How flowers show climate change impacts as Spring 2023 arrives 'earlier than we’ve ever seen' in some places

Dinah Voyles Pulver, USA TODAY
Thu, March 9, 2023 

Daffodils, violets and other flowers are arriving early in many gardens and fields this spring, unfurling lovely colors and shedding light on how plants are adapting to climate change.

Observers are reporting very early leaf outs of the common lilac in Pennsylvania, the brilliant yellow blossoms of forsythia in Maine and American witch hazel in New York, said Theresa Crimmins, director of the USA National Phenology Network at the University of Arizona.

Ecologist Matt Austin examined more than 140 years of pressed flowers and plants in the Missouri Botanical Garden collection to track how violets changed over time. He found the flowers — widely known as one of the first harbingers of spring — are responding to both increased rainfall and warmer temperatures.

Recent studies in China, Canada and the Himalayas also show earlier starts to spring seasons.

Daffodils peek through the snow in Vermont in early March 2023.

When is spring? Flower blooms come early this year

Spring officially starts March 20, 2023, although meteorologists define spring as March, April, and May. However, signs of spring like flower blooms and warmer weather can show up even earlier — and this year they did.

Spring is early across much of the United States, Crimmins said, “but it’s arriving in certain locations earlier than we’ve ever seen it arrive in the 40 years that we have data where we’re tracking things.”

The Network's Nature’s Notebook program gathers information from observers across the nation, who have helped amass more than 30 million records since 2009, Crimmins said.

"This year, a really mild winter has been followed by persistent warm temperatures," she said. "The earlier springs really stand out in places like New York City.”

These early blooming and budding plants and trees cause allergies earlier in the year and are disrupting years of synchronicity between pollinators and plants that need them for reproduction, she said.

DEFINITIONS: Is climate change the same thing as global warming? Definitions explained.

CLIMATE CHANGE CAUSES: Why scientists say humans are to blame

What does historical data say?

One historical data set from New York state in the 1800s compared with modern records revealed how plants are changing there statewide.

Researchers found a majority of the species in that historical data are flowering and leafing out earlier, according to a 2022 paper Crimmins helped co-author with Kerissa Fuccillo Battle of the Community Greenways Collaborative and others. Plants flowered an average of 10.5 days earlier and leafed out 19 days earlier than in the 1800s data.

GRAPHICS: Spring arrives weeks early, bringing sniffling and sneezing to allergy sufferers

Here's why scientists say the plants are changing:

The New York study found leafing and blooming associated with a warming trend in mean January-to-April average temperatures.

January was the warmest on record for seven states in the Northeast, and among the top 10 warmest for 20 others states, federal officials said.

In February, temperatures at 192 reporting stations in the nation averaged 3.5 degrees above normal, according to federal data provided by Climate Central.

Last year was one of the warmest years on record in the U.S. and around the globe.

A common blue violet, Viola sororia, blooms in Missouri. The plants produce showier blossoms than they used to, in part because climate change is bringing more rainfall.

Why are violets blooming earlier?

Records show warmer temperatures are bringing more rain in the eastern half of the United States.

Common blue violets are making the most of that, producing showier blooms, said Austin, an ecologist at Washington University in St. Louis and the botanical garden.

Common blue violets are a great research subject, Austin said, because they use two different kinds of reproduction: cross pollination — where they produce wide open, showy blooms that rely on pollinators to transfer their pollen between plants — and self pollination — with smaller flowers that remain in a bud-like stage tucked near the base of the plant.

CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS: What are the effects of climate change? How they disrupt our daily life, fuel disasters.

To learn more about how violets were changing, he looked at herbarium records of violets in Missouri that contained an entire dried plant, from the roots up, dating back to 1875.

He found violets today producing more of the open, showy flowers compared to smaller self-pollinating flowers. Comparing plant records and annual rainfall and temperature, he concluded the increase in showier blooms is linked to increased rainfall, with an interacting effect of temperature.

A Racemosum Mountain rhododendron is shown on Yulong Mountain in China, where Robbie Hart, an ethnobotanist with the Missouri Botanical Garden, did field work to examine the impacts of the changing climate on plants and the people who rely on them.

Plants moving higher

Robbie Hart, an ethnobotanist at the Missouri Botanical Garden works with a team that studies plants in parts of the Himalayas, where plants are creeping toward higher elevations.

"If climate change warms the entire mountain, it’s shifting elevational ranges upward for many plants, which means the highest elevation plants may not have anywhere to go because there’s no more mountain at the top," Hart said. Some plants bloom earlier, others bloom later.

Such changes affect the lives of Indigenous people in mountainous regions around the world, who rely on plants for their livelihoods, medicinal herbs, food and incense, he said. “When climate change affects (the plants), it's affecting people through the entire landscape."

He and other researchers want to learn more about the cues that trigger a plant to unfurl petals, open a leaf or germinate a seed.

As Hart studied rhododendrons, he learned they create a flower in a little closed bud the year before, then hold on to it, waiting to accumulate a certain period of cool temperatures before flowering the next spring.

Some mechanism keeps the buds closed until it’s really springtime, he said. When that cue is missed, rather than flowering early in a warmer year, it flowers later.

Rhododendron racemosum decorating a spring sacred to the Naxi Indigenous Himalayan people of Southwestern China during a springtime festival.

