With gold-colored Trump statue, conservatives show fealty to former president

A golden statue of the former president, showing he remains a Republican political force despite violent scenes in Washington last month.

Reuters

Washington

February 28, 2021

A statue of former US President Donald Trump is pictured at the Conservative Political

 Action Conference in Orlando, Florida (Picture Credits: Reuters)

US conservatives praised Donald Trump at an annual gathering on Friday, even unveiling a golden statue of the former president, showing he remains a Republican political force despite violent scenes in Washington last month.

Prominent congressional conservatives - including Senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley and Representatives Steve Scalise and Matt Gaetz - were among the Trump loyalists speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, which the former president will address on Sunday.

“Let me tell you something: Donald Trump ain’t going anywhere,” said Cruz.

Trump’s tumultuous final weeks in office saw his supporters launch a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in an attempt to block Congress from certifying Democratic President Joe Biden’s election victory, a win that Trump falsely claimed was tainted by widespread fraud.

If there was any doubt that CPAC this year was devoted to Trump, the gold-coloured statue of the former president, dressed in a jacket, red tie and Stars-and-Stripes boxing shorts, was on display at the conference site.

Two participants wheeled the larger-than-life statue through the conference centre lobby, according to a video on social media. It was unclear why the statue, showing a cartoonish version of Trump with an oversize head, was there.

The statue drew instant derision online, with commentators comparing it to the golden calf that enraged the prophet Moses in the Old Testament.

“Idol worship isn’t conservative. #RestoreOurGop,” Representative Adam Kinzinger, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump on a charge of inciting the Jan. 6 attack, said on Twitter.

Gaetz declared himself part of the “pro-Trump, America First” wing of the conservative movement. “We’re not really a wing, we’re the whole body,” he said.

He also appeared to forecast a future role for Trump, who is pondering another run for president in 2024: “Trump may not have drained the swamp all the way yet.”

U.S. Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican who may run for the party’s presidential nomination in 2024, sought to thread the needle between pledging loyalty to Trump and signalling his aspirations for higher office.

He said “President Trump has flaws” but that he had made the party more approachable for working-class Americans.

“We will not win the future by going back to where the Republican Party used to be,” Scott said. “If we do, we will lose the working base that President Trump so animated. We’re going to lose elections across the country and ultimately we’re going to lose our nation.”

‘NOT THE PAST’

Hawley, another possible 2024 candidate, called himself part of the future of the party.

“We’re not the past, we’re the future. We represent the future of this country,” he said.

Trump is expected to talk on Sunday about the future of the party and lay out policy differences within a group riven by differences in the wake of his chaotic four years in office.

“The divide right now is between the ‘Beltway elites’ and the conservative grassroots around the country,” said a Trump adviser who helped prepare the speech.

Trump will also offer red-meat rhetoric critical of his successor, Democrat President Joe Biden.

Trump supporters at the conference on Friday repeated some of his false claims, arguing that they justified new restrictions on voting.

Photo: Reuters

In addition to the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, seven Senate Republicans voted to convict him of inciting insurrection, although the 57-43 vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict.

Many other senior Republicans did not attend this year’s event. They included former Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Representative Liz Cheney - another House Republican who voted to impeach.

Some advisers say they want Trump not to use his speech to relitigate the election at length but instead offer a road map to Republicans’ regaining control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 2022 congressional elections.

CPAC is an event organized by the American Conservative Union, whose chairman, Matt Schlapp, is close to Trump. It is a prime venue for speakers who want to gauge interest in whether they should run for president based on the enthusiasm they generate.

Russia launches satellite to monitor climate in Arctic

© Roscosmos Press Service/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Russia's Arktika-M spacecraft for monitoring climate and environment in the Arctic region, during lift-off from the launchpad in Kazakhstan on February 28MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia launched its space satellite Arktika-M on Sunday on a mission to monitor the climate and environment in the Arctic amid a push by the Kremlin to expand the country’s activities in the region.

The Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the global average over the last three decades and Moscow is seeking to develop the energy-rich region, investing in the Northern Sea Route for shipping across its long northern flank as ice melts.

The satellite successfully reached its intended orbit after being launched from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur cosmodrome by a Soyuz rocket, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, said in a post on Twitter.

Russia plans to send up a second satellite in 2023 and, combined, the two will offer round-the-clock, all-weather monitoring of the Arctic Ocean and the surface of the Earth, Roscosmos said.

The Arktika-M will have a highly elliptical orbit that passes high over northern latitudes allowing it to monitor northern regions for lengthy periods before it loops back down under Earth.

At the right orbit, the satellite will be able to monitor and take images every 15-30 minutes of the Arctic, which can’t be continuously observed by satellites that orbit above the Earth’s equator, Roscosmos said.

The satellite will also be able to retransmit distress signals from ships, aircraft or people in remote areas as part of the international Cospas-Sarsat satellite-based search and rescue programme, Roscosmos said.

“As more activity takes place in the Arctic and as it moves into higher latitudes, improving weather and ice forecasting abilities is crucial,” said Mia Bennett, a geographer at the University of Hong Kong.

“There is also an element of data nationalism that is feeding into all this. Countries, especially those that see themselves as space powers, want to be able to rely on their own satellites and data to inform their activities, whether commercial or military in nature,” she said.

 THE BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION CONTINUES

Allies of Aung San Suu Kyi to Form Interim Gov’t to Rival Military Leaders, Report Says

© REUTERS / STRINGER

ASIA & PACIFIC

10:11 GMT 28.02.2021(updated 06:06 GMT 01.03.2021)Get short URL

by Max Gorbache

The development comes two days after the country’s ambassador to the United Nations urged the international community to end the military rule in the country. In an emotional speech, Kyaw Moe Tun also called on countries not to cooperate with the military leaders that came to power following a coup earlier this month.

Allies of Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi will form an "interim government" that will rival the Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power in a military coup, the Financial Times reported, citing a local official. Sa Sa, who was appointed earlier this week as the envoy of Myanmar’s disbanded parliament, told the newspaper about the plans during a video interview.

The official revealed that MPs who managed to avoid arrest are ready to take risks and set up a temporary government inside the country for "the sake of the people of Myanmar".

"We will be working very closely with the international community, and work with China and India. It’s better for them to have a stable neighbour than an unstable one", Sa Sa said.

What Happened in Myanmar?

After receiving independence from Britain in 1948, the country was under military rule for decades. However, democratic reforms paved the way for a general election in 2015, which was won by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

In November 2020, the country held another general election and Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won in a landslide. For several months, the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) claimed that there had been widespread voter fraud. The election commission, however, dismissed the allegations.

On 1 February, the military seized power in the country and declared a year-long state of emergency. Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint, as well as senior leaders of the NLD were arrested.

The coup triggered nationwide protests, with demonstrators occasionally clashing police and pro-military supporters. At least three protesters and a policeman died during the clashes. According to the monitoring group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, 700 people have been arrested since the military seized power.

Citizen's panel slams French government response to reducing emissions


Issued on: 28/02/2021 

The Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat was set up to offer proposals on how to help the government reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases. AFP/File

Text by: Paul Myers


France's Citizens' Climate Convention has given the government a woeful score for its "unambitious" response towards recommendations on reining in the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, giving President Emmanuel Macron's administration an overall mark of 3.7 out of 10 in a final vote on Sunday.

Meeting for the last time this weekend via videoconference, the 150-member CCC was asked to assess if the government response to its proposals would make it possible to achieve the emissions reduction target of 40 percent before 2030.

The panel's response was a clear indictment, with an average score of 2.5 out of 10.

"This is disappointing," CCC member Benoit Baubry told Franceinfo radio. "This climate reduction bill is not ambitious enough, and does not meet our recommendations.

"We call upon MPs to help us put new amendments in place in order to reduce carbon emissions as much as possible."


