Why the Children of Immigrants Are the Ones Getting Ahead in America


Ran Abramitzky and Leah Bouston

TIME
Wed, June 1, 2022,

Miami Beach, Florida, Lincoln Road Pedestrian Mall high angle view of city

Miami has one of the highest percentage of immigrants in the U.S. A view of Miami Beach, Lincoln Road Credit - Jeffrey Greenberg-UCG/Universal Images Group

In April 2020, the New York Times ran a special feature called “I Am the Portrait of Downward Mobility.” “It used to be a given that each American generation would do better than the last,” the piece began, “but social mobility has been slowing over time.”

In paging through the profiles, we couldn’t help noticing one group of Americans who defies this trend: the children of immigrants. Sonya Poe was born in a suburb of Dallas, Texas to parents who immigrated from Mexico. “My dad worked for a hotel,” Sonya recalled. “Their goal for us was always: Go to school, go to college, so that you can get a job that doesn’t require you to work late at night, so that you can choose what you get to do and take care of your family. We’re fortunate to be able to do that.”

The dream that propels many immigrants to America’s shores is the possibility of offering a better future for their children. Using millions of records of immigrant families from 1880 to 1940 and then again from 1980 to today, we find that the in past and still today children of immigrants surpass their parents and move up the economic ladder. If this is the American Dream, then immigrants achieve it—big time.

One pattern that is particularly striking in the data is that the children of immigrants raised in households earning below the median income make substantial progress by the time they reach adulthood, both for the Ellis Island generation a century ago and for immigrants today. The children of first-generation immigrants growing up close to the bottom of the income distribution (say, at the 25th percentile) are more likely to reach the middle of the income distribution than are children of similarly poor U.S.-born parents.

What’s more, no matter which country their parents came from, children of immigrants are more likely than the children of the U.S.-born to surpass their parents’ incomes when they are adults. This pattern holds both in the past and today, despite major changes in U.S. immigration policy over the past century, from a regime of nearly open borders for European immigrants in 1900 to one of substantial restrictions in recent decades. Children of immigrants from Mexico and the Dominican Republic today are just as likely to move up from their parents’ circumstances as were children of poor Swedes and Finns a hundred years ago.

Not only does upward mobility define the horizons of people’s lives, but it also has implications for the economy as a whole. Even immigrants who come to the U.S. with few resources or skills bring an asset that is hugely beneficial to the U.S. economy: their children. The rapid success of immigrants’ children more than pays for the debts of their parents.

To conduct our analysis, we needed data that links children to parents. For the historical data, we used historical census records to link sons living in their childhood homes to census data collected 30 years later when these young men had jobs of their own.

Think of us like curious grandchildren searching branches of their family tree online, but a million times over. We started by digging through websites like Ancestry.com that allow the public to search for their relatives. From here, we developed methods to automate these searches so we could follow millions of immigrants and their children in the records.

Our modern data is based on federal income tax records instead. The tax records allow researchers to link children to their parents as tax dependents, and then observe these children in the tax data as adults.

When we compiled this data, what do we see?

The first striking takeaway is that, as a group, children of immigrants achieve more upward mobility than the children of U.S.-born fathers. We focus on the children of white U.S.-born fathers because the children of Black fathers tend to have lower rates of upward mobility. So, the mobility advantage that we observe for the children of immigrants would be even larger if we compared this group to the full population.

The second notable takeaway is that even children of parents from very poor countries like Nigeria and Laos outperform the children of the U.S.-born raised in similar households. The children of immigrants from Central American countries—countries like Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua that are often demonized for contributing to the “crisis” at the southern border—move up faster than the children of the U.S.-born, landing in the middle of the pack (right next to children of immigrants from Canada).

Our third finding is that the mobility advantage of the children of immigrants is just as strong today as it was in the past. What’s more, some of the immigrant groups that politicians accused long ago of having little to contribute to the economy—the Irish, Italians, and Portuguese—actually achieved the highest rates of upward mobility. For the past, we are only able to study sons because we cannot link daughters who change their name at marriage. But in the modern data we can see that this pattern applies to daughters as well.

Today, we might not be that surprised to learn that the children of past European immigrants succeeded. We are used to seeing the descendants of poor European immigrants rise to become members of the business and cultural elite. Many prominent leaders, including politicians like President Biden, regularly emphasize pride in their Irish or Italian heritage. But, at the time, these groups were considered the poorest of the poor. In their flight from famine, Irish immigrants are not too dissimilar from immigrants who flee hurricanes, earthquakes, and violent uprisings today.

We often hear concerns about how poor immigrants will fare and whether their children will get trapped in low-paying jobs or dependent on government support. But our data sleuthing should lay these fears to rest. The children of immigrants do typically make it in America. And it most often takes them only one generation to rise up from poverty.