Dig deeper:

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Uncertain future: Climate change affecting Northeast maple trees, maple syrup season


Flower and fruit festivals: As climate change disrupts historic weather patterns, festivals forced to adapt

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Early spring 2023: Flower blooms show climate change impact

Business backlash pushing GOP to weaken anti-ESG proposals

Eric Stafford, a veteran lobbyist for the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, watches a Kansas Senate committee hearing on a bill aimed at preventing state funds from being invested using environmental, social or governance principles, Tuesday, March 7, 2023, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. The chamber opposed the toughest version of the bill and became neutral when Republican lawmakers made it milder, but Stafford is still telling lawmakers that it violates free market principles. 

(AP Photo/John Hanna)

JOHN HANNA and TOM DAVIES
Thu, March 9, 2023

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Conservative Republicans who want to thwart socially and environmentally conscious investing are now being pushed to water down their proposals after backlash from powerful business groups and fears that state pension systems could see huge losses.

In both Kansas and Indiana, where the GOP has legislative supermajorities, bankers associations and state chambers of commerce criticized the strongest versions of anti-ESG legislation currently under consideration as anti-free market.

In Kansas, their opposition prompted a Senate committee's chair to drop the toughest version of its bill — applying anti-ESG rules to firms handling private investments — before hearings began this week. The Kansas committee was slated to vote Thursday but could postpone action on a milder version of an anti-ESG bill after the head of the state pension system for teachers and government workers warned that it could see $3.6 billion in losses over 10 years if the bill were passed.

And last month, legislative researchers in Indiana reported that its pension system expected the first version of a House bill to cost the system $6.7 billion over 10 years, prompting lawmakers to rewrite it before the chamber passed it.

ESG stands for environmental, social and governance and those factors' increased use in investing in recent years inspired GOP attempts to thwart it. Now, those efforts are riling groups long allied with Republicans in backing less government regulation.

"This is the underlying political nature of this,” said Bryan McGannon, acting CEO and managing director for US SIF: The Forum for Responsible and Sustainable Investment. “They really aren’t thinking about the consequences of the kind of the real world impacts of what this means in the financial system.”

About one-eighth of U.S. assets being professionally managed, or $8.4 trillion, are being managed in line with ESG principles, according a report in December from US SIF, which promotes sustainable investing.

At least seven states, including Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia, have enacted anti-ESG laws in the past two years. GOP Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Gianforte of Montana also have moved to ensure their states' funds aren't invested using ESG principles.

Critics of ESG contend that using investments to move the U.S. away from fossil fuels, address gun violence or protect abortion rights sacrifices earnings for investors and undercuts the finances of public pensions.

“The agent who is representing or investing on behalf of the principal has a fiduciary duty to put the principal’s interest over the agent’s interest,” Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a conservative Republican, told the state Senate committee this week. “That principle is such a such a core of American law.”

Anti-ESG efforts also draw support from companies and industries that feel under attack, such as oil and natural gas producers. During an Indiana House committee hearing last month, lawmakers heard a litany of complaints from businesses, including those in coal mining and firearms production, about difficulties they blame on corporate ESG policies.

“This is, again, a social agenda chasing something that they shouldn't be chasing,” Kansas Senate committee Chair Mike Thompson, a Kansas City-area Republican who labels ESG investments as “potentially dangerous.”

Public pension funds are caught in the debate as big institutional investors: The Kansas system has $25 billion in assets and Indiana's has $45 billion. NASRA, the association representing U.S. state pension fund administrators, opposes any move — including on either side of the ESG debate — away from making the security of pension fund assets "the paramount goal.”

In Kansas, Thompson scrambled Wednesday to set up behind-the-scenes talks to address the state pension system's concerns.

Its executive director, Alan Conroy, testified that Kansas lawmakers' current proposals are so broad that the state pension system couldn't hire or retain an investment manager who did “anything in that ESG world." The pension system would have to fire them all, hire new ones and likely settle for lower investment returns, he said.

Similar concerns played out in Indiana, but the pension system there backed off its figure for estimated losses after House members revised their bill.

Supporters say ESG isn't about boycotting certain industries or companies but of doing a better job assessing future risks, such as costs from major accidents or pollution, or a diminishing local water supply. They argue that considering such factors is part of an investment manager's obligation to get the best returns possible.

“The free market is trying to create a better risk-assessment framework, more comprehensive,” said Zack Pistora, a Sierra Club lobbyist in Kansas.

In Kansas, the bankers and credit union association and the state Chamber of Commerce went from opposing the tougher version of the anti-ESG legislation to being neutral on all or most of its milder cousin. In Indiana, the state chamber endorsed the more limited version.

Eric Stafford, a veteran Kansas Chamber of Commerce lobbyist, said free markets will make corrections if ESG investing provides lesser returns. And Alex Orel, a lobbyist for the Kansas Bankers Association, worried about a political "pendulum.”

He said: “You swing too far to the right, you swing back and it hits you right in the face.”

___

Davies reported from Indianapolis.

 

Kansas state Sen. Mike Thompson, R-Shawnee, confers with Jason Long, an attorney on the Kansas Legislature's bill drafting staff before a meeting of the Senate committee Thompson chairs, Tuesday, March 7, 2023, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Thompson is leading an effort to prevent the state from investing its funds using environmental, social or governance principles. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

Alan Conroy, executive director of the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System, testifies before a Kansas House committee about a bill that would prevent the pension system from doing socially conscious ESG investing, Wednesday, March 8, 2023, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Conroy says proposals before the Legislature would force KPERS to fire all of its investment managers and hire new ones and create $3.6 billion in losses over 10 years. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

 

Kansas state Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, D-Wichita, asks a question during a Kansas Senate committee hearing on a bill aimed at preventing state funds from being invested using ESG principles, Wednesday, March 8, 2023, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

   

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach follows a Kansas Senate committee hearing on a proposal to prevent the state from investing funds using ESG principles, Tuesday, March 7, 2023, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. ESG stands for environmental, social and governance, and conservative Republicans like Kobach are trying to block it across the U.S. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

No one believed the Covid Wuhan lab leak theory – then the world changed its tune

Sarah Knapton
Wed, March 8, 2023



When Covid-19 first emerged in Wuhan in December 2019, many pointed out that the outbreak was close to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Of all the cities in the world, a deadly coronavirus had popped up just eight miles from laboratories where scientists were importing and tinkering with deadly bat coronaviruses.

