Mark Carney-led grouping drops U.N. climate initiative requirement

By Isla Binnie and Ross Kerber - 

FILE PHOTO: Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England (BOE) 

attends a news conference at Bank Of England in London© Reuters/POOL

NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) - A coalition of financial firms led by former Bank of England governor Mark Carney that aims to tackle climate change said on Thursday it has dropped a requirement for its members to sign up to a United Nations emissions reduction campaign.

The move drew criticism from climate activists worried it would ease pressure to act on the banks, insurers and asset managers signed up to the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a group which in total accounts for assets worth some $153 trillion.

GFANZ includes groups of companies organised by sector, each previously required to partner with Race to Zero, a U.N.-backed campaign aimed at securing bigger commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Race to Zero members agree to "phase out development, financing and facilitation of new unabated fossil fuel assets, including coal," in line with science-based scenarios. Environmental advocates are concerned that GFANZ members won't be held to that standard or others without their commitment to Race to Zero.

The change comes amid tensions between GFANZ and Wall Street firms over how far they should go in their climate commitments.

"Clearly they are giving in to their Wall Street members who have been reported as threatening to quit the alliance if they are expected to actually pull back on their finance for fossil fuels," said Paddy McCully, senior analyst at non-governmental organization Reclaim Finance.

GFANZ said in a statement that from now, "member alliances are encouraged, but not required, to partner with the Race to Zero".

The decision was driven by a need to be more flexible in highly-regulated financial industries in 50 jurisdictions, it said.

GFANZ said its affiliation with the United Nations will continue. United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell will join a group responsible for setting its strategy and priorities, and monitoring progress, GFANZ added.

(Reporting by Isla Binnie in New York and Ross Kerber in Boston; editing by Richard Pullin)

RAILROADERS DESERVE PAID SICK TIME

No rail strike until after the midterm elections
by Jeremy Lott, Contributor |

WASHINGTON EXAMINER

October 28, 2022 

The midterm election season's waning days brought bad news for the freight railroads and President Joe Biden's administration. A second rail union voted to reject the agreement that had been hammered out between the railroads and the 12 unions representing their workers, making an eventual strike more likely.

This bad news from Oct. 26 was tempered, however, by an agreement between the railroads and the latest union to say no to the deal, the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen. It stipulated that there would be no work stoppage until December at the earliest. The same is likely true for the other holdout unions as well.

The hope of the railroads had been that the first failed vote was essentially a fluke. The vote by members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division on Oct. 10 had been followed by two more union memberships voting to accept the deal, bringing six of the 12 railroad unions on board.

But half the unions are not the “all aboard” the railroads were hoping for.

"Railroaders do not feel valued,” Tony Cardwell, BMWED union president, told the trade publication Progressive Railroading at the time of the first “no” vote. “They resent the fact that management holds no regard for their quality of life, illustrated by their stubborn reluctance to provide a higher quantity of paid time off, especially for sickness."

The paid time off demand seemed, to many observers, like moving the goalposts, but the railroads tried to persuade workers that this issue had been addressed in negotiations.

Association of American Railroads spokesman Ted Greener pointed the Washington Examiner to a statement from the industry group touting both more money and time off for railroad workers.

According to the new contract, the AAR explained, railroad workers would see a “24 percent wage increase during the five-year period from 2020 through 2024, including an immediate payout on average of $11,000 upon ratification ... $5,000 in performance bonuses [and] total average annual pay” of $110,000. They would also have good healthcare coverage and “employees would receive an additional paid personal leave day per year.”

The rail lobby emphasized that under the new agreements, “Employees will continue to have multiple options for time off and, for those employees who operate trains, the agreements include enhanced abilities to schedule time off and local agreements to be finalized after ratification of the national agreement will further enhance quality of life and the predictability of schedules.”

What the railroads were not willing to do, however, was reopen negotiations with half of the unions left to ratify the new contracts. A second “no” could change the railroads’ willingness to deal, or it could lead to more threats of strike, and a possible intervention by the lame-duck Congress.

In negotiating the new contracts, the railroads and their unions had followed the recommendation of the Biden-appointed Presidential Emergency Board to increase worker pay substantially. Other things were on the table, but compensation was the biggest issue.

The railroads quickly acceded to that demand. It’s possible either that the rank-and-file workers and union negotiators did not see eye to eye on the time-off issue or that unions are currently using the issue to push for greater concessions from the railroads.

Most political rail watchers agree that the Biden administration has managed to dodge at least one bullet with no rail strike before the midterm elections. If so, the administration is dodging a bullet that it fired in the first place.

It is difficult for rail workers to get into a position in which they can legally strike because of the vital nature of their work to America’s supply chains. It can take six months or more to hammer out a new contract, with unions and railroads working things out in front of the National Mediation Board.

Yet at the behest of Biden NMB appointees Linda Puchala and Deirdre Hamilton, the board released the unions and the railroads from “statutory mediation” in June. At that point, negotiations had been ongoing for only two months, which is about as long as it usually takes the two sides to clear their throats.

Over 300 Groups Urge Biden to Help Avoid Rail Shutdown

The Associated Press Oct 27, 2022

Freight train cars sit in a Norfolk Southern rail yard in Atlanta on Sept. 14, 2022. 

(Danny Karnik/ AP Photo)

OMAHA, Neb.—A coalition of 322 business groups from a variety of industries signed off on a letter to President Joe Biden Thursday urging him to make sure the deals he helped broker last month get approved because a railroad strike would have dire consequences for the economy.

All 12 rail unions must approve their agreements to prevent a strike next month and two unions have rejected their deals.

“It is paramount that these contracts now be ratified, as a rail shutdown would have a significant impact on the U.S. economy and lead to further inflationary pressure,” wrote the group, which includes nearly every major trade group and quite a few state business associations.

Biden has been watching the contract dispute closely and appointed a special board of arbitrators this summer to try to help resolve it, but the White House hasn’t said whether he will get personally involved again.

The railroads have offered 24 percent raises and $5,000 in bonuses in the five-year deal, which would be the biggest increases in more than four decades, but the negotiations hinge on quality-of-life concerns. The unions that represent the conductors and engineers who drive the trains want the railroads to ease the punishing schedules that they say keep them on call 24-7, and the other unions want the railroads to add paid sick time.

A strike isn’t imminent because the two unions that voted down their deals agreed to retry negotiations before considering a walkout, but the railroads face a Nov. 19 deadline with one of those unions. Six smaller unions have approved their deals while four others are set to vote over the next month, including the two biggest ones and the engineers and conductors in those two unions have the most quality-of-life concerns.

