Diplomacy & Crisis News

Michael E. Webber

Climate Change, The Americas

The central U.S. has freezes, heat waves, windstorms, droughts and floods. All of these events stress the electric grid, pipeline networks, roads, rail and waterways.

Editor’s note: Amid record cold temperatures and skyrocketing energy demand, utilities across the central U.S. have ordered rolling blackouts to ration electricity, leaving millions of people without power. Energy expert Michael E. Webber explains why weather extremes can require such extreme steps.

1. The Plains states have a lot of wild weather. Why is this cold wave such a problem for utilities?

The central U.S. has freezes, heat waves, windstorms, droughts and floods. All of these events stress the electric grid, pipeline networks, roads, rail and waterways. Right now in my state of Texas, ERCOT, a nonprofit corporation that manages the power grid for most of the state, is imposing rolling blackouts because demand for electric heating is very high. So is the Southwest Power Pool, which serves customers in 14 states from North Dakota to Oklahoma.

About 60% of homes in Texas have electric heat, and most of the rest use natural gas or propane. Normally our peak electric demand is on summer afternoons for air conditioning. But in this sustained cold, electric demand is spiking to keep homes comfortable and pipes from freezing. This storm is more extreme than the most severe winter conditions that ERCOT typically plans for.

At this time of year, power plants that run on coal or natural gas often shut down for planned maintenance ahead of the summer cooling season. That means we have less capacity available than usual right now.

To meet the difference between high demand and low capacity, utilities are cycling power on and off to different neighborhoods or regions of Texas in a methodical way to keep things in balance. If they didn’t do this, there would be a risk of a much wider-scale blackout, which would be catastrophic and life-threatening.

2. How do utilities plan for this kind of extreme weather?

Utilities everywhere follow the weather very closely. Temperature changes affect the need for heating and cooling, which drives demand for electricity and natural gas. Meteorological conditions affect the availability of wind and solar power.

Thermal power plants – which burn coal, natural gas or biomass – also need a lot of water for cooling to run efficiently, as do nuclear power plants. If climate change warms rivers or reduces their water levels, it could force those power plants to turn off or reduce their output.

Weather forecasting has improved as satellites become more abundant and computer models become more sophisticated. Utilities can take steps in advance of a major storm, such as asking customers to preheat their homes. For ratepayers who will do this, the utility may adjust their thermostats to reduce power flow when demand is high.

Power providers can also ask large industrial customers to temporarily shut down factories to reduce electricity demand. And they can give hourly or minute-by-minute updates to customers about rolling blackouts and provide real-time maps of power outages.

Utilities work year-round to harden the grid against extreme weather. They may build berms to protect power plants against floods, fill reservoirs in preparation for droughts, replace equipment that can get overheated in the summer or weatherize power plants for cold conditions.

Almost exactly a decade ago, in February 2011, Texas suffered a significant series of rolling blackouts when cold weather forced dozens of coal and natural gas power plants offline. This cold snap is testing the upgrades utilities made after that event.

3. Does having a diverse fuel mix protect against energy crunches?

Texas is blessed with multiple energy sources. Much of it is produced locally, including natural gas, wind and solar power. Over the past 15 years, the state has diversified its fuel mix: Coal use has dropped, wind and solar have grown, and nuclear and natural gas use have held steady.

Each of these options has pros and cons. Wind and solar do not require water cooling, so they work fine during droughts and floods. But they vary based on wind patterns, cloud cover and time of day.

Nuclear power is reliable, but sometimes nuclear plants have to reduce their output during heat waves or droughts if their cooling water is too hot or scarce.

Natural gas is a high performer, but in the 2011 Texas cold snap, gas plants struggled to keep up with demand because many homes and businesses were using the fuel for heat. That reduced the pressure in gas pipelines, which made it hard to physically move gas to turbines that needed the fuel to generate electricity.

Much of the coal burned in Texas power plants comes from Wyoming over a sprawling rail network that can be disrupted if a bridge or section of track is out of commission for repairs. Utilities store 30 days or more of coal in piles near their power plants, but those piles can freeze or be flooded, as occurred when Hurricane Harvey swamped Houston in 2017.

Because all of these options fail in different ways, a diverse mix is the best basis for a robust system. Today Texas has three times as much wind power-generating capacity as it did in 2011, which may help stave off the worst risks of a statewide blackout.

