Chinese vaccines sweep much of the world, despite concerns

HUIZHONG WU and KRISTEN GELINEAU
Mon, March 1, 2021, 

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The plane laden with vaccines had just rolled to a stop at Santiago’s airport in late January, and Chile’s president, Sebastián Piñera, was beaming. “Today,” he said, “is a day of joy, emotion and hope.”

The source of that hope: China – a country that Chile and dozens of other nations are depending on to help rescue them from the COVID-19 pandemic.

China’s vaccine diplomacy campaign has been a surprising success: It has pledged roughly half a billion doses of its vaccines to more than 45 countries, according to a country-by-country tally by The Associated Press. With just four of China’s many vaccine makers claiming they are able to produce at least 2.6 billion doses this year, a large part of the world’s population will end up inoculated not with the fancy Western vaccines boasting headline-grabbing efficacy rates, but with China’s humble, traditionally made shots.
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Amid a dearth of public data on China’s vaccines, hesitations over their efficacy and safety are still pervasive in the countries depending on them, along with concerns about what China might want in return for deliveries. Nonetheless, inoculations with Chinese vaccines already have begun in more than 25 countries, and the Chinese shots have been delivered to another 11, according to the AP tally, based on independent reporting in those countries along with government and company announcements.

It’s a potential face-saving coup for China, which has been determined to transform itself from an object of mistrust over its initial mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak to a savior. Like India and Russia, China is trying to build goodwill, and has pledged roughly 10 times more vaccines abroad than it has distributed at home.

“We’re seeing certainly real-time vaccine diplomacy start to play out, with China in the lead in terms of being able to manufacture vaccines within China and make them available to others,” said Krishna Udayakumar, founding director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center at Duke University. “Some of them donated, some of them sold, and some of them sold with debt financing associated with it.”

China has said it is supplying “vaccine aid” to 53 countries and exports to 27, but it rejected a request by the AP for the list. Beijing has also denied vaccine diplomacy, and a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said China considered the vaccine a “global public good.” Chinese experts reject any connection between the export of its vaccines and the revamping of its image.

“I don’t see any linkage there,” said Wang Huiyao, president of the Centre for China and Globalization, a Beijing think tank. “China should do more to help other countries, because it’s doing well.”

China has targeted the low- and middle-income countries largely left behind as rich nations scooped up most of the pricey vaccines produced by the likes of Pfizer and Moderna. And despite a few delays of its own in Brazil and Turkey, China has largely capitalized on slower-than-hoped-for deliveries by U.S. and European vaccine makers.

Like many other countries, Chile received far fewer doses of the Pfizer vaccine than first promised. In the month after its vaccination program began in late December, only around 150,000 of the 10 million Pfizer doses the South American country ordered arrived.

It wasn’t until Chinese company Sinovac Biotech Ltd. swooped in with 4 million doses in late January that Chile began inoculating its population of 19 million with impressive speed. The country now has the fifth highest vaccination rate per capita in the world, according to Oxford University.

Chilean Vilma Ortiz got her Sinovac shot at a school in Santiago’s Nunoa neighborhood, along with about 60 other people. Although she considers herself “kind of a skeptical person,” she said she researched the Chinese vaccines on the Internet and was satisfied.

“I have a lot of faith and confidence in the vaccine,” she said.

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In Jakarta, the sports stadium was abuzz as masked healthcare workers filed in to receive their Sinovac shot. Wandering the rows of vaccination stations was Indonesian President Joko Widodo, the first person in the Southeast Asian country to get the Chinese shot, 140 million doses of which he has ordered for his people.

Among those at the stadium was Susi Monica, an intern doctor receiving her second dose. Despite questions over its efficacy, getting the shot was worth it to her, particularly because she didn’t have any adverse reactions to the first dose.

Besides, she said, “Do I have another choice right now?”

The choices are limited for Indonesia and many other low- and middle-income countries clobbered by COVID. Vaccine deployment globally has been dominated by wealthier countries, which have snapped up 5.8 billion of the 8.2 billion doses purchased worldwide, according to Duke University.

China’s vaccines, which can be stored in standard refrigerators, are attractive to countries like Indonesia, a sweltering nation that straddles the equator and could struggle to accommodate the ultracold storage needs of vaccines like Pfizer’s.

The bulk of Chinese shots are from Sinovac and Sinopharm, which both rely on a traditional technology called an inactivated virus vaccine, based on cultivating batches of the virus and then killing it. Some countries view it as safer than the newer, less-proven technology used by some Western competitors that targets the coronavirus’ spike protein, despite publicly available safety data for the Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines and none for China’s.

“The choice was made for this vaccine because it is developed on a traditional and safe inactivated platform,” said Teymur Musayev, an official with the Ministry of Health in Azerbaijan, which has ordered 4 million Sinovac doses.

In Europe, China is providing the vaccine to countries such as Serbia and Hungary -- a significant geopolitical victory in Central Europe and the Balkans, where the West, China and Russia are competing for political and economic influence. This stretch of Europe has offered fertile ground for China to strengthen bilateral ties with Serbia and Hungary’s populist leaders, who often criticize the EU.

Serbia became the first country in Europe to start inoculating its population with China’s vaccines in January. The country has so far purchased 1.5 million doses of Sinopharm’s vaccine, which makes up the majority of the country’s supply, and smaller amounts of Russia’s Sputnik V and Pfizer’s vaccines.

Donning heavy coats against the winter chill, masked-up Serbians have been waiting in long lines for their turn to get the vaccine.

“They have been vaccinating their own people for (a) long period, I assume they have more experience,” Natasa Stermenski, a Belgrade resident, said of her choice to get the Chinese shot at a vaccination center in February.

Neighboring Hungary, impatient over delays in the European Union, soon became the first country in the EU to approve the same Chinese vaccine. On Sunday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban got the Sinopharm shot, after recently saying he trusted the Chinese vaccine the most.

Many leaders have publicly supported the Chinese shots to allay concerns. Early on, “people had all these microchip theories in their heads, genetic modification, sterilization, running around on social media platforms,” said Sanjeev Pugazhendi, a medical officer in the Indian Ocean island nation of the Seychelles, whose president recently received a Sinopharm shot on camera. “But the moment we started giving out the vaccines to leaders, religious leaders and health workers, that started to subside.”

Beijing’s vaccine diplomacy efforts are good for both China and the developing world, experts say.

“Because of the competition for influence, the poor countries can get earlier access for vaccines,” said Yun Jiang, managing editor of the China Story Blog at the Australian National University. “Of course, that’s assuming that all the vaccines are safe and delivered in the right way.”

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China’s vaccine diplomacy will only be as good as the vaccines it is offering, and it still faces hurdles.

Ahmed Hamdan Zayed, a nurse in Egypt, was reluctant to receive a vaccine, especially a Chinese one. The frontline health worker would be among the first in the country to get Sinopharm’s shot as part of a mass vaccination campaign. Over 9 million Sinopharm shots have been given outside China.