Even Wuhan scientists themselves were concerned. Dr Shi Zhengli, WIV virologist, told Scientific American that she remembered thinking if coronaviruses were behind the outbreak “could they have come from our lab?”

It should not have been so controversial. Laboratory leaks are fairly common, with smallpox, swine flu, anthrax, and foot and mouth disease all known to have escaped from facilities in recent decades.

In 2004, the Sars virus leaked from a high-containment research laboratory in Beijing at least three times, causing local outbreaks - so such a scenario was far from unprecedented.

Behind the scenes, international scientists were also worried. The virus had come out of nowhere, seemingly pre-adapted to infect humans, and no intermediary host could be found.

An email from Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, in February 2020 said that “a likely explanation” was that Covid had rapidly evolved from a Sars-like virus inside human tissue in a low-security laboratory.

The email, to Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Francis Collins, of the US National Institutes of Health, said that such evolution may have “accidentally created a virus primed for rapid transmission between humans”.

Sir Jeremy warned that research in Wuhan was like the “Wild West”, with experiments carried out at worrying biosecurity levels.

But Dr Collins, the former director of the US National Institutes of Health, argued that further debate on the subject could damage “international harmony”. The comment would come to typify why it has been so difficult to get to the bottom of the origins of Covid.

As Matt Hancock’s original biography drafts show, the world was terrified of upsetting China.

Over the next few months, scientists did what they could to steer investigations away from a laboratory leak, pushing journals to publish letters and papers that dismissed concerns as “conspiracy theories”.

Only in the US was the possibility being seriously considered, where Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, argued there was “enormous evidence” that the virus had leaked from Wuhan.

In May 2020, US intelligence discovered there had been an emergency shutdown at WIV in October 2019, coupled with a suspicious fall in mobile phone activity.

But the political gulf between the Trump administration and most scientists led to the allegations being disparaged as anti-Chinese racism.

When an investigation by the World Health Organisation concluded that the virus had most likely jumped from animals to humans in a zoonotic spillover event, the case seemed closed.

In fact, it was not until Mr Trump left office in January 2021 that the tide began to turn and slowly scientists put their heads above the parapet.

In a letter to the journal Science in May 2021, 18 of the world’s top epidemiologists and geneticists from institutions including Cambridge, Harvard and Stanford universities called for an independent inquiry into the origins of the pandemic.

By that time, a collective of virologists and hackers had also found evidence showing that Wuhan scientists had been tweaking bat coronaviruses to make them more deadly - and doing so with funding from the US government.

In 2010, WIV embarked on “gain of function experiments” to increase the infectiousness of Sars coronavirus in humans. By 2015, Wuhan scientists had created a highly infectious chimeric virus that targeted the human upper respiratory tract.

In 2018 and 2019, grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US showed that Dr Zhengli had applied to work on “virus infection experiments in humanised mice” using Sars coronaviruses - to find out what changes could lead to a spillover event into humans.

As Harvard scientist Alina Chan told MPs at the House of Commons science and technology select committee: “You find these scientists who said in early 2018: ‘I’m going to put horns on horses,’ and at the end of 2019 a unicorn turns up in Wuhan city.”

Freedom of Information requests also revealed that under the US-China Predict project, Wuhan researchers collected bat coronaviruses from China and south-east Asia. These were sent to various laboratories hundreds of miles away for “sequencing”, “archiving”, “analysis” and “manipulation”.

WIV had collected more than 220 Sars-related coronaviruses, at least 100 of which were never made public. Members of staff were also photographed wearing inadequate levels of personal protective equipment while handing bats.

But to date, Beijing has failed to disclose much of the work that was happening and removed a database of viral sequences shortly before the pandemic erupted.
Bombshell admission

By the summer of 2021, US intelligence had also discovered that three researchers at WIV had sought treatment at a hospital after falling ill in November 2019 - weeks before China told the world about Covid.

Then in August 2021, the head of the WHO’s pandemic origins investigation made the bombshell admission that he had been pressured into ruling out a laboratory leak to avoid arguments with China.

Dr Peter Embarek said it was actually a “likely hypothesis” that a laboratory employee could have picked up the virus while working in the field and brought it back to Wuhan.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, was forced to admit that a laboratory leak had been ruled out prematurely and set up a new inquiry to examine the origins of the pandemic.

More than 18 months on, that inquiry has gone nowhere, with members complaining they have been stonewalled by China. In response, Beijing claims the inquiries are politically motivated and has even suggested the pandemic may have begun in the US.

Last October, a US Senate committee concluded that the Covid-19 pandemic was “more likely than not” the result of a laboratory accident and told China it would need to prove otherwise.

And last week Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, said that the bureau believes Covid-19 most likely originated in a Chinese laboratory. A US energy department report released in February also came to the same conclusion.

A US House of Representatives sub-committee hearing on the pandemic origins opened on Wednesday in the latest attempt to get to the truth.

