Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here. November 29, 2023 | |
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Another year, another climate conference. Set to begin tomorrow, this annual edition of the UN-backed global gathering will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates, the world's seventh-largest oil producer and a major producer of natural gas. Eyebrows have been raised even further by an investigative report by the BBC and the Centre for Climate Reporting—denied by the Emirati president of the COP28 summit, Sultan al-Jaber—that leaked documents revealed an intention to discuss fossil-fuel deals on the sidelines.
Still, Jaber signaled a commitment to renewable-energy technology by traveling to Azerbaijan ahead of the conference to open a solar farm, Attracta Mooney and Aime Williams write in a Financial Times feature. And the UAE offers something else that could help save the planet: money, and lots of it—as noted by the FT's headline, "the cheque book COP."
Citing anonymous sources, the FT reporters write of potential plans for a multibillion-dollar climate fund: "The expectation is the fund would provide equity finance and play a big role in helping poorer countries gain access to the cash needed to green economies. The fund would also look to leverage more investment from the private sector than similar efforts by the World Bank and (International Monetary Fund). The UAE told the Financial Times it would announce a 'robust set of climate finance initiatives at COP28 that exemplify the presidency's call to bring forth available, affordable and accessible climate finance.'"
As Casey Crownhart writes for the MIT Technology Review, those who profit from oil and gas may have a big role to play in averting climate disaster: "It's certainly a controversial location choice" for COP28, Crownhart notes, "but the truth is that there's massive potential for oil and gas companies to help address climate change, both by cleaning up their operations and by investing their considerable wealth into new technologies and lending their expertise to growing fields."
Still, the reality of perverse incentives is stark. As Crownhart writes, "The problem is, of course, that these companies also have the power to slow progress on cutting emissions, and a vested interest in preserving the status quo." And as the FT's Mooney and Williams write, "(T)he discussion of the future of fossil fuels at the summit will be shaped by the holder of the presidency, which has a massive, vested interest in the continued production of hydrocarbons." |
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The news from Gaza and Israel isn't all good. Suffering continues in the Palestinian enclave. Families and friends on both sides of the border continue to grieve. Israel is assessing a Hamas claim that the youngest Israeli hostage, age 10 months, his brother and mother are no longer alive.
But since Israel and Hamas entered a four-day truce last week, extended by two days on Monday, a sense of relief has emanated. Qatar, which is mediating truce negotiations, says it is "very optimistic" about another extension. More emotionally, the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners has produced heartwarming scenes—like this one of a nine-year-old hostage rejoining his father and the joyous tears of another father who was reunited with his daughter, after believing she had been killed. (Speaking to CNN's Clarissa Ward, he described the moment as "beautiful, just like I imagined it.") Or this image of a four-year-old former hostage, smiling in a children's hospital with her aunt and uncle.
In Ramallah, Bethan McKernan and Sufian Taha wrote for The Guardian last week, Palestinian prisoners released by Israel "were greeted with singing, Palestinian flags, the flags of the militant wings of Hamas and the West Bank's dominant Fatah party, and the hugs and tears of their mothers, fathers, sons and daughters." As for who the Palestinian detainees are, The Economist writes: "Days before the truce began Israel's government published a list of 300 Palestinians who could be released as part of the exchange with Hamas. Almost all are from the West Bank and East Jerusalem; just five are registered as residents of Gaza. Around 90% are teenage boys between 16 and 18 years old, and the remainder are mostly adult women. Only 67 have been sentenced; the rest are awaiting trial. More than 200 were due to be—or have already been—prosecuted in military courts. Palestinian civilians, including those under 18, can be prosecuted in such courts. Human-rights groups have raised concerns about very high conviction rates, the lack of legal support for Palestinians and poor conditions in Israeli prisons."
At the Financial Times, Chloe Cornish and Neri Zilber note that some family members of Israeli children taken hostage by Hamas and released say their loved ones "have returned speaking in hushed voices." Cornish and Zilber identify another chilling part of post-release reality: "Many of the freed hostages do not have homes to return to after Hamas set fire to dwellings during its assault, while other communities in the region were evacuated to keep residents safe. Other captives were released only to learn that their family members had been murdered in the attack. Some children, including 4-year-old Israeli-American Avigail Idan, have been orphaned." |
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Will Argentina Test Alternative Economics? |
"The election is now over," Americas Quarterly Editor in Chief Brian Winter wrote earlier this month, after libertarian economist Javier Milei won Argentina's presidential run-off vote, "but we still don't know who will govern Argentina: Will it be the volatile Javier Milei from most of the campaign? Or the calmer, comparatively moderate coalition leader who we saw at times during the final weeks?"
Milei rose to electoral prominence this year with bold, extreme-sounding plans to make the US dollar Argentina's official currency and do away with its central bank. Although he has softened some hardline edges, as Winter noted, as president-elect last week Milei appeared to make the case for a sharp turn. "There's no money. There's no money," he told a local media outlet, Reuters reported. "If we don't make a fiscal adjustment, we're headed for hyperinflation. We'll have hyperinflation and we are going to have 95% poverty and 70% or 80% homeless."
Questions remain as to whether and how Milei's most-radical ideas could work in practice. At The New Yorker, John Cassidy recently identified problems on the horizon. For one, some experts have warned Argentina simply does not have enough dollars to switch to the currency. Milei has acknowledged as much. Making that problem more difficult to solve, Argentina has already strained the credulity of international lenders, having taken 21 loans from the International Monetary Fund since 1958 and having defaulted on its sovereign debt three times since 2001. ("If someone comes and gives me $30 billion in cash, I can solve it in one day," Milei told The Economist in a September interview, as Cassidy notes. "If they don't give me the $30 billion in cash, I won't solve it in one day.")
Dollarization could deprive Argentina of the flexibility to respond to economic shocks, leave it vulnerable to fluctuations in the dollar's value, and be very difficult to undo, experts tell Cassidy. "That's assuming Milei's plan goes into effect, of course," Cassidy writes, noting that Milei's "weak position in the legislature" leads some to doubt any of this will happen soon. |
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After decades of the infamous "one-child policy," China faces an economically threatening demographic decline, with an aging population and relatively few young adults coming of age to replenish the workforce and fund the necessary social and medical safety net for the elderly. To address the problem, the Chinese Communist Party has encouraged childbearing. In 2021, Jane Li wrote for Quartz of new government slogans promoting having two children. "Across the country, bureaucrats have been mobilised to incentivise young people to get married, and for couples to stay married and have children," Fan Wang wrote this month for the BBC.
As the Global Briefing has noted before, Chinese women are skeptical of the 180-degree reversal and the newfound pressure it has wrought. In a New York Times guest opinion essay, Chinese-feminism expert Leta Hong Fincher writes that "sexist state propaganda labels single professional women older than 27 as sheng nu, or leftover women. While conducting fieldwork in China for my Ph.D. in sociology from 2011 to 2013, I spoke with many who endured relationships they didn't want … I wanted to tell them to just walk away. Now many young Chinese women are doing exactly that, delaying or shunning marriage and childbirth altogether, mirroring the journey of women in other, wealthier patriarchal East Asian societies such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. As individuals, these Chinese women are generally unwilling to challenge official policy. But through their reproductive choices, they collectively pose a radical and complicated problem for the Chinese Communist Party." |
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