One question that arises with our work is: what about children who arrive without papers? Undocumented children face more barriers to mobility than other children of immigrants. Fortunately, this group is relatively small even in recent years: only 1.5 million (or five percent) of the 32 million children of immigrant parents are undocumented today. Indeed, this number is small because many children of undocumented immigrants are born in the U.S. and thus are granted citizenship at birth.

The children in our data from countries like Mexico and El Salvador are those whose parents benefited from an earlier legalization effort in the mid-1980s. They are doing remarkably well now, and we believe that their counterparts today have this potential, as well. Children who arrive in the U.S. without papers face barriers to mobility—and not because they put in any less effort, but because they encounter obstacles all along their path. With a stroke of a pen, politicians can make that happen but, so far, this legislation has remained out of reach.

What enables the children of immigrants to escape poor circumstances and move up the economic ladder? The answer we hear most often is that immigrants have a better work ethic than the US-born and that immigrant parents put more emphasis on education.

We agree that the special features of immigrant families could be part of the story (although it’s hard to tell in our data). Yet when we crunched the numbers we found something surprising: immigrants tend to move to those locations in the U.S. that offer the best opportunities for upward mobility for their kids, whereas the U.S.-born are more rooted in place.

Generations of social science research has confirmed that where children grow up influences their opportunities in life. We find that immigrant parents are more likely than U.S.-born parents to settle in these high-opportunity areas, which are flush with good jobs and offer better prospects for mobility in the next generation. As striking proof that geography matters, we see that children of immigrants out-earn other children in a broad national comparison, but they do not earn more than other children who grew up in the same area. In terms of economic fortunes, the grown children of immigrants look similar to the children of U.S.-born parents who were raised down the block, or in the same town. This pattern implies that the primary difference between immigrant families and the families of the U.S.-born is in where they choose to live.

One implication of our findings is that it is very likely that U.S.-born families would have achieved the same success had they moved to such high-opportunity places themselves. In fact, we find that the children of U.S.-born parents who moved from one state to another have higher upward mobility than those who stayed put: their level of upward mobility is closer to (but not quite as high as) that of the children of immigrants who moved from abroad. So, you might ask: why don’t US-born families move out of a region when job opportunities dwindle?

Ironically, J.D. Vance (who is now running for Senate in Ohio on an anti-immigration platform) poses this question in his bestseller Hillbilly Elegy,aboutgrowing up in Middletown, Ohio, only 45 minutes from the border with Kentucky, the state where his family had lived for generations. For Vance, moving up the ladder meant moving out of his childhood community, a step that many Americans are unwilling to take. He went on to enlist in the Marines, and then to Ohio State and Yale Law School—“Though we sing the praises of social mobility,” he writes, “it has its downsides. The term necessarily implies a sort of movement—to a theoretically better life, yes, but also away from something.”

Vance is hitting on the cost of attaining upward mobility for children of U.S.-born parents. Many of the children of U.S.-born parents grow up in areas where their families settled long before, so economic mobility for them is often coupled with the costs of leaving home. By contrast, immigrants already took the step of leaving home to move to America, so they may be more willing to go wherever it takes within the country to find opportunity. In other words, U.S.-born families are more rooted in place, while immigrant families are more footloose—and this willingness to move toward opportunity seems to make all the difference.

Adapted from Abramitzky and Boustan’s new book Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success

NOT A WORD ABOUT GANGS

World Bank, Haitians putting challenged nation on a more prosperous and resilient path | Opinion


Delot Jean/AP

Carlos Felipe Jaramillo
Mon, May 30, 2022

There’s a well-known Haitian proverb, Se lè ou nan bezwen, ou konn ki moun ki zanmi ou. It means a true friend will always be ready to support you in the most difficult times.

Haitians have suffered terrible misfortunes in recent years, and enormous challenges remain, but there are many good reasons for hope — and I’m grateful for the recent opportunity to travel to Haiti and pledge the World Bank’s continued support to the country’s resilient recovery.

This was the message I carried during my recent visit, my first since becoming the World Bank’s vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean. During my trip, I was struck by how much can be achieved even in the most daunting circumstances.

The 2021 earthquake is a case in point. Haiti was struck by a massive earthquake, with a huge humanitarian and economic toll. Since then, the World Bank has been working with the government of Haiti in three key areas to ensure a prompt and targeted response.

First, within two weeks, by leveraging remote imaging and techniques, we identified, analyzed and prepared a Global Rapid Damage Estimation Report highlighting the main recovery needs. In addition, and together with the United Nations and European Union, we produced a Post Disaster Needs Assessments that estimated the earthquake caused approximately $2 billion in damage and losses, or rather 11 percent of Haiti’s 2019-2020 GDP.