Yet China continues to dig in its heels and, without access to its laboratories and records, investigations are now at an impasse.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, believes that if any evidence existed, it has likely now been destroyed.

The political will to probe deeper also seems lacking outside of the GOP. If the Cabinet Office notes are to be believed, the British Government appears to view links to the Wuhan laboratory as entirely coincidental.

But with each passing day, a laboratory leak becomes more plausible. When scientists hunted for the source of the original Sars, a small team found it within six months.

It is now more than three years since the start of the pandemic and, despite an unprecedented search, no animal host for Covid-19 has ever been found. Perhaps because it never existed in the wild.

US aviation regulator boosting Boeing oversight

Family members attend as Boeing's Muilenburg testifies before Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing on grounded 737 MAX on Capitol Hill in Washington

Wed, March 8, 2023 
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is ramping up oversight of Boeing and plans to add nearly 300 employees to its safety office following two fatal 737 MAX crashes in recent years, the agency's acting head said on Wednesday.

Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen told the Senate Commerce Committee that the aviation safety office, which currently has 7,489 employees, plans to have 7,775 by the end of September. The committee held a hearing on FAA safety reforms that Congress directed in 2020 after the 737 MAX crashes killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019.

The FAA currently has 107 full-time staff members providing regulatory oversight on Boeing, up from 82 just a couple of years ago, Nolen said.


Additionally, he said the FAA has augmented its Boeing oversight team with the equivalent of 35 full-time employees from across the agency to support oversight activities.

Boeing declined to comment.

A 2020 House of Representatives report said the two fatal 737 MAX crashes "were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA."

Nolen told reporters the agency is continuing the review tow new versions of the MAX -- the MAX 7 and 737 10 -- for certification but declined to offer a timetable for when they might be approved. "Safety will dictate that timeline," Nolen said.

Nolen said he met with Boeing last month. "We've had a good level of responsiveness with Boeing," Nolen said. "They are committed to the process."

Boeing in 2021 agreed to pay $6.6 million in penalties after the FAA said it failed to comply with a 2015 safety agreement and cited other safety concerns.

The FAA has closely scrutinized Boeing's quality and other issues in recent years. The FAA continues to inspect each 737 MAX and 787 aircraft before an "airworthiness certificate is issued and cleared for delivery." Typically the FAA delegates airplane ticketing authority to the manufacturer.

During the hearing, Republican Senator J.D. Vance raised questions about two recent Boeing 737 MAX flights and asked whether the 737 MAX was actually safe after the FAA mandated safety and software updates before lifting a 20-month grounding in late 2020.

"I can say categorically that the 737 MAX airplane is safe," said Nolen.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Josie Kao)

Bank of Canada holds key rate steady, first major central bank to pause hikes

The Bank of Canada declined to hike its benchmark rate for the first time in a year

Alicja Siekierska
Wed, March 8, 2023 



Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said at a press conference in January that pausing rate hikes was “conditional on economic developments coming out in line with our forecasts.

The Bank of Canada hit pause on Wednesday for the first time in a year, opting to hold its benchmark interest rate at 4.5 per cent as it assesses the impact of its aggressive tightening cycle.

The highly anticipated move makes the Bank of Canada the first major central bank to pause interest rate hikes. It also follows through on the bank’s previous signal that it was ready to pause its current tightening cycle, one that included eight consecutive rate hikes in an effort to tame soaring inflation.

"Overall, the latest data remains in line with the Bank’s expectation that CPI inflation will come down to around 3 per cent in the middle of this year," the Bank of Canada said in a statement released alongside the rate decision.

"Governing Council will continue to assess economic developments and the impact of past interest rate increases, and is prepared to increase the policy rate further if needed to return inflation to the 2 per cent target."

Wednesday’s decision was expected by economists and markets, according to Bloomberg.

While the most recent Labour Force Survey showed the Canadian job market remains strong, GDP growth has stalled and inflation has decelerated from its June 2022 highs, falling to 5.9 per cent in January. The Bank noted that "the labour market remains very tight", but also said pressures in product and labour markets should ease amid weak economic growth for the next couple quarters.

"This should moderate wage growth and also increase competitive pressures, making it more difficult for businesses to pass on higher costs to consumers," the central bank said.

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said at a press conference in January that pausing rate hikes was “conditional on economic developments coming out in line with our forecasts.” The central bank reiterated that pledge to pause on Wednesday, saying it was conditional on economic developments evolving in line with its outlook.

"Clearly, the Bank wants to keep its options open if inflation doesn't go their way and/or if the job market continues to sizzle," BMO Capital Markets chief economist Douglas Porter wrote in a research note on Wednesday.

"The (Bank of Canada) will now be data dependent, and if the recent strong momentum persists, look for the tone to toughen in the coming weeks."

CIBC Economics managing director Avery Shenfeld said in a research note released on Wednesday that "the Bank of Canada needs a clearer picture on growth and inflation prospects to decide if it needs to hike again or more definitively set aside that prospect."

"With so little time since it initiated its conditional pause, it simply doesn't have enough data to provide that clarity," Shenfeld wrote.

On Tuesday, traders were pricing in 80 per cent change of another quarter percentage point hike at some point in 2023. That's due in part to a rebound in economic activity and a resurgence in inflationary pressures elsewhere, including the United States.

The pause by the Bank of Canada puts it on a diverging path from its U.S. counterpart. U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell told lawmakers this week that rates will likely have to go higher than previously anticipated.

