Sunday Cutdown XII (2/18/2024)
Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document
1) Africa getting ready for take-off
ALJAZEERA: Can Africa’s new free trade treaty boost business on the continent?
The gist:
African leaders will this weekend gather in Addis Ababa for the annual summit of the African Union (AU) to discuss key business issues, including plans to make Africa a global economic powerhouse.
In the spotlight during the two-day high-level meeting, starting on February 17, is a treaty that the AU says will revolutionise trade on a continent where country-to-country trade levels are dismal, with most imports coming from countries like China.
If you are fragmented, then the world can abuse you. But if you are united, you can hold your own. This is the path America trod: develop continental trade first, being protectionist as you see fit. Size matters.
So, here’s the deal:
Ratified by a majority of African countries, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement will merge 55 economies into a single, competitive mega market of more than a billion people, making it one of the biggest free trade areas in the world.
Hamilton would approve, as would the founders of the EU.
The treaty came into force in 2021, with ratification now the issue. The reasonably optimistic projection is that Africa’s total economic heft will reach about $30T in 2050, putting it in the same realm as the EU, US, India, and China.
For now, the continent is too reliant on China as both a raw materials export market and a source of cheap manufactured goods. The deficits are typical : infrastructure, connectivity to the outside world, and — quite frankly — ease of doing business within Africa. On the last point, it’s often easier to do anything, including travel, with outside partners than with on-continent neighbors. That is a huge hold-up on development this treaty is designed to address with things like an AU-wide passport.
Naturally, there is superpower competition:
“See what Russia is doing, pitching Francophone countries against France even as Russian companies are gaining interest in the extractives sector in Africa,” he [Olabisi Akinkugbe of Canada’s Dalhousie University] said, referring to Russia’s increasing influence in French-speaking African countries, at the same time that the United States and China are seeking more African allies.
Overall, very good sign.
2) Early signs of the migration apocalypse?
1 NEWS: Immigration strong, but record numbers of NZers leaving
NYT: On a Frozen Border, Finland Puzzles Over a ‘Russian Game’
New Zealand recently sees a huge uptick (for them) in immigrants, the vast majority coming from my Middle Earth band (30 degrees north and south of equator, where climate change hits hardest). That record inflow counters a record outflow for a record net.
We should get used to hearing these record-setting announcements — across all such vectors (inbound, outbound, net).
Per the US (Texas, Florida) example, we should also anticipate the weaponization of this flow of climate refugees, where frontline countries seek to dump their problem in more Northern laps (here Russia dumping migrants on Finland’s border as a sad protest for it joining NATO).
Greg Abbott would be proud.
Those being abused don’t care:
Moayed Salami, 36, a Syrian who reached the crossing in November, said his experience showed Russia was clearly using the asylum seekers as pawns — but willing ones.
He and seven other applicants interviewed, all of whom arrived before Finland closed its border, described being escorted through three layers of Russian checkpoints, where their passports were taken and their entry visas to Russia were canceled. He and some others said the Russian authorities then followed them until the very last stretch before the border.
“What I keep telling the Finnish media, when they say we are being exploited by Russia, is that it does not matter,” Mr. Salami said. “How could it? We needed a way out. If we had to flee via Mars, we would do it.”
The last line is a good one to remember.
3) How bad — and good — is all this record migration into America
WAPO: Here’s which states could benefit most from migrant labor
NEWSWEEK: US Population Just Had Its Largest One-Year Increase in History
WAPO: The surge in immigration is a $7 trillion gift to the economy
The stories abound with this record flow of immigrants, declared by most politicians a complete disaster and crisis!
Except, we’ve got so many states starving for entry-level labor. Here’t the map:
As I noted in America’s New Map:
It may strike you as implausible that Latin Americans will somehow show up in Canada’s New North as immigrant farmers, but it should not. Recall Abraham Lincoln’s wartime scheme (the 1863 Homestead Act) to lure Euro- pean immigrant farmers to the American West with the promise of 160 free acres. Who migrates to a country during its civil war? Well, Lincoln needed to keep up wartime food production. If Canada once populated its west with a similar offering to European immigrants, then why not its North with Lati- nos? In recent years, some of the fastest-growing US counties for Latinos sit just below Canada’s southern border in states like North Dakota. Just give it some time.
Demand meeting supply.
How valuable is that?
As the economy has improved and consumers have begun recognizing that improvement, Republicans have pivoted to attacking President Biden on a different policy weakness: immigration. After all, virtually everyone — Democrats included — seems to agree the issue is a serious problem.