The head of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division union that rejected its agreement earlier this month said if the railroads won’t consider adding sick time he has no choice but to prepare for a strike next month. Union President Tony Cardwell said railroad executives continue to “bow to Wall Street’s continued desire for more than its fair share” as they report billions in profitRail Strikes.

Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, BNSF, Kansas City Southern, CSX, and the other railroads want any deal to closely follow the compromises recommended by arbitrators Biden appointed, so they have rebuffed all pleas for paid sick time. The industry also argues that the unions opted to forego paid sick leave over the years in favor of higher wages and strong short-term disability benefits that kick in as soon as four days into an absence and can continue up to a year.

Ian Jefferies, who leads the Association of American Railroads trade group, said Thursday the “BMWED’s recent proposal was not a realistic offer” because the union “simply demanded more—and they did so with full knowledge that the railroads would not agree.”

If both sides can’t agree on a deal, Congress may step in and block a strike. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Makers, which endorsed Thursday’s letter, is already lobbying lawmakers to make sure they’re ready to act because refineries rely on railroads to deliver more than 300,000 barrels of crude oil and other chemicals every day.

“We’re heavily stressing the need to avoid a strike at all costs—not just for our industry. It’s going to affect every industry” said Rob Benedict, vice president of midstream for the AFPM.

By Josh Funk

A reply to BMWED President Tony Cardwell: Who has the right to “sanction” a strike—the bureaucracy or the workers?

The Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee

WSWS.ORG

Informational picket by railroaders in Kansas City, Kansas [Photo: WSWS]

Dear Mr. Cardwell:

We are writing to respond to your open letter of October 26 to the BMWED membership, in which you attacked “anonymous” “fringe groups” with “dangerous ideas of unsanctioned work stoppages.” We feel all the more obliged to respond because your letter sums up the bureaucratic arrogance of the officials at all 12 unions, not just at the BMWED.

You did not mention who you were referring to, but it is obvious that the target of the letter is the Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee. We have been organizing and campaigning among our coworkers to build democratic structures to give railroaders the means to countermand your endless bureaucratic delays of our right to strike. This includes your extension of the “status quo” until “five days after Congress reconvenes”—approximately November 19—following members’ rejection of your tentative agreement two weeks ago.

First of all, let us say that even though you refuse to identify us, there is nothing “anonymous” about us. We conduct our work publicly, holding well-attended online public meetings, organizing informational pickets and distributing and discussing our statements with our coworkers. This is in naked contrast to you, Mr. Cardwell, and the officials in all 12 unions, who conduct your business outside of the view or control of the rank and file.

In your letter, you declare: “Not only is an unsanctioned work stoppage illegal, but an uncoordinated strike is short-sighted and will not produce the result that at least one anonymous group is claiming.” You continue: “Unions that have engaged in illegal strikes have been hit with catastrophic financial penalties. … BMWED will not support or condone an illegal work stoppage and our bylaws prohibit strike wages or other benefits for an illegal strike.”

We condemn this statement in the strongest possible terms. This is nothing more than a naked attempt to scare our coworkers back into line, that you felt the need to say it indicates that the sentiment for strike action is overwhelming, and that workers are tired of being told what they can and can’t do by unaccountable officials.

Your statement is an open declaration that you and the BMWED leadership are prepared to act as strikebreakers, siding with the companies and the government against us. You threaten legal and financial penalties and the withholding of strike pay for any “unsanctioned” strike—unsanctioned because you, Mr. Cardwell, will refuse to sanction it. You then try to cover your tracks by claiming the union is prepared to sanction “coordinated self-help”—i.e., not necessarily a strike—at some point in the future, but the rest of your letter makes clear you are determined to make sure that this never occurs.

What gives you the right to claim sole authority to “sanction” a strike? Workers have already “sanctioned” it long ago. BMWED workers voted by 99 percent in favor of a strike; in BLET, 99.5 percent; in the IAM, 80 percent. Workers have spoken again and again with one voice that we are prepared to strike for what we need and deserve. But you and the bureaucracy in the other unions have simply ignored this. In the IBEW, there is even evidence to suggest that the contract was “passed” through fraud. It is not up to you and your fellow bureaucrats to override us and tell us what to do.

What you say about a strike being “illegal” is a flat-out lie. For three years, you have had the anti-strike provisions of the Railway Labor Act as a convenient cover for your inaction. But all of that went away on September 16, with the end of the last “cooling-off” period. There are, at present, no legal limits to striking or any other form of “self-help” which workers are under. We repeat, for the benefit of our coworkers: We can now legally strike at any time.

It is true that Congress would try to intervene with anti-strike legislation. But that has not happened yet, and we should be putting ourselves in the strongest possible position to answer this threat. The ideal period to strike is right now, in the final weeks before the midterm elections, when Congress is in recess and the political cost of congressional intervention would be greatest.

By extending the strike deadline to “five days after Congress reconvenes,” you are doing the exact opposite, putting Congress in the strongest possible position to answer our strike threat. All of the other unions are also delaying until after the midterms. The BLET even invited Nancy Pelosi, who already drew up anti-strike legislation in the House, to its national convention in early October. There is no other explanation for this except that you want the threat of Congressional intervention hanging over our heads, to give yourselves ammunition to ram this deal through and frighten workers with the threat of “illegality.”

You make the significant confession in your letter that the extension of the strike deadline is not due to any legal reason at all, but a secret agreement which you worked out with the carriers. This “stipulation,” you write, was a condition of the carriers’ agreeing to the TA which workers voted down. To our knowledge, this is the first time this has ever been admitted publicly. Your announcement of the extension on October 10 declared only that the rejection “results in a ‘status quo’ period” and that “there could be no ‘self help’ until after the 19th,” without explaining why or on whose authority. You wanted to create the impression among workers that it was due to some obscure legal requirement, perhaps under the terms of the RLA.

Mr. Cardwell, no genuine workers’ representative ever would have agreed to this, much less concealed it from us. Little wonder this has dragged on for three years. Why would the carriers ever budge if the other side of the table was prepared to make such concessions? The NCCC [National Carriers’ Conference Committee] said on October 19 that it refuses to consider any changes to sick leave or anything else that deviates from the framework set by the Presidential Emergency Board. And why would they, if they know you will never “sanction” a strike, and you are allowing them and Congress to dictate what workers can and can’t do?