Quelle est l'appréciation de la prise en compte par le @gouvernementFR de l’ensemble des propositions de la thématique "Consommer" pour les membres de la #ConventionCitoyenne pour le #climat 🔴📊
Retrouvez les propositions sur cette thématique 👉https://t.co/21NL9UmWYf pic.twitter.com/3MutwU79z2— Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat (@Conv_Citoyenne) February 28, 2021

The CCC also returned below average scores on the other main topics on which it has been working since 2019. The theme “housing" obtained an average of 3.4 out of 10, “production and work", "food" and "transport" 3.7 each, “consumption of natural resources" 4 and the proposals on governance 4.1.

Of the 150 citizens initially chosen at random, 119 were registered for the final vote.

They also discussed the lessons learned from their experience, which has been described as an unprecedented exercise in participatory democracy.
Implementation

The government says 75 of the CCC’s proposals have been implemented and 71 are in the process of being implemented.

Some of them have found their way into the stimulus plan or the budget, others into decrees and about 40 into the climate and resilience bill, which will be debated in parliament at the end of March.

France has committed itself to reducing emissions by 40 percent by 2030, and the draft law – aimed at rolling out 146 proposals by the citizens – is how the government hopes to fulfil its promises.

Last week France's High Council on Climate, another review body set up by Macron, added to criticism of the government’s climate bill, which it said was weak and insufficient.

The council warned France would fail to meet its Paris Agreement targets under the bill’s existing form.

Plastic is part of the carbon cycle and needs to be included in climate calculations


The plastic problem isn’t separate from climate change. (Shutterstock)

February 28, 2021 

Plastic pollution and climate change are two prominent environmental issues of our time. Plastic was once thought to be a miracle invention that made life simpler for families.

But just as our exploitation of fossil fuels led to climate change, the unsustainable use of plastic materials has led to a global environmental catastrophe. To this day, plastic pollution has infiltrated every part of our planet, from remote mountain lakes to the ocean to the very air we breathe.

The unsustainable consumption of nonrenewable resources is the common root of both these problems, and beneath the surface, there are many links between these two issues.
Plastic is part of the carbon cycle

To better understand how plastic particles move through the environment, scientists should investigate their transport as they do for nitrogen, carbon and water.

Listen to ‘Don’t Call Me Resilient,’ a provocative new podcast about raceFind out more

To do this, they should formally adopt the terminology used to study these biogeochemical cycles, including “reservoirs,” which are places of storage, and “fluxes,” which describe the movement of substances from one place to another over time. This will help us understand the transport mechanisms and fate of plastic pollution in the environment, which are major gaps in the field today.

Plastic should be studied in the same way nitrogen, carbon and water are, so that scientists can understand its movement and its fate. (Shutterstock)

In fact, all the plastic that has ever been produced is part of the carbon cycle. Overall, an enormous seven gigatonnes — or seven billion tonnes — of plastic have been produced, mainly from chemicals extracted from the fossil carbon reservoir. This is not much different from the roughly 14 billion tonnes of carbon emitted into the atmosphere every year from the same reservoir due to human activities.

Plastic transports carbon in different ways. For instance, plastic can become incorporated into living organisms, or settle to the bottom of the ocean as aggregates of plastic and organic matter. It can also release greenhouse gases at every stage of its life cycle, from production to transportation to waste disposal. Scientists and governments should investigate how plastic pollution transports carbon because nutrient redistribution has implications for the livelihoods of ecosystems and the well-being of living organisms.

Since plastic polymers are so persistent, almost every piece of plastic we have ever produced is still somewhere on this planet. This suggests, due to the sheer amount of plastic pollution, that plastic pollution is on the same scale as global transport processes of carbon, also on the order of gigatonnes.