"The Bank of Canada’s conditional commitment to keep rates on hold will place a magnifying glass on the divergence in monetary policy with the U.S. Federal Reserve," Desjardins managing director and head of macro strategy Royce Mendes wrote in a research note on Wednesday.

Still, he added that "given the sharp repricing in expectations over the past few weeks, the relatively neutral language in the statement is seeing markets marginally reduce bets for further rate increases."

With files from Bloomberg.

Alicja Siekierska is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow her on Twitter @alicjawithaj.


Bank of Canada and Fed head for historic divergence, in a blow to loonie


 Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaks at The Economic Club of Washington

Thu, March 9, 2023
By Fergal Smith

TORONTO (Reuters) - As the Bank of Canada pauses its interest rate hikes, investors are betting that the sensitivity of Canada's economy to higher borrowing costs will result in a historically large gap between the tightening campaigns of the BoC and the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Analysts have long argued that Canada's economy is more sensitive to interest rate hikes than the U.S. economy, pointing to the higher debt loads of Canadians after they participated in a red-hot housing market in recent years and the shorter Canadian mortgage cycle.

But now some major economic data has given substance to that view and supports the market's recent move to price in a wider gap between the end points for interest rate hikes in Canada and the United States, say analysts.

Canadian inflation slowed more than expected to 5.9% in January and gross domestic product was flat in the fourth quarter, held back by weakness in the interest rate-sensitive parts of the economy, including housing investment as well as business spending on machinery and equipment.

A lower expected peak for Canadian rates has pressured the Canadian dollar against its U.S. counterpart. The currency hit a four-month low on Wednesday at 1.3815, or 72.39 U.S. cents, after the BoC left its benchmark interest rate on hold at 4.50%, becoming the first major central bank to suspend its tightening campaign.

A weaker currency could drive up the cost of imported goods for Canadians, adding to inflation pressures.

"The Canadian economy is just far more sensitive to interest rates because of factors like the crazy amount of debt-to-income that we've got, because of our overheated housing market," said Jay Zhao-Murray, a market analyst at Monex Canada Inc. "The transmission channels of monetary policy are more effective in Canada than in the U.S."

Contrasting with the BoC, Fed Chair Jerome Powell delivered a message this week of higher and potentially faster rate hikes.

Money markets expect the BoC's policy rate to peak at about 4.75% this year, or roughly 90 basis points below the expected end point of the Fed.

Canadian rates have peaked below U.S. rates in the three major tightening cycles since the start of the millennium, with the gap ranging between 50 and 75 basis points.

"Poring over the national accounts, it's increasingly clear that interest-sensitive demand has wilted in Canada," Warren Lovely and Taylor Schleich, strategists at National Bank of Canada, said in a note after the recent GDP data.

Their work shows that interest rate-sensitive demand in Canada's economy was 26% of final domestic demand at the start of the current rate hike cycle, one of the highest shares on record, compared with 21% for the United States.

Still, there could be a limit to how much interest-rate divergence the BoC will allow, say analysts. Last October, Governor Tiff Macklem warned that the bank might tighten more aggressively in response to a weaker currency after the loonie hit a two-year low of 1.3977.

"If the spread diverges any further there is going to be further depreciation of the Canadian dollar and that will feed in to eventually inflation in this country," said Royce Mendes, head of macro strategy at Desjardins.

(Reporting by Fergal Smith in Toronto; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Malaysian ex-PM Muhyiddin arrested, faces graft charges

 Malaysian new Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin thumbs up during a press conference at prime minister's office in Putrajaya, Malaysia on March 9, 2020. Muhyiddin arrived Thursday, March 9, 2023 at the anti-graft agency office for a second time in a month over alleged corruption in the award of government projects under his rule. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian, File)

Thu, March 9, 2023

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia's former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin was arrested Thursday and will be brought to court to face corruption charges, the anti-graft agency said.

Muhyiddin, who led Malaysia from March 2020 until August 2021, will be the country's second leader to be indicted after leaving office. Ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak was hit with multiple graft charges after he lost in 2018 general elections and began a 12-year prison term in August after losing his final appeal in the first of several trials.

The anti-graft agency said Muhyiddin, 75, will face several charges Friday related to alleged abuse and money laundering linked to government projects awarded under his 17-month rule. It said Muhyiddin was detained shortly after he arrived at the agency for the second time in three weeks to answer questions about an economic stimulus program for ethnic Malay contractors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who took power after November's general elections, had ordered a review of government projects approved by past administrations that allegedly did not follow the rules. He has denied the case against Muhyiddin was politically motivated, telling local media the investigation was independently carried out by the anti-graft agency.


“If you said all cases are politically motivated, then how are we going to arrest people for big corruption cases?” Anwar was cited as saying by the Malay Mail, an online news portal.

Two senior leaders from Muhyiddin's Bersatu party were also recently charged with graft. The anti-graft agency froze Bersatu's bank accounts amid investigations into alleged illegal proceedings.

Muhyiddin, who leads a strong Islamic-dominated opposition, has denied any wrongdoing and accused Anwar's government of trying to crush the opposition ahead of state elections.

Earlier Thursday, a large crowd of supporters gathered outside the anti-graft agency building, chanting “Fight! Fight!” and “Allahu Akbar (God is great)” amid speculation that Muhyiddin would be arrested and charged.

Bersatu leaders accused Anwar’s government of political persecution to tarnish the opposition. Muhyiddin, 75, got out of his car and prayed with his supporters before entering the building.