Second, we helped Haiti mobilize the necessary resources for action. We leveraged an additional $200 million for the earthquake response and are working with donors and partners to provide a total of $2 billion over the next three years. This contribution puts us on track to provide record funding to Haiti this fiscal year, close to $500 million in total, far more than originally allocated.

Third, we now are putting all of our energy into the recovery effort’s implementation. This includes ensuring that necessary funding arrives as quickly as possible, and to the right places. Together with the government, we are focusing over the next year on this single, hugely important program.

We recognize past concerns — particularly regarding the 2010 earthquake — that the international community, at times, promises more than it can deliver. We are firmly committed to ensure that, even under current difficult circumstances, we find swift, pragmatic solutions to delivering assistance to those that most need it, including the most vulnerable and in the most remote areas.

Haiti‘s recovery, regrettably, is challenged by two on-the-ground realities.

First, the recovery is within the context of deteriorating security. Even more than the uncertain political scenario, restoring security is of the utmost importance for the World Bank’s program in Haiti to be effective. Strong collaboration among our development partners — including the United Nations, the United States, and Canada — will be needed.

Second, the country continues to struggle with the socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. As in other Caribbean countries, unemployment, poverty and inequality rose in 2020 and 2021 as a result of lockdowns and containment measures. To help bring Haiti out of the pandemic’s shadow and to reduce the 60% of the Haitian population that is vaccine hesitant, there are ongoing efforts to raise its vaccination rate, the lowest in the region.

Despite these challenges, I remain hopeful about Haiti’s future. The resilience that Haitians have shown when confronted with chronic fragility and recurrent shocks has been inspiring. Haiti has a vibrant civil society, a dynamic young population and a prosperous diaspora that retains close links with its home country — remittances remain a key pillar of economic support.

In fact, the response to the 2021 earthquake shows just how much Haiti has advanced in what nevertheless has been a turbulent decade since the catastrophic earthquake of 2010.

I was particularly heartened to see and learn about the new temporary bridge outside Jeremie being built in record time next to the one damaged in last year’s earthquake. Clearly, much has been learned from previous experiences about how best to confront the aftermath of natural disasters.

Investments in strengthening disaster risk management and civil protection also have had an impact, especially considering that the disaster struck in profoundly complex political circumstances, scarcely one month after the tragic assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

This can be added to a host of other improvements in recent years: the management of health-related shocks; in education; infrastructure, including roads, water and renewable energy; and local governance, especially in the area of public finance.

Together, we must continue working to address recent and long-standing challenges to eliminate poverty and drive prosperity in Haiti.

Even so, out of every crisis comes opportunity. The situation today could be an inflection point. Taken together, Haitians’ resilience, as well as progress in the areas mentioned and in other spheres — including how the international community can contribute to Haiti’s development — can make an invaluable contribution to setting the country on a new, more prosperous path.

Carlos Felipe Jaramillo is the World Bank Vice President for the Latin America and the Caribbean Region.

Sanctioned Russian oligarch's megayacht hides in a UAE creek

This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows Motor Yacht A, belonging to Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko, moored in Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates, May 12, 2022. In the dusty, northern-most sheikhdom of the United Arab Emirates, Motor Yacht A, one of the world's largest yachts, sits in the quiet port — so far avoiding the fate of other luxury vessels linked to sanctioned Russian oligarchs. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)

ISABEL DEBRE and JON GAMBRELL
Wed, June 1, 2022, 12:09 AM·5 min read

RAS AL-KHAIMAH, United Arab Emirates (AP) — In the dusty, northern-most sheikhdom of the United Arab Emirates, where laborers cycle by rustic tea shops, one of the world's largest yachts sits in a quiet port — so far avoiding the fate of other luxury vessels linked to sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

The display of lavish wealth is startling in one of the UAE's poorest emirates, a 90-minute drive from the illuminated high-rises of Dubai. But the 118-meter (387-foot) Motor Yacht A's presence in a Ras al-Khaimah creek also shows the UAE's neutrality during Russia's war on Ukraine as the Gulf country remains a magnet for Russian money and its oil-rich capital sees Moscow as a crucial OPEC partner.

Since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, the seven sheikhdoms of the Emirates have offered a refuge for Russians, both those despairing of their country’s future as well as the mega-wealthy concerned about Western sanctions.

While much of the world has piled sanctions on Russian institutions and allies of President Vladimir Putin, the Emirates has not. It also avoids overt criticism of the war, which government readouts still refer to as the “Ukraine crisis.”

The Motor Yacht A belongs to Andrey Melnichenko, an oligarch worth some $23.5 billion, according to Forbes. He once ran the fertilizer producer Eurochem and SUEK, one the the world’s largest coal companies.



