Saturday, May 25, 2024

 

In Hoc Signo Vinces



The Son of God Goes Forth to War

In 1812, need I say more, Reginald Heber composed the hymn of the Church Militant, the text of which bears citation in full:

The Son of God goes forth to war, a kingly crown to gain; his blood red banner streams afar: who follows in his train? Who best can drink his cup of woe, triumphant over pain, who patient bears his cross below, he follows in his train.

That martyr first, whose eagle eye could pierce beyond the grave; who saw his Master in the sky, and called on him to save. Like him, with pardon on his tongue, in midst of mortal pain, he prayed for them that did the wrong: who follows in his train?

A glorious band, the chosen few, on whom the Spirit came, twelve valiant saints, their hope they knew, and mocked the cross and flame. They met the tyrant’s brandished steel, the lion’s gory mane; they bowed their heads the death to feel: who follows in their train?

O noble army, men and boys, the matron and the maid, around the Savior’s thrown rejoice, in robes of light arrayed. They climbed the steep ascent of heaven, through peril, toil and pain; O God, to us may grace be given, to follow in their train.

According to the astute analyst Mr Mike Whitney, Mr Richard Haass (I wonder whether the name originally meant hate i.e. Hass or hare i.e. Haase), a reverend brother of the Rhodes-Rothschild congregation for the propagation of the faith, has arrived at the same conclusions of his brethren in uniform that the battlefield triumph of the legacy SS battalions and reconstituted Ukrainian military product (Kiever Velveeta) is beyond achievement. As Mr Whitney points out, not only outliers like Scott Ritter, Douglas MacGregor or Larry Wilkerson have stopped singing hymns of immanent victory over the reincarnation of Ivan and Stalin, but members of the general staff have changed their tunes.

Whereas the professionals cautiously suggest, if not request, disengagement, the real government for whom Richard Haass is a representative “influencer” complacently advises that the West in NATO assembled must and will now shift gears. If an M1 Abrams cannot manage a 15 degree incline in snow or mud, then it is just a matter of firing more rocketry. That is to the extent that overt military support is relevant.

Clearly Mr Haass also has the strategy of Brzezinski in Afghanistan in mind. Recall the latter’s offensive pronouncement that creating the pseudo-Islamic terrorist forces in Afghanistan (actually the beginning of “America’s own Ghurka regiments”) was justified as a means of destroying the Soviet Union.

Instead of faux-Muslims, Ukraine is run by crypto-Zionist terrorists who operate Ukraine just like Hamid Karzai ran Afghanistan.

Depopulating Ukraine also benefits the criminal cashflow underlying the plunder of the territory still known by that name.

As we have both argued to different degrees, this was war against Russia from the beginning.

Paul Craig Roberts has insisted from the beginning that Putin failed to see the obvious, thus prolonging the campaign to the brink. I disagree. In real politics it makes a difference what you say too. The tacit avoidance of the obvious (and here Stalin was compelled to act the same) has been necessary to prepare and force the other side to escalate in language first.

Of course this is not 1938 and Putin is not leading a state out of civil war. Germany’s role has been muted because the “Nazis” are already in the Ukraine. From current reports they are engaged in clearing the corridor for a vain but violent missile cruise to Moscow and Sevastapol. Moreover a great deal of Western war preparation was accomplished by the COVID-19 campaign, whose effects on the Western mass psychology and economy are far from dissipated (as they too are entering a new only vaguely perceivable phase).

Yet one can see that the Istanbul format was an attempt to reach something equivalent to the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. That failed – showing that the West learned from its mistake in the last war against Russia.

Why is there such an obvious discrepancy between official US military assessments and those of the Establishment? Let us recall that the notorious Pentagon Papers reported the warrior’s pessimistic appraisal of US efforts in Indochina. The late Daniel Ellsberg adroitly “neglected” to include the crucial CIA chapters in his conscientious exposure. Vietnam was a CIA (corporate) war with military cover. The same applies to the Ukraine. Vladimir Putin surely knows that. However there are also rules in covert warfare. One of them is that the general public must remain confused or ignorant of the underlying business driving the visible and tangible hostilities. Mr Putin has repeated that all wars end with negotiation. Hence his refusal to table demands or assertions that could render the malicious incapable of concessions demonstrates a profound belief in diplomacy foreign not only to perfidious Albion but to its genotypes in the Anglo-American Empire.