But what if that premise is wrong? …
Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released updated 10-year economic and budget forecasts …
The CBO has now factored in a previously unexpected surge in immigration that began in 2022, which the agency assumes will persist for several years … This infusion of working-age immigrants will more than offset the expected retirement of the aging, native-born population.
This will in turn lead to better economic growth. As CBO Director Phill Swagel wrote in a note accompanying the forecasts: As a result of these immigration-driven revisions to the size of the labor force, “we estimate that, from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenues will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise.”
This is where the natalist worry-warts like Elon Musk are clueless: we have the answer to declining fertility; it’s just the wrong color, perhaps.
Coming out of the pandemic and reflecting this immigrant surge, America last year grew at the fastest absolute amount (3.8m) than in any previous year of our entire history as a nation. It was overwhelmingly due to immigration.
As I like to say, the answer to our demographic issues (loss of fertility, aging) sits right under our noses.
4) Russia becoming China’s best boy
NYT: When sanctions fail
NBC NEWS: Russia’s isolation is forcing it to look to China for support in the Arctic
The West’s sanctions against Russia have not failed: de-globalizing Russia’s financial sector was a real and serious blow, but not an insurmountable one for Putin. Still, he had no choice in reply: switch energy exports from well-paying Europe to bargain-basement-pricing China and India. He’s taking a huge hit on this, basically condemning Russia to a long-term trajectory as China’s economic vassal.
So, no, we couldn’t kick Russia out of the core of the global economy, but we most definitely wounded it and, quite frankly, made it more of China’s problem than our own — long term, another good thing.
That emerging junior-partner dynamic is already manifesting itself in the New North:
Reeling under the financial and diplomatic impacts of its war in Ukraine, Russia has stepped up cooperation with China to expand its foothold in the Arctic, with significant implications for U.S. national security, according to a new private intelligence report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long prioritized military and economic expansion in the Arctic as a key facet of his geopolitical strategy and ambitions, and after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, he began cooperating with China in the region. But after it sought to limit the involvement of the People’s Republic, Russia recently has invited much greater Chinese participation, says the report by Strider Technologies, a firm that focuses on open-source intelligence.
As the article notes, Russia did its best to exclude China from the Arctic for years — decades really. Now, it is selling out.
Putin’s big reach into the Arctic is increasingly becoming Xi’s big reach.
There is no outcome in Ukraine for Russia that justifies all this economic and strategic loss to China.
5) Love Vlad while you can, MAGA!
NYT: Why MAGA Loves Russia and Hates Ukraine
CFR: Leadership Change in Russia
It has been amazing to watch Ukraine go from a place most Americans couldn’t spot on a map to the center of US political intrigue and hyper partisanship AND far-right conspiracy theories. Really amazing.
As the NYT’s David French notes:
First, if you’re stumped by the notion that Ukraine is a villain, you may need reminding of a conspiracy theory that is now largely forgotten but was prevalent on the right at the time of Donald Trump’s first impeachment. In his infamous conversation with Zelensky — the one that triggered the impeachment — Trump asked Zelensky about a “CrowdStrike” server allegedly being held in Ukraine.
This is a reference to a longstanding MAGA claim that it was Ukraine and not Russia that interfered with the 2016 election. There’s no evidence of any kind to support the allegation, and Trump’s own advisers repeatedly debunked it. But my Times colleague Scott Shane described how the theory gained purchaseon the right nonetheless …
Combine that claim with the fact that Hunter Biden had a lucrative business relationship with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and MAGA found itself with the perfect villain to counter the Trump-Russia narrative. Trump wasn’t in bed with a hostile power in Russia; the Democrats were in bed with a hostile power in Ukraine.
But it goes further still. To MAGA, Putin isn’t just innocent; he’s admirable. Heroic, even, in some ways. He isn’t defined as an authoritarian dictator at the helm of one of America’s chief geopolitical rivals. No, he’s defined as an anti-woke leader who defends Christian civilization by taking on the decadent West …
There is an old saying: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Ideally, the phrase means that Americans set aside their domestic differences to address foreign threats to the nation. But in this hyperpolarized era, the far right gets this equation precisely backward. They are aiding Vladimir Putin because they see him, too, as opposed to their domestic enemies.
And that’s how we got to where we are, where the GOP far-right is totally in bed with Putin, no matter what he does. In that way, he is Trump’s doppelgänger, but with there no question which of the two is puppeteer and which is on the strings.
But, like Trump, Putin will only be around for so long.