This extra wind will be especially important because about 30% of ERCOT’s generating capacity is offline right now, reportedly due to natural gas shortages. Some West Texas wind turbines have also shut down due to icing, but turbines in other parts of the state are partially offsetting those losses. ERCOT will investigate all power losses after this storm passes and use what it learns to make new improvements to its system.

4. California has had rolling blackouts recently, too. Is this a national risk?

California is a big state with power sources in many locations, so it relies on a sprawling network of wires and poles to move electrons from one place to another. Those power lines can sag when it’s hot out and fail when high winds blow trees down onto the wires.

Aging transmission and distribution networks can also spark wildfires, which is a growing risk as the effects of climate change worsen drought conditions in the West. To manage those risks, California grid operators will preemptively turn off the power to prevent wildfires. They also did this in August 2020 to ration power during a heat wave.

Weather-related power outages are increasing across the U.S. as climate change produces more extreme storms and temperature swings. States that design their buildings and infrastructure for hot weather may need to plan for more big chills, and cold-weather states can expect more heat waves. As conditions in Texas show, there’s no time to waste in getting more weather-ready.

Michael E. Webber, Josey Centennial Professor of Energy Resources, University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Nathan Bartlett

Coronavirus,

The AstraZeneca vaccine, sometimes also called “the Oxford vaccine”, is a core plank in Australia’s coronavirus vaccine plan, with the Australian government securing 53.8 million doses.

South Africa will pause its rollout of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine after a small study suggested it offers minimal protection against mild and moderate infection from the South African coronavirus strain known as B.1.351.

The South African health minister said the government was waiting for scientific advice on next steps.

A media release issued overnight by the University of Oxford said a study of about 2,000 volunteers with an average age of 31 found a two-dose regimen of the AstraZeneca vaccine (officially known as ChAdOx1 nCov-19):

provides minimal protection against mild-moderate COVID-19 infection from the B.1.351 coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa. Efficacy against severe COVID-19 infection from this variant was not assessed.

The analysis is yet to be peer reviewed or published.

The AstraZeneca vaccine, sometimes also called “the Oxford vaccine”, is a core plank in Australia’s coronavirus vaccine plan, with the Australian government securing 53.8 million doses. It’s worth remembering, though, that it’s just one of the vaccines that will be made available in Australia — and that vaccines are just one of a range of responses we will need to get the pandemic under control.

So what’s all this mean for you? There’s no doubt this news is disappointing — but it’s also no great surprise given how quickly this virus mutates. And it doesn’t yet mean Australia should abandon its plan to rollout the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The sobering reality is setbacks such as these are to be expected in vaccine development, especially when dealing with an agile, fast-mutating virus such as this coronavirus.

 

Still better for Australia to have AstraZeneca than not

It’s reasonable for the South African government to pause while it reflects on what these new data mean.

For Australia, it’s too early to bin the AstraZeneca vaccine as part of our rollout, especially as the South African variant is not yet prevalent here. If we did that every time we got new data, we would never get any vaccines out. I think, at this point, it is still better to have the AstraZeneca vaccine in Australia than to not have it.

Based on Australia’s current circumstances, I think it’s reasonable to say we just need anything that will help reduce the risk of severe disease. That will help ease the burden on health-care systems.

We will get better vaccines coming out all the time. It’s an iterative process.

Encouragingly, Oxford said in its press release that:

Work is already underway at the University of Oxford and in conjunction with partners to produce a second generation of the vaccine which has been adapted to target variants of the coronavirus with mutations similar to B.1.351, if it should prove necessary to do so.

Such an agile virus demands a range of responses

These new developments highlight how quickly this incredibly agile coronavirus adapts and changes. While the level of infection remains so high, we must get used to the idea that new strains will be appearing all the time.

Vaccines are best suited to stationary targets and currently, SARS-CoV-2 is anything but — with so much human infection occurring, the virus has huge opportunity to mutate and generate variants.

Having said that, the newest vaccine technologies such as mRNA vaccines (including what’s commonly known as the Pfizer vaccine) can rapidly update and reformulate to keep up with mutant viruses.

Of course, it still takes some time to manufacture and distribute new vaccines so there will inevitably be a lag of months between identifying a new virus variant and making and distributing an updated vaccine.

A month is a long time in a pandemic. That underscores how critical treatments addressing these gaps are going to be if we are to have any chance of bringing this pandemic to an end within the next couple of years. Those responses will likely include antivirals that reduce duration of infection and other treatments that provide rapid, broad spectrum protection against viruses by directly boosting innate immunity in the airways.