Therefore, the professional soldiers (as opposed to paramilitary party cadres in cabinet of general staff) can honestly say what they have been educated to see while the political commissariat repeats the substance of their daily briefings.

For the US, WW2 became desperate only once it was clear that the Wehrmacht was on the retreat. The panic of 1944 that precipitated Normandy and the formal abandonment of fascist (Vichy) and occupied France was triggered by a similar adjustment. 1945 delivered Germany and Japan to US occupation where they have remained ever since. [Except for the interregnum of an East Germany state from 1949 to 1990 — DV ed] It also initiated the kind of war that international financial functionary Bernard Baruch was credited with calling “cold”.

The physical space has not changed. The strategic objectives remain more or less the same as in the Fourth Crusade (including the sack of major Near Eastern population centers). However, there has been an enormous compression of time and lethality.

The inhabitants of Western Eurasia aka Europe are supposed to be simultaneously impoverished and enlisted as Crusaders, think of the 1212 “Children‘s Crusade”. The masses of psychologically maimed since 2020 are to find their salvation in vicarious battle with the “Ivan”. The rabinnical-papal absolutism on the Tiber has long been a patron of perdition. However, there is some irony in the regnal name blessing the slaughter on the Bosporus and elsewhere East. Innocent III was anything but. However innocence and purity, like hygiene and solidarity have become the highest virtues among the quick and the dead of the dissolving Western Empire.

Salvation is just over the rainbow, as the popularity of those banners demonstrates.

In Hoc SignoFacebookTwitter

Dr T.P. Wilkinson writes, teaches History and English, directs theatre and coaches cricket between the cradles of Heine and Saramago. He is author of Unbecoming American: A War Memoir and also Church Clothes, Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South AfricaRead other articles by T.P..

Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World



Iri and Toshi Maruki, XV Nagasaki, 1982, from The Hiroshima Panels.

For Prabir, who is now out of jail.

On the evening of 14 May, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken climbed onstage at Barman Dictat in Kyiv, Ukraine, to pick up an electric guitar and join the Ukrainian punk band 19.99. Ukrainians, he said, are ‘fighting not just for a free Ukraine, but for a free world’. Blinken and 19.99 then played the chorus of Neil Young’s ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’, entirely ignoring the implications of its lyrics – much like Donald Trump, who, to Young’s irritation, used the chorus in his 2015–2016 presidential campaign.

In February 1989, the day after Young received the news that his band’s tour in the USSR fell through, he penned the song’s lyrics, resting on his criticisms of the Reagan years and the first month of George H. W. Bush’s presidency. While it sounds patriotic on the surface, that song – like Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ (1984) – is deeply critical of the hierarchies and humiliations of capitalist society.

The three verses of ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ paint a picture of despair (‘people shufflin’ their feet/ people sleepin’ in their shoes’) defined by the drug epidemic plaguing the poor (a woman ‘puts the kid away/ and she’s gone to get a hit’), the collapse of educational opportunities (‘there’s one more kid/ that will never go to school’), and a growing population that lives on the street (‘we got a thousand points of light/ for the homeless man’). Springsteen’s song, written in the shadow of the US war on Vietnam (‘so they put a rifle in my hand/ sent me off to a foreign land/ to go and kill the yellow man’), also captured the strangulation of the working class in the US, many of whom were unable to get a job after returning from a war they did not want (‘down in the shadow of the penitentiary/ out by the gas fires of the refinery/ I’m ten years burning down the road/ nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go’).

These are songs of anguish, not anthems of war. To chant ‘born in the USA’ or ‘keep on rockin’ in the free world’ does not evoke a sense of pride in the Global North but a fierce criticism of its ruthless wars. ‘Keep on rockin’ in the free world’ is pickled in irony. Blinken did not get it, nor did Trump. They want the allure of rock and roll, but not the acidity of its lyrics. They do not understand that Neil Young’s 1989 song is the soundtrack of the resistance to the US wars that followed against Panama (1989–1999), Iraq (1990–1991), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001–2021), Iraq (2003–2011), and many more.