We have to give up all of our demands, while the carriers give up virtually nothing. What “stipulations” did you require from the carriers? Nothing. If the negotiating process were controlled by rank-and-file workers, it would go something like this: “Give us our sick days, COLA, lower the years of service for vacation, leave our health care alone. ‘Stipulate’ to that, and we won’t walk out.”

If your arguments that it is “illegal” for us to strike were true, then that could only mean that America is a dictatorship where workers have no rights, with yourselves acting as policemen. We cannot deny the fact that the government is controlled by the rich and has always sided with them against workers, but we still have First Amendment rights, whether you recognize it or not.

In conclusion, Mr. Cardwell, we inform you that workers’ patience is at an end. We are tired of being bureaucratically denied the rights entitled to us by the Constitution and that every other American enjoys.

You accuse the RWRFC of being a “fringe” group. You are the fringe, Mr. Cardwell, not us. We have voted to strike and to reject your garbage contracts. We, the workers, outnumber you 1,000 to 1. The RWRFC was formed to give voice and organization to railroad workers against the attempts to bureaucratically silence us.

You say in your letter: “Workers must be wary of a group throwing disruption grenades from behind a wall of secrecy.” We agree wholeheartedly! Only that applies to you, not to us.

Mr. Cardwell, on behalf of our 120,000 coworkers, we give you the following instructions: If you are not willing to abide by the will of the membership, then get out of the way.

But if there is one thing your letter did, it makes the following crystal clear: We, the rank and file, must take control of this situation ourselves. Brothers and sisters everywhere, organize your own networks, get your rail yards on the same page, share this letter and prepare to fight.

Sincerely,
The Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee

Big tech’s dirty supply chains undercut climate promises from HQ

Taiwan's TSMC is the sole producer of Apple’s Silicon processors that go into iPhones, iPads and Macs.

PHOTO: REUTERS

TAIPEI – Amazon.com, Microsoft and Alphabet have pledged to run their own operations on 100 per cent clean power. But their suppliers – the lesser known companies that make the key components of hit products like the Kindle, the Xbox or Pixel mobiles – remain deeply reliant on fossil fuels.

Twelve of the 14 top suppliers get on average 5.4 per cent of their energy from renewable sources or don’t disclose, data from a Greenpeace report released on Friday showed.

Their major clients, including HP, Dell Technologies, Lenovo Group, Sony, LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics share the blame, the organisation said.

Of 10 consumer electronics brands, only one – Apple – has designed an emissions strategy requiring its suppliers to achieve 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030.

The big consumer electronics brands “have not provided sufficient incentives or support for their suppliers to decarbonise”, Greenpeace’s researchers concluded. They “have failed to set meaningful renewable energy targets where it really counts – in their supply chains”.

Google, Sony and Dell declined to comment, while representatives from Microsoft, HP, Lenovo and LG didn’t respond to Bloomberg’s emailed requests for comment.

Amazon said it plans to power its operations with 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025 and to zero out its carbon emissions by 2040. Samsung said it was committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

At the heart of their supply chains are Asian chip behemoths like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and SK Hynix that can guzzle as much power as entire countries to produce the advanced logic and memory chips that are now used in nearly everything.

While their products are indispensable, they use fossil fuels to generate much of their power. In 2021, TSMC and Hynix reported renewable energy usage rates of only 9 per cent and 4 per cent, respectively.

Greenpeace said that the 10 tech companies and 14 suppliers studied used more than 170,000 gigawatt hours of power last year, on par with the annual electricity consumption of Argentina.

By 2030, power used by the global tech sector is expected to be up 60 per cent over 2020. That threatens to create severe supply issues and raises environmental concerns in manufacturing hubs.

Taiwan’s TSMC is sucking up as much electricity as Sri Lanka’s 21-million population and is expected to use up 12.5 per cent of the island’s annual power consumption by 2025. More than half of Taiwan’s energy is generated from coal and fossil fuels.

In South Korea, home to another critical chip-supplier, SK Hynix, the story is similar. The company’s chip factories consume power equivalent to 1.6 million South Korean households and more than 60 per cent of the country’s power comes from burning coal and natural gas.

Apple is calling on its suppliers to address their greenhouse gas emissions, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. The Cupertino, California-based company will “evaluate the work of its major manufacturing partners to decarbonise their Apple-related operations – including running on 100 per cent renewable electricity – and will track yearly progress,” the firm said in the statement.

TSMC is the sole producer of Apple’s Silicon processors that go into iPhones, iPads and Macs, while Hynix is a key memory provider for the same devices. BLOOMBERG

US testing shows decline in math and reading skills among students, aggravated by the ruling class response to the pandemic

Harvey Simpkins

WSWS.ORG

Kindergarten teacher Karen Drolet, left, works with a student at Raices Dual Language Academy, a public school in Central Falls, R.I., Feb. 9, 2022. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

On Monday, the National Center for Education Statistics released the results of the 2022 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), which was given to fourth and eighth grade students last spring. The results show a large decrease in English and math proficiency since the test was last administered in 2019.

Forty-three out of 53 states and other jurisdictions tested by the NAEP saw a decline in fourth-grade math skills. For eighth grade, only two jurisdictions did not see a statistically significant decline. For fourth grade reading, 30 jurisdictions saw a decline, while 33 jurisdictions saw a decline in eight grade reading.

On average, between 2019 and 2022, fourth and eighth grade reading both showed a three-point decline, fourth grade math a five-point decline and eighth grade math an eight-point decline. NAEP is scored on a 0 to 500 scale.

Many government officials, news reports and commentators quickly blamed remote learning during the pandemic as the cause of the declines. But in Los Angeles, one of the few school districts to maintain remote learning options throughout the 2020–2021 school year, showed gains between 2019–2022 on NAEP in fourth grade reading (two points) eighth grade reading (nine points) and eight grade math (one point). Florida, fully open for in-person learning since the 2020–2021 school year, saw a four point drop in eighth grade reading, seven point drop in eight grade math, five point drop in fourth grade math and no change in fourth grade reading.

Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the federal agency that administers NAEP, noted, “There’s nothing in this data that tells us that there is a measurable difference in the performance between states and districts based solely on how long schools were closed.”

Students who took the 2022 assessment were also asked whether they attended remote school during the 2020–21 school year. The NAEP report noted that higher performers on the test (scoring at or above the 75th percentile) who learned remotely during the 2020–21 school year reported having “more frequent access to a desktop computer, laptop, or tablet all the time; a quiet place to work available at least some of the time; and a teacher available to help them with mathematics schoolwork about once or twice a week or more compared to lower performers (those below the 25th percentile).”