Managing expectations

Vaccines can have amazing efficacy in clinical trials but things may be different in the real world when you are dealing with different populations and exposure to different virus strains. That is a normal part of vaccine development and global rollout, and we must manage expectations around this.

We always knew the first generation vaccines would be far from perfect, and certainly not a magic bullet. As scientists have said all along, this is a long game with incremental gains. And with so much research focused on beating this pandemic, there is huge reason for optimism.

We don’t want people to be discouraged from getting vaccines. Based on current circumstances and the fact the South African variant is not yet prevalent in Australia, the AstraZeneca vaccine will be one of a suite of responses that will help bring a reduction in serious disease in the first place — and ultimately prevent transmission as vaccines become more effective and supported by other treatments.

Just like you get a new flu shot every year, so it may be in the future you get a new coronavirus jab as better and more targeted vaccines become available.

New treatments will become available to support better and better vaccines, which will slowly but surely bring an end to this pandemic.

 

Nathan Bartlett, Associate Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

La NASA finira-t-elle par découvrir des traces de vie sur Mars ? Eternelle question. Mais que ces traces existent ou non, le résultat pour l'industrie aérospatiale est le même : l'exploration de ce nouvel eldorado lui offre une grande bouffée d'oxygène et une véritable manne financière. Toute une (...) / États-Unis, Nucléaire militaire, Énergie, Espace, Nucléaire civil, Recherche, Science, Technologie - 2004/12

What George Shultz understood about American power.

It is time to admit that there is a central defect in the United States’ current approach to the Gulf.

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’hiver 2020-2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 4/2020). Norbert Gaillard propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Emmanuel Saez et Gabriel Zucman, Le triomphe de l’injustice. Richesse, évasion fiscale et démocratie (Le Seuil, 2020, 304 pages).

Emmanuel Saez et Gabriel Zucman, professeurs d’économie à l’Université de Californie à Berkeley, donnent un aperçu de l’histoire fiscale des États-Unis et analysent le creusement des inégalités depuis l’ère Reagan, signalant ses effets dévastateurs sur la démocratie américaine.

Les deux premiers chapitres battent en brèche l’idée selon laquelle les États-Unis ont toujours été un pays à faible pression fiscale. L’un des éléments constitutifs du New Deal fut en effet la mise en place d’un système fiscal très progressif, destiné à réduire les inégalités et à instaurer de facto un revenu maximum. C’est ce système qui a été démantelé par les Républicains dans les années 1980, aboutissant à des écarts de revenus vertigineux.

Les statistiques présentées pour illustrer ce phénomène sont édifiantes. Par exemple, en 1978, la moitié des Américains les plus pauvres captaient 20 % du revenu national contre seulement 12 % pour le centile supérieur. En 2018, ces proportions s’étaient inversées. La fiscalité a largement contribué à façonner cette tendance. Entre 1980 et 2018, le taux effectif d’imposition des 50 % les plus pauvres est resté stable, alors que celui des 400 Américains les plus riches a été divisé par deux, devenant même inférieur à celui des classes populaire et moyenne ! Cette évolution est le résultat de plusieurs facteurs : en premier lieu, les baisses successives des impôts sur le revenu et sur les sociétés. Mais le creusement des inégalités est aussi la conséquence de l’explosion de l’optimisation et de l’évasion fiscales à partir des années 1980, au moment où la pression fiscale ne cessait de diminuer. Cet argument fort d’Emmanuel Saez et Gabriel Zucman décrédibilise ainsi tous ceux qui proclament que s’il y a des paradis fiscaux, c’est simplement parce qu’il y a des « enfers fiscaux ».

Afin de combattre les inégalités et stopper la concurrence fiscale entre États développés, les auteurs avancent une longue liste de propositions. D’abord, chercher une coordination au niveau du G20 en vue d’harmoniser et d’appliquer un taux unique d’impôt sur les sociétés. Ensuite, instaurer un « impôt de rattrapage » pour récupérer le manque à gagner lié aux bénéfices d’entreprises et aux capitaux divers qui filent dans les paradis fiscaux. Il est suggéré que les pays à fiscalité élevée collectent les impôts dus aux États récalcitrants dans le but de les convaincre de se joindre au mouvement. Cette proposition, séduisante sur le papier, est cependant susceptible de fragiliser l’existence de nombreuses entreprises. Sont également préconisées la taxation des transactions financières avec les paradis fiscaux non coopératifs, la création d’une autorité anti-optimisation, l’instauration d’un impôt sur la fortune, et la fusion de l’impôt sur le revenu et de l’impôt sur les sociétés – l’objectif étant qu’un dollar de salaire soit imposé au même taux qu’un dollar de bénéfice. Enfin, il est envisagé de créer un impôt sur le revenu national à taux unique pour remplacer les primes d’assurance que les classes populaire et moyenne versent pour leur couverture santé.