Iri and Toshi Maruki, XIII Death of the American Prisoners of War, 1971, from The Hiroshima Panels.

Blinken went to Kiev to celebrate the passing of three bills in the US House of Representatives that appropriate $95.3 billion for the militaries of Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the United States. This is in addition to the more than $1.5 trillion that the US spends on its military every year. It is obscene that the US continues to supply Israel with deadly munitions for its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, including the $26.4 billion it promised to Israel in the new bills while feigning concern for the starvation and slaughter of Palestinians. It is ghastly that the US continues to prevent peace talks between Ukraine and Russia while funding the former’s demoralised military (including $60.8 billion for weapons in the new bills alone) as the US seeks to use the conflict to ‘see Russia weakened’.

At the other end of Eurasia, the US has, similarly, used the issue of Taiwan in its efforts to see China ‘weakened’. That is why this supplemental appropriation allots $8.1 billion for ‘Indo-Pacific security’, including $3.9 billion in armaments for Taiwan and $3.3 billion for submarine construction in the US. Taiwan is not alone as a potential frontline state in this pressure campaign against China: the newly formed Squad, made up of Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the US, uses solvable conflicts between the Philippines and China as opportunities to weaponise dangerous manoeuvres with the hope of provoking a reaction from China that would give the US an excuse to attack it.


Iri and Toshi Maruki, XIV Crows, 1972, from The Hiroshima Panels.

Our new dossier, The New Cold War is Sending Tremors Through Northeast Asia, published in collaboration with the International Strategy Centre (Seoul, South Korea) and No Cold War, argues that ‘the US-led New Cold War against China is destabilising Northeast Asia along the region’s historic fault lines as part of a broader militarisation campaign that extends from Japan and South Korea, through the Taiwan Strait and the Philippines, all the way to Australia and the Pacific Islands’. The bogeyman for this build-up in what the US calls the ‘Indo-Pacific’ (a term developed to draw India into the alliance to encircle China) is North Korea, whose nuclear and missile programmes are used to justify asymmetrical mobilisation along the Pacific edge of Asia. That South Korea’s military budget in 2023 ($47.9 billion) was more than twice North Korea’s GDP ($20.6 billion) in the same year is just one example that highlights this imbalance. This use of North Korea, the dossier argues, ‘has always been a fig leaf for US containment strategies – first against the Soviet Union and today against China’. (You can read the dossier in Korean here).


Iri and Toshi Maruki, XII Floating Lanterns, 1968, from The Hiroshima Panels.

In the early years of the US development of the ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’, Chinese scholars such as Hu Bo, Chen Jimin, and Feng Zhennan argued that the term was merely conceptual, limited by the contradictions between the countries involved in the development of the Chinese containment strategy. Over the past few years, however, a new view has developed that these shifts in the Pacific pose a serious threat to China and that the Chinese must respond with bluntness to prevent any provocation. It is this situation, characterised by the US’s creation of alliances that are designed to threaten China (the Quad, AUKUS, JAKUS, and the Squad) alongside China’s refusal to bend before the hyper-imperialism of the Global North, that creates a serious threat in Asia.

The last section of the dossier, ‘A Path to Peace in Northeast Asia’, offers a window into the hopes of the people’s movements in Okinawa (Japan), the Korean peninsula, and China to find a pathway to peace. Five simple principles anchor this path: end the dangerous alliances, US-led war games in the region, and US intervention into the region, and support unity across struggles in the region as well as frontline struggles to end militarisation in Asia. The latter point is being fought on several fronts by those living near Okinawa’s Kadena Air Base and Henoko Bay as well as South Korea’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defence installation and Jeju Naval Base, to name a few.


Iri and Toshi Maruki, X Petition, 1955, from The Hiroshima Panels.

Several years ago, I visited the Maruki Gallery outside Higashi-Matsuyama city in Saitama, where I saw the remarkable murals made by Ira Maruki (1901–1995) and Toshi Maruki (1912–2000) to remember the terrible violence of the nuclear bombs that the US government dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These murals, in the traditional Japanese ink wash style sumi-e, depict the immense human toll of the ugliness of modern warfare. Thanks to the chief curator Yukinori Okamura and the international coordinator Yumi Iwasaki, we were able to include some of these murals in our dossier and in this newsletter.