“We had concerns about vaccines in general,” the 27-year-old father of two said in a phone interview from the Abu Khalifa hospital in the northeastern part of the country. “The Chinese vaccine, in particular, there was insufficient data available compared to other vaccines.”

But Zayed ultimately decided to get the shot after conducting more research. A doctor at his hospital called colleagues in the United Arab Emirates, which had approved the same shot, and they met with Egyptian health officials.

Sinopharm, which said its vaccine was 79% effective based on interim data from clinical trials, did not respond to requests for an interview. Sinopharm’s chairman has said they have not had a single severe adverse event in response to their vaccine.

Chinese vaccine companies have been “slow and spotty” in releasing their trial data, compared to companies like Pfizer and Moderna, said Yanzhong Huang, a global health expert at the U.S. think tank Council for Foreign Relations. None of China’s three vaccine candidates used globally have publicly released their late-stage clinical trial data. CanSino, another Chinese company with a one-shot vaccine that it says is 65% effective, declined to be interviewed.

China’s pharmaceutical business practices also have raised concerns. In 2018, it emerged that one of China’s biggest vaccine companies falsified data to sell its rabies vaccines. That same year, news broke that a Sinopharm subsidiary, which is behind one of the COVID-19 vaccines now, had made substandard diphtheria vaccines used in mandatory immunizations.

With Chinese vaccines, “for a lot of people, the first thing you think about is ‘Made in China,’ and that doesn’t give you much assurance,” said Joy Zhang, a professor at the University of Kent in the UK who studies the ethics of emerging science.

Russia and India have faced similar skepticism, partly because people have less trust in products made outside the Western world, said Sayedur Rahman, head of the pharmacology department at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University in Bangladesh.

“China, India, Russia, Cuba, whenever they develop a vaccine or conduct research, their data is questioned, and people say their process is not transparent,” he said.

A December YouGov poll of 19,000 people in 17 countries and regions on how they felt about different vaccines found that China’s received the second-lowest score, tied with India’s. In the Philippines, which has ordered 25 million Sinovac doses, less than 20% of those surveyed by a research group expressed confidence in China’s vaccines.

Those concerns have been exacerbated by confusion around the efficacy of Sinovac’s shot. In Turkey, where Sinovac conducted part of its efficacy trials, officials have said the vaccine was 91% effective. However, in Brazil, officials revised the efficacy rate in late-stage clinical trials from 78% to just over 50% after including mild infections.

A senior Chinese official said Brazil’s numbers were lower because its volunteers were healthcare workers who faced a higher risk of infection. But other medical experts have said exposure would not affect a vaccine’s effectiveness.

Sinovac’s trials were conducted separately in Turkey and Brazil, and the differences in efficacy rates arise from differences in the populations, a spokesman for the company said in a previous interview with the AP. The company declined to be interviewed for this article. An expert panel in Hong Kong assessed the efficacy of the vaccine at about 51%, and the city approved its use in mid-February.

Globally, public health officials have said any vaccine that is at least 50% effective is useful. International scientists are anxious to see results from final-stage testing published in a peer-reviewed science journal for all three Chinese companies.

It’s also unclear how the Chinese shots work against new strains of the virus that are emerging, especially a variant first identified in South Africa. For example, Sinopharm has pledged 800,000 shots to South Africa’s neighbor, Zimbabwe.

There are concerns among receiving countries that China’s vaccine diplomacy may come at a cost, which China has denied. In the Philippines, where Beijing is donating 600,000 vaccines, a senior diplomat said China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, gave a subtle message to tone down public criticism of growing Chinese assertiveness in the disputed South China Sea.

The senior diplomat said Wang did not ask for anything in exchange for vaccines, but it was clear he wanted “friendly exchanges in public, like control your megaphone diplomacy a little.” The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the issue publicly.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte publicly said in a news conference on Sunday that China did not ask for anything, as the donations were flown in.

Meanwhile, opposition legislators in Turkey are accusing Ankara’s leaders of secretly selling out Uyghurs to China in exchange for vaccines after a recent shipment delay. The legislators and the Uyghur diaspora community fear Beijing is trying to win passage of an extradition treaty that could see more Uyghurs deported to China.

Despite all the worries, the pandemic’s urgency has largely superseded hesitations over China’s vaccines.

“Vaccines, particularly those made in the West, are reserved for rich countries,” said one Egyptian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. “We had to guarantee a vaccine. Any vaccine.”

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Gelineau reported from Sydney.

Associated Press researcher Chen Si in Shanghai, and AP reporters Patricia Luna in Santiago, Chile; Sam Magdy in Cairo; Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines; Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia; Aida Sultanova in London; Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary; Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade, Serbia; Cara Anna in Nairobi, Kenya; Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Diane Jeantet in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report.

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China Vaccine Diplomacy

FILE - In this Dec. 23, 2020, file photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, a Sinovac worker checks the labeling on vials of COVID-19 vaccines on a packaging line in Beijing. With jgrabbing efficacy rates, but with China’s traditionally made shots. (Zhang Yuwei/Xinhua via AP, File)Moreust four of China’s many vaccine makers claiming they are able to produce at least 2.6 billion doses this year, a large part of the world’s population will end up inoculated not with Western vaccines boasting headline-

 

Chicago hunger strike against recycling plant grows: 'We're starving ourselves to save people's lives'

Taylor Moore

Mon, March 1, 2021

Photograph: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

Hunger strikers on Chicago’s Southeast Side have gone nearly four weeks without food to protest against environmental racism, and now the city is beginning to reconsider its stance on the controversial metal shredder that started it all.

“I share your commitment to equity and fully understand that our frontline communities, particularly on the South and West Sides of Chicago, have been significantly impacted by environmental pollution and other compounding environmental issues, for multiple generations,” wrote Lori Lightfoot, the city’s mayor, in a letter from last Tuesday.

On 4 February, three community activists vowed to go without food until the city stops a metal shredder from moving into the East Side, a low-income Latino community already reeling from the effects of industrial pollution. Since then, eight others – including an elected city official – have joined the hunger strike. They held a candlelight vigil in front of city hall on Tuesday.

“It is immoral, it is discriminatory and we cannot allow [this plant to operate] in a pandemic when we can prevent it,” said Byron Sigcho-Lopez, the 25th ward alderman who has joined the hunger strike “as long as it’s needed”. On Friday, Sigcho-Lopez, a Democratic socialist who represents a majority-Latino neighborhood similarly affected by heavy industry, introduced a resolution to support the hunger strike, but a majority of Chicago city council, including the local alderman who has professed support of the hunger strike, voted to not consider it.

Amid numerous EPA violations, Reserve Management Group (RMG), a metal recycling company, recently closed a similar scrapyard on the city’s predominantly white, affluent North Side. Southside Recycling – which will use some equipment from the General Iron facility, including pollution controls – is considered by residents and local activists to be its reincarnation.

Metal shredding can be a dangerous business. Dr Susan Buchanan, public health professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, says the particulate matter that typically emanates from these facilities can cause severe respiratory and cardiovascular conditions. Steve Joseph, CEO of RMG, maintains the site “will be enclosed and removed from public view” and “almost nothing” about it “resembles General Iron”.