Cet ouvrage brille par sa rigueur, sa cohérence et sa clarté. Certaines de ses recommandations sont discutables, mais d’autres mériteraient d’être appliquées dès que possible.

Norbert Gaillard

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Accédez à l’article de Fred Eboko et Sina Schlimmer ici.

Retrouvez le sommaire du numéro 4/2020 de Politique étrangère ici.

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’hiver 2020-2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 4/2020). Paul Maurice, chercheur au Cerfa à l’Ifri, propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Agnès Arp et Élisa Goudin-Steinmann, La RDA après la RDA. Des Allemands de l’Est racontent (Nouveau Monde, 2020, 408 pages).

La question centrale posée par Agnès Arp et Élisa Goudin-Steinmann est contenue dans le titre de leur ouvrage : en quoi la République démocratique allemande (RDA) continue-t‑elle d’avoir une influence sur la société allemande, même après sa disparition, y compris sur les générations qui ne l’ont que très peu, voire pas, connue ?

Pour les auteurs, ce qui fait aujourd’hui l’expérience d’être « Allemand de l’Est » est peut-être davantage ce qui s’est passé après la chute du Mur que durant les quarante années d’existence de la RDA : la délégitimation d’une histoire écrite par l’Ouest et les « vainqueurs de l’histoire ». L’objectif de cette écriture biaisée de la RDA après 1989-1990, centrée sur l’omniprésence de la Stasi, sur la domination politique du Parti socialiste unifié d’Allemagne (SED), ou sur l’assujettissement à l’URSS, était de renforcer la démocratie dans les « nouveaux Länder ». Mais ceci a, au contraire, conduit à une exclusion des citoyens de l’ex-RDA, de leur vécu et de leurs parcours personnels.

Depuis une dizaine d’années, la recherche scientifique tend à évoluer – les deux chercheuses font d’ailleurs un bilan de ces évolutions historiographiques, dans lesquelles elles s’insèrent, dans la quatrième partie de l’ouvrage (« Dédiabolisation ? La RDA dans la recherche scientifique »). On cherche désormais à s’intéresser aux gens « ordinaires », et à une histoire orale de la RDA.

L’originalité de l’ouvrage tient aux entretiens biographiques avec 19 citoyens de l’ex-RDA. Il s’agit de citoyens qui n’étaient ni dans l’opposition militante, ni dans le soutien actif – à l’exception d’un seul fonctionnaire du régime. Ils se trouvaient dans l’entre-deux, où l’on donne le change tout en étant critique envers l’emprise du politique sur le quotidien, en conservant l’Eigensinn, le quant à soi, défini par l’historien Alf Lüdcke, la possibilité de s’arranger avec les opportunités qui s’ouvrent.

Il s’agit ici non de généraliser à partir d’un panel réduit, mais de redonner la voix à ces citoyens de l’ex-RDA, issus de milieux intellectuels et sociaux très différents, mais aussi de trois générations différentes. Celle des « pères fondateurs », qui ont vécu le traumatisme du nazisme et fait le choix volontaire de s’installer en RDA, en se sentant une responsabilité face à l’histoire. Celle du baby-boom, les « nés-dedans » (Hineingeborenen), pour qui 1989 a signifié des temps difficiles : ils n’ont connu que la RDA et ont eu des difficultés à se réinventer. Enfin celle des Wendekinder, nés autour des années 1970, trop jeunes pour avoir eu des choix difficiles à faire, et qui n’ont connu la RDA que dans l’enfance.

Par leur démarche mêlant témoignage et analyse, Agnès Arp et Élisa Goudin-Steinmann cherchent à montrer en quoi les mémoires des citoyens divergent autant des discours médiatiques. Les principaux témoignages aboutissent à un constat similaire : celui d’une vie qualifiée de « normale », d’autant plus qu’elle est révélée en creux par les ruptures biographiques après 1989-1990. Si nul ne regrette la période du Mur, les témoins insistent sur des aspects essentiels de leur existence : l’absence de chômage, le système de santé, l’indépendance économique des femmes, les loyers dérisoires.