In other words, remote learners with adequate resources and support were generally able to perform better on the assessment. If the government had provided laptops, internet access and enough teachers, adequately trained, to provide support, remote learning could have been successfully implemented in the spring of 2020 as a temporary measure, along with all necessary public health measures, to eliminate COVID-19.

Instead, in order to save Wall Street, limited and haphazard public health measures were steadily abandoned in the late spring and summer of 2020, with the result that more than two years later, the pandemic has not only not ended but new vaccine-resistant mutations are emerging.

Austerity in education long predates the pandemic. During the Obama administration, there was a net loss of 300,000 school employees, despite K-12 enrollment increasing during his presidency. But the pandemic has laid bare the real state of education in the United States.

Decades of funding cuts have led to massive increases in class sizes, reductions in school nurses and counselors, woefully inadequate pay for essential school personnel, a curriculum increasingly devoted to rote “teaching to the test,” especially in math and reading, along with the elimination of art, music, theater, field trips and other culturally enriching experiences. The pandemic has only accelerated many of these trends, and tens of thousands of teachers have left the profession.

Just this academic year, school districts across the country have cut hundreds of millions of dollars from their budgets. New York City cut $215 million, Minneapolis, $27 million, various districts across California each faced budget deficits of tens of millions of dollars, and the Kansas City school district had a $28 million deficit.

At the federal level, the fiscal year 2022 budget provided $76.4 billion to the Department of Education, less than 10 percent of the Pentagon budget. In 2022 alone, the United States has provided to Ukraine at least $50 billion in weapons and other financial assistance, two-thirds the total federal spending on education.

Further exacerbating the crisis in education are the health effects of COVID-19 on students and school personnel. A study published in Nature from May showed that 70 percent of US children had been infected, some 51 million children, and the CDC’s inadequate statistics show that 1,506 children have died from the virus. While no state or federal agency tracks the number of school workers who have died, the Twitter account School Personnel Lost to Covid shows that, as of August 1, 2,422 school workers have died.

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COVID, Capitalism, and Class War: A Social and Political Chronology of the Pandemic
Mehring Books, the publishing arm of the Socialist Equality Party (US), is proud to announce the publication in epub format of Volume 1 of COVID, Capitalism, and Class War: A Social and Political Chronology of the Pandemic, a compilation of the World Socialist Web Site's coverage of this global crisis.

The health impacts are worsening, and countless children and school workers will suffer from Long COVID, which can cause serious long-term health problems, including brain damage and sudden death from heart attacks and strokes. A study published October 20 in Pediatrics looked at 15,000 children hospitalized with COVID-19 and determined that 7 percent experienced neurological complications, including seizures.

Many of those afflicted with Long COVID complain of “brain fog” and the inability to concentrate for even short periods of time, with obvious negative implications for learning.

Millions of students, repeatedly exposed to COVID-19, will likely suffer health impairments of one degree or another. Students will continuously have their education disrupted by illness. When the Omicron wave hit last winter, schools routinely combined classes to fill in for missing teachers infected with the virus, or even packed students into auditoriums or cafeterias with no instruction taking place.

Now, with all mitigation measures dropped for the 2022–2023 school year and a new wave of COVID-19 variants likely to soon swoop over the country, children and school workers will continue to be exposed to the virus, and the same cycle of education disruption seen with the Omicron wave will repeat itself.

Compounding the long-term health problems from COVID-19, according to the Imperial College of London, an estimated 229,500 US children have lost at least one primary caregiver to COVID-19. A study published in April by JAMA Network compared education outcomes for siblings, where one child experienced a parental death before finishing K-12 education and the other after.

The results showed that experiencing parental death before finishing school was associated with lower school performance and, further, that “losing a parent at a younger age was associated with lower grades within a family.”

Until all necessary public health measures are put in place to contain and eliminate COVID-19 on an international scale, along with a massive infusion of education funding, high quality education for all remains impossible. To address both the pandemic and the education crisis, it is necessary that the working class take up the struggle against the subordination of health and education to private profit.

Rishi Sunak shows the growing influence of Indian talent in the West: Tyler Cowen

India is by far the world’s most significant source of undiscovered and undervalued skills

TYLER COWEN
OCTOBER 28, 2022 

Rishi Sunak (right) and his wife Akshata Murthy. (Image credit: @RishiSunak/Twitter)

With Rishi Sunak as prime minister of the United Kingdom, it is now impossible to deny what has been evident for some while: Indian talent is revolutionising the Western world far more than had been expected 10 or 15 years ago.

You might think UK leadership is an exception, but consider the United States. It is entirely possible that there will be a presidential election in 2024 or 2028 between Kamala Harris (who is half Indian-origin) and Nikki Haley, who is of Indian origin. Few people consider that the most likely matchup, but it is very much within the realm of possibility.

If the two most prominent members of the Atlantic alliance end up being led by people of Indian origin, that is a testament to the flexibility and strength of the UK and the US. It is hard to imagine the same thing happening in China or in most of the rest of the world. One striking feature of Sunak is that his ethnic origin does not dominate the political discussion.

The success of Indian-origin talent is at this point overwhelming. Significant CEOs of Indian origin include Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Shantanu Narayen of Adobe, Arvind Krishna of IBM, Raj Subramaniam of FedEx, Sonia Syngal of the Gap, and (soon) Laxman Narasimhan of Starbucks. All this is happening in the US that is arguably the greatest generator of managerial talent the world has ever seen. These individuals are hardly succeeding in a weak or uncompetitive environment.

Furthermore, many of these people were born in India. Estimates vary, but India’s per capita income, according to the World Bank, still falls short of $7,000. You cannot credit India’s capital endowment for their success. It is their talent, even if many of them came from relatively wealthy families.

Of the different ethnic groups that have moved to the US, Indian-origin individuals have the highest per capita income. Ever.

Or consider my own profession, economics. Two of the three most-influential academic economists of the last 20 years have been Raj Chetty, for his work on mobility, and Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee (with French-origin wife and co-author Esther Duflo, also a Nobel laureate) on economic development, and randomised control trials. You can debate who else might belong in this top tier, but the Indian-origin presence is indisputable.

It’s not just about the Anglo world, either. Indian talent is spreading more broadly. In Germany, for instance, 58 percent of Indian-origin workers have either university degrees, or specialist skills. That is about twice the rate of native Germans.

Working with Shruti Rajagopalan, I oversee a philanthropic programme, Emergent Ventures India, to make grants to promising young (and sometimes older) people in India. I have met most of the winners, and they are remarkably ambitious, and energetic.