Grassroots organizers on the Southeast Side characterize the move as yet another example of environmental racism to hit the community, which has high rates of asthma. The area is already contaminated by businesses that dump more than a million pounds of toxins into the air every year. The permits that allowed the facility to start construction have come under scrutiny from federal investigators. The US EPA is currently reviewing complaints that Illinois EPA’s approval has further concentrated polluting industry in a majority Black and brown neighborhood, while the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud) is investigating, with assistance from the US Department of Justice, the city’s role in facilitating the metal shredder’s move south.

“My team is working to fully evaluate the implications of these federal inquiries for this process,” Lightfoot wrote. In a separate letter uncovered by the Chicago Tribune, the mayor’s lawyers asked the US EPA for guidance, saying it was “crucial that the outcome of the city’s permitting process be based on a legitimate [Illinois EPA] authorization”, though that same legal department has denied the legitimacy of Hud’s investigation into the city.

Hunger strikers called Lightfoot’s response “insulting” in a joint statement. “We believe that this administration would sooner let Southeast Siders starve in our hunger strike than commit to taking any real steps to address the issues,” they wrote.

After reading the mayor’s statement, Yesenia Chavez said she had to lie down because of high-blood pressure. “We’re literally starving ourselves to save people’s lives, and for [the mayor] to keep mentioning she wants to continue a conversation with us is dismissing how we’re putting our health at risk right now,” said Chavez, a lifelong Southeast Side resident on day 22 of her hunger strike.

Environmental and social justice organizations across the city and the country have mobilized around the Southeast Side, pledging one-day hunger strikes in solidarity.

“As hard as it is to digest the city’s lackluster response, it’s more important for us to keep going toward environmental reform to save families being affected right now,” said Chavez. “One more death because of air pollution and industrial abuse is just one too many for us to accept.”

Texas utility chairwoman resigns amid rebukes and fallout from record-breaking storm

John C Moritz Austin Bureau 

USA TODAY NETWORK, Corpus Christi Caller Times

Mon, March 1, 2021, 

AUSTIN — The chairwoman for the Texas Public Utility Commission resigned under fire Monday amid continuing fallout from the massive failure of the state's electric power grid during last month's record-breaking winter storm.

DeAnn Walker's decision came just hours after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called on both her and the top executive of the the grid manager to step down, saying they proved woefully unprepared to manage the crisis.

Texas Public Utility Commission Chair DeAnn Walker fielded criticism from Democrats and Republicans at legislative hearings about the February power outages around the state

In her resignation letter, Walker said responsibility for the grid failure that left more than 4 million Texans without electricity, many for several consecutive days, falls on many shoulders, including the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid manager.


"I testified last Thursday in the Senate and House and accepted my role in the situation," Walker said in her letter to Abbott. "I believe others should come forward in dignity and courage and acknowledge how their actions or inactions contributed to the situation."

She specifically mentioned natural gas companies, the Texas Railroad Commission, ERCOT, electricity providers and the Texas Legislature as bearing some of the responsibility for the power failure.

Abbott, who appoints the three-member utility commission, through a spokeswoman thanked Walker for her public service and said that efforts to shore up electric reliability will continue.

"Our focus is to continue working collaboratively with the Legislature on reforms to our power system and look forward to passing lasting and meaning full solutions to ensure these tragic events are never repeated," said Renae Eze, Abbott's press secretary.

In calling early in the day for the resignation of both Walker and ERCOT CEO Bill Magness, Patrick said they were unprepared for the severity of the storm that came with snow and ice storms coupled with several days of subfreezing temperatures all over the state.

ERCOT control room

"It is obvious ERCOT and the PUC simply did not anticipate the magnitude of the storm or the amount of power it would require," Patrick said in a written statement.

Late Friday, several Democratic lawmakers also called for Walker to step down.

Last week, five members of the ERCOT board of directors resigned under fire as Gov. Greg Abbott called for a shakeup in the organization. In a written statement, ERCOT noted the diminished ranks in leadership and suggested Magness' role might be diminished, at least in the near term.

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"Given the recent resignations of several ERCOT board members and the current composition of the ERCOT board of directors, our corporate secretary will be working with the current, remaining members to consider this request," the statement said. "Mr. Magness will continue to work with the Texas Legislature and any state agencies on investigations of the recent winter storm and its reform of ERCOT."

Texas senator Brandon Creighton demands straight answers from ERCOT President & CEO Bill Magness about his thoughts on the state's power grid.

Both Walker and Magness testified separately last week before House and Senate committees examining the causes and potential solutions for the widespread and prolonged power outages. While ERCOT was scrambling to restore power, Magness told reporters in a series of news briefings that Texas lost nearly half of its generating capacity and was just minutes away from a total meltdown of its energy grid.

Patrick, however, said testimony from Walker and Magness showed breakdowns in communication and examples of miscalculation that exacerbated the failures in generation caused by freezing resources and spiking demand from electricity consumers.

"From their testimony it is clear they also did not consider the harsh freeze could shut down electricity generating power plants or that crews would not be able to make emergency repairs because roads would be impassable," Patrick said.

More: ERCOT post-storm review: Outages saved Texas from blackout that would take weeks to restore

State Rep. Rafael Anchia of Dallas, one of eight Democratic House members who signed a letter calling for Walker to step down, offered a withering assessment of the chairwoman's response to the outages.

"The people of Texas deserved nothing less than Commissioner Walker’s immediate resignation following the complete failure by her agency and ERCOT, the Texas power grid operator that she neglected to regulate," Anchia said. “Texans still await her apology."

More: Griddy vowed to be a market 'disrupter.' Mission accomplished to electric customers' chagrin

During her testimony before the legislative committees, Walker said she did not have the legal authority some members said she should have exercised to minimize the outages, or at least reduce their duration.

"If everyone thinks I have the authority, I'm more than happy to move forward with the rule-making," she said. "But it is something I think needs to be part of another discussion."

The three members of the PUC were appointed by Gov. Abbott and they each are paid about $201,000 annually. The state agency oversees ERCOT, which is a private nonprofit corporation.

According to her biographical information on the PUC's website, which was taken down immediately upon her resignation, Walker was a senior policy adviser to Abbott before he appointed her to chair the commission in September 2017. Her term was to expire this September.

She is also a former assistant general counsel for the commission.

Walker also served as associate general counsel and director of regulatory affairs at CenterPoint Energy before joining Abbott's staff.


This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Texas Lt. Gov. Patrick calls for ERCOT and PUC chiefs to resign

Mining magnets: Arctic island finds green power can be a curse


Aerial view of the town of Narsaq in southern Greenland

Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and Eric Onstad
Mon, March 1, 2021, 
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - In the tenth century, Erik the Red, a Viking from Iceland, was so impressed with the vegetation on another Arctic island he had found he called it "the green land." Today, it's Greenland's rocks that are attracting outsiders - superpowers riding a green revolution.

The world's biggest island has huge resources of metals known as 'rare earths,' used to create compact, super-strong magnets which help power equipment such as wind turbines, electric vehicles, combat aircraft and weapons systems.