Pour améliorer la compréhension du moment 1989-1990 comme situation historique, il est intéressant de prendre en compte ces discours des citoyens eux-mêmes, révélateurs des impensés de la réunification et de leur prix politique.

Paul Maurice

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Basma Zahran allume une cigarette. Auparavant, elle expliquait qu'elle ne pouvait fumer en public. « Alors, pourquoi fumes-tu, aujourd'hui, devant tout ce monde ? » « C'est le changement », répond-elle simplement, interdisant ainsi toute réplique. / Égypte, Femmes, Société, Printemps arabes 2011- - (...) / Égypte, Femmes, Société, Printemps arabes 2011- - 2011/03

Jusque-là confrontés à un pouvoir « féodal », les paysans égyptiens ont accompli « le second acte de la révolution. Les ouvriers font grève et revendiquent ; les paysans, eux, reprennent d'eux-mêmes leur outil de production : la terre ». / Égypte, Agriculture, Printemps arabes 2011- - (...) / Égypte, Agriculture, Printemps arabes 2011- - 2011/03

En France comme à l'étranger, la connivence des pouvoirs politiques avec de puissants patrons de presse attire régulièrement l'attention sur le contrôle des médias. Quelques groupes industriels possèdent la plupart des maisons d'édition et contrôlent une grande partie du contenu et de la distribution (...) / Culture, Économie, Idées, Industrie culturelle, Livre, Politique - 2007/10

This article is the English version of : Chantal Delsol, « Le crépuscule de l’universel », published in Politique étrangère, Vol. 84, Issue 1, 2019.

During the two centuries following the French Revolution, Western culture has claimed its status as upholder of universal values to justify its spread around the world. Our conquests were disguised as missions, in keeping with a long tradition – from Pericles bringing democracy to subject cities, through to Christians leading crusades in the name of Truth. A faith in human rights was the new gospel preached by its disciples. And the message was getting through. After Peter the Great’s Westernization of Russia by force, Japan and Turkey followed suit. Over two centuries, foreign cultures all became Westernized, more or less of their own will, and often laying claim to our principles and using our terminology.

All regimes, even autocratic ones, were keen to call themselves “democratic.” Western leaders, who toured the world to lecture on human rights, were frequently received in host countries with protestations of the countries’ excellent democratic credentials. The general feeling that there was some virtue attached to Western culture came from the idea of progress. Everyone wanted to be “modern.” History was even reinterpreted. Perhaps more out of diplomacy than conviction, the Chinese went so far as to claim around the time of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights that they had played a role in starting the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. 

All this was true until the turn of the twenty-first century. For almost twenty years now, the Western message has been received differently. And on all continents: in China and many of its neighbors, in the majority of Islamic countries, and in Russia. What is new is that for the first time, we are confronted by foreign cultures that openly oppose our model, reject it with reasons, and justify a different type of society from ours. In other words, they dismiss the universality of the principles we sought to bring to the world and possibly see them as the results of an ideology. This rejection is new, not in its expression, but rather in its scale. It overturns the understanding of universalism we thought we upheld. It changes the geopolitical order. The ideological nature of the break is beyond all doubt: it is our individualism that is in question, and everything that comes with it.

Several points need to be made in order to gain a better understanding of this unprecedented situation. The cultural centers in question tend to put forward similar arguments to delegitimize the West. They question our role as a culture of emancipation and freedom; and their role, they say, is to defend communities, both small and large. One might say that in the face of the individualist West a huge holistic front has been opened up. Certainly, the bipolar world of the Cold War, which left a unipolar world after the fall of the Berlin Wall, has now become multipolar. But rather than seeing here a “clash of civilizations,” one should first attempt to ascertain the extent of the anti-Western movement that is being expressed everywhere and giving way to a new era. […]

Read the rest of the article here.

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Oui, heureuse province, aujourd'hui comme hier, Bourgogne... nom sans faille, a écrit l'un de ses fils, le romancier Raymond Dumay – tout rond, qui semble-rouler comme un tonneau plein... C'est encore un de nos paradis gourmands. Lentement et sûrement s'est formée une tradition et, les uns après (...) / France, Agriculture, Alimentation, Identité culturelle - 1955/01