I am of the view that India is by far the world’s most significant source of undiscovered and undervalued talent. It is akin to Germany and central Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and someday will be seen as such. It is possible to believe this, and still have mixed or uncertain views about India’s future as a nation, just as central Europe in that time faced plenty of turmoil.

As tech entrepreneur and author Balaji Srinivasan has suggested, the Internet will rapidly become much more of an Indian playground, influencing our ideas and moods as well as how we write and speak English. The future of our intellectual spaces is to a large extent going to be India-derived.

Imagine a visitor to Great Britain in 1900, then the world’s pre-eminent power, thinking about how to shape the future of their own nation. No matter what their area of concern, they probably should have been paying a lot of attention to the US. Now imagine a visitor to the US today, thinking about the future of their own nation: They really should be focusing on India.

The success of Indian-origin talent is about more than just the obviously high population of India. Blossoming of creative talent often have a mysterious element, but in this case some factors are evident; some proficiency in the English language, ‘good enough’ Internet connections, and an aspirational attitude that does not take prosperity for granted

More subjectively, I would add that India has historically been skilled at absorbing and synthesising foreign influences, including numerous conquerors. That may help make Indian talent especially good at adapting to very different foreign environments, including the UK and the US.

Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. 

Fuel shortage hits Cuba again amid economic crisis

Long queues snake around many filling stations in capital Havana as the Caribbean country reels under its second fuel crisis in seven months.

Cupet blames the deficit on logistical difficulties and higher-than-usual demand. (AFP)

Cuba is facing its second fuel shortage in seven months, authorities have said, as long lines snaked around many Havana filling stations.

Thursday's queues came a day after state-run Cuba-Petroleum Union (Cupet) announced "a deficit in the availability of fuel" and delivery "difficulties."

"If you manage to find gasoline, then you can waste a whole lot of time waiting in line. Because the queues can go around the whole block," Michael Sanchez, a young driver who waited 10 hours to put gas in his car in Havana, told the AFP news agency.

Cupet blamed the deficit on logistical difficulties and higher-than-usual demand, in a statement published on Twitter on Wednesday.

Communist-led Cuba, which is facing its worst economic crisis in almost 30 years due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and US sanctions, had similar problems in March.

The current distribution crisis comes almost three months after a major fire at a storage plant in the province of Matanzas, which left 17 dead, destroyed four mega-tanks of crude oil and caused $100 million in losses just for the fuel burned, according to official data.

READ MORE: Cuba without power after Hurricane Ian destroys electrical grid

Caught between Russia and US

At a time when Cuba is urging the Biden administration to ease US sanctions that it says stifle hurricane recovery efforts, Russian oil has flooded into the island, providing relief to debilitating blackouts.

Russia has shipped an estimated $352 million in oil to Cuba since the start of the Ukraine war, the biggest inflow from Russia this century and enough to cover about 40 percent of the shortfall in the island's supplies, according to independent estimates.

The sales also potentially alleviated the weight of international sanctions on Russia for its incursion on Ukraine.

In an increasingly complex geopolitical situation, the island nation has been left with its hands tied.

"(It leaves them) between a rock and a hard place," said William LeoGrande, a professor at American University who has tracked Cuba for years.

"Cuba can’t afford to alienate either side in what is shaping up to be a new Cold War."

Cuba has depended on foreign oil as its primary energy source for decades.

Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Soviets sold Cuba oil well below market price. Later, Cuba hatched a similar deal with socialist ally Venezuela at the height of its oil boom, sending Cuban medics in exchange for discounted petroleum.

Since Venezuela has fallen into its own crisis, though, Cuba has been left short on both oil and a way to pay for it.

READ MORE: Ukraine-Russia conflict: Can we learn from the Cuban Missile Crisis?

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For those with HIV or weak immune systems, monkeypox can be fatal: US study

OCTOBER 27, 2022PUBLISHED AT 9:54 PM

A woman arrives at a monkeypox vaccination site in New York City, US on 15 Aug, 2022.

Reuters file

CHICAGO - People with severely weakened immune systems, such as those infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), can experience severe symptoms and even die from a monkeypox infection, according to a US study released on Wednesday (Oct 26).

The study looked at cases of 57 US patients hospitalised with severe monkeypox complications. Almost all (83 per cent) had severely weakened immune systems, most often because of infection with HIV. Many of those patients were not being treated for the virus that causes Aids.

"Monkeypox and HIV have collided with tragic effects," Dr Jonathan Mermin, leader of the monkeypox response for the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a statement.

"Today's report reminds all of us that access to monkeypox and HIV prevention and treatment matters - for people's lives and for public health," he said.

More than 90 countries where monkeypox is not endemic have reported outbreaks of the viral disease, which the World Health Organisation has declared a global health emergency. Confirmed cases have reached 76,757.

Just over 28,000 people in the US have been infected with monkeypox since the start of the outbreak in May. Cases in the US started peaking in mid-August and have since dropped sharply, helped by the rollout of vaccines.

Deaths outside of Africa, where the virus is endemic, are rare, as are deaths caused by the form of the virus now circulating in the US - Clade IIb.

Read Also

Monkeypox outbreak can be eliminated in Europe, WHO says

For the study, health officials investigated some of the most severe cases of monkeypox, which spreads through close contact with an infected person.

Overall, it found that 47 of these individuals were also infected with HIV, yet only four of them were receiving antiretroviral therapy, powerful drugs that keep the virus in check. Most (95 per cent) were male, and 68 per cent were Black.

According to the analysis, 17 patients required care in an intensive care unit, and 12 have died, including five in which monkeypox was a contributing factor or the confirmed cause of death.

The researchers urged healthcare workers to test all sexually active patients with suspected monkeypox infections for HIV at the time of monkeypox testing, unless the patient's HIV status is already known.

For those with suspected monkeypox infections who test positive for HIV, the CDC urged providers to start the patient on monkeypox treatment as soon as possible, potentially even before monkeypox infection is confirmed. The agency also recommended that doctors start HIV treatment for those who test positive for that virus as soon as possible.

Another coup in Burkina

BY Lassane Ouedraogo

https://africasacountry.com/
10.28.2022
September's coup is Burkina Faso's second of the year, and its another one with popular support. Why did it happen?


Image via Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina.

On September 30, a military coup overthrew the transitional government in Burkina Faso. This coup was the second in eight months, and among 10 staged in the six decades since independence from France.

