzled looks from neighboring farmers. “I think this is going to change agriculture in the Midwest."
The short corn developed by Bayer Crop Science is being tested on about 30,000 acres (12,141 hectares) in the Midwest with the promise of offering farmers a variety that can withstand powerful windstorms that could become more frequent due to climate change. The corn's smaller stature and sturdier base enable it to withstand winds of up to 50 mph — researchers hover over fields with a helicopter to see how the plants handle the wind.
The smaller plants also let farmers plant at greater density, so they can grow more corn on the same amount of land, increasing their profits. That is especially helpful as farmers have endured several years of low prices that are forecast to continue.
I have spotted this corn many times and it always freaks me out in that WTF? way. It just looks odd, like a failing field, except it isn’t.
You gotta love the ingenuity of the US ag industry.
Thus, we should not abuse them with stupid tariff wars.
5) China positions itself as regional hub. The US …? Not so much.
UN-ECLAC: Latin America and the Caribbean accounted for nearly a fifth of U.S. foreign trade during the first six months of 2023
NYT: China Is Striking Deals to Cement Its Role as Asia’s Trade Hub
China is making deals and building infrastructure and that combination is bringing it closer to its economic neighbors.
All smart stuff, even if — at times — it is a defensive move:
Multinational corporations and Chinese companies have shifted the final assembly of many products, including solar panels and smartphones, to Vietnam to bypass trade barriers against Chinese goods erected by the United States and other countries. But the chemicals, components and engineering for many of these products still come from China.
Still, China is thinking and acting bigger:
If successful, the plans would give China closer ties to the economies of Northeast and Southeast Asia, the Mideast and even the Arctic, the latest steps in its 11-year-old Belt and Road Initiative to create a more China-centered global order.
Meanwhile, the US isn’t making anywhere near the same effort with its southern neighbors, with whom our trade and investment integration remains stunted compared to what it could and should be. We are acting smaller by the day, and if we pursue Trump’s promised economic strategy, we’ll find ourselves mattering a whole lot less to the global economy — essentially playing into China’s strategy.
To date, we’ve extended ourselves and our networks as far as Mexico but really no farther:
In 2022, the United States trade in goods with Mexico represented 68% of total trade with Latin America and the Caribbean. South America represented about 21% of the share, Central America 7%, and the Caribbean 4%.
And we wonder why immigration pressures from Mexico have declined dramatically while those of the Caribbean and Central and South America have grown so much higher. Mexico is now primarily a “transit country.”
Our trade with Latin America remains stunted for three reasons:
Lack of infrastructure
Latin America’s low intra-regional trade
China displacing the US as a preferred trade partner.
What does China bring most to Latin America? That would be infrastructure.
Does China encourage intra-regional trade? Just the opposite.
Is China’s trade and investment profile increasingly marginalizing the US across Latin America? Yeah, it is.
There is no mystery here. We are just screwing ourselves and our future with this approach, instead preferring to demonize immigrants and continue our disastrous-for-all War on Drugs.
6) Looking down our noses
THE HILL: Latin America hedges its bets amid US disinterest
Conversely (to #5), it is no surprise that Latin America returns our strategic disinterest with a disinterest of its own:
“There’s been too little bandwidth, too little agency in Washington towards the hemisphere for quite some time now,” said Arturo Sarukhán, a consultant who served as Mexico’s ambassador to the United States from 2007 to 2013.
For most countries in the region, the lack of U.S. attention can be frustrating at times but far from existential.
Mexico and Cuba, the two Latin American nations physically closest to the United States, are disproportionately exposed to changing political winds in the United States, while many of their peers are relatively insulated by distance and increasing global commerce with China.
Call it an Un-Monroe Doctrine.
Talk about taking your eye off the ball:
The hottest issue for U.S. foreign policy experts has been China, particularly its expansionist moves in the South China Sea.
“I think that’s a huge irony, that with all this almost maniacal, monothematic focus on China and the geopolitical, geo-economic challenge that China poses to U.S. long-term interests, that the U.S. seems to have been looking just in one direction, when China has been in the past decade or so, really deepening its footprint in the Americas,” said Sarukhán.