Anwar and Muhyiddin battled for the premiership after November general elections produced a hung parliament. The country’s king later appointed Anwar as prime minister after he formed a unity government with several smaller parties. Anwar's strength will be put to test in elections in six states in the coming months.

The coming EV batteries will sweep away fossil fuel transport, with or without net zero

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Tue, March 7, 2023 

New electric car batteries could lengthen ranges to a thousand miles or more

 - Michaela Handrek-Rehle/Bloomberg

The Argonne National Laboratory in the US has essentially cracked the battery technology for electric vehicles, discovering a way to raise the future driving range of standard EVs to a thousand miles or more. It promises to do so cheaply without exhausting the global supply of critical minerals in the process.

The joint project with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) has achieved a radical jump in the energy density of battery cells. The typical lithium-ion battery used in the car industry today stores about 200 watt-hours per kilo (Wh/kg). Their lab experiment has already reached 675 Wh/kg with a lithium-air variant.

This is a high enough density to power trucks, trains, and arguably mid-haul aircraft, long thought to be beyond the reach of electrification. The team believes it can reach 1,200 Wh/kg. If so, almost all global transport can be decarbonised more easily than we thought, and probably at a negative net cost compared to continuation of the hydrocarbon status quo.

The Argonne Laboratory in Chicago is not alone in pushing the boundaries of energy storage and EV technology. The specialist press reports eye-watering breakthroughs almost every month. America, Europe, China and Japan are all in a feverish global race for battery dominance – or survival – and hedge funds are swarming over the field.

I highlight this paper because US national labs have AAA credibility. The study is peer-reviewed and has just appeared in the research journal Science. Their solid-state battery has achieved the highest energy density yet seen anywhere in the world. And sometimes you have to pick on one to tell a larger story.

The science paper says the process can “theoretically deliver an energy density that is comparable to that of gasoline”, a remarkable thought that slays some stubborn shibboleths. It is not for today, but it is not for the remote future either. It typically takes five or so breakthroughs of this kind in battery technology to reach manufacturing.

Professor Larry Curtiss, the project leader, told me that his battery needs no cobalt. That eliminates reliance on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which accounts for 74pc of the world’s production and has become a Chinese economic colony for the extraction of raw materials.

Beijing has already gained a lockhold on the supply chain through ownership or control over three quarters of the DRC’s major cobalt mines. Russia is the world’s third. It is planning to raise that share by tearing up the marine bed off the Pacific coast.

Reports by the United Nations and activist groups leave no doubt that cobalt mining in the DRC is an ecological and human disaster, with some 40,000 children working for a pittance in toxic conditions for small ‘artisanal’ mines. It has become a byword for North-South exploitation.

Needless to say, the horrors of the cobalt supply chain have been seized on by fossil “realists” (i.e. vested interests) and Putin’s cyber-bots to impugn the moral claims of the green energy transition. The Argonne-IIF technology should make it harder to sustain that line of attack.

Prof Curtiss said the current prototype is based on lithium but does not have to be. “The same type of battery could be developed with sodium. It will take more time, but can be done,” he said. Switching to sodium would halve the driving range but it would still be double today’s generation of batteries.

Sodium is ubiquitous. There are deposits in Dorset, Cheshire, or Ulster. The US and Canada have vast salt lakes. Sodium can be produced cheaply from seawater in hot regions via evaporation. There is no supply constraint.

This knocks out another myth: that the EV revolution is impossible on a planetary scale because there either is not enough lithium, or not enough at viable cost under free market conditions in states aligned with the Western democracies. (The copper shortage is more serious, but there may be solutions for that as well using graphene with aluminium).

The International Energy Agency estimates that demand for lithium will rise 20-fold by 2040 if we rely on existing battery technology. The Australians are the world’s biggest producers today. But the greatest long-term deposits are in the Lithium Triangle of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, which are in talks to create an OPEC-style lithium cartel. China’s Tianqui owns 22pc of the Chilean group SQM, the world’s second-biggest lithium miner.

A lithium recycling industry will mitigate the problem. In the end, lithium can be extracted from seawater. It is highly diluted at 180 parts per billion but research suggests that it could be isolated for as little as $5 a kilo. If so, the lithium scare is just another of a long list of seemingly insurmountable barriers that fall away with time. The march of clean-tech is littered with such false scares.

For readers with a better grip on chemistry than me, the Argonne-IIF uses a solid electrolyte made from a ceramic polymer based on nanoparticles. This does require expensive materials.

It achieves a reaction of four molecules at room temperature instead of the usual one or two. It is able to extract oxygen from the surrounding air to run the reaction, solving a problem that has held back development for a decade. It can operate over a thousand cycles of charging and discharging. It is safer and less likely to catch fire than today's batteries.

What the Argonne-IIF battery and other global breakthroughs show collectively is that energy science is moving so fast that what seemed impossible five years ago is already a discernible reality, and that we will be looking at a very different technological landscape before the end of this decade.

Germany and Italy last week succeeded in blocking EU’s plans for ban on petrol and diesel sales by 2035. They might just as well bark at the moon or command the waves to recede. Moore’s Law and the learning curve of new technology has already sealed the fate of the combustion engine – with or without net zero.

The legacy companies cannot save their sunk investment in fossil motors – unless the EU retreats into fortress protectionism, which would be economic suicide. To try would be to guarantee the total destruction of Europe’s car industry. The only hope of saving it is to go for broke on electrification before global rivals run away with the prize.

The coming battery technology kills the case for hydrogen in cars, vans, buses, or trucks, and perhaps also for trains and aircraft, whether it is “green” from wind and solar via electrolysis or “blue” from natural gas with carbon capture. The energy loss involved makes no sense. It is much cheaper and more efficient to electrify wherever possible.