The metals are abundant globally, but processing them is difficult and dirty - so much so that the United States, which used to dominate production, surrendered that position to China about 20 years ago.

As Greenland's ice sheet and glaciers recede, two Australia-based mining companies - one seeking funding in the United States, the other part-owned by a Chinese state-backed firm - are racing for approval to dig into what the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) calls the world's biggest undeveloped deposits of rare earth metals.

The contest underscores the polluting side of clean energy, as well as how hard it is for the West to break free of China in production of a vital resource. Rare earth metals have many uses, and last year China produced about 90% of them, according to Toronto-based consultancy Adamas Intelligence. As U.S.-China tensions mount, President Joe Biden's administration said last month it will review key U.S. supplies, including rare earths, to ensure other countries cannot weaponise them against the United States.

Each Greenland mine would cost about $500 million to develop, the companies say. Both plan to send mined material away for final processing, an activity that is heavily concentrated in China. The only rare earth mine now operating in the United States – Mountain Pass in California – is partly owned by a Chinese state-backed company that currently sends material mined in the U.S. to China for processing.

The Greenland sites are less than 16 km (10 miles) from each other at the southern tip of the island, near a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Debate on them has triggered a political crisis in the capital of Nuuk, forcing a general election on the island of 56,000, due in April. Many Greenlanders, while concerned about pollution, feel mining is key to develop their fragile economy. In a 2013 poll, just over half said they want raw materials to become the country's main source of income.

The country may ultimately back either project, both, or neither, but for those Greenlanders open to mining, the two proposals boil down to a choice between one mine that would not produce radioactive material, and another that would.

The first mine, a private initiative from an Australian geologist who has presented it to U.S. officials, would not involve nuclear material. It has won preliminary environmental approval, but it needs cash and a processing plan.

The second one has already spent more than $100 million preparing to mine, has proven processing technology through its Chinese partner, and won initial political support from Greenland's coalition government. But its plans include exporting uranium, a nuclear fuel, and it recently ran into strong opposition, including from residents of the nearby town of Narsaq.

"As indigenous people we have lived in harmony with nature for many, many years," said Mariane Paviasen, an opposition lawmaker who lives in the town. "We use these lands to hunt and fish."

Greenland, a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, has a gross domestic product of around $3 billion - similar to Andorra and Burundi. With its people living mostly on fishing and grants from Copenhagen, its government is keen to attract foreign investments.

It does not have an estimate for royalties from the first project, but expects around 1.5 billion Danish crowns ($245 million) each year from the Chinese-linked one - equivalent to roughly 15% of public spending.

Greenland's government did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Acting Minister of Resources Vittus Qujaukitsoq said last month that if Greenlanders suddenly decide they don't want the second project, "we'll make a fool of investors. The credibility of the whole country is at stake."

STRATEGIC RESOURCES

Greenland's rare earth metals are also a chance for America and Europe to regain control of a strategic resource.

The island's potential as a source of the raw materials needed for renewable energy technologies gained momentum in 2010, when China threatened to cut off its supply of rare earth metals to Japan, and tightened quotas to international buyers.

Prices for some of the metals have jumped in recent months, driven by surging demand for electric vehicles as well as concerns that Beijing may restrict sales.

Greenland's position near the eastern flank of the United States makes it a sensitive location. Former U.S. President Donald Trump offered to buy the island in 2019, and he was not the first U.S. president to do so: In 1946 Harry S. Truman offered Denmark $100 million for it. A defence treaty between Denmark and the United States dating back to 1951 gives the U.S. military almost unlimited rights there, and Greenland houses the northernmost U.S. military base.

Friedbert Pflüger, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, says the revenues generated by a major mine could give its owner leverage over policies in Greenland, and a strong Chinese presence there may pose strategic threats.

"The very presence of Chinese companies in Greenland could be used as justification for China to intervene," said Pflüger, a former German politician and ex-deputy defence minister.

China's foreign ministry said in a statement that such comments politicise economic and trade issues through "groundless speculation," adding "China has always supported Chinese companies to carry out foreign economic cooperation in accordance with market principles and international rules."

The U.S. State Department said: "We encourage our allies and partners to carefully review any investments... that could give China access to critical infrastructure in ways that compromise their security or allow China to exert undue, adverse influence over their domestic economies."

Denmark, which handles foreign affairs and defence for Greenland, has in the past headed off Chinese involvement in infrastructure projects, which government sources say was because of security concerns. Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod declined to comment on the security implications of China's involvement. But he told Reuters that Copenhagen's close ties with the United States "should not be seen as an obstacle to commercial investments in Greenland."

China is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, so it can import uranium from Greenland. But since the fuel is used in nuclear weapons, that would be sensitive. Copenhagen, which has the final say, declined to comment.

TRUMP'S OFFER

Trump's offer for Greenland aimed to help address Chinese dominance of rare earth supplies. Those involved say he was partly following up on talks between U.S. officials and a privately held company called Tanbreez Mining Greenland A/S. Tanbreez is the owner of the first Greenland site - Kringlerne, or Killavaat Alannguat in Greenlandic.

The company's owner, Australian geologist Greg Barnes, told Reuters he had met U.S. officials weeks before Trump made the offer, and the company website shows Barnes with them and the former U.S. ambassador to Denmark on a site visit. The USGS confirmed its officials had visited the site in 2019; Washington and a representative for the former president declined to comment.

Barnes said he had put A$50 million ($38.6 million) of his own cash into the Greenland project. New York-based investment banker Christopher Messina, managing director at capital markets advisory services firm Mannahatta Partners, is trying to assemble more financing. He says Kringlerne is "such a huge deposit that what comes out of it could satisfy manufacturing demands in the U.S. for years to come."

Whether or not that pans out, Barnes says the metals produced by his project can be processed outside China, although he has not yet decided where, and declined to say at what cost.

He said the royalties it would generate for Greenland would be roughly the same as those promised by the China-linked plan. "We've managed to get our capital costs down without Chinese technology," Barnes told Reuters.

The only major plant outside China that does the complex work of separating individual rare earth elements is in Malaysia. But others - including the Mountain Pass mine in the United States - are planning or have started to build such facilities.

"For the foreseeable future, China is going to be the major player in all of these supply chains simply because it's so far advanced and because it's not stopping and waiting for alternatives to catch up," said Ryan Castilloux, head of Adamas.

Tanbreez says half the rare earth metals it mines would be lanthanum and cerium - relatively plentiful metals used in telescope lenses and auto catalysts to cut emissions. About a fifth would be yttrium, which is in demand for lasers and the superconductors used in quantum computing.

Neither of the Greenland projects would be pollution-free. Both plan for mined rock to be locally crushed and separated into concentrates to send for final processing.

Tanbreez's mining waste will be piped to a lake which, while it does not contain fish, feeds a river with a large population of Arctic char. Turbid water could impact the char, according to the company's environmental report, which says it plans to dump some 550 tonnes a day of waste material into the lake and will dam it to prevent disruption downstream.