In 1980, the South Korean military dictatorship arrested Kim Nam-ju (1945–1994) and thirty-five other leftists on the grounds that they were involved in the National Liberation Front Preparation Committee. Kim was a poet and a translator who brought Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and Ho Chi Minh’s writings into Korean. While in Gwangju Prison for eight years, Kim wrote a range of powerful poetry, which he was able to smuggle out for publication. One of those poems, ‘Things Have Really Changed’, is about the suffocation of the ambitions of the Korean people over their own peninsula.

Under Japanese imperialism, if Joseon people
shouted ‘Long Live Independence!’,
Japanese policemen came and took them away,
Japanese prosecutors interrogated them,
Japanese judges put them on trial.

Japan withdrew and the US stepped in.
Now if Koreans
say ‘Yankee Go Home’,
Korean police come and take them away,
Korean prosecutors interrogate them,
Korean judges put them on trial.

Things have really changed after liberation.
Because I shouted ‘Drive out the foreign invaders!’,
people from my own country
arrested me, interrogated me, and put me on trial.


 Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. 

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Could These Arrest Warrants Signal the Beginning of the End for the “Axis of Evil”?


Israel's stooges in the West squirm as their adoration for the apartheid state turns sour


UK foreign secretery Lord David Cameron has told peers: “I don’t believe for one moment that seeking these warrants is going to help get the hostages out, it’s not going to help get aid in and it’s not going to help deliver a sustainable ceasefire. To draw moral equivalence between the Hamas leadership and the democratically-elected leader of Israel I think is just plain wrong.”

He misses the point as usual. The warrants have nothing to do with that. They are about bringing those wanted for the most grievous war crimes to justice.

Prime minister Rishi Sunak then said that the move was “deeply unhelpful”, adding: “There is no moral equivalence between a democratic state exercising its lawful right to self defence and the terrorist group Hamas.”

Even Biden was singing off the same hymn-sheet saying there is “no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas” and that what’s happening in Gaza is not genocide…. a hymn of praise for Israel almost.

Of course there is no moral equivalence. As the world has witnessed, Israel’s crimes are a thousand times greater than Hamas’s and are allowed to continue without let-up, courtesy of the US and UK who dutifully carry on supplying the ordnance and weaponry. It still hasn’t penetrated enough Washington and Whitehall skulls that it is the Palestinian resistance who are exercising their lawful right to self-defence – using “armed struggle” if necessary – against Israel’s illegal military occupation, brutal 17-year blockade and decades-long murderous oppression (UN Resolutions 37/43 and 3246).

Furthermore Hamas are just as legitimate as any Israeli administration having been democratically elected under the scrutiny of international observers, a result immediately rejected at the time by the UK, Israel and the US because it didn’t happen to suit their evil purpose in the Middle East.

And why are Hamas proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK? Only because a group of Israel’s pimps and stooges among Westminster’s political elite say so. It would be interesting to take a vote on what the people who put them there actually think, now they know the horrendous situation in Gaza and the West Bank and the long history leading up to it. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to proscribe Likud, Netyanyahu’s terrorist party?

Cameron also claims it’s a mistake to draw moral equivalence because Palestine is not regarded as a state. Again, he isn’t paying attention. 146 of the 193 UN member states recognise Palestine, including Ireland, Norway and Spain who announced recognition just a few days ago. 11 of these are EU states, so what is Cameron drivelling about?

Fortunately, a cross-party group of 105 MPs and Lords has called on the UK Government “to do all it can to support the International Criminal Court” after Prime Minister Sunak’s remark that its decision to seek arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders was “deeply unhelpful”. In a letter addressed to Foreign Secretary Cameron they say “there is mounting evidence that Israel has committed clear and obvious violations of international law in Gaza and we strongly believe that those responsible must be held to account”. They call on the Government “to take a clear stance against any attempts to intimidate an independent and impartial international court…. The Court, its Prosecutor, and all its staff must be free to pursue justice without fear or favour”.