The key takeaway is that plastic pollution has its own cycle, and that it may also play a fundamental role in the carbon cycle — the movement of carbon between different reservoirs such as the atmosphere, ocean and organisms — a cycle that is very relevant to global climate change.
Two sides of the same coin

Several recent articles by journalists and scientists have framed the plastic pollution problem as a distraction from the problem of climate change. The issue of plastic pollution may compete with climate change for funding and attention, delaying action what is a more pressing environmental issue, they say.

I disagree. Research shows that the plastic problem is not independent from climate change.

Greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. (Pixabay)

Plastic and climate are two sides of the same coin: the majority of plastic polymers are made from petrochemical feed-stocks and their raw materials for synthesis are ethylene and propylene. These compounds are derived from naphtha, one of several chemicals refined from petroleum. What else is refined from petroleum? Gasoline, the fossil fuel we burn for energy that emits greenhouse gases.

These sister compounds are used differently but they have a common origin and they instigate the very issues in question. When demand for petroleum drops, companies ramp up their plastic production. When demand for plastic drops, fossil fuel companies might be inclined to shift their production ratio again. Failing to recognize the intimate connections between these issues not only makes tackling these issues inefficient, but may also undermine efforts on both fronts.
Moving forward

Through the many years of efforts by researchers, activists, and policy-makers around the world, we are starting to see a big difference in public attitude towards these issues. On the climate front, the adoption of the Paris Agreement and the energy of the youth movement fill me with optimism

The Paris Climate Summit (COP21) in 2015. (COP21 UofT Students, 2015)

On the plastic pollution front, a UN international agreement to limit emissions of plastic may be on the horizon.

By acknowledging the connections between these issues, I only see benefits. Climate plans should acknowledge the greenhouse gas emissions from plastics and how plastics can be better managed. For instance, Canada’s most recent climate plan acknowledged its ban on single-use items in 2021 and recognized the importance of transitioning to a circular economy. Likewise, plastic pollution plans can describe the benefits to that city, state or country’s climate strategy by mitigating plastic production.

Moving forward, we should keep this in mind and tackle these two issues together — the opportunities to do so are plentiful.

Author

Xia Zhu
PhD Student, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto
Disclosure statement

Xia Zhu received funding from the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. She is affiliated with the People's Climate Movement.
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Japanese companies go high-tech in the battle against food waste



By Tetsushi Kajimoto


TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese companies are ramping up the use of artificial intelligence and other advanced technology to reduce waste and cut costs in the pandemic, and looking to score some sustainability points along the way

Disposing of Japan’s more than 6 million tonnes in food waste costs the world’s No.3 economy some 2 trillion yen ($19 billion) a year, government data shows. With the highest food waste per capita in Asia, the Japanese government has enacted a new law to halve such costs from 2000 levels by 2030, pushing companies to find solutions.

Convenience store chain Lawson Inc has started using AI from U.S. firm DataRobot, which estimates how much product on shelves, from onigiri rice balls to egg and tuna sandwiches, may go unsold or fall short of demand.

Lawson aims to bring down overstock by 30% in places where it has been rolled out, and wants to halve food waste at all of its stores in 2030 compared with 2018.

Disposal of food waste is the biggest cost for Lawson’s franchise owners after labour costs.

Drinks maker Suntory Beverage & Food Ltd is experimenting with another AI product from Fujitsu Ltd to try to determine if goods such as bottles of oolong tea and mineral water have been damaged in shipping.


Until now, that’s been a time-consuming human endeavour. With the new AI, Suntory hopes to gauge when a damaged box is just that, or when the contents themselves have been damaged and need to be returned.

Suntory aims to reduce the return of goods by 30-50% and cut the cost of food waste and develop a common standard system that can be shared by other food makers and shipping firms.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

Japan’s notoriously fussy shoppers are showing signs of getting on board, especially as the coronavirus pandemic hits incomes.

Tatsuya Sekito launched Kuradashi, an e-commerce firm dealing in unsold foods at a discount, in 2014 after seeing massive amounts of waste from food processors while working for a Japanese trading firm in China.