The first coup of 2022 occured on January 24, when Lieutenant-Colonel Henri Sandaogo Damiba overthrew President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, the first elected civilian president of the country. Kabore was elected in 2015 (and reelected in 2020) to replace President Michel Kafando, who led a transitional government following the 2014 popular revolution that ousted Blaise Compaore. The latter ruled the country for 27 years after taking power in the 1987 bloody coup that claimed the life of revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara.

Since the departure of Compaoré, the security situation in Burkina Faso has deteriorated dramatically. Thousands of people are internally displaced. In January this year, 13.9 % of the country schools were closed due to terrorism and, according to official reports, more than 40% of the national territory is controlled by non-state armed groups affiliated to ISIS and Al Qaeda. Observers agree that the human cost of the crisis is much higher than reported.

Soon after taking power, Damiba instituted the Patriotic Movement for the Safeguard and Restauration (MPSR) and vowed to reconquer the country by fighting the jihadist insurgents and helping the two million internally displaced people return to their homes. But eight months later, he found himself on the receiving end of a coup, overthrown by junior officers critical of his performance, lack of military successes, and his general deviation from stated goals and promises of the January coup.

Tensions were already high in the week and days before the coup. On September 29, civil society groups in Bobo Dioulasso staged a protest and demanded that Damiba to step down as a leader of the country. The protest, which was repressed by the police, denounced Damiba and the transitional government’s inability to stop the advance of jihadists.

The tipping point was when a convoy led by the army to supply the city of Djibo (under terrorist blockade since February) was targeted on September 26. More than 100 vehicles with food supplies were destroyed. Eyewitnesses spoke of civilian and military deaths numbering in the hundreds, while official government communication reported 11 slain soldiers, 28 wounded and 50 civilians missing. This macabre defeat of the army was pinned on Damiba. A week earlier he had mobilized a 70-strong delegation to attend the UN Summit in New York. There, he argued that his government was making some progress in the fight against terrorism and asked for support from the international community. The trip was perceived at home as wasteful and in total disregard of the dire insecurity situation of the country.

Until September 30, when he appeared on national television as the leader of the coup against Damiba, Captain Traore Ibrahim, was unknown to the general public in Burkina Faso. Prior to this the 34-year-old soldier and native of the rural commune of Bondokuy in the northwest region was leading The Cobras, an anti-terrorist fighting group that played an active role in the coup that brought Damiba to power. Traore Ibrahim graduated from Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo (formerly Université de Ouagadougou) before being recruited to the army in 2010, making him and his junta uncharacteristic of those leading previous coups. Most coups have been staged by officers trained from a secondary school age in the Prytanée Militaire de Kadiogo, a reputable military training institution under the auspices of the Ministry of Defence. That was certainly the case for Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba and even Captain Thomas Sankara.

Among the justifications advanced by Ibrahim for the September coup was that his predecessor had lost focus in the fight against jihadism, (the primary reason why he Damiba power in January), getting diverted by internal politics and drifting out of touch with the men on the battlefield, who lacked the basic resources required to re-capture the significant national territory controlled by the jihadist movements. Ibrahim’s junta also made clear its aims to diversify Burkina Faso’s international partnerships in the fight against jihadism. Some of his men were seen waving Russian flags in the streets of Ouagadougou.

Ibrahim also argued that Damiba had meddled with the justice system and set dangerous precedents, including welcoming self-exiled former president Blaise Compaore to Burkina Faso despite his being found guilty by a military court and condemned to a life sentence for the killing of former president Thomas Sankara. When Compaore, who ruled the country for 27 years following the assassination of Sankara, sought to modify the constitution in 2014 in order to run again, the Bburkinabe youth mobilized in a popular revolution and ousted him. He has since been living in exile in neighboring Cote d’Ivoire. Damiba’s reconciliation project was seen as a betrayal of the January coup that brought him to power.

The first three days of the September coup were characterized by confusion, uncertainty, and fear. First, coup leaders read a declaration on television announcing that Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba was overthrown, and a curfew was set in place (9pm-5am). But within hours Damiba issued a statement via the official government website asking the mutineers to come back to the table to negotiate. Ibrahim and his coup leaders went back on national television to announce the cancellation of the curfew and asked the population to come out in support accusing Damiba of hiding at the French military base and preparing to take back power. Rumors of French military intervention to support Damiba circulated widely on WhatsApp, prompting anger about France’s meddling in local politics.

In the capital, Ouagadougou, and in other major cities many people responded to the call of Ibrahim and his men. They gathered in large numbers in the public squares in Ouagadougou, Bobo, Kaya, Koudougou, and Ouahigouya. Despite a communiqué from France’s representative in Burkina Faso rejecting all allegations that France was taking sides or that Damiba was hiding at the French military base, most protesters in Bobo rushed to the French cultural center seeking to burn it down in protest. In Ouagadougou, a crowd of young people entered the French embassy and lit tires on fire whileFrench soldiers were posted on the rooftop of the embassy building and shooting teargas.

Burkinabe youth are intuitively revolutionary. They cry for a positive and radical change. Their first truly civilian elected president, President Kaboré, did not live up to that expectation. Damiba’s short-lived and unlawful government set about plundering the country (he appointed his close friends to key government positions and increased the salary of his government ministers while cutting funds from most social services). Traore Ibrahim is seen as the next “hope” and some pundits even see in him a modern reincarnation of Sankara.e. For example, his use of the army to organize farmers to fight hunger through agricultural projects resonates well with many people.

This umpteenth coup in Burkina Faso, added to all the others in the region (Mali in 2020 and 2021, and Guinea in 2021), are part of a significant political shift in response to and economic crises globally. Junta leaders have cited the deteriorating political situations as a major reason to overthrow hard-won electoral democracies. This has seen an active diversification of military partnerships, such as in Mali where the Russian private group Wagner is now operating.

It will take a lot of wisdom from all parties, including the civil society organizations together with the young military leaders to address the instability in the country, including recovering it from the grips of terrorist organizations, assuring the international community that human rights will not be violated in the process, and that a return to a civilian rule will be guaranteed within a reasonable timeline. Most importantly they have an obligation to respond to the pressing needs of the youth, or potentially face a spiral of coups and violence that we can ill afford.

The climate news is bad. 

The climate reality is worse.

Analysis by Ishaan Tharoor

WASHINGTON POST

October 28, 2022

Women from the pastoral Turkana community wait on Oct. 18 with their children under a tree at a drought-intervention community outreach clinic organized by the United Nations. (Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)

The climate news is as grim as ever. Despite the stated ambitions of the international community to take action, the world’s nations have shaved just 1 percent off their projected greenhouse gas emissions for 2030, according to a new U.N. report. The meager outcome places the planet on a path to warm by 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century — below some of the greatest fears of climate watchers but still beyond the safe temperature threshold set at 1.5 degrees Celsius. It precipitates a dangerous future of extreme weather, rising sea levels and “endless suffering,” as the United Nations put it itself.