One of the organisers, MP Richard Burgon, said: “At every stage, our Government has failed to fulfil its moral duty to do everything it can to help save lives and prevent suffering in Gaza. It must not fail again. It must back the ICC in ensuring that there is no impunity for war crimes and it must stand up to those seeking to impede justice.”

Almost straightaway Sunak, in a surprise move, called a general election for 4 July. This means that MPs immediately cease being MPs but ministers continue in office until a new government is formed. For the next 6 weeks, then, Sunak’s crew continue to rule without being accountable to the House of Commons and could do a lot of damage. So this is a doubly dangerous time for our nation.

Meanwhile Cameron and his ignorant friends seem to think the Gaza war only started as recently as October 7. He plays up the release of 134 Israeli hostages when, on October 6 Israel was holding 5,200 Palestinians captive, including at least 170 children, and since then has abducted some 7,350 more. Why do we never hear from Cameron about the Palestinian hostages/prisoners?

And how many Palestinians had Israel killed before October 7? Answer: 10,651 slaughtered by Israel in the 23 years up to Oct 7, including 2,270 children and 656 women (Israel’s B’Tselem figures). That’s 460 a year. In that period Israel was exterminating Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1.

Israel’s friends in the West like to think of Netanyahu as the leader of a Western style democracy that shares our values. Actually he’s the head of a nasty little ethnocracy with vicious apartheid policies and a 76-year record of terrorism, pursuing an extended military campaign aimed at occupying and annexing another people’s lands and resources, and showing no respect whatsoever for British values or international norms of behaviour.

So, putting aside for a moment our dislike of Hamas’s methods, shouldn’t we be asking our politicians to explain why exactly Hamas must be eliminated and the Palestinians’ homeland pulverised in the process, seeing as it is they who are under illegally military occupation and they who have the ultimate right of self-defence?

It’s easy to see where Cameron is coming from. After 3 months of genocide in Gaza, he denied Israel had broken international law. He also said it was “nonsense” to suggest that Israel intended to commit genocide. Asked if he thought Israel had a case to answer at the ICJ, he said: “No, I absolutely don’t. I think the South African action is wrong, I think it is unhelpful, I think it shouldn’t be happening…. I take the view that Israel is acting in self-defence after the appalling attack on October 7. But even if you take a different view to my view, to look at Israel, a democracy, a country with the rule of law, a country with armed forces that are committed to obeying the rule of law, to say that that country, that leadership, that armed forces, that they have intent to commit genocide, I think that is nonsense, I think that is wrong.”

So says this self-declared zionist and key stooge for Israel, one of many at Westminster who are desperate to maintain the shady US/UK-Israel alliance. Do Sunak, Cameron & co really want victory for the genocidists? It seems they do. Because they’ve pledged their undying adoration and support for that rotten apartheid regime and now the world has seen it for what it really is and their position is turning sour.

On the face of it the Hamas trio — Haniyeh, Sinwar and Dief — with competent legal representation seem likely to survive the legal process. And although many are questioning why arrest warrants are being considered for them at the same time as the mega-maniac Netanyahu there is reason to hope that, if they do come to trial, a lot of bad stuff about Israel, the US and the UK will come out. The world will then be much wiser and the ‘axis of evil’ behind it all will collapse under the weight of its own lunacy.

The UK general election will likely rid us of Sunak, Cameron and the rest of the Tory nitwits. But sitting in the waiting room is Labour’s Keir Starmer, another Israel stooge. Yes, the zionists have all angles covered.

Stuart Littlewood, after working on jet fighters in the RAF, became an industrial marketeer in oil, electronics and manufacturing, and with innovation and product development consultancies. He also served as a Cambridgeshire county councillor and a member of the Police Authority. He is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society and has produced two photo-documentary books including Radio Free Palestine (with foreword by Jeff Halper). Now retired, he campaigns on various issues, especially the Palestinians' struggle for freedom.

 

Colombia Aims to Boost Oil Production to

 1 Million Bpd

ONE STEP FORWARD TWO STEPS BACK

Despite a bold climate stance, Colombia is looking to increase its oil production to 1 million barrels per day by encouraging drillers to ramp up activity in underutilized exploration blocks, according to the country's energy ministry.