The online business is now thriving due partly to a jump in demand for low-priced unsold foods as consumers became more cost conscious amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Sales grew 2.5 times last year from a year before, while the amount of food waste has doubled since the coronavirus cut off food supply chain,” Sekito told Reuters.

Kuradashi has a network of 800 companies, including Meiji Holdings Co, Kagome Co and Lotte Foods Co, who sell it a total 50,000 items including packs of instant curry, smoothies and high-quality nori.

“Japanese shoppers tend to be picky but we attract customers by offering not just a sale but a chance to donate a portion of purchases to a charity, raising awareness about social issues,” Sekito said.

Membership numbers jumped to 180,000 in 2021 from 80,000 in 2019.

Others have also joined forces with food firms in developing new technological platform to cut food waste as part of global efforts to meet sustainable development goals (SDGs).

NEC Corp is using AI that can not only analyse data such as weather, calendar and customers’ trends in estimating demand but also give reasoning behind its analysis.

NEC has deployed the technology to some major retailers and food makers, helping them reduce costs by 15%-75%.

NEC hopes to share and process data through a common platform among makers, retailers and logistics, to reduce mismatches in supply chains.

“Reducing food waste is not our ultimate goal,” said Ryoichi Morita, senior manager overseeing NEC’s digital integration.

“Eventually, we hope it can lead to resolve other business challenges such as minimizing costs, fixing labour shortages, streamlining inventory, orders and logistics.”


Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Lincoln Feast.

'Inferior' women: China counters Uighur criticism with explicit PR attacks

RACISM, CHAUVINISM, HAN NATIONALISM, SEXISM, MISOGYNY WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS

By Cate Cadell

BEIJING (Reuters) - China, under growing global pressure over its treatment of a Muslim minority in its far west, is mounting an unprecedented and aggressive campaign to push back, including explicit attacks on women who have made claims of abuse.

As allegations of human rights violations in Xinjiang mount, with a growing number of Western lawmakers accusing China of genocide, Beijing is focussing on discrediting the female Uighur witnesses behind recent reports of abuse.

Chinese officials have named women, disclosed what they say is private medical data and information on the women’s fertility, and accused some of having affairs and one of having a sexually transmitted disease. The officials said the information was evidence of bad character, invalidating the women’s accounts of abuse in Xinjiang.

“To rebuke some media’s disgusting acts, we have taken a series of measures,” Xu Guixiang, the deputy head of Xinjiang’s publicity department, told a December news conference that was part of China’s pushback campaign. It includes hours-long briefings, with footage of Xinjiang residents and family members reading monologues.

A Reuters review of dozens of hours of presentations from recent months and hundreds of pages of literature, as well as interviews with experts, shows a meticulous and wide-reaching campaign that hints at China’s fears that it is losing control of the Xinjiang narrative.

“One reason that the Communist Party is so concerned about these testimonies from women is because it undermines their initial premise for what they’re doing there, which is anti-terrorism”, said James Millward, a professor of Chinese history at Georgetown University and expert in Xinjiang policy.

“The fact that there are so many women in the camps ... who don’t have the faintest appearance of being violent people, this just shows how this has nothing to do with terrorism.”

Uighurs make up most of the 1 million people that a United Nations estimate says have been detained in Xinjiang camps under what the central government calls a campaign against terrorism. Accusations by activists and some Western politicians include torture, forced labour and sterilisations.

In rare U.S. bipartisan agreement, the top diplomats of the former administration of Donald Trump and the new one of Joe Biden have called China’s treatment of the Uighurs genocide, a stance adopted last week by the Canadian and Dutch parliaments.

China faces sanctions such as a ban on U.S purchases of Xinjiang cotton and tomatoes, and calls by some Western lawmakers to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. The government denies accusations of abuse at the “vocational training centres” in the remote western region, and says claims of systematic sexual abuse are unfounded.