Two other reports this week from U.N. agencies compounded these woes. An analysis by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change found that few countries had adjusted their climate pledges since a major U.N. climate conference last year held in Glasgow, Scotland. This year’s conference is set to be hosted in Egypt next month. Another study by the World Meteorological Organization found that methane emissions are rising faster than ever. The evidence raises “questions about humanity’s ability to limit the greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the near term,” my colleagues reported.

Advances have been made — the world is weaning itself off coal, while the governments of major emitters Australia and United States have recently enacted significant legislation to reduce emissions. But it’s not happening fast enough. “Global and national climate commitments are falling pitifully short,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said in a video message this week. “We must close the emissions gap before climate catastrophe closes in on us all.”

No matter Guterres’s constant entreaties, the necessary political urgency is not on show in much of the world. Even governments with well-intentioned climate agendas have seen their attention sidetracked by the war in Ukraine, the toll of the pandemic, and the energy price volatility and inflation buffeting the global economy. And so, my colleagues wrote, “the world is barreling toward a future of unbearable heat, escalating weather disasters, collapsing ecosystems and widespread hunger and disease.”


How climate change is reshaping the world

In some places, that future is now. The Horn of Africa and many parts of East Africa are in the midst of a devastating drought. A fifth consecutive rainy season has failed and analysts expect the sixth — starting next March — to also be a dud. As fields go fallow and millions of livestock die of thirst, there is a staggering crisis of hunger in countries throughout the region. According to the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP), some 22 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are at risk of starvation.

In Somalia, in particular, aid groups and international observers warn of the imminent onset of famine. The conditions appear worse than in 2011, the last time famine was declared in the war-ravaged country, when some 250,000 people died. Every minute, one Somali child is being admitted for medical treatment for malnutrition, a spokesperson for the U.N.’s children agency said earlier this month. There are harrowing tales of mothers and families trudging through parched terrain in search of medical assistance for ailing babies. Thousands may have already died.

Close to 8 million people — roughly half the country’s population — have been impacted by drought. Up to 6.7 million people across the country may face food insecurity by the end of the year. The failure of successive crop cycles dovetailed with the inflationary pressures created by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as well as the ongoing instability within Somalia as the fragile government battles the entrenched insurgency of Islamist extremist group al-Shabab.

“We don’t know where the end is,” Michael Dunford, WFP’s regional director for East Africa, told me, warning of the need for the international community not only to reckon with the ongoing crisis, but the future cycles of drought and suffering to come as the effects of global warming disproportionately impact regions like the Horn of Africa.

“It’s not about the climate changing — the climate has changed. And we are not going back even once the rains start,” he said. “This is a crisis that we are well and truly in the middle of and I don’t know where the bottom is.”

I covered Somalia’s last famine a decade ago. It’s about to happen again.

Earth could soon briefly hit threatening climate threshold

The further tragedy of the situation is that these most imperiled communities played little to no role in creating the conditions stoking global warming now. This is “a population which importantly has not brought this on themselves,” Dunford said. “What’s happening today … in the region is impacting a vulnerable population that has not contributed to greenhouse gases.”

“Somalis are the victims of our behavior, the victims of our habits — not of theirs,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s humanitarian chief, said this week. “And yet we haven’t even managed to get to them the money that we pledged nobly some time ago for exactly this kind of purpose.”

U.N. agencies have indicated that Somalia alone needs some $2 billion in aid to stave off the worst outcomes. The WFP, which has been largely funded by the United States, is providing more than 4 million Somalis with “lifesaving” food and cash assistance. But it needs more funding at a time when national governments are navigating their own economic head winds.

“We have never seen such a level of requirement,” said Dunford, gesturing to the estimated 345 million people globally who are at this very moment acutely food hungry. That’s double the figure it was before the start of the pandemic. But the lurking role of climate change in the ongoing catastrophe, he added, means that there’s “a need for equity” on the world stage. Dunford pointed to the responsibility of the “industrialized world, Gulf states and others to step up and make the contributions required.”

The severity of the crisis was not unexpected, but the international humanitarian system has been forced to play catch up. “The war in Ukraine came at a very inopportune time,” Dunford said. He said they had recognized that the situation in Somalia was continuing to deteriorate, and they started advocating for the needs of the country. “And then everyone’s attention was diverted to Europe. So we lost time and we lost attention,” he said. “The funding came late… and it meant we are starting further back in our response than we liked.”

That delay will be measured in lives.


By Ishaan TharoorIshaan Tharoor is a columnist on the foreign desk of The Washington Post, where he authors the Today's WorldView newsletter and column. He previously was a senior editor and correspondent at Time magazine, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York. Twitter

SCI FI BFG
Gigantic, 70-Foot Nuclear Fusion Gun Could Change the World

Ed Browne -

On a quiet industrial estate in England, the silence is occasionally broken by the thump of a 72-foot-long gun. At the end of the barrel, a star is born.

The Big Friendly Gun (BFG) is a prototype for what U.K.-based nuclear fusion company First Light Fusion hopes will be the future of energy production.

The video above shows a test-fire at the company's facility. From a safe distance and separated from it by a thick wall of concrete, the team look on as data pours in from the gun's sensors. Each test-fire takes the world a step closer to what will potentially be an effectively limitless source of clean power.

The giant steel gun works by firing a high-velocity piston with 6.6 pounds of gunpowder. Speeding down the barrel, the piston, compressing hydrogen gas as it moves, enters a cone segment that crushes the gas to a tiny point before it bursts through a metal seal. This shoots a projectile at 4.3 miles per second into a vacuum chamber where it strikes a nuclear fusion fuel target, temporarily producing the conditions in which nuclei can fuse together.



The first stage of the Big Friendly Gun barrel. Behind the camera, the narrower second stage of the barrel leads to the reaction chamber. Photo taken in Oxford, U.K., on October 4, 2022. Ed Browne/Newsweek© Ed Browne/Newsweek


The reaction chamber of the Big Friendly Gun. For scale, a human could squeeze inside it. A tiny projectile exits the small hole at several kilometers per second before hitting a nuclear fusion fuel target. Fusion has been achieved inside this chamber. Photo taken in Oxford, U.K., on October 4, 2022. Ed Browne/Newsweek© Ed Browne/Newsweek

First Light Fusion says it was commissioned, designed, and built for £1.1 million ($1.27 million) over the course of 10 months. There's nothing else like it in the world.