The European Union in March included Melnichenko in a mass list of sanctions on business leaders and others described as close to Putin. The EU sanctions noted he attended a Feb. 24 meeting Putin held the day of the invasion.

“The fact that he was invited to attend this meeting shows that he is a member of the closest circle of Vladimir Putin and that he is supporting or implementing actions or policies which undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, as well as stability and security in Ukraine,” the EU said at the time.

Melnichenko resigned from the corporate positions he held in the two major firms, according to statements from the companies. However, he has criticized Western sanctions and denied being close to Putin.

Melnichenko could not be reached for comment through his advisers.

Already, authorities in Italy have seized one of his ships — the $600 million Sailing Yacht A. France, Spain and Britain as well have sought to target superyachts tied to Russian oligarchs as part of a wider global effort to put pressure on Putin and those close to him.

But the $300 million Motor Yacht A so far appears untouched. It flew an Emirati flag on Tuesday when Associated Press journalists observed the ship. Two crew members milled around the deck.

The boat’s last recorded position on March 10 put it off the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, just over 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) from Ras al-Khaimah. Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by the AP show the vessel in Ras al-Khaimah’s creek beginning March 17, a week later.

The Financial Times first reported on the ship’s presence in the UAE.

Authorities in Ras al-Khaimah did not respond to a request for comment on the yacht’s presence. The UAE's Foreign Ministry did not answer questions about the ship, but said in a statement to the AP that it takes “its role in protecting the integrity of the global financial system extremely seriously.”

But so far, the UAE has taken no such public action targeting Russia. The country abstained on a U.N. Security Council vote in February condemning Russia’s invasion, angering Washington.

The neutral response may stem from “the financial gain we’re seeing in Dubai in terms of new tourist arrivals, and Russian efforts to move assets and buy property,” said Karen Young, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

The flow of Russian money — both legitimate and shady — is now an open secret in Dubai, where lavish hotels and beaches increasingly bustle with Russian speakers. State-run radio hosts cheerily describe a massive influx.

The UAE became one of the few remaining flight corridors out of Moscow. The Emirati government offered three-month multiple-entry visas upon arrival to all Russians, allowing major companies to easily transfer their employees from Moscow to Dubai. The private jet terminal at Al Maktoum International at Dubai World Central has seen a 400% spike in traffic, the airport's CEO recently told the AP.

Real estate agents have reported a surge of interest from Russians seeking to buy property in Dubai, particularly in the skyscrapers of Dubai Marina and villas on the Palm Jumeirah.

For those who want to move to the UAE, buying high-end property also helps secure a visa.

“Business is booming right now,” said Thiago Caldas, CEO of the Dubai-based property firm Modern Living, which now accepts cryptocurrency to facilitate sales with new Russian clients. “They have a normal life and don’t face restrictions.”

Caldas said inquiries from Russian clients in Dubai have multiplied by over 10 since the war, forcing his firm to hire three Russian-speaking agents to deal with the deluge.

With sanctions on Russian banks and businesses thwarting many citizens’ access to foreign capital, Russians are increasingly trying to bypass bank transfers through digital currencies in Dubai, said two cryptocurrency traders in the city, where they're able to liquidate large sums of cash.

“It’s a safe haven. … The inflow from Russian accounts skyrocketed 300% days after the war in Ukraine began,” said a Russian crypto trader in Dubai, who spoke like the other on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala state investment company remains among the most active sovereign wealth funds in Russia, along with those of China and Qatar, according to calculations by Javier Capapé of IE University in Spain for the AP.

But pressure is growing. Late on Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi posted a strongly worded video message in solidarity with Ukraine featuring local ambassadors from the world's leading democracies as Russia's foreign minister visits the region.

“We are united against Russia's unjustifiable, unprovoked and illegal aggression,” said Ernst Peter Fischer, Germany's ambassador to the UAE.

___

Follow Isabel DeBre and Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/isabeldebre and www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

Mexico's Cemex to fully operate UK cement plant on alternative fuel


A cement plant of Mexican cement maker CEMEX is pictured in Monterrey

Mon, May 30, 2022

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico's Cemex, one of the largest concrete producers globally, said Monday it would fully operate a cement plant in the United Kingdom on a type of alternative fuel, as the company looks to greatly reduce its carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions.

The plant in Rugby, in England's West Midlands region, is Cemex's first to fully operate on "Climafuel," a mix of paper, cardboard, wood, carpet, textiles and plastics, the company said. BIOFUEL THAT IS NOT POLLUTION FREE

Cemex Chief Executive Fernando Gonzalez said in a statement that the plant's conversion served "as the model for the rest of our regions."