Will Trump’s return to power make all this worse? Count on it.
7) Pity the PITI
THE CONVERSATION: Why home insurance rates are rising so fast across the US – climate change plays a big role
My homeowners insurance went up about $4k this year.
There is no better conduit for convincing Americans that climate change is real and costly.
8) Have reactor, will travel
US DOD: DoD Breaks Ground on Project Pele: A Mobile Nuclear Reactor for Energy Resiliency
A good sign for the future: a small-scale fourth-generation nuclear reactor that you can package up and deliver in four containers!
"The DoD has a long record of driving American innovation on strategic and critical technology," said Mr. Jay Dryer, SCO director. "Project Pele is a key initiative for improving DoD energy resilience and will also play a crucial role in advancing nuclear power technology for civilian applications."
Being able to create energy locally — at speed — is a huge, enabling goal for the US military, one that saves lives otherwise lost to long and incredibly vulnerable energy supply chains. It is estimated that 7-8% of US troop deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan involved personnel moving fuel. Also bad, it meant our gas cost about $1,000 a gallon to deliver to the most isolated situations.
So, yeah, this is good stuff.
I expect it to spread like the Internet and GPS and drones.
9) Too hot to handle
COLUMBIA MAGAZINE: America’s Great Climate Migration Has Begun. Here’s What You Need to Know.
KXAN: Texas’ growth at risk due to water shortages, urgent action needed
The cited expert:
“Away from the coasts and toward the north” …
“If people still have their livelihoods and there’s infrastructure to keep them reasonably safe, they’ll often stay and try to adapt, even in the face of pretty extreme environmental pressures” …
“The big question then becomes: how many resources do we put into adaptation efforts, and for whom?”
This guy is talking North America. Same logic will apply in spades to Latin America.
This should be the focus of America’s foreign aid going forward: invest in local resilience or face the consequences.
10) The down under, right under
BBC: South America drought brings wildfires and blackouts
The harsh reality:
Last week, the Brazilian Geological Service (SGB) said water levels in many of the rivers in the Amazon basin had reached their lowest on record.
In 2023, the Amazon basin suffered its most severe drought in at least 45 years – which scientists at the World Weather Attribution group found had been made many times more likely by climate change.
Brazil matters to global food security, and it is under climatic assault.
11) UAE: Civil Wars R Us
NYT: How a U.S. Ally Uses Aid as a Cover in War
UAE is very active in Yemen and Sudan — two longstanding civil conflicts.
America modeled all manner of behavior across our Global War on Terror.
Now, we live in the age of copycats.
The Emirates is playing a deadly double game in Sudan, a country shredded by one of the world’s most catastrophic civil wars.
Eager to cement its role as a regional kingmaker, the wealthy Persian Gulf petrostate is expanding its covert campaign to back a winner in Sudan, funneling money, weapons and, now, powerful drones to fighters rampaging across the country, according to officials, internal diplomatic memos and satellite images analyzed by The New York Times.
Better or worse?
The war in Sudan, a sprawling gold-rich nation with nearly 500 miles of Red Sea coastline, has been fueled by a plethora of foreign nations, like Iran and Russia. They are supplying arms to the warring sides, hoping to tilt the scales for profit or their own strategic gain — while the people of Sudan are caught in the crossfire.
But the Emirates is playing the largest and most consequential role of all, officials say, publicly pledging to ease Sudan’s suffering even as it secretly inflames it.
We were never the only option, just the most ethical one.
12) Heavy lies the helmet
NYT: The Heavy Toll of Desertion From the Russian Army
The subheaders say it all:
At first, soldiers didn’t realize they were being sent to war. Then they couldn’t refuse.
Before the war, most people enlisted for economic reasons.
In the Russian military, appearances outweighed reality.
The system is built on corruption, and theft is part of the job.
The war has resurrected a culture of military brutality.
Deserters’ own commanders don’t want to report them.
Desertion is dangerous, and deserters are afraid to speak out.
Putin recently announced he wants to bulk up the Russian Army. This was widely interpreted in the West as a scary sign:
US Air Force general: Russia military larger, better than before Ukraine invasion
I find that analysis rather nutty.
But hey, whatever covers your budget.