The Russian “pivot to Asia” (cited above) bodes poorly for a post-Putin Russia. Per a CFR report, smart minds are already working the post-Putin scenarios. As I noted in my book, there will be an opportunity there for Russia’s dismemberment at the hands of an attracting Europe in the West, an opportunistic India toward the South (but increasingly looking northward as climate change hits and damages its south), and a ravenous China in the Far East. Russia is a big fat target in a climate-changed world.
Here’s the CFR trio:
The radicalization scenario (an Andropov-type successor)
A leader even more militant, radical, and/or ethnonationalist could succeed Vladimir Putin … However, that possibility also includes potential backlash from less hard-line elites and society, as seen in the late Soviet Union when Andropov was succeeded by Gorbachev.
The retrenchment scenario (a Khrushchev-type successor)
In a retrenchment scenario, a less militant yet still autocratic leader comes to power and pursues a “Putinism without Putin” approach. That historically more probable outcome would come about if Russian elites wanted to keep the system intact but get rid of the worst excesses of the Putin era at home and abroad…
The fragmentation scenario
In this scenario, leadership change would fragment federal power and erode control over Russia’s regions. The outcome would be an inward-looking Russia occupied by domestic tensions and center-region disputes. An erosion of federal power is historically linked to a weaker Russian role internationally, which could benefit Ukraine and the West. However, there is also a possibility of dangerous unpredictability in foreign policy, as losing the federal center’s monopoly on violence can multiply regional centers of violence and weaken control over military assets and weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. A fragmentation scenario can emerge via two pathways: economic crisis or violent clashes among elites. It can also result from an unsuccessful radicalization or retrenchment scenario, in case an Andropov-type or a Khrushchev-type successor is unable to hold onto power.
I am betting on the fragmentation model for now.
6) The frozen tundra is losing its mystique
WAPO: The Midwest is experiencing a ‘lost winter.’ Here’s what that means.
WAPO: It’s so warm in Wisconsin that it just had its first-ever February tornado
The gist:
The “lost winter” is affecting commerce in the region: Ice fishing opportunities are limited, ski areas are struggling, and wintertime events dependent on snow can’t proceed.
Winter still has a month or two left, but the forecast offers little promise for sustained cold. The exceptionally warm winter fits into a long-term trend toward milder winter weather, driven by human-caused climate change.
Green Bay, likely my retirement city, is lately averaging about 10 degrees Fahrenheit above historical norms. Minneapolis has had less snow than Nashville — truly weird. South of Madison there was recently an extremely rare tornado in February.
As always, not crazy per se in terms of what, but deeply odd in terms of where and when. Climate velocity is real, shifting weather patterns toward the poles at a speed stunning in terms of its demands on species for lightning-fast evolutionary adaptations.
I am reminded of the Genesis Device from Star Trek: “Impressive, they can make planets!” (John Larroquette cameo in ST-III)
It’s like we’re remaking Earth in real time — across my lifetime. Born in 1962, I am of a cohort likely to have experienced the most climatic change in any one lifetime in human history. It is an amazing time to be alive, alright. We are — see below — playing with fire.
7) The sum of all fires
NYT: Fires Are the Sum of Our Choices
WAPO: Hurricanes are getting so intense, scientists propose a Category 6
The always great David Wallace-Wells on fires as the ultimate karma from humanity’s recasting of the planet through US-style globalization:
When the fire historian Stephen Pyne says that we are now living in the “Pyrocene,” this is part of what he means: Forest fires are now burning twice as much tree cover, globally, as they did just 20 years ago, and the world is quickly inuring itself to that fact. In parts of the world as far-flung as Fort McMurray, Alberta; Lahaina, Hawaii; Boulder County, Colo.; and now Valparaiso, Chile — where at least 15,000 homes have been destroyed — the new age of fire has produced what the climate scientist Daniel Swain has called the return of the “urban firestorm.” Of the 10 deadliest fires on Earth since 1900, five have occurred since 2018.
How to assign casualty?
It’s all a bit complicated. Put 100 climate scientists and forest ecologists in a bar, the climate scientist John Abatzoglou and the forest ecologist Solomon Dobrowski tell me, and it’s a good bet they’ll all agree with a statement like “More heat, less moisture, more human-caused ignitions and more fuel have dramatically increased fire activity in the West and beyond.” But ask the 100 scientists about the relative contributions from forest management and climate change, they say, and consensus collapses: The climate scientists might suggest that climate change contributes something close to two-thirds of our current fire predicament, while the ecologists might flip the estimate — two-thirds from forest management and one-third climate factors.