Energy Minister Andrés Camacho emphasized the government's strategy to revitalize "lazy contracts"—agreements signed 10 to 15 years ago that have so far seen minimal exploration efforts. Camacho believes this approach can elevate production to approximately 800,000 bpd by year-end, a rise from the Q1 average of 774,000 bpd.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has made bold commitments to combat climate change by halting new drilling licenses in country and moving away from oil and gas in favor of green alternatives—a stance that would seem in opposition to the push to eke out oil from existing contracts.

But according to Camacho, "Increasing the number of contracts does not necessarily lead to more exploration," Camacho stated in Bogotá, highlighting the policy to boost exploration within current agreements. Nevertheless, if successful, it will lead to more output for the country that already has oil and coal accounting for half of its total exports.

The National Hydrocarbons Agency has implemented stringent requirements for contract compliance to prevent companies from signing contracts just to resell them at higher prices without conducting any actual exploration—a practice that could stifle future oil production.

State oil company Ecopetrol SA is contributing to the output increase through enhanced oil recovery techniques, improving extraction volumes from reservoirs. Colombia's current oil recovery rate averages 27 percent, according to Camacho.

The National Hydrocarbons Agency vowed to release a report today on the country's oil and gas reserves, noting that as of the end of 2022, proven oil reserves stood at the equivalent of 7.5 years and natural gas reserves at 7.2 years.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

Saudi Aramco Eyes Minority Stake in Repsol’s Renewables Business

Saudi oil giant Aramco has approached Repsol to express interest in buying a minority stake in the Spanish energy firm’s renewables business, Spain’s business daily Expansion reported on Friday, quoting several market sources.

The entire Repsol Renovables, or Repsol Renewables, is valued at around $6.5 billion (6 billion euros).   

Aramco has approached Repsol about a potential acquisition of a minority stake in Repsol Renewables but hasn’t filed a formal offer yet, according to Expansion’s sources.

Repsol has recently received an unsolicited approach from an investor willing to buy a minority stake in its renewables unit. The Spanish firm is in talks to sell a small stake in Repsol Renovables, sources familiar with the discussions told Reuters earlier this month.  

Repsol has also retained Spanish banking giant Santander to act as an advisor for the potential sale, the sources told Reuters.

At any rate, Repsol will keep more than 50% of its renewables business.

Two years ago, Repsol sold 25% of Repsol Renovables to Crédit Agricole Assurances and Energy Infrastructure Partners (EIP) for $979 million (905 million euros).

Last month, Repsol said it would invest $3.2 billion to $4.3 billion (3 billion euros to 4 billion euros) net to organically develop its global portfolio of renewable projects and reach between 9,000 MW and 10,000 MW of installed capacity by 2027. Of this figure, 30% will be in the United States. 

Saudi Aramco, for its part, is currently eyeing potential investments in new energies outside Saudi Arabia, the state oil giant’s chief executive officer Amin Nasser said at the end of April.

Apart from deals in the refining and petrochemicals segment, especially in its key crude export market, China, Aramco is looking to invest in the development of new technologies and new energies, including in collaboration with partners outside the Kingdom.  

Early this year, Aramco more than doubled funding to its venture capital arm by injecting an additional $4 billion funding. The fresh funding is raising Aramco’s total investment allocation to its unit Aramco Ventures from $3 billion to $7 billion.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

EVs Twice As Likely To Hit Pedestrians As Gasoline Vehicles

By Alex Kimani - May 23, 2024


  • The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has found that pedestrians are twice as likely to be hit by an electric or hybrid car than by a gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicle.

  • The scientists have hypothesized that the relatively quiet operations of an electric vehicle as well as high pedestrian density in noisy urban areas could be major reasons.

  • The study uncovered a pedestrian casualty rate of 5.16 per 100 million miles driven for electric and hybrid vehicles, more than double the 2.4 per 100 million miles recorded for traditional gasoline-powered cars.

For years, the transition from ICE vehicles to EVs has been viewed as a critical element of reducing the more than seven billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (GtCO?) the global transport sector emits each year. The Biden-Harris administration has set an ambitious goal to have up to half of all new vehicle sales in the country electric by the year 2030 as part of the government’s mission to achieve a net-zero emissions economy by 2050. 