Clean hydrogen is too valuable to squander. We need it to replace dirty hydrogen used in industry. We need it for fertilisers, green steel, container shipping, and long-term storage in saline aquifers to back up renewables during a windless Dunkelflaute. We do not need it for road transport.

My advice to corporate bosses and ministers: keep up with the world’s scientific literature, or you will be massacred.

This article is an extract from The Telegraph’s Economic Intelligence newsletter;  exclusive insight from two of the UK’s leading economic commentators – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Jeremy Warner – 

SHE IS CRT

US Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison honoured with new stamp

HER BOOKS ARE BANNED IN GOP STATES

Anca Ulea
Wed, 8 March 2023


US Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison honoured with new stamp

American writer and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison’s photo will now be seen on letters sent across the United States, as her likeness has been immortalised on a stamp by the US Postal Service this week.

Morrison, who became the first black woman to win a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, died in 2019 at 88 years old. Her legacy is being honoured with a monthslong series of events at Princeton University, where Morrison taught for almost two decades.

The stamp was unveiled in a tribute at Princeton, which opened with a recording of Morrison’s voice reciting a passage on New York City’s Harlem neighbourhood from her 1992 novel “Jazz”.

“Nobody says it’s pretty here; nobody says it’s easy either. What it is is decisive, and if you pay attention to the street plans, all laid out, the City can’t hurt you,” Morrison’s voice said in the auditorium.

Later, an all-Black acapella group sang the popular hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing," which is known in the US as the Black national anthem.

Our new stamp will be seen by millions, and forever remind us of the power of her words and the ideas she brought into the world.

The guest speakers included former US President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey, as well as the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden. President Obama had presented Morrison with the Medal Of Freedom in 2012.

President Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to author Toni Morrisson - 2012 

- Mandel Ngan/AFP

Pritha Mehra, the chief information officer and executive vice president of the US Postal Service said that the postal service is proud to commemorate Morrison.

“Our new stamp will be seen by millions, and forever remind us of the power of her words and the ideas she brought into the world,” she said.

Morrison’s novels explored the black experience in America, addressing the painful legacy of slavery in the United States and its effects on contemporary black society. She wrote boldly about topics that other authors avoided, like racism and abuse.

Her 1970 novel “The Bluest Eye” has been targeted by countless book bans in some US states for depicting topics like racism, incest and child molestation.

Morrison’s commemoration on the stamp comes amid renewed calls for books to be banned across the US, fuelled by conservative politicians. It also comes amid a global movement for certain offensive language to be expunged from new printings of old books.

At Tuesday’s tribute, Oprah Winfrey talked about starting her book club in 1996 with Morrison’s novel from the same year “Song of Solomon” in mind.

“Over the years, I selected four of Toni Morrison’s books to read as a community, more than any other author,” she said in a pre-recorded video shown at the tribute.

Winfrey recalled meeting Morrison on her talk show: “I shared with her that, ‘Ms. Morrison, sometimes your books are challenging and difficult for some people to read.' And she said, ‘Well think about how difficult they are to write.'"

Princeton's President Christopher Eisgruber stressed that Morrison's legacy will continue to be an inspiration for the university, its community and most importantly, black artists and artists of colour.

“She was a writer of rare genius, brilliant originality and genuinely historic importance,” Eisgruber said.

A GOP war on 'woke'? 

Most Americans view the term as a positive, USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds

Susan Page, USA TODAY
Wed, March 8, 2023 

Republican presidential hopefuls are vowing to wage a war on "woke," but a new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word as a positive attribute, not a negative one.

Fifty-six percent of those surveyed say the term means "to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices." That includes not only three-fourths of Democrats but also more than a third of Republicans.

Overall, 39% say instead that the word reflects what has become the GOP political definition, "to be overly politically correct and police others' words." That's the view of 56% of Republicans.

The findings raise questions about whether Republican campaign promises to ban policies at schools and workplaces they denounce as "woke" could boost a contender in the party's primaries but put them at odds with broader public opinion in the general election.

Independents, by 51%-45%, say "woke" means being aware of social injustice, not being overly politically correct.

“Most Americans understand that to be woke is to be tuned in to injustices around us,” said Cliff Young of Ipsos. "But for a key segment of Republicans who make up the Trump-DeSantis base, 'woke' is a clear trigger for the worst of the politically correct, emerging multicultural majority."

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reacts after publicly signing HB7, "individual freedom," also dubbed the "stop woke" bill during a news conference in April.

A new rallying cry in the culture wars

In the early 20th century, "woke" was generally used as a call for Black people around the world to "wake up" to racial oppression. After the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the term gained wider usage to describe awareness of the continuing legacy of racial discrimination and systematic oppression.

Now conservatives have adopted the term as a rallying cry in the culture wars, signaling their opposition to everything from the teaching of the ongoing effects of slavery to the use of gender-neutral pronouns.

More: 'Woke mind virus'? 'Corporate wokeness'? Why red America has declared war on corporate America

Opinion: Tired Trump fades at CPAC while DeSantis rises at Reagan Library

"We will never surrender to the woke mob," Ron DeSantis declared in his victory speech when he won a second term as Florida governor in November. Former President Donald Trump last week accused President Joe Biden of engineering "a woke takeover of the entire federal government."

Even South Carolina's Sen. Tim Scott, a Black man who discusses how racism has affected his life, has derided "woke corporations" and "woke prosecutors" as negative forces in American life.

