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Javier E

How the Politically Unthinkable Can Become Mainstream - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...overton-window-democrats.html

Overton window political viable Mainstream unthinkable ideas

shared by Javier E on 07 Aug 24 - No Cached
  • You’ve probably noticed that policies once dismissed out of hand — from “Medicare for all” to a 70 percent top tax rate; from sweeping action on climate change to abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement — are being discussed in mainstream circles now. The Overton window is a useful way to understand what’s happening.
  • The key is that shifts begin with the public. Mr. Overton argued that the role of organizations like his own was not to lobby politicians to support policies outside the window, but to convince voters that policies outside the window should be in it. If they are successful, an idea derided as unthinkable can become so inevitable that it’s hard to believe it was ever otherwise.
  • “Public officials cannot enact any policy they please like they’re ordering dessert from a menu,” Mr. Lehman said in an interview. “They have to choose from among policies that are politically acceptable at the time. And we believe the Overton window defines that range of ideas.”
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  • the window is a description, not a tactic: Shifting it doesn’t mean proposing extreme ideas to make somewhat less extreme ideas seem reasonable.
  • “It just explains how ideas come in and out of fashion, the same way that gravity explains why something falls to the earth,”
  • Joseph P. Overton introduced the concept in the 1990s as an executive at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy,
  • “We have come a very, very long way in the American people now demanding legislation and concepts that just a few years ago were thought to be very radical,” Mr. Sanders said in a recent interview.
  • That the Overton window is shifting doesn’t necessarily mean policies like Medicare for all will be enacted, and it doesn’t say anything about whether they are good or bad. But it does say something meaningful about the political climate.
  • Part of the story is polarization: Democrats moving left and Republicans right, to an extent “that we haven’t seen previously in a modern political period,”
  • As support for more ambitious policies has increased among Democrats, there has also been “a wave of young party leaders who are less encumbered by a long voting history tying them to more moderate and less progressive policy stances,” Dr. Atkinson said. “And they’re being supported by a base that is ready to hear these messages.”
Javier E

Elon Musk's Novel and Polarizing Cybertruck - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...lon-musk-tesla-cybertruck.html

truck EV musk design

shared by Javier E on 25 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • Indeed, the vehicle’s fortresslike appearance and hefty price tag (it starts at around $80,000) seem to tap into contemporary anxieties around social disorder, according to Michael Rock, the founding partner of the brand consultancy 2x4.“It’s the embodiment of the culture of fear right now,” Mr. Rock said. “Why do you need a bulletproof car in the Hamptons? There’s a mentality to it. You’ve built this huge thing around you, and it’s all about this invading horde out there, and you’re in this bulletproof container.”
  • Mr. Rock compared the Cybertruck to the Hummer H2, another imposing automobile whose success critics linked to a frightened national mood. A New York Times review of the Hummer published in 2003, shortly after the United States invaded Iraq, called it “a unilateral personal statement in sync with a unilateral foreign policy.”
  • “This is a weapon,” he said. “Metal, angles, sharp: It’s like a blade. And so it’s definitely macho. It’s not round, there are no curves. I wonder if I’ll ever see a nice lady driving this kind of car.”
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  • Women, however, own Cybertrucks, too. In an email, Dr. Helen Raynham, a dermatologist in Massachusetts, said that she had reserved her Cybertruck more than four years ago and had put a custom license plate on her new vehicle: “GRLBOS.” She added that she surrounded the plate with diamonds.
  • To the legions of passers-by who owners say want to touch their Cybertrucks, sit on their Cybertrucks, and take selfies with their Cybertrucks, the vehicle isn’t a political or cultural flashpoint. Instead it’s something rarer: A genuinely novel piece of mass design
  • In some circles, the vehicle’s unique appearance has made it into a coveted status symbol and an object of considerable fascination. Celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Serena Williams have both been spotted in Cybertrucks. On YouTube, there is a robust, seemingly nonpartisan culture around modifying Cybertrucks and testing out their unusual features.
Javier E

China Rules Solar Energy, but Its Industry at Home Is in Trouble - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...china-solar-energy.html