Concrete producers have been pressured by regulators and investors to lower CO2 emissions in recent years. Cement, key to producing concrete, contributes around 8% of CO2 emissions globally, according to estimates.

Cemex did not give a time frame for the plant's transition to alternative fuels, with the regional head saying in a statement the company "eventually (expected) to phase out" fossil fuels completely at the Rugby facility.

The company said the move was part of its strategy to produce net-zero CO2 concrete by 2050.

Giant Deep Ocean Turbine Trial Offers Hope of Endless Green Power

Erica Yokoyama
Mon, May 30, 2022, 7:07 PM·6 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Power-hungry, fossil-fuel dependent Japan has successfully tested a system that could provide a constant, steady form of renewable energy, regardless of the wind or the sun.

For more than a decade, Japanese heavy machinery maker IHI Corp. has been developing a subsea turbine that harnesses the energy in deep ocean currents and converts it into a steady and reliable source of electricity. The giant machine resembles an airplane, with two counter-rotating turbine fans in place of jets, and a central ‘fuselage’ housing a buoyancy adjustment system. Called Kairyu, the 330-ton prototype is designed to be anchored to the sea floor at a depth of 30-50 meters (100-160 feet).

In commercial production, the plan is to site the turbines in the Kuroshio Current, one of the world’s strongest, which runs along Japan’s eastern coast, and transmit the power via seabed cables.

“Ocean currents have an advantage in terms of their accessibility in Japan,” said Ken Takagi, a professor of ocean technology policy at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Frontier Sciences. “Wind power is more geographically suited to Europe, which is exposed to predominant westerly winds and is located at higher latitudes.” Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) estimates the Kuroshio Current could potentially generate as much as 200 gigawatts — about 60% of Japan’s present generating capacity.

Like other nations, the lion’s share of investment in renewables has gone into wind and solar, especially after the Fukushima nuclear disaster curbed that nation’s appetite for atomic energy. Japan is already the world’s third largest generator of solar power and is investing heavily in offshore wind, but harnessing ocean currents could provide the reliable baseline power needed to reduce the need for energy storage or fossil fuels.

The advantage of ocean currents is their stability. They flow with little fluctuation in speed and direction, giving them a capacity factor — a measure of how often the system is generating — of 50-70%, compared with around 29% for onshore wind and 15% for solar.

In February, IHI completed a 3 ½ year-long demonstration study of the technology with NEDO. Its team tested the system in the waters around the Tokara Islands in southwestern Japan by hanging Kairyu from a vessel and sending power back to the ship. It first drove the ship to artificially generate a current, and then suspended the turbines in the Kuroshio.

The tests proved the prototype could generate the expected 100 kilowatts of stable power and the company now plans to scale up to a full 2 megawatt system that could be in commercial operation in the 2030s or later.

Like other advanced maritime nations, Japan is exploring various ways of harnessing energy from the sea, including tidal and wave power and ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), which exploits the difference in temperature between the surface and the deep ocean. Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd. has invested in UK-based Bombora Wave Power to explore the potential for the technology in Japan and Europe. The company is also promoting OTEC and began operating a 100 kW demonstration facility in Okinawa in April, according to Yasuo Suzuki, general manager of the corporate marketing division. Kyushu Electric’s renewable unit Kyuden Mirai Energy begins a 650 million yen ($5.1 million) feasibility test this year to produce 1 MW of tidal power around the Goto Islands in the East China Sea. The government this month also proposed changes to offshore wind auctions that could speed up development.

Among marine-energy technologies, the one advancing fastest towards cost-effectiveness is tidal stream, where “the technology has advanced quite a long way and it definitely works,” said Angus McCrone, a former BloombergNEF chief editor and marine energy analyst. Scotland-based Orbital Marine Power is one of several companies constructing tidal systems around Orkney, location of the European Marine Energy Centre. Others include SIMEC Atlantis Energy’s MeyGen array and California-based Aquantis, founded by US wind pioneer James Dehlsen, which reportedly plans to start testing a tidal system there next year.

While tidal flows don’t run 24 hours, they tend to be stronger than deep ocean currents. The Kuroshio current flows at 1 to 1.5 meters per second, compared with 3 meters per second for some tidal systems. “The biggest issue for ocean current turbines is whether they could produce a device that would generate power economically out of currents that are not particularly strong,” said McCrone.

Ocean Energy Systems, an intergovernmental collaboration established by the International Energy Agency, sees the potential to deploy more than 300 gigawatts of ocean energy globally by 2050.