The fusion of atomic nuclei is the same process that powers our sun, and scientists have been trying to recreate it on Earth for almost 100 years, since this reaction produces more energy than fossil fuels with no carbon emissions or radioactive byproducts.

Additionally, the fuels needed for the reaction, which are typically the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, can be produced artificially. As such, fusion power, if we can harness it, would be not just clean, but abundant.

First Light Fusion's approach—known as inertial fusion—is a far cry from perhaps the most common and much more complicated tokamak approach, in which plasma gas is circulated using giant magnets. But it works, and CEO Nick Hawker thinks it could change the game.

"I would describe tokamaks as the leading approach in magnetic fusion," Hawker told Newsweek. "The physics are pretty clear—it's been very well characterized."



The reaction chamber of a smaller-scale version of the Big Friendly Gun. Photo taken in Oxford, U.K., on October 4, 2022. Ed Browne/Newsweek© Ed Browne/Newsweek

Through all the years of studying tokamak technology, the principal issue is how the plasma loses energy. Scientists have found that energy within the plasma tends to bleed across the intense magnetic field lines involved in the reaction, causing the reaction to fizzle out. As such, no one has managed to achieve net energy gain—more energy generated than energy required to run the machine—with a tokamak.

"Net energy gain has been demonstrated with inertial fusion, but the driver, instead of being a laser, was an underground weapons test," Hawker said. "So there is that empirical proof there that you can get to high energy gain with inertial fusion.

"I feel a bit unfair giving this as a criticism of magnetic fusion because the challenges we know about are because of the work done in magnetic fusion, and that's what has allowed us to come up with an approach that sidesteps them."

One such challenge is the sheer violence involved in fusion reactions. Tokamaks must circulate plasma at temperatures of 180 million degrees Fahrenheit in order to generate fusion, all while neutrons from the fusion reaction are battering the inside walls of the reaction chamber.

"It's one of the major challenges for tokamaks—the survivability of the vacuum chamber and how frequently you'd have to swap that out," Hawker said. "It's like plastic that you've left in the sun. What happens when you leave plastic in the sun for a long time is that the UV light destroys the material structure within the plastic, and it falls apart in your hands. The neutrons from fusion do that to structural steel, so it's a bit of an issue."



Nick Hawker, CEO of First Light Fusion, stands in front of the company's M3 pulsed power unit, which uses extreme electromagnetic forces to launch projectiles at hypervelocity. Photo taken in Oxford, U.K., on October 4, 2022. Ed Browne/Newsweek© Ed Browne/Newsweek

First Light Fusion's reactor design aims to sidestep this by shielding the reactor walls with liquid, which absorbs the neutrons and exposes the steel structure of the chamber to less neutron bombardment compared to a tokamak.

The BFG is only one step toward this final vision. The company is currently working on its next machine, M3, which is a sprawling mass of electric capacitors all geared toward using an electrical current to accelerate a projectile at 1 billion Gs to 20 kilometers per second, upping the impact speed. In short, it's more sophisticated than gunpowder.



Stacks of electronic capacitors that power the M3 propulsion machine. There are 192 in all, producing up to 200,000 volts. Photo taken in Oxford, U.K., on October 4, 2022. Ed Browne/Newsweek© Ed Browne/Newsweek


A before-and-after version of the projectiles used in the M3 machine. On the left: A projectile that has been subject to the machine's intense electromagnetic forces. On the right: One that has not. Photo taken in Oxford, U.K., on October 4, 2022. Ed Browne/Newsweek© Ed Browne/Newsweek
When Will Fusion Energy Be on the Grid?

Hawker expects the First Light Fusion reactor to be generating usable electricity in the 2030s and for power to be on the grid by the following decade. So what would a giant gun reactor look like?

"I like to say that magnetic fusion is like a furnace," Hawker said. "It's an always-on hot process because the particles are going around the donut. Whereas inertial fusion is more like an internal combustion engine. It's a pulsed process where you have a repetition rate and the energy per event multiplied by the frequency gives you the power."

This analogy can be continued when considering that internal combustion engines have a spark plug that ignites the gas to keep the process going. Often in inertial fusion this spark plug is a laser. In the case of First Light Fusion, it is a high-velocity projectile. According to Hawker, this method benefits from being cheaper and simpler.

The projectile hits the fusion target rapidly. The company's target design amplifies this impact pressure to around 1 terapascal or 10 million times more pressure than Earth's atmosphere, producing a cloud of heat and neutrons. This heat is then transferred to a flow of liquid that moves around the inner reaction chamber and is transferred once more to a tank of water, heating it to a temperature of over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

"We love steam," Hawker said. "It's low risk, it's easy. I want a very boring power plant design, and I want one new thing only, which is the core process. Everything else I want to be as standard as possible."

In First Light's hypothetical reactor on the grid, this process is expected to repeat itself once every 90 seconds—not as fast as some other inertial fusion proponents, which envision laser-based reactors repeating their reactions 10 times per second. Still, even one kinetic impact once per 90 seconds is enough to release huge amounts of power.

"Each target will release about the same amount of energy as a barrel of oil," Hawker said. "It's literally a million times more energy dense than a chemical reaction. It's more energy dense than nuclear fission as well."

The next decade is a long way off, and the climate crisis demands a sharper change to our energy habits than fusion can currently promise to provide. But the world needs a breakthrough energy technology and late is better than never. To that end, Hawker and his team continue to put their fingers in their ears and press "fire."

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IT HAPPENED! Nuclear Fusion Is FINALLY Hitting The Market!

Oct 6, 2022



Tech Space

Our world has gone ahead when it comes to science and technology. The research we do, the discoveries we make, and the tools and record-winning inventions used to make these discoveries and explorations has created the world we live in today. Some of these discoveries have dated and have been worked on for an average of over fifty years. To date, more observations, tests, and innovations are being made to improve and further the improvements on these projects. Among these projects that are being worked on is Nuclear Fusion. On an average of fifty years, nuclear fusion has been around for years. Scientists kept researching nuclear energy and trying to come up with ways to harness this energy to serve other purposes. As time progressed, researchers kept advancing in the research, coming up with ways and building high-end equipment for them to advance further in the research on Nuclear fusion. Now, they have made a breakthrough. What milestone did these scientists achieve? How does it work? And in what ways will this breakthrough help them advance in their research? Now, they have made a breakthrough. What milestone did these scientists achieve? How does it work? And in what ways will this breakthrough help them advance in their research?