china industry industrial policy

shared by Javier E on 25 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • Over the past 15 years, China has come to dominate the global market for solar energy. Nearly every solar panel on the planet is made by a Chinese company. Even the equipment to manufacture solar panels is made almost entirely in China. The country’s solar panel exports, measured by how much power they can produce, jumped another 10 percent in May over last year.
  • But China’s solar panel domestic industry is in upheaval.
  • Wholesale prices plummeted by almost half last year and have fallen another 25 percent this year. Chinese manufacturers are competing for customers by cutting prices far below their costs, and still keep building more factories.
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  • Stock prices of its five biggest makers of panels and other equipment have halved in the past 12 months. Since late June, at least seven large Chinese manufacturers have warned that they will announce heavy losses for the first half of this year.
  • The turmoil in the solar energy sector amid enormous factory capacity and booming exports highlights how China’s industrial policymaking works. The government decided 15 years ago to put extensive support behind solar power, and then let the companies claw it out. Beijing has shown a high tolerance for letting firms stumble and even fail in large numbers.
  • Something similar is happening in the automotive sector. Annual car sales in China are around 25 million a year, more than any other country but barely half the country’s ability to make vehicles. So automakers in China are now following the solar industry’s lead in cutting prices sharply and ramping up exports.
  • China’s approach can lead to big financial losses for local governments, state investment funds and state-supported banks, all of which bankroll companies in favored industries.
  • Sunzone’s rivals, including Tongwei and Longi Green Energy Technology, gained formidable economies from large-scale production. They have plowed part of their extra revenue into developing solar panels that are increasingly efficient at converting sunlight into electricity.
  • The rise and fall of Hunan Sunzone Optoelectronics in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province in south-central China, is a case study of how China’s policies work.
  • “It’s a very expensive development model, but it produces national champions quite reliably,” said David R. Hoffman, a senior adviser on China for the Conference Board, a global business group.
  • Despite the financial help, Sunzone’s factory now sits empty. A large “Sunzone” sign on the second floor rusts in the swampy heat of Changsha. The only person still working at the site on a recent afternoon, a security guard, said that manufacturing equipment was removed in January and the factory was set to be demolished and turned into office buildings.
  • Sunzone epitomizes how lavish lending from state-owned banks and generous local subsidies have produced manufacturing overcapacity. Solar companies cut costs and prices sharply to maintain market share. That led to a few low-cost survivors while many other competitors were driven out of business in China and around the world.
  • China’s banks, acting at Beijing’s direction, have lent so much money to the sector for factory construction that the country’s solar factory capacity is roughly double the entire world’s demand.
  • Started in 2008, the solar panel manufacturer benefited early on from practically every possible subsidy. It got 22 acres of prime downtown land in the heart of the city almost for free. One of China’s biggest state-owned banks arranged a loan at a low interest rate. The Hunan provincial government then agreed to pay most of the interest.
  • Many other factories, like Sunzone’s, quickly become obsolete.
  • “Enterprises continue to put advanced production capacity into operation to maintain competitiveness” said Zhang Jianhua, director of China’s National Energy Administration, at a news conference last month. “At the same time, the outdated production capacity is still extensive and needs to be gradually phased out.”
  • Compounding the problems facing China’s solar energy companies is the rapid disappearance of local subsidies. Local governments are running out of money as a housing crisis makes it hard for them to sell long-term leases on state land to real estate developers — previously their biggest source of cash.
  • Partly because of worries about Chinese subsidies, President Biden last month allowed steep tariffs that had expired to go back into force on solar products imported from Southeast Asia that use lots of Chinese components. And the Department of Commerce has begun trade cases against imported solar panels that could lead to further tariffs.
Javier E

Opinion | We're Asking the Wrong Question About Kamala Harris and Race - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...kamala-harris-race.html

race identity blackness culture history

shared by Javier E on 25 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • Harris often mentions the South Asian half of her heritage, but in traditional American discourse, it feels off to categorize her as simply South Asian — like Aziz Ansari or Mindy Kaling — and leave it there. Yet calling her just Black, as a kind of shorthand, feels right. Blackness is treated as blacking out, so to speak, whatever other race is involved. Most people default to this perspective — myself included.
  • This approach contradicts not just logic, but also itself. In contrast to the centuries-old “one-drop rule” that segregationists have invoked to describe the indelible ancestral stain of so-called Black blood, enlightened people are supposed to believe that race is purely a social construct, with no biological basis. If so, then why does having some Black forebears make you Black, regardless of the rest of the family tree?
  • I’ve fielded questions from people from France to Japan about why Obama is considered Black, rather than both Black and white. The question always feels naïve to me at first, but if you imagine stepping outside our particular national framework, it’s the foreigner who is making sense and the American version that is weird.
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  • Today, those who express different ideas about racial identity often encounter serious resistance. When Tiger Woods, the child of two mixed-race people, announced himself to be “Cablinasian” — as a combination of Caucasian, Black, American Indian and Asian — he was mocked as not knowing who he is. The writer Thomas Chatterton Williams encountered skepticism when he said he couldn’t see his blond, blue-eyed child as Black.
  • all signs indicate that my children are growing up in a world that’s very different from the one I grew up in. I experienced plenty of passing instances of racism, even as a student at fancy private schools. But it’s been a half century now. Experiences of the kind Harris has recounted, of suburban white kids whose parents told them not to play with her because she was Black, have been alien to my girls so far.
  • If someday they decide not to define themselves as Black, it will not be because they are ashamed or in some kind of denial. It will be because the world has changed, and we should be thankful for that.
  • American discourse is, happily, becoming more amenable to the idea that a person who is half Black can be two things rather than just one
  • What is most important is that Harris, Obama and other people of mixed racial heritage can now get as far as they have. As for our habit of processing Blackness as foundational — much as Strom Thurmond did — it will be ever more absurd as the races mix further over the coming generations. On this custom, history will look upon us in puzzlement.
Javier E