But the potential for ocean energy is location dependent, taking into account the strength of currents, access to grids or markets, maintenance costs, shipping, marine life and other factors. In Japan, wave energy is moderate and unstable through the year, while areas with strong tidal currents tend to have heavy shipping traffic, Takagi said. And OTEC is better suited to tropical regions where the temperature gradient is bigger. One of the advantages of the deep ocean current is it doesn’t restrict navigation of ships, IHI said.

Still, the Japanese company has a long way to go. Compared with onshore facilities, it’s much more complicated to install a system underwater. “Unlike Europe, which has a long history of the North Sea Oil exploration, Japan has had little experience with offshore construction,” said Takagi. There are major engineering challenges to build a system robust enough to withstand the hostile conditions of a deep ocean current and to reduce maintenance costs.

“Japan isn’t blessed with a lot of alternative energy sources,” he said. “People may say that this is just a dream, but we need to try everything to achieve zero carbon.”

With the cost of wind and solar power and battery storage declining, IHI will also need to demonstrate that overall project costs for ocean current power are competitive. IHI aims to generate power at 20 yen per kilowatt-hour from large-scale deployment. That compares with about 17 yen for solar in the country and about 12-16 yen for offshore wind. IHI also said it conducted an environmental assessment before it launched the project and will use the test results to examine any impact on the marine environment and fishing industry.

If successful at scale, deep ocean currents could add a vital part in providing green baseline power in the global effort to phase out fossil fuels. IHI’s work could help Japan’s engineering take a leading role with government support, said McCrone.

IHI has to make a convincing argument that “Japan could benefit from being a technology leader in this area,” he said.

Electric vehicles not the only way to meet CO2 targets, Italy car lobby says


An electric car is plugged in at a charging point for electric vehicles in Rome

Tue, May 31, 2022

MILAN (Reuters) - Electric vehicles are not the only effective route to reducing carbon emissions produced by the car industry, the head of Italy's automotive lobby said on Tuesday.

Other technologies could help to decarbonise the industry, meeting the same targets on emissions while preserving know-how and jobs in Italy, said Paolo Scudieri, the chairman of automotive industry association ANFIA.

"I refer to the tangible contribution that biofuels and synthetic fuels, as well as hydrogen, can provide," Scudieri said opening ANFIA's public assembly, adding the Italian automotive industry was already making huge investments on hydrogen.

Biofuels and synthetic fuels, referred to as e-fuels, are being developed to allow modified versions of combustion engines to continue to be used rather than a wholesale switch to battery electric vehicles (BEV).

Scudieri said that exclusively focusing on BEV technology, currently dominated by Asian producers, would put some 73,000 jobs at risk in Italy in coming years, which would not be compensated by about 6,000 new jobs expected to be created by electric mobility.

He added around 450 car parts maker in Italy, out of a total of 2,200, risk going out of business as they have not yet started to shift production towards electric technology.

The European Commission has proposed a 100% cut in CO2 emissions by 2035 for the industry. The target, which is part of a bigger package of climate change policies launched last year, would make it impossible to sell new fossil fuel-powered vehicles in the 27-country bloc.

The European parliament will hold a debate next week on a number of climate policies, including a plan to effectively ban combustion engine cars by 2035.

Scudieri said there was not a prevailing position among different political groups within the European parliament.

"Every single vote will count and my wish is that our MEPs will vote also having the country's interests in mind," he said.

(Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari; Editing by Keith Weir)

21ST CENTURY ROBBER BARON

Elon Musk said working from home during the pandemic 'tricked' people into thinking they don't need to work hard. He's dead wrong, economists say.

Isobel Asher Hamilton

Wed, June 1, 2022,

Elon Musk at the 2022 Met Gala.Andrew Kelly/Reuters

• Elon Musk said COVID-19 "tricked people into thinking that you don't actually need to work hard."

• Working from home didn't make workers less productive, three economists told Insider.

• The only constraint on productivity was when workers had children at home they needed to look after.

Elon Musk is not a fan of remote work.

In the early hours of Wednesday, Musk commented on a tweet which appeared to be an email from him to Tesla executive staff, saying: "Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla."

Although Musk didn't confirm the authenticity of the email, when asked whether such a strict in-office policy could be considered antiquated by some, he replied: "They should pretend to work somewhere else."

The tweets were not completely out of the blue.

Musk previously expressed distaste for American workers "trying to avoid going to work at all" in a May interview with The Financial Times — although he was contrasting them with workers in China, rather than comparing in-office and remote workers.

And he tweeted last month: "All the Covid stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you don't actually need to work hard."

Musk, who railed against lockdown mandates and defied shelter-in-place orders to send workers back to his California Tesla factory in May 2020, might have the wrong idea about remote work. Insider spoke to three economists, all of whom said remote work during the pandemic did not damage worker productivity.

"Most of the evidence shows that productivity has increased while people stayed at home," Natacha Postel-Vinay, an economic and financial historian at the London School of Economics, told Insider.