Tanbreez's plan has passed the public consultations stage and received a government permit in September. Now the company is working on parliament approval.

"CRITICAL PERIOD"

Both the Greenland projects, though run from Australia, are part of a European Union initiative, the European Raw Materials Alliance, to boost Europe's output of critical minerals and cut dependence on China for rare earth metals..

The alliance, funded by the EU, is coordinating investment and providing seed money for European mines, processing plants and industries such as magnets.

Last year, the EU kick-started 10 billion euros ($12 billion) of investment into rare earth and other green-energy-related projects, and it says its demand for rare earth metals could surge as much as tenfold by 2050. It says China currently makes up 98% of its supply.

"This is a very critical period of time," says the Alliance's head, Bernd Schäfer. "We in Europe are facing raw materials scarcity on many levels and also the need for action."

The rival mountaintop site not far from Tanbreez is called Kvanefjeld, or Kuannersuit in Greenlandic. For John Mair, managing director of its owner, Greenland Minerals Ltd, it's a world-class opportunity at the right moment.

Kvanefjeld's main offer is neodymium, needed for wind turbines. Brussels says the EU's demand for the metal may reach 13,000 tonnes per year by 2050, three times more than it used in 2015. Neodymium is also used in combat aircraft.

Greenland Minerals is a listed firm in which Chinese company Shenghe Resources is the biggest shareholder, with just under 10%. Shenghe, which also has a similar size stake in Mountain Pass, declined to comment for this story.

Greenland Minerals, which bought its concession from Barnes, says its planned mine will, at least initially, send minerals it produces to China for final processing. It says it plans to find a site in Europe, but has not said when.

The company has a strong hand. Back in 2011, the estimated costs for setting up Kvanefjeld were $2.3 billion. By 2019, these shrank to $505 million, the company says: Shenghe, whose biggest shareholder is a state-run Chinese mineral research institute, has helped boost efficiency.

But Greenland Minerals faces public opposition. It is one step behind Tanbreez in the environmental vetting process - and its ores include significant amounts of radioactive materials.

When Greenland Minerals embarked on public consultations this year, protests erupted. At one meeting in Narsaq on Feb. 10, locals both inside and outside the hall banged windows and played loud music to disrupt presentations.

As opposition mounted, a small pro-mining party, Demokraatit, triggered a general election by pulling out of Greenland's coalition in early February.

Polls suggest Greenland's main opposition party, Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA), which has a zero-tolerance policy for uranium, will become the biggest in parliament, so would be first to try to form a new coalition.

"Our aim," IA lawmaker and Narsaq resident Paviasen told Reuters, "is to halt the (Kvanefjeld) mining project." But IA says it has not expressed opposition to Tanbreez, which is seen as less of a threat to the environment.

Kvanefjeld would dump much more waste than Tanbreez - about 8,500 tonnes each day - into a lake on top of the mountain, the Greenland Minerals plan says.

Greenland Minerals says any increase in background radiation from its Kvanefjeld mine will be minimal. It plans to build a concrete 45-meter dam to contain the radioactive waste and to spray water on the ground to keep the dust from blowing away.

The dam will be built to international standards to "withstand even the worst imaginable seismic activity," it said in a report submitted to Greenland's government last year.

Even so, residents say they worry contaminated water will seep into nearby rivers or that the dam will fail entirely. They cite the collapse of a mining dam in Brazil two years ago that killed 270 people.

As the crisis has deepened, Greenland Minerals' shares have dropped by more than 50%. If the mine goes ahead, Paviasen says, many people plan to move away.

(This story corrects 10th paragraph to delete China as destination for uranium exports)

(Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in Copenhagen and Eric Onstad in London; Additional reporting by Ernest Scheyder in Houston, Humeyra Pamuk in Washington and Tom Daly; Edited by Sara Ledwith)

China says domestic competition hurting rare earth prices

FILE PHOTO: WorChina says domestic competition hurting rare earth priceskers transport soil containing rare earth elements for export at a port in Lianyungang




Gabriel Crossley and Min Zhang
Sun, February 28, 2021

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's rare earths, a group of 17 minerals used in military equipment and consumer electronics, are being undersold due to "vicious competition" domestically and face low resource utilisation, the country's industry minister said on Monday.

Prices for some rare earths in China, such as praseodymium-neodymium (PrNd) - used in rare earth magnets - have spiked to multi-year highs this year amid strong demand from the electric vehicle sector.

However, prices for other rare earths mined simultaneously, such as cerium and lanthanum, used in catalysts for oil refining, remain depressed due to abundant supply.

"Our rare earths did not sell at the 'rare' price but sold at the 'earth' price... because of competitive bidding, which wasted the precious resource," Minister of Industry and Information Technology Xiao Yaqing said during a news briefing.

A heavy reliance on China, the world's top producer of rare earths, has led the United States to order a review of its supply chain for the minerals.

Shipments of rare earth magnets from China to the United States hit 585 tonnes in December, the highest since at least 2016, according to Chinese customs data. China's overall rare earth exports last year were the lowest since 2015 amid coronavirus-hit demand overseas.

China's industry ministry proposed in January tightening regulation of the rare earth sector, including a stipulation that importers and exporters abide by foreign trade and export control laws.

"Government should play a role in maintaining market order, loosen what can be loosened and control what should be controlled," said Xiao, who previously served as head of state-owned metals group Chinalco, the parent of one of China's biggest rare earth producers.

The minister said some companies were producing excessive amounts of rare earths, causing environmental issues and leading to low resource utilisation rates.

China raised its rare earth output quotas for the first half of 2021 to record levels.

Meanwhile, China lacks high-level rare earth products, Xiao said, adding the country "should learn from Japanese enterprises in this regard."

(Reporting by Gabriel Crossley; Writing by Se Young Lee and Min Zhang; additional reporting by Tom Daly; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Edmund Blair)

POSTMODERN RED SCARE 

Exclusive: Scientists at top British universities worked with Chinese nuclear weapons researchers

Juliet Samuel
Mon, March 1, 2021

Cambridge University (King's College Chapel) 

Top View - Getty Images

Scientists at Britain’s leading universities – including Cambridge, Edinburgh and Manchester – have worked on a string of projects with researchers at China’s nuclear weapons research institution, The Telegraph can reveal.

The Telegraph found that British academics have published dozens of papers alongside scientists employed by a Chinese institution that is on a US sanctions list due to its research into developing Beijing’s nuclear arsenal.

Several also appear to have worked for the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP) at the same time as holding posts at British universities.

The joint UK-China projects show how taxpayers could be inadvertently funding research at China’s nuclear weapons programme through science funding grants and use of Britain’s cutting edge government-funded science facilities, including the UK’s national supercomputer, ARCHER, and a £260 million particle accelerator called Diamond Light Source.

The revelations have been described as a “national scandal” and prompted calls for urgent Government and university action to crack down on risky partnerships.

Tom Tugendhat, chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, described the links as “extraordinary”, adding: “Some universities’ apparent lack of curiosity about their partners leaves them exposed to accusations of collusion with hostile states, violating human rights, and undermining the security of the UK.