In other words, this isn’t an either-or set; it’s both-and. But that complexity is often maddeningly difficult to internalize.
Along with fires going off the charts, hurricanes are outgrowing our classic measurements, leading scientists to propose a new Class 6 — a Spinal Tap moment if ever there was one.
But the old top-line Cat 5 is now viewed as understating the risk, thus:
Wehner and James Kossin, a distinguished science adviser at the First Street Foundation, suggest the Category 6 label could go to any tropical cyclone with sustained winds of at least 192 mph — an intensity that five storms have surpassed since 2013.
In other words, it’s not a 100-year-flood if it happens every 3-4 years, am I right?
8) We may live to see the Amazon Forest gone
NYT: A Collapse of the Amazon Could Be Coming ‘Faster Than We Thought’
If you thought seeing the Sea of Azov disappear, then get ready for something far more important. The scary projection:
Up to half of the Amazon rainforest could transform into grasslands or weakened ecosystems in the coming decades, a new study found, as climate change, deforestation and severe droughtslike the one the region is currently experiencing damage huge areas beyond their ability to recover.
Those stresses in the most vulnerable parts of the rainforest could eventually drive the entire forest ecosystem, home to a tenth of the planet’s land species, into acute water stress and past a tipping point that would trigger a forest-wide collapse, researchers said.
While earlier studies have assessed the individual effects of climate change and deforestation on the rainforest, this peer-reviewed study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, is the first major research to focus on the cumulative effects of a range of threats.
“This study adds it all up to show how this tipping point is closer than other studies estimated,” said Carlos Nobre, an author of the study.
Honestly, what this tells me geopolitically is this: if Brazil cannot handle this, then greater powers are eventually going to have to step in and do better. Brazil may well be declared a failed state by outsiders over this disaster with profound global implications.
Bottom line: no state in Middle Earth is safe.
9) What it means to be middle class is what is shrinking
WAPO: How Americans define a middle-class lifestyle — and why they can’t reach it
Fascinating chart says it all:
I have had enough times, as the father of six, where I did not qualify throughout this gauntlet, and — admittedly — those were scary days to realize there were middle-class requirements that I was no longer meeting.
That sense of US-market capitalism’s brutality is all around us. It drives MAGA and the wider economic nationalism (distinct enough from the White Christian Nationalism). Historically, that fear has triggered a Progressive response, be it from Left or Right.
Our current leadership generations (Boomers, Xs) are not delivering nearly enough on this need. Instead, we are feted with idiotic, time-wasting culture wars.
It is revolting in every meaning of that word.
10) India must have that UNSC permanent seat
THE ECONOMIC TIMES: External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar says India will surely get Security Council seat but not easily
It has long been a gripe of India’s, and with its economy slated to achieve #3 status within a foreseeable timeline, the calls will only grow.
To me, the permanent seats should be: 1) US, 2) EU (not UK), Russia (alas), China, and India (not France). It’s time to put the winning coalition of WWII to bed as a geopolitical concept.
11) The AMOC threat
GUARDIAN: Are you ready for the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation? No, you are not
SCIENCE ALERT: It's Confirmed. A Major Atlantic Ocean Current Is Verging on Collapse.
WAPO: Why this is one of the planetary shifts scientists are most worried about
You have likely heard of the "Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC.
This is how it presents on a map:
Frankly, it’s what keeps Europe Europe: it’s climatic temperance. Well ….
Evidence from Earth’s past shows that this crucial and complex ocean system has shut down before, and modeling studies such as Van Westen’s suggest that it could happen again as human greenhouse gas emissions cause the planet to warm.
It is a bit of science-informed guess still if and when the AMOC could stop due to climate change. The sheer complexity of it all defies easy predictions (not that media have any hesitation about trying to freak people out).
But the new study, cited in the WAPO piece (all the cites above obsess over the same recently-published study), was able to simulate a collapse with some precision, creating new worries among the scientific community.
In other words, we have been warned.
What could happen?
See below for broader framing:
12) Paging Irwin Allen!
WSJ: Scientists Resort to Once-Unthinkable Solutions to Cool the Planet
If you have a WSJ subscription, this article reports out on three seemingly inconceivable solutions to the planet’s warming:
Dumping chemicals in the ocean? Spraying saltwater into clouds? Injecting reflective particles into the sky?
The details matter to me less than the reach: per my book, climate change is going to push humanity into considering and embracing all sorts of inconceivables. If that is happening in science, it will happen too across politics.
With enough speed, evolution is revolution.