"People spent less time commuting so could use some of that time to work, and they also got to spend more time with their family and sleeping, which meant they were happier and ended up more productive," she added.

Musk did not immediately reply when contacted by Insider outside of usual working hours.

Data shared with Bloomberg in February 2021 by VPN provider NordVPN Teams suggested that in many economies, working from home meant people worked longer hours.

Albrecht Ritschl, an professor of economic history, also said cutting out commuting was a bonus to worker productivity, and added that working from home led to fewer hours spent in "pointless meetings."

"Time spent at the office is not the same thing as working hard," Ritschl said.

Almarina Gramozi, a lecturer in economics at King's College London, said the largest surveys of workers in the US and the UK found workers were at least as productive at home as in the office — although she said a similar study in Japan found workers did report lower productivity working from home.

All three experts said productivity occasionally dipped in some cases, but not because people were shirking.

People with children at home during the pandemic often had to split their attention between work and childcare, leading to a decrease in productivity, Postel-Vinay and Ritschl said.

Gramozi also added productivity isn't just down to individual employees.

"Productivity levels depend substantially on the support that employers offer, technology adoption, and on the type of work that would allow it to be easily conducted remotely," she told Insider.

Elon Musk says recession is 'a good thing,' billionaires make people 'happy'



Bryan Ke
Mon, May 30, 2022

Elon Musk said in a series of tweets last week that it is “morally wrong and dumb” to use the word “billionaire” as a pejorative and that a possible recession is “a good thing” because it could affect unproductive work-from-home employees.

The comment about billionaires came after Musk, 50, opened a poll on Twitter on Friday and asked his 95.7 million followers who they trust less: politicians or billionaires. The results of the poll, which 3,399,953 people participated in, showed that 75.7% of respondents trust politicians less, while 24.3% of respondents trust billionaires less.

Who do you trust less? Real question.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 26, 2022

In another tweet on Friday, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said it is “morally wrong and dumb” to use the word “billionaire” as a pejorative, adding, “If the reason for it is building products that make millions of people happy.”



Musk also tagged Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY, 14) in one of the replies to his poll, daring the politician to start her own poll with her followers. The New York representative reportedly told Bloomberg earlier this month that she would like to replace her Tesla with an electric vehicle manufactured by workers who push for unionization, a process that Musk has expressed great disapproval of in the past.

“A union is just another corporation,” Musk tweeted on Friday. “Far better for many companies to compete for your skills, so that you have maximum optionality.”

In addition to his pro-billionaire thread, Musk expressed his thoughts about the country heading for a recession, claiming that “this is actually a good thing.”

“It has been raining money on fools for too long. Some bankruptcies need to happen,” Musk added. “Also, all the Covid stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you don’t actually need to work hard. Rude awakening inbound!”

Replying to another Twitter user who asked how long the recession would last, Musk wrote, “Based on past experience, about 12 to 18 months. Companies that are inherently negative cash flow (i.e. value destroyers) need to die so that they stop consuming resources.”


Musk’s tweets came right after the World Economic Forum occurred in Davos, Switzerland, from May 22 to 26. During the event, several world leaders, CEOS, journalists, investors and others gather to discuss wide-ranging problems, from economy-related issues to climate change.

Rich Nations’ Toxic Habits Bring African Refugees to Their Doors



Antony Sguazzin, Katarina Hoije and Maya Averbuch
Tue, May 31, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Osman Ali grew up near southern Somalia’s Shabelle river that was once deep enough for him to dive in for a swim. But in the last three years, droughts have thinned it into a dirty stream, wilting his corn and sesame crops and reducing his sheep and goats to skin and bones. Left at the mercy of armed extortionists he couldn’t pay, the 29-year-old sold his family’s land and bought a ticket to Brazil. A two-month-long trudge through jungles, rivers and cities brought him to Tapachula in Mexico, with hopes of heading to the US southern border.

Like him, Ibrahima Coulibaly waited in the sweltering heat on a sidewalk outside Tapachula’s immigration office in a yellow Lakers basketball jersey. He left his home near Tambacounda in eastern Senegal after a series of droughts destroyed his millet, peanut and bean crops, leaving his family with little to eat. He sold his 32 head of cattle and embarked on a long journey to the Americas. Arriving in Brazil earlier this year and robbed in the Darien Gap — the dense jungle between Colombia and Panama infested with poisonous snakes and bandits — Coulibaly was desperate for a permit to continue crossing Mexico to get to the US border.

“At some point leaving is better than staying; you can walk until you drop dead, but you can’t just sit still until you die from hunger,” the 37-year-old said in an interview in April. “Every year is worse than the previous one.”