“Clearly they need to realise their responsibility but the Government also has an essential role in making sure they’re aware of the consequences arising from these partnerships.”

The Security Services have repeatedly raised concerns over relationships between UK universities and China and almost 200 British academics are understood to be under investigation for unwittingly helping the Chinese build weapons of mass destruction.

National security

In response to the findings, a Government spokesman said that they “will not accept collaborations which compromise our national security and… continue to work with the sector to identify and mitigate the risks of interference".

In total, The Telegraph found that scientists at 33 UK universities, including 18 in the prestigious Russell Group including Queen Mary University London (QMUL) and Liverpool, have conducted research in cooperation with CAEP or its subsidiaries.

The institutions are supervised by China’s Central Military Council and are on US sanctions lists because they have been tasked with developing Beijing’s nuclear weapons programmes and with finding new ways to put science to military use.

United Kingdom, Architect Liverpool, University Of Liverpool, Faculty Of Engineering, Dramatic Exterior Shot Of The Building Lit Up In Green Neon Light. (Photo by View Pictures/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) - Getty Images

Senior British scientists, including former Cambridge Professor Simon Redfern and Dr Gilberto Teobaldi, a group leader at a Government-run laboratory, have been simultaneously affiliated with both UK institutions and a subsidiary of CAEP. Both have received taxpayer funding for their work.

Edinburgh, QMUL and Cambridge researchers have all had links to a “shock wave and detonation physics” defence laboratory at CAEP.

All the universities involved have insisted that the research was compliant with the Government's legislation, regulations and guidance and their partnerships were subject to stringent checks on security, ethics governance, and intellectual property protection. None of the research had any military use, they said in statements.

China's Silicon Valley

As a line on a CV, it sounds straightforward enough: the Beijing Computational Science Research Center (CSRC).

Housed in a glass, oval building in Z Park, known as 'China’s Silicon Valley', the centre has its own gym and lecture halls, houses part of a major supercomputer, and boasts of its many foreign university partnerships.

It is easy to see why Gilberto Teobaldi might happily take up an offer to become an “associate member”.

But this shiny office is more than a hub for computer geeks. It is in fact run by China’s sole developer of nuclear weapons, CAEP, an institution tasked with advanced weapons research and supervised by China’s Central Military Council.

Beijing Computational Science Research Center - CSRC, - News Scans

The centre tends not to play up its military links in its recruitment of foreign scientists.

Dr Teobaldi became an “associate member” in 2016. Since then, he has worked with its scientists and published at least seven scientific papers listing him as one of its researchers while also being employed by Liverpool University. In 2018, he also became a “group leader” in a British government laboratory.

'An extremely bad idea to cooperate'

Research by The Telegraph reveals that Dr Teobaldi is just one of many UK scientists who have forged links with China’s nuclear weapons laboratory. Scientists working at the CAEP and its subsidiaries have published dozens of papers with British scientists, many of which make use of British government grants or facilities.

The UK scientists involved in these projects argue that they are purely focused on basic science or its civilian applications, but others argue the line is not always so clear cut.

“These things are inextricably intertwined and extremely hard to disentangle,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert at the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury College in the US.

Charles Parton, a former Foreign Office official and China expert, said: “It is an extremely bad idea to cooperate with an institute that develops nuclear weapons.”

The work done by Dr Teobaldi’s group at the UK Government-run Rutherford Appleton Laboratory includes research on nuclear and solar energy. As a senior UK scientist, Dr Teobaldi’s work has benefited from taxpayer-funded grants totalling more than £600,000 and his papers have made repeated use of the ARCHER supercomputer.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council, which runs the lab, say that they “support international collaborations that are legitimate, lawful and responsible, and operate within the framework set out by government”.

The research “relates to fundamental science using theoretical models to find sustainable materials for civil applications”, a spokesman said, adding that Dr Teobaldi was not involved in the work on nuclear energy carried out by a member of his team.

Dr Teobaldi is listed as affiliated with the CSRC on several papers published in 2020, but the STFC say his links with the centre ended in late 2018, just months after he joined the UK lab.

Liverpool University, where Dr Teobaldi is now an honorary research fellow, says it has “a robust set of policies and procedures in place in relation to due diligence, ethics governance, and IP protection”.

'Thousand talents' linked to IP theft

Another senior UK scientist with links to the CAEP is Prof Simon Redfern, formerly head of the Earth Science department at Cambridge University, and now working in Singapore. Prof Redfern studies how minerals behave in extreme environments such as volcanoes and, as a hobby, monitors earthquakes on his phone.

His work has benefited from substantial government funding and in 2016, he shared a sneaky selfie while inside the British Diamond Light Source. In the same year, while serving on two UK government science bodies, Prof Redfern took up a role as a visiting professor at a subsidiary of the CAEP known as “HPSTAR”.

HPSTAR was set up in 2014 to recruit foreign talent and since joining, Prof Redfern has published 15 papers with its scientists. He has also accepted an award from China’s “Thousand Talents” plan, a Chinese programme that has been linked to intellectual property theft in other countries, whose participants are restricted from US federal funding.

HPSTAR, like its parent institution, is named on a US sanctions list because of the risk of its research aiding the Chinese military.

Meanwhile, Cambridge has itself hosted at least three researchers from the CAEP since 2014, including one scholar from the CAEP defence laboratory on “shock wave and detonation physics”. The latest is listed on papers as being simultaneously affiliated with HPSTAR.

The visiting academics would have had their visas checked by the Home Office.

Cambridge University said: “We would welcome greater support from government to navigate an evolving geopolitical landscape that seeks to balance trade relations with national security considerations.

'Major national scandal'

The links raise urgent questions about whether the UK’s regime for regulating research partnerships and visiting scholars is fit for purpose. Prof Lewis at Middlebury argues Western scientists should be able to work even with an institution like the CAEP if the project is not directly related to defence.

However, despite some recent updates to UK guidelines, there are widespread concerns that the vetting system is far behind that of the US. “If you’ve got all the systems in place... you might be in a position to say, in this particular case it’s acceptable to cooperate,” said Mr Parton. But for the UK regime, he added, “there is a long way to go”.

Radomir Tylecote, co-author of a report on Sino-British research links for Civitas, called The Telegraph’s findings “a major national scandal” and said the Government should urgently introduce a US-style “entity list” of sanctioned foreign organisations.

Manchester University, which has previously run joint laboratories with two Chinese defence conglomerates, also appears to have extensive links with the CAEP.

Its researchers have published 14 papers in collaboration with CAEP scientists since 2015, many of them involving senior Manchester professor Qingming Li. Prof Li studies explosions and projectiles, authoring papers that analyse in detail the way concrete cracks under impact, and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Defence Technology.

While holding a senior role at Manchester and working on UK-government-funded projects, he is also an “adjunct professor” at a known defence laboratory on “explosion science and technology” at Beijing Institute of Technology.

A Manchester University spokesman said that they have strict policies in place to ensure research is not used beyond its intended purpose and said it operated in accordance with government guidelines.