Beijing has rejected calls for an independent U.N. investigation into Xinjiang’s internment program. Journalists and diplomats have not been permitted access to the camps outside of tightly controlled government tours. Uighurs in Xinjiang have told Reuters they fear reprisals for speaking to press while in China

‘LIES AND SLANDER’

China’s tightly controlled, invitation-only media events on Xinjiang require journalists to submit questions days or weeks in advance. They include pre-recorded videos and prepared testimony by former camp inmates and religious figures.

Beijing has packaged content from the events in two volumes titled, “The Truth About Xinjiang: Exposing the US-Led Lies and Slanders About Xinjiang.”

In January, the Twitter account of China’s U.S. embassy was suspended for a tweet that said Uighur women had been “baby-making machines” before Beijing instituted its system of cam

“The biological, the reproductive, the gendered aspect of this is particularly horrifying to the world,” said Georgetown’s Millward. China “seems to have recognised that... You now see them trying in this clumsy way to respond.”

During a regular daily press briefing last week, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin held up images of witnesses who had described sexual abuse in Xinjiang. The account of one of them, he said, was “lies and rumours” because she had not recounted the experience in previous interviews. He gave medical details about the woman’s fertility.

Xinjiang officials in January said a woman who had spoken to foreign media had syphilis, and they showed images of medical records - unsolicited information that was not directly related to her account.

A Xinjiang government official said of another witness last month: “Everyone knows about her inferior character. She’s lazy and likes comfort, her private life is chaotic, her neighbours say that she committed adultery while in China.”

Last week, the top spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, Hua Chunying, tweeted images of four named witnesses, saying they had “raked their brains for lies”, adding “they will never succeed.”

China has declined to provide data on the number of people in the camps. Beijing initially denied the camps existed but now says they are vocational and education centres and that all the people have “graduated”.


Reporting by Cate Cadell; Editing by William Mallard

Foreign journalists in China see 'rapid decline in media freedom': survey


BEIJING (Reuters) - China used coronavirus prevention measures, intimidation and visa curbs to limit foreign reporting in 2020, ushering in a “rapid decline in media freedom,” the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) said on Monday.

For the third ear in a row, no journalists told the group that working conditions had improved, the FCCC said in an annual report based on 150 responses to a survey of correspondents and interviews with bureau chiefs.

“All arms of state power - including surveillance systems introduced to curb coronavirus - were used to harass and intimidate journalists, their Chinese colleagues, and those whom the foreign press sought to interview,” it said.

Authorities cited public health concerns to deny reporters access to sensitive areas and threatened them with enforced quarantine, it added. Visa restrictions were also used to put pressure on reporting.

At least 13 correspondents were given press credentials valid for 6 months or less, the FCCC said. Foreign reporters based in China typically receive one-year visas and must renew them annually.

Journalists were also used as “pawns” in China’s diplomatic disputes, it added.

China expelled more than a dozen foreign journalists at U.S. media organizations in 2020, amid a series of tit-for-tat actions between the countries. Washington also slashed the number of journalists permitted to work in the United States at four major Chinese state-owned media outlets.

In September, Australia helped two of its foreign correspondents leave China after they were questioned by the country’s state security ministry.

Journalists reporting from far western Xinjiang, where China has been accused of large-scale human rights abuses, encountered especially intense harassment, the report said.

Last year Chinese authorities detained Cheng Lei, an Australian citizen working for Chinese state media, and later Haze Fan, a Chinese national working for Bloomberg News, both on suspicion of endangering national security.

Both remain in detention.

Some Reuters journalists are members of the FCCC.

Reporting by Gabriel Crossley; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and William Mallard

AstraZeneca has sold its stake in Moderna for more than $1 billion: The Times

CENTRALIZED PLANNING SOCIAL OWNERSHIP OF BIG PHARMA

(Reuters) - AstraZeneca Plc has sold its 7.7% stake in Moderna Inc for more than $1 billion after the U.S. biotechnology company’s shares soared on the back of its coronavirus vaccine breakthrough, The Times reported.

