Nuclear energy united Europe. Now it is dividing the club | The Economist - 1 views
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“The peaceful atom”, wrote Jean Monnet, the cognac salesman turned founding father of the EU, was to be “the spearhead for the unification of Europe”.
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Europe was a nuclear project before it was much else. In 1957 the EU’s founding members signed the Treaty of Rome to form the European Economic Community, the club’s forebear. At the same time they put their names to a less well-known organisation: Euratom, which would oversee nuclear power on the continent.
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Where nuclear power was once a source of unity for Europe, today it is a source of discord
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Dark things are happening on Europe's borders. Are they a sign of worse to come? | Dani... - 0 views
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Together, these stories suggest that the “push-back” – the forcing away of migrating people from a country’s territory, even if it places them in harm’s way or overrides their right to asylum – is becoming an entrenched practice. Once something that would take place largely in the shadows, it is being done increasingly openly, with some governments trying to find ways to make the practice legal. The UK’s proposal has been strongly criticised by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, whose representative said it would “unavoidably” put lives at risk.
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Just as shocking as the claims themselves is the fact that the revelations have largely been met with a shrug of indifference by EU officials, whose funding helps prop up border defences in both countries. Twelve member states are even demanding that the EU adjusts its rules so that it can finance “further preventive measures”, including walls and fences, at its external borders.
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In south-eastern Europe, an international team of investigative journalists have revealed that Croatia and Greece are using a “shadow army”, balaclava-clad plainclothes units linked to those countries’ regular security forces, to force people back from their borders. In Croatia, these units have been filmed beating people with clubs at the border with Bosnia. In Greece, they are accused of intercepting boats in the Aegean and setting the passengers adrift on life-rafts in Turkish waters. (Croatia has promised to investigate reports of abuse, while Greece denies the practice.
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The Center Cannot Hold | Foreign Affairs - 0 views
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the debate over whether great-power competition or transnational threats pose the greater danger to the United States is a false one. Look back at strategic assessments from ten years ago on China and Russia, on the one hand, and those on pandemics and climate change, on the other, and it is clear that Washington is experiencing near-worst-case scenarios on both. Great-power rivalry has not yet sparked a hot war but appears to be on the brink of sparking a cold one. Meanwhile, the worst pandemic in a century is not yet over, and the climate crisis is only accelerating.
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What COVID-19 has made powerfully clear is that this is an age of transnational threats and great-power competition—one in which the two phenomena exacerbate each other.
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By the same token, ramping up competition with China without a plan to rally the world to deal with transnational threats (which can themselves fuel rivalry between great powers) would only guarantee future disasters.
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What is behind rocketing natural-gas prices? | The Economist - 0 views
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uropean gas prices have soared in recent weeks, climbing to a high of $25 per million British thermal units (chart 1, left panel)
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from Russian supply bottlenecks to a lack of wind in the North Sea, caused the spike.
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Even before the recent price surge, gas was in short supply. A prolonged northern-hemisphere winter meant that European countries ran down reserves, leaving their stocks 25% below the historic average
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'Build Back Better' Hit a Wall, but Climate Action Could Move Forward - The New York Times - 0 views
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Faced with the possibility that Democrats could lose control of Congress in November’s midterm elections, the party is now looking to salvage what it can from the $2.2 trillion Build Back Better Act.
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That could mean jettisoning many of the child-care, health care and tax-overhaul provisions that are priorities for different segments of the Democratic coalition.
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Republicans, including those who accept the scientific consensus that climate change is primarily a result of burning fossil fuels, expressed less urgency.
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Climate Change Poses a Widening Threat to National Security - The New York Times - 0 views
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The Biden administration released several reports Thursday on climate change and national security, laying out in stark terms the ways in which the warming world is beginning to pose significant challenges to stability worldwide.
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the first such document to look exclusively at the issue of climate, said that risks to American national security will grow in the years to come. After 2030, key countries will face growing risks of instability and need for humanitarian assistance, the report said.
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The document makes three key judgments. Global tensions will rise as countries argue about how to accelerate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions; climate change will exacerbate cross-border flash points and amplify strategic competition in the Arctic; and the effects of climate change will be felt most acutely in developing countries that are least equipped to adapt.
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Old Power Gear Is Slowing Use of Clean Energy and Electric Cars - The New York Times - 0 views
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The local utility’s equipment is so overloaded that there is no place for the electricity produced by the panels to go.
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have made it hard for homeowners, local governments and businesses to use solar panels, batteries, electric cars, heat pumps and other devices that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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Now, homes and businesses are increasingly supplying energy to the grid from their rooftop solar panels.
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Oil Prices Stay High as Output From OPEC and Others Falls Behind - The New York Times - 0 views
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The sharp pullback came with an implicit promise that as factories reopened and planes returned to the air, the oil industry would revive, too, gradually scaling up production to help economies return to prepandemic health.
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Members of the cartel OPEC Plus, which agreed to cut output by about 10 million barrels a day in early 2020, are routinely falling well short of their rising monthly production targets.
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Production in the United States, the world’s largest oil producer, has also been slow to recover from its one-million-barrel-a-day plummet in 2020, as companies and investors are wary of committing money amid climate change concerns and volatile prices.
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Associated Press News - 0 views
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President Joe Biden wrapped up his time at the Group of 20 summit on Sunday trying to convince Americans and the wider world that he’s got things under control — and taking Russia, China and Saudi Arabia to task for not doing enough to deal with the existential threat of climate change.
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Biden’s overall take on his efforts: On climate change, he’s got $900 billion planned for renewable energy, and Congress will vote this coming week.