This gargantuan effort might be worth it:  A 2021 study conducted by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) comparing lifecycle emissions of ICE vs. EVs concluded that “emissions over the lifetime of average medium-size [BEVs] registered today are already lower than comparable gasoline cars by 66%–69% in Europe, 60-80% in the United States, 37%–45% in China, and 19%–34% in India.’’ 

However, as is usually the case with every technology, EVs have their drawbacks, too. 

Not only does your average EV come with a higher sticker price than a comparable gasoline car but also an EV can lose as much as 12% of its range when temperatures drop to 20 degrees, a figure that shoots up to 40% if you turn on the cabin heater.

And now researchers have come up with yet another reason why you might want to rethink trading in your gas-guzzler for a shiny new EV: electric vehicles are more accident-prone. To wit, a study conducted by lead researcher Dr. Phil J. Edwards at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has found that pedestrians are twice as likely to be hit by an electric or hybrid car than by a gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicle.

e study uncovered a pedestrian casualty rate of 5.16 per 100 million miles driven for electric and hybrid vehicles, more than double the 2.4 per 100 million miles recorded for traditional gasoline-powered cars. Insisting that the study is not meant to bash EVs, Dr. Edwards notes that "Electric cars are definitely a thing for the future. They are a wonderful way to reduce air pollutionBut we must mitigate the danger" to pedestrians. EV drivers need to be extra cautious of pedestrians,’’ he added.

The researchers have conceded that current crash statistics aren't yet robust enough to reach scientific conclusions. However, they have hypothesized that the relatively quiet operations of an electric vehicle as well as high pedestrian density in noisy urban areas could be major reasons, with pedestrians almost three times as likely to be hit by an electric or hybrid car in these areas. Dr. Edwards suspects that demographics could also play a role, noting that “Younger, less experienced drivers are more likely to be involved in a road traffic collision and are also more likely to own an electric car.”

Driverless Cars Safer Than Human Drivers

EVs currently account for less than 1% of vehicles on U.S. roads, implying human casualties associated with the industry are still much lower compared to those attributable to the fossil fuel industry. But with bold predictions that EVs could make up 60-70% of the U.S. fleet by 2050, the significantly higher propensity of electric propulsion to cause accidents could prove highly problematic.

Luckily, there’s a handy solution: driverless cars. For years, autonomous driving buffs and experts claimed that driverless vehicles have the potential to be safer than humans. Unfortunately, those claims have remained unverified for the simple fact that there’s not enough data available. That is, until now. 

Last year, Google’s Waymo analyzed 7.13 million fully driverless miles in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco cities. Waymo touts itself as the world’s first autonomous ride-hailing service, and its cars are fully electric.  Waymo then compared the data to human driving benchmarks, marking the first time the company studied miles from fully driverless operations only, rather than a mix of autonomous and human-monitored driving.

The conclusion is very encouraging. Waymo’s driverless cars were 6.7 times less likely than human drivers to be involved in a crash resulting in an injury, good for a respectable 85% reduction over the human benchmark. These vehicles are also 2.3 times less likely to be in a police-reported crash, or a 57% reduction. Overall, this translates to ~17 fewer injuries and 20 fewer police-reported crashes compared to if a human driver would have driven the same distance in the cities where Waymo operates.

There seems to be little consensus regarding the time when autonomous vehicles will finally become an everyday reality on U.S. roads, with public distrust of autonomous driving technology a major hurdle. A Forbes Advisor report found that as many as 93% of U.S. citizens have concerns about some aspect of self-driving cars. However, the ongoing AI boom might help accelerate this technology and lower adoption timelines from decades to maybe less than a decade. 

According to Micron Technology, “AI is a critical technology required to realize autonomous driving. The extreme compute performance required for an autonomous vehicle based on AI requires an innovative memory and storage system to process and hold the vast amount of data necessary for a computer to make decisions like a human.”

Even baby steps might help make EVs safer, with one McKinsey study showing that the growing adoption of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) in Europe could reduce the number of accidents by about 15% by 2030.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com