The report added that it was not clear over what period British-based AstraZeneca sold its holding in Moderna.

AstraZeneca and Moderna did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

AstraZeneca is retaining partnership with Moderna on other disease treatments and could sell its AstraZeneca/Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine on a commercial basis in future if the virus becomes endemic, the report added.

Moderna, whose vaccine is cleared for emergency use against COVID-19 in the United States, said last week it was expecting sales of $18.4 billion from its coronavirus vaccine this year.

From U.S. domination to energy transition, two years that changed oil



By Jessica Resnick-Ault

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took the stage at the world’s largest energy conference in 2019 to declare an age of U.S. dominance after a decade of rapid shale development made the United States the world’s top oil and gas producer.

Two years later, the oil industry is recovering from the worst recession it has ever experienced after measures to contain coronavirus stopped billions of people from traveling and wiped out one-fifth of worldwide demand for fuel. The U.S. fossil fuel industry is still reeling after tens of thousands of jobs were lost.

The pandemic has also accelerated the energy transition, interrupting a steady rise in fuel consumption that may have otherwise continued for several more years unabated. Oil demand may never recover from that hit. This year, the CERAWeek conference in Houston is entirely virtual and numerous panels are dedicated to the transition to the low-carbon economy of the future, hydrogen technologies and climate change.

Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, and speakers from Amazon and renewable fuels giant Iberdrola are among the headline speakers.

“The tone is different: There’s one theme that permeates the entire conference and that is energy transition,” said CERAWeek Founder Dan Yergin, vice chair of IHSMarkit.

Last year’s conference was one of the first major global events to be canceled as the pandemic started to rage and quickly made it unfeasible to gather thousands of people from 85 countries at the conference venues.

Since that time, many of the world’s major oil companies have set ambitious goals to shift new investments to technologies that will reduce carbon emissions to slow global warming. U.K.-based BP Plc has largely jettisoned its oil exploration team; U.S. auto giant General Motors Co announced plans to stop making gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles in 15 years.

To be sure, the 2021 program includes oil leaders who typically appear at CERAWeek. They include Mohammed Barkindo, secretary general of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and the chief executives of Exxon Mobil, Total, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum.

But they will participate in panels focusing on the energy transition. Barkindo will discuss what kind of a recovery oil and gas will have as future demand is challenged. BP’s Looney will join Andy Jassy, who is set to become Amazon.com Inc’s CEO later this year, on a panel about reinventing energy. Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub and Ahmed Al Jaber, United Arab Emirates minister of state, are slated to tackle cutting carbon emissions.

Oil companies have come under increasing pressure from shareholders, governments and activists to show how they are changing their businesses from fossil fuels toward renewables, and to accelerate that transition.

“This year’s program reflects the reality of the transition toward a net zero future,” said Julien Perez, vice president of strategy and policy for the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a consortium of major oil companies.

Yergin said Gates will discuss the difficulty in reducing emissions to slow temperature rise around the world. He is expected to focus on the technologies that are missing, but required, from the energy transition.

“You’ll often go to conferences where people say, ‘Hey, let’s get companies to report their emissions and somehow magically make the emissions go away, or we’ll just divest the stocks,’” Gates told Reuters in an interview earlier this month.

The reality, Gates said, is much tougher. Many heavy industries that use oil and gas are hard to shift away from those fuels, and that is where new technologies are needed. Steel, for instance, still relies on furnaces fired by metallurgical coal.

“If you’re a steel company, you’re going to report a very big (emissions) number. People still need basic shelter, and it’s unlikely we’ll stop building buildings.”

While the shared goal of carbon neutrality has now become widely accepted, finding the best way to reach that goal is much more difficult, Yergin said.

“Previous energy transitions unfolded over centuries. This is meant to unfold over less than three decades - that’s a really heavy lift,” he said.


Reporting By Jessica Resnick-Ault; additional reporting by Katy Daigle; editing by David Gaffen, Simon Webb and Nick Zieminski


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