THE FAILURE OF CELIBACY

Head of French church child abuse probe says possibly 10,000 victims

Issued on: 02/03/2021 - 

Allegations against priests and senior Catholic figures have

 lead to pay-outs and prosecutions worldwide 

ERIC CABANIS AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

The head of an independent enquiry investigating church child abuse in France said Tuesday that there might have been at least 10,000 victims since 1950.

Jean-Marc Sauve, head of a commission set up by the Catholic Church, said that a previous estimate in June last year of 3,000 victims "is certainly an underestimate."

"It's possible that the figure is at least 10,000," he added at a press conference where he delivered an update on the commission's work.

A hotline set up in June 2019 for victims and witnesses to report abuse received 6,500 calls in the first 17 months of operation.

"The big question for us is 'how many victims came forward'? Is it 25 percent? 10 percent, five percent or less?" Sauve told reporters.

The Bishops' Conference of France agreed in November 2018 to set up the commission after huge and repeated child abuse scandals shook the Catholic Church at home and abroad.

The move sparked mixed reactions from victims' associations at the time, who applauded attempts to encourage survivors to speak out, but questioned French prosecutors' willingness and ability to press charges.

Reacting to the new estimate on Tuesday, several victims' associations said they suspected that even 10,000 was an underestimate.

"It's the tip of the iceberg, it's certainly even more," said Veronique Garnier from the group Faith and Resilience.

"10,000 is a lot but it's the bottom of the scale. We're far from the truth," said Jean-Pierre Sautreau, who heads a victims' group in the Vendee region in western France.

- Final report -

The commission, comprised of more than 20 figures drawn from legal, academic and medical backgrounds, was originally scheduled to deliver a final report by the end of 2020 but has set a new deadline of September this year.

Sauve said the final report would present "broad conclusions" which would seek to answer the question of "how we got here, beyond the failings and individual crimes of priests and religious figures."

Allegations against priests and senior Catholic figures have lead to pay-outs and prosecutions worldwide, as well as changes to church doctrine.

In 2019, a French court gave the archbishop of Lyon, Philippe Barbarin, a six-month suspended jail sentence for covering up for a priest, Bernard Preynat, who was accused of assaulting around 70 scouts between 1986 and 1991.

Barbarin's conviction was overturned on appeal in 2020, but the Pope accepted his resignation.

Preyant was given a five-year jail term in 2020.

In May 2019, Pope Francis passed a landmark new measure obliging anyone in the Church who knew about sex abuse to report it to their superiors.

© 2021 AFP

Social tipping points: slouching toward climate salvation

Issued on: 02/03/2021 - 

Across all sectors -– energy, industry, geopolitics, finance,

 public opinion –- accelerating change has experts wondering 

whether the world is, at long last, turning the corner on climate 

Ina FASSBENDER AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

The world appears to have finally woken up to the existential threat of global warming, and the drive to fix the problem is accelerating across the board.

The planet's biggest carbon polluters –- China, US, EU -– vow carbon neutrality by mid-century; solar and wind power continued to surge even as global GDP shrank five percent last year; two-thirds of humanity see a "climate emergency"; a top-five automaker says it will only make zero-emissions vehicles after 2035; major investors recoil from coal, while fossil fuels companies shrivel in value.

Climate action cheerleaders are past masters at stringing together whatever signs of progress are at hand to conjure a glass half full, so good news laundry lists must be viewed skeptically.

There are arguably just as many reasons for pessimism.

Last week UN chief Antonio Guterres noted that -- net-zero promises notwithstanding -- "governments are nowhere close to the level of ambition needed to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius and meet the goals of the Paris Agreement."

The 2015 treaty calls for capping global warming at "well below" 2C compared to preindustrial levels, and the world is currently on track for double that.

On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency reported that global CO2 emissions have returned to pre-pandemic levels, and then some.

But in all sectors -– energy, industry, geopolitics, finance, public opinion –- a flurry of activity has experts wondering whether the world is, at long last, turning the corner on climate.

"Is the pendulum swinging hard in the right direction? Absolutely," said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at New York University.

"In the US, it's Washington, it's Detroit, it's Silicon Valley, it's Wall Street," he added. "They didn't wait for one another, it is all happening at the same time."

The term for this sunny scenario is "social tipping point", defined as a threshold leading irreversibly to a new state or paradigm, whether it be a shift to meat-free diets or -- the ultimate goal -- a global carbon-neutral economy.

Or electric vehicles.

A decade ago, EVs barely registered in terms of market share, and a rapid phase out of the internal combustion engine seemed chimerical. Today, the EV revolution is well underway and, by most accounts, unstoppable.

- Locking in tipping points -

Leading the charge is Norway, where electric vehicles accounted for 54 percent of new car sales last year -- three-quarters if plug-in hybrids are included in the tally.

The only other country in double digits is Iceland, and globally the EV market share in 2020 was less then five percent.

"A global tipping point will come when EVs cost the same to manufacture as conventional cars," said Tim Lenton, an Earth system scientist at the University of Exeter and lead author of recent research that takes Norway's EV saga as a tipping points case study.

Rapid uptake is also helped by an about-face in consumer attitudes from wariness to wanting what others have, an example of "social contagion".

By itself, Norway will never move the dial on global carbon emissions. But its pathbreaking example -- including a ban on new carbon polluting cars after 2025 -- has an outside influence and adds to gathering global momentum, Lenton and others say.

Britain and California will only allow the sale of emissions free vehicles from 2035, while China -- already the largest EV market in the world -- has said it will ban petrol- and diesel-fuelled cars from that date.

Industry has its leaders too.

Last month GM, the world's fourth biggest carmaker, announced it would only sell emissions-free vehicles starting in 2035.

The soaring share value of EV pure player Tesla has recently made it's CEO Elon Musk the richest person in the world.

"To see it coming both from the government side, and from major auto companies, this really signals that change is coming," send Lenton.

Sometimes a "critical minority" is enough to lock in a tipping point, which can occur before its broader impact is visible.

- Slavery and fossil fuels -

Grassroots pressure on fund managers and their clients to unload fossil fuel stocks is a text-book example, Ilona Otto, head of the social complexity and system transformation research group at the University of Graz's Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, told AFP.

"In the beginning it does matter why they do it, but later it matters less," said Otto, lead author of a study on the social tipping dynamics needed to stabilise Earth's climate by 2050.

"Simulations show that if about nine percent of investors divest, the rest will follow suit because they will be afraid of being left behind and losing money."

The climate divestment movement, intertwined with social justice goals, can be compared to the drive to abolish slavery in late 18th and early 19th century, she said.

Both involved deeply rooted economic systems that actively resisted change. In the case of chattel slavery, a long unchallenged system came unravelled quickly and was soon seen as morally indefensible.

"We will get to a point where it will seem as unthinkable to use fossil fuel energy as it is to have slaves," Otto said.

Meanwhile, the grassroots global climate movement that surged onto the world stage in 2019 -- led, in part, by a then 16-year Greta Thunberg of Sweden -- is still gaining momentum, even if a raging pandemic has obscured its scope.