Dilemma on Wall Street: Short-Term Gain or Climate Benefit? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...inancial-industry-climate.html

climate change response environment wall street dilemma prisoners' climate

shared by Javier E on 20 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • team of economists recently analyzed 20 years of peer-reviewed research on the social cost of carbon, an estimate of the damage from climate change. They concluded that the average cost, adjusted for improved methods, is substantially higher than even the U.S. government’s most up-to-date figure.
  • That means greenhouse gas emissions, over time, will take a larger toll than regulators are accounting for. As tools for measuring the links between weather patterns and economic output evolve — and the interactions between weather and the economy magnify the costs in unpredictable ways — the damage estimates have only risen.
  • It’s the kind of data that one might expect to set off alarm bells across the financial industry, which closely tracks economic developments that might affect portfolios of stocks and loans. But it was hard to detect even a ripple.
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  • In fact, the news from Wall Street lately has mostly been about retreat from climate goals, rather than recommitment. Banks and asset managers are withdrawing from international climate alliances and chafing at their rules. Regional banks are stepping up lending to fossil fuel producers. Sustainable investment funds have sustained crippling outflows, and many have collapsed.
  • In some cases, it’s a classic prisoner’s dilemma: If firms collectively shift to cleaner energy, a cooler climate benefits everyone more in the future
  • in the short term, each firm has an individual incentive to cash in on fossil fuels, making the transition much harder to achieve.
  • when it comes to avoiding climate damage to their own operations, the financial industry is genuinely struggling to comprehend what a warming future will mean.
  • A global compact of financial institutions made commitments worth $130 trillion to try to bring down emissions, confident that governments would create a regulatory and financial infrastructure to make those investments profitable. And in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act passed.
  • What about the risk that climate change poses to the financial industry’s own investments, through more powerful hurricanes, heat waves that knock out power grids, wildfires that wipe out towns?
  • “If we think about what is going to be the best way to tilt your portfolios in the direction to benefit, it’s really difficult to do,”
  • “These will probably be great investments over 20 years, but when we’re judged over one to three years, it’s a little more challenging for us.”
  • Some firms cater to institutional clients, like public employee pension funds, that want combating climate change to be part of their investment strategy and are willing to take a short-term hit. But they aren’t a majority
  • And over the past couple of years, many banks and asset managers have shrunk from anything with a climate label for fear of losing business from states that frown on such concerns.
  • On top of that, the war in Ukraine scrambled the financial case for backing a rapid energy transition. Artificial intelligence and the movement toward greater electrification are adding demand for power, and renewables haven’t kept up
  • All of that is about the relative appeal of investments that would slow climate change
  • If you bought some of the largest solar-energy exchange-traded funds in early 2023, you would have lost about 20 percent of your money, while the rest of the stock market soared.
  • There is evidence that banks and investors price in some physical risk, but also that much of it still lurks, unheeded.
  • “I’m very, very worried about this, because insurance markets are this opaque weak link,” Dr. Sastry said. “There are parallels to some of the complex linkages that happened in 2008, where there is a weak and unregulated market that spills over to the banking system.”
  • Regulators worry that failing to understand those ripple effects could not just put a single bank in trouble but even become a contagion that would undermine the financial system.
  • But while the European Central Bank has made climate risk a consideration in its policy and oversight, the Federal Reserve has resisted taking a more active role, despite indications that extreme weather is feeding inflation and that high interest rates are slowing the transition to clean energy.
  • “The argument has been, ‘Unless we can convincingly show it’s part of our mandate, Congress should deal with it, it’s none of our business,’”
  • a much nearer-term uncertainty looms: the outcome of the U.S. election, which could determine whether further action is taken to address climate concerns or existing efforts are rolled back. An aggressive climate strategy might not fare as well during a second Trump administration, so it may seem wise to wait and see how it shakes out.
  • big companies are hesitating on climate-sensitive investments as November approaches, but says that “two things are misguided and quite dangerous about that hypothesis.”
  • One: States like California are establishing stricter rules for carbon-related financial disclosures and may step it up further if Republicans win
  • And two: Europe is phasing in a “carbon border adjustment mechanism,” which will punish polluting companies that want to do business there.
  • at the moment, even European financial institutions feel pressure from the United States, which — while providing some of the most generous subsidies so far for renewable-energy investment — has not imposed a price on carbon.
  • The global insurance company Allianz has set out a plan to align its investments in a way that would prevent warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, if everyone else did the same. But it’s difficult to steer a portfolio to climate-friendly assets while other funds take on polluting companies and reap short-term profits for impatient clients.
  • “This is the main challenge for an asset manager, to really bring the customer along,” said Markus Zimmer, an Allianz economist. Asset managers don’t have sufficient tools on their own to move money out of polluting investments and into clean ones, if they want to stay in business,
  • “Of course it helps if the financial industry is somehow ambitious, but you cannot really substitute the lack of actions by policymakers,”
  • According to new research, the benefit is greater when decarbonization occurs faster, because the risks of extreme damage mount as time goes on. But without a uniform set of rules, someone is bound to scoop up the immediate profits, disadvantaging those that don’t — and the longer-term outcome is adverse for all.
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