Trump has announced his campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination, and DeSantis is seen as likely to be his leading challenger, although he hasn't formally announced his candidacy. Scott has also indicated he is considering a presidential bid.

Republicans, by 60%-14%, say being described as "woke" would be an insult, not a compliment. Independents – by 42%-32% – agree. Democrats, by 46%-25%, say it would be a compliment.

Across party lines, about 1 in 4 say they don't know enough about what the term means to judge whether it is a compliment or a slur.

The USA TODAY/Ipsos poll of 1,023 adults was taken Friday through Sunday using KnowledgePanel, Ipsos' online probability-based panel. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
'Critical race theory' and the power of words

On issues of race and gender, language matters.

Americans by close to 3-1, 72%-26%, support teaching "the ongoing effects of slavery and racism in the United States" in public schools, a question asked of half the sample. That includes overwhelming numbers of Democrats and independents and close to half of Republicans (46%).

But in response to a different question asked of the other half of the sample, those surveyed oppose by 53%-41% the teaching of "critical race theory," which holds that systemic racism is institutionalized in America to the advantage of white people.

The phrase particularly resonates among Republicans, who by 81%-15%, oppose the teaching of critical race theory in public schools.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks at a town hall campaign event, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, in Exeter, New Hampshire.

Americans overwhelmingly oppose, by 76%-21%, efforts by state governments to ban certain books from school classrooms and libraries. Last year the nonprofit group PEN America reported that school districts in 26 states had moved to ban some books, often ones that relate to race or gender identity.

The opposition to state bans crosses party lines, including 86% of Democrats, 78% of independents and 66% of Republicans.

On gender, a wide partisan divide

The partisan divide is gaping on matters involving gender.

Overall, those surveyed overwhelmingly oppose the use of gender-neutral pronouns to describe someone, 61%-36%.

But while almost all Republicans oppose gender-neutral pronouns, 87%-11%, Democrats support them by double-digits, 61%-37%.

The clashing views are similar over whether people should be able to identify as someone other than "man" or "woman" on government documents such as passports and birth certificates. Overall, Americans oppose the idea by 61%-36%.

While 88% of Republicans oppose it, however, 60% of Democrats support it.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A GOP war on 'woke'? Most Americans see term as positive: Ipsos Poll

Latin America poised to become renewable energy giant: report

Joshua Howat Berger
Thu, March 9, 2023


Latin America is poised to become a major renewable energy producer, with nearly a billion solar panels' worth of large-scale clean-electricity projects slated to come online in the next seven years, a report found Thursday.

In welcome good news for the climate-change race, researchers said Latin American countries had more than 319 gigawatts of utility-scale solar- and wind-power projects due to be launched by 2030 -- equal to nearly 70 percent of the region's total current electrical capacity from all sources combined.

"Rich in wind and solar resources, Latin America has the potential to be a global leader for renewable energy," said the report by the Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a US-based non-profit that tracks clean-energy development.

The new projects -- which include planned installations and those already under construction -- would expand Latin America's current utility-scale solar- and wind-power capacity by more than 460 percent, it found.

That makes the region a "global standout" on renewables, said Kasandra O'Malia, project manager at GEM.

"We're already seeing a big upswing. And if you look at all the projects that are planned, it's just this big, exponential-looking explosion," she told AFP.

Even if not every planned project gets built, the region appears to be at an inflexion point, with even more projects likely to be announced in the coming years, she said.

Brazil, Latin America's biggest economy, is leading the green-energy boom, with 27 gigawatts of utility-scale solar and wind plants already operating, and another 217 gigawatts of capacity slated to come online by 2030.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who took office in January, has vowed to expand clean energy and restore Brazil's leadership role on climate change, after four years under far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

But the roots of the boom go back further, to a 2012 law that incentivized solar energy in Brazil by allowing private producers to sell electricity directly to the grid, according to energy expert Roberto Zilles.

"Today, it's cheaper to produce your own energy" than buy electricity, Zilles, the director of the University of Sao Paulo's Energy and Environment Institute, told AFP.

The report also highlighted developments in Chile -- traditionally a fossil-fuel importer, where wind and solar now represent 37 percent of total installed electricity capacity -- and Colombia, which has 37 gigawatts of new solar and wind capacity slated to come online by 2030.

- Offshore wind, green hydrogen -

However, Mexico, the region's second-biggest economy, was singled out as a case for concern.

Mexico, an early adopter of renewable energy, is currently home to Latin America's largest solar and wind projects.

But progress has declined since 2021 energy reforms pushed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a fossil-fuels champion who has made revitalizing state oil company Pemex a cornerstone of his administration.

"Mexico has stalled," the report said.

"Even if all prospective projects were to come online, the country would only reach approximately 70 percent of its pledge to bring 40 gigawatts of solar and wind by 2030."

The report found Latin America has especially big potential as a producer of offshore wind energy.

It also said green energy exports could be a potential economic windfall, whether by sending surplus electricity to other countries or using renewable energy to produce green hydrogen for export.

Renewable energy has boomed worldwide as prices for solar panels and wind turbines have plunged -- a trend furthered over the past year by soaring fossil fuel costs driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The International Energy Agency found in a December report that renewables will become the largest source of global electricity generation by early 2025, surpassing coal.

But the transition needs to be faster if the world is to meet the Paris climate accord's target of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, O'Malia said.

She called on the world's major energy consumers -- North America, Europe and China -- to follow Latin America's example.

"The rest of the globe is not doing their share," she said.

jhb/dw