"Concern about the climate emergency is far more widespread than we knew before," Stephen Fisher, a sociologist at Oxford who helped design a survey of 1.2 million people across 50 countries, told AFP.

"And the large majority of those who do recognise a climate emergency want urgent and comprehensive action."

Beyond morality, there comes a point in major social transitions when rejecting the status quo and adopting new norms becomes the most rational option economically.

"Even in red (Republican) states, solar panels are popular," noted James Williams, a professor at the University of San Francisco and lead author of a recent study outlining plausible pathways for US carbon neutrality by 2050.

Not long ago, the Chinese government viewed the concept of carbon neutrality as an economic burden, Pan Jiahua, the director of the Institute of Eco-civilisation Studies at Beijing University of Technology, told the Atlantic Council last month.

Today, however, "we have a consensus that it's an opportunity for employment, growth, and the transformation of society."

Part of this expanding consensus recognises that powering the world economy with fossil fuels is no longer compatible with civilisation as we know it.

- A race we can't afford to lose -

But that hard truth clashes with another: coal, oil and gas still account for nearly 85 percent of global energy supply, and are subsidised to the tune of half-a-trillion dollars every year, both for consumers and producers, according to the OECD.

How that tension will be played out -- and how quickly -- remains to be seen, but there can be no doubt that fossil fuel companies are feeling the heat.

"The cyclical shock of Covid has brought forward a structural peak in emissions, which was going to happen anyway," Kingsmill Bond, senior energy analyst at financial think tank Carbon Tracker, told AFP.

"Before the crisis, renewables had almost reached a tipping point and now, in future, all growth in demand for energy can be satisfied with renewable sources," said Bond, a former sell-side equity analyst at major banks.

"As soon as this happens, you by definition get peak fossil fuel demand, and therefore peak emissions," he added, raising the possibility that 2019 -- the last year unaffected by the Covid crisis -- may be that peak.

Ultimately, the separate strands of climate action must coalesce into a greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts whole.

"A synergy is needed for large-scale change to unfold," said Jonathan Donges, co-leader of the FutureLab of Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Social tipping points have an evil twin in the climate system, where Lenton and other Earth system scientists have identified 15 temperature trip wires for irreversible and potentially catastrophic change.

A world that has warmed two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels could push the melting of icesheets atop Greenland and West Antarctic -- with enough frozen water to lift oceans 13 metres -- past a point of no return.

Other tipping points could see the Amazon basin turn from tropical forest to savannah; billions of tonnes of carbon leech from Siberia's permafrost; the disappearance of the polar ice cap in summer.

Taken together, these changes could punch a one-way ticket to what scientists call "hothouse Earth", a profoundly inhospitable state the planet has not known for tens of millions of years.

"But of course there's a fundamental difference between ice sheets and social systems," said Lenton. "We have the foresight to change our course of action."

In a very real sense, then, humanity is in a race it cannot afford to lose.

"If we want to avoid the bad tipping points, we need to trigger the good, or social tipping points," Lenton added.

"We have left it too late to tackle climate change incrementally."

© 2021 AFP

Dr. Seuss pulls six books over racist imagery

SCHOOL LIBRARIANS DO THIS ALL THE TIME 

IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE THE NEWS

Issued on: 02/03/2021 - 

Dr. Seuss books on display in a bookshop in Florida in 2015

 JOE RAEDLE GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP

New York (AFP)

They are beloved by generations of early readers for their wacky rhyming tales and mischievous plotlines, but six Dr. Seuss books are being pulled because of imagery now considered racist.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises -- the publisher of the bestselling children's books -- announced Tuesday that it is taking the six titles, which include "If I Ran the Zoo" and "The Cat's Quizzer," out of print.

The move comes as criticism grows in the United States over the way minority communities have been portrayed in many of his books.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises said it had made the decision after carrying out a review of its collection last year with the help of experts, including teachers.

"These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong," the company said in a statement.

The other titles being consigned to history are "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," "McElligot's Pool," "On Beyond Zebra!" and "Scrambled Eggs Super!"

"Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises's catalog represents and supports all communities and families," the statement added.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises made the announcement on what would have been the birthday of the famous children's book author.

Seuss, born Theodor Seuss Geisel in Massachusetts in 1904, published more than 60 books during his lifetime, including some of the most popular children's books of all time.

His most famous works include "The Cat in the Hat," "Green Eggs and Ham" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."

Seuss's books have sold more than 650 million copies and have been translated into dozens of languages.

However, his books are being reevaluated over their portrayal of Black and Asian people.

A 2019 study published in the "Research on Diversity in Youth Literature" journal studied 50 of his books.

The report concluded that 43 of the 45 characters of color had characteristics aligning with the definition of Orientalism.

The two Black characters in the books were identified as "African" and both "align with the theme of anti-Blackness," the study said.

Stereotypical characters portrayed as "Arabian" appear in "If I Ran the Zoo," "On Beyond Zebra!" and "Scrambled Eggs Super!"

"The Cat's Quizzer" also features "Arabian" figures as well as a character portrayed as "a Japanese."

"And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," features a "Chinese boy" with a rice bowl and chopsticks.

The study also noted that Seuss published anti-Black and anti-Semitic cartoons in a magazine in the 1920s as well as racist anti-Japanese propaganda during World War II.

On Saturday, a school district in Virginia suggested it was moving away from Dr. Seuss books while not banning them completely.

"Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr. Seuss," Loudoun County Public Schools said.

In 2017, a school librarian in Cambridge Massachusetts said she would not accept a gift of ten Dr. Seuss books from then first lady Melania Trump because many of his books were "steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes."

© 2021 AFP

French music icon Serge Gainsbourg’s legacy continues to inspire

Issued on: 02/03/2021 - 17:40

French songwriter and performer Serge Gainsbourg died on

 March 2, 1991 in Paris. © France 24 screengrab

Text by:Philippe THEISE

French pop artist Serge Gainsbourg died thirty years ago Tuesday after a career that redefined the boundaries of pop songcraft and challenged conventional mores.

Born in Paris to Russian émigrés in 1928, Gainsbourg released his first album, Du chant à la une!... in 1958. He achieved international renown with the 1969 long-player Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg, which included the sultry hit Je t’aime, moi non plus, and 1971’s Histoire de Melody Nelson, a concept album with orchestral elements.

Gainsbourg’s romantic life imbued his music and helped make him a front-page artist. The title of a 1968 album, Initials B.B., refers to French actress Brigitte Bardot, who sang the chorus on its ode to the US outlaw characters “Bonnie and Clyde”. Gainsbourg and the English actress and singer Birkin were together for more than 10 years; their daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg is a musical artist and actress in her own right.

Challenging traditional values and mores also became an essential part of Serge Gainsbourg’s art. He recorded a reggae version of France’s national anthem, La Marseillaise, in 1979 that angered soldiers, and duetted with Charlotte on the 1984 track Lemon Incest about “the love we will never make together”.

Click on the video to watch the full FRANCE 24 report.