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But he also acknowledged what he can’t yet achieve: bringing Russia, China and Saudi Arabia to the table with the broader international community to limit carbon emissions and move to renewable energy.
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US rejoins coalition to achieve 1.5C goal at UN climate talks | Climate crisis | The Gu... - 0 views
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The US has rejoined the High Ambition Coalition at the UN climate talks, the group of developed and developing countries that ensured the 1.5C goal was a key plank of the Paris agreement.
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urge rich nations to double the amount of climate finance they make available for poor countries to adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis.
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One negotiator said fears that the 1.5C target was in danger of slipping out of reach had prompted the group’s resurgence. “We are extremely concerned about 1.5C,” they said. “That’s why we are calling for a way to keep 1.5C as a viable option.”
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Fossil Fuels' Forthright Defender - WSJ - 0 views
Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Robinson Meyer - The New York Times - 0 views
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Implementation matters, but it’s harder to cover because it’s happening in all parts of the country simultaneously. There isn’t a huge Republican-Democratic fight over it, so there isn’t the conflict that draws the attention to it
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we sort of implicitly treat policy like it’s this binary one-zero condition. One, you pass a bill, and the thing is going to happen. Zero, you didn’t, and it won’t.
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ROBINSON MEYER: You can almost divide the law up into different kind of sectors, right? You have the renewable build-out. You have EVs. You have carbon capture. You have all these other decarbonizing technologies the law is trying to encourage
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Pope Francis on climate: 'Irresponsible' Western lifestyle must change - The Washington... - 0 views
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Warning that “the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point,” Pope Francis issued a renewed call for climate action Wednesday, singling out the United States for “irresponsible” Western excess and decrying the “weakness” of world leaders for failing to take bold steps.
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Eight years after his landmark environmental encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” in which he scolded climate change deniers and called for an “ecological conversion” among the faithful, Francis released a follow-up, known as an apostolic exhortation.
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“If we consider that emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries, we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact,” the pope wrote.
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Opinion | The Complicated Truth About Recycling - The New York Times - 0 views
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Recycling has been called a myth and beyond fixing as we’ve learned that recyclables are being shipped overseas and dumped (true), are leaching toxic chemicals and microplastics (true) and are being used by Big Oil to mislead consumers about the problems with plastics.
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Recycling is real. I’ve seen it. For the past four years, I’ve traveled the world writing a book about the waste industry, visiting paper mills and e-waste shredders and bottle plants. I’ve visited all kinds of plastics recycling facilities, from gleaming new factories in Britain to smoky, flake-filled shredding operations in India
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While I’ve seen how recycling has become inseparable from corporate greenwashing, we shouldn’t be so quick to cast it aside. In the short term, at least, it might be the best option we have against our growing waste crisis.
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Germany Gets Honest About What Net Zero Will Cost - WSJ - 0 views
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Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration is falling apart because it turns out someone will have to pay for decarbonizing the eurozone’s largest economy.
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This shocking and horrifying revelation is brought to you by Germany’s highest constitutional court, which ruled in mid-November that Berlin’s favorite budget gimmick violates the balanced-budget amendment. The amendment, known as the debt brake, limits the federal general-budget deficit to 0.35% of gross domestic product in any year unless Parliament declares an emergency.
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German governments devised a workaround even before the amendment forced them to. By establishing special funds—called Sondervermögen—with their own revenue streams and borrowing authority, the government could shift a portion of its expenditures off its balance sheet.
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Opinion | An Iconic Landscape, Threatened by Trees - The New York Times - 0 views
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For a host of ingenious reasons, Native people had long set fire to the prairie: to rejuvenate vegetation and attract bison herds, to ward off mosquitoes and snakes, to ease travel, even to hinder their enemies in battle. Intentionally or not, they were also keeping the Eastern redcedar at bay, confining the scrappy conifer to the prairie’s deepest wrinkles.
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white settlers were slow to catch on. Confronted by fire, wild or not, they fought back, desperate to save their homes, their crops, their livestock, their culture at large. At the same time, they planted trees in a land without: for shelter, for timber, for shade, for a touch of their forested homelands back east
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“Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons,”
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Electric Cars Were Already Having Issues. Then Things Got Political. - WSJ - 0 views
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, anti-“woke” backlash and high-profile politics are increasingly making the suggestion of owning an EV a political cudgel. Or, as Ford Motor Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley recently lamented: “They have become a political football.”
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President Biden’s support of the transition, through subsidizing manufacturing, extending tax credits for EVs and giving money for charging stations, has come under attack from Republican rivals seeking to challenge him for the White House next year.
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“I don’t get why Ford and GM, why these carmakers, aren’t fighting…to make cars that are going to sell, to make cars that are going to be able to go on long distances,” Trump said at a rally during which he predicted the EV policies would lead to “hundreds of thousands of American jobs” being lost.
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Extinction Rebellion's future is far less radical than its past | Rupert Read | The Gua... - 0 views
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Five years ago last week, Extinction Rebellion was launched in Parliament Square. Back then, a principal term of criticism lobbied at XR was that it was “alarmist”. Five years on, it’s plainly visible that it was not.
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In the past few months the process of climatic decline has dramatically accelerated, and we are exceeding many of the supposed worst-case scenarios laid out in climate models. We are plainly hurtling towards 1.5C of global over-heat, long before most seemingly well-informed people thought we would.
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it was never able to recover its reputation from the Canning Town incident in October 2019, when rebels inexplicably stopped underground trains running – to much public criticism
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