The number of Africans trying to make it to the US southern border is on track to hit a potential record this year. Coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Somalia and elsewhere, many are escaping livelihood-destroying climate events. The continent they’re fleeing is facing natural disasters at a faster rate than the rest of the planet, and is largely unprepared to deal with them. Africa, which has done the least to cause the global climate crisis — producing just 4% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions — is being hit by record storms, floods and droughts as the earth heats up.

By 2050, 86 million Africans, or about 6.6% of the region’s 1.3 billion people, will be forced to migrate by climate change, the World Bank estimates. That’s on top of those fleeing conflicts and persecution — often linked to climate-related skirmishes over scarce resources. And with Africa’s population expected to double by 2050, those numbers can only rise.

The vast majority of climate victims migrate to other parts of their own country — mostly to urban slums — or spill into a neighboring nation, but those who can scrape together some funds venture farther afield. With over 4,500 Africans crossing the Colombia-Panama border between January and April this year, according to the International Organization for Migration, they have become the second-largest group — after Latin Americans — to try to get to the US border. And although Europe has tightened controls, in the first two months this year, over 89,000 people crossed the Sahara desert in northern Niger, according to the IOM. Most were on their way to — or returning from — Algeria and Libya, the well-worn path to Europe, with nine out of 10 people the IOM spoke to citing climate change as one of the reasons for why they were leaving.

“People are like ‘OK, I can’t live here, I may as well die trying to get somewhere else,’” said Ayaan Adam, chief executive officer of AFC Capital Partners, the unit of the infrastructure-focused Africa Finance Corp. that’s raising $500 million for a climate-resilience fund this year. “This is happening now. We are seeing a preview of the movie that will unroll and that will be increasing in intensity.”

Helping Africans stay home by making the continent sustainable carries a hefty price tag — $1 trillion to “climate-proof” the infrastructure it needs, which itself would cost $2.3 trillion, Adam estimates. China, the US and Europe, which collectively produce more than 50% of the world’s emissions, need to help finance this effort, African leaders say.

“This is not a donation, this is a cleaning fee,” Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera said at COP26 in Glasgow in November.

Richer countries can limit refugees at their borders by helping the continent adapt to climate change, said Lisa Lim Ah Ken, a migration and climate change specialist for east Africa at the IOM.

“Developed nations spend huge national budgets on building walls and creating and policing immigration policies that prevent migration, yet if those budgets were invested in the nations and communities who are suffering from the effects of climate change, supporting their sustainable development, then perhaps forced migration would be reduced,” Lim Ah Ken said.

It’s been more than a decade since rich countries committed to help the world’s poorer nations cut emissions and adapt to climate change with up to $100 billion a year. They have yet to meet that target.

African leaders estimate that adapting to climate change — by fortifying coastlines against rising sea levels, fighting desertification and building climate-resilient roads and bridges — would require an annual $33 billion, Patrick Verkooijen, chief executive officer of the Global Center on Adaptation, or GCA, said in an interview from Rotterdam. While the countries can raise $6 billion themselves, they’re only getting another $6 billion in aid, he said.

“This is a must have, not a nice to have, for Africa,” Verkooijen said, adding that adaptation finance will be a key focus of the COP27 climate summit in November in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

The climate-adaptation money currently flowing in is too insignificant to make a difference. The African Development Bank has a fund with contributions from Europe and Canada, but has disbursed just $8 million for small operations in 16 countries. One ambitious project — the Great Green Wall initiative aimed at halting desertification by planting trees across the width of Africa — has received pledges of over $19 billion from organizations across the globe. But progress has been slow.

Extreme weather events have exploded in Africa. The Horn of Africa is currently dealing with the worst drought in at least four decades, putting 16 million people across Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia at risk and raising the specter of a famine. In May, South Africa’s deadliest floods in almost three decades triggered landslides that killed 435 people and destroyed thousands of dwellings.

The number of floods in Africa has jumped five-fold since the 1990s, according to GCA. In 2020, the most severe flood in Sudan in 60 years displaced more than 500,000 people. In 2019, two of the strongest cyclones ever recorded hit east Africa. Cyclone Idai destroyed 90% of the homes in the city of Beira in Mozambique and damaged 1.4 million hectares (3.6 million acres) of arable land in Zimbabwe. That was followed by Cyclone Kenneth. Together, they killed 1,300 people and affected the lives of 3.5 million more.

The floods that followed the cyclones provoked the worst locust infestation in a quarter century, leaving 9.6 million people in Sudan without enough food and driving thousands of farmers in Somalia to migrate. Africa loses 4 million hectares of forest each year to land degradation, Lake Chad has shrunk by 90% in the last 40 years and the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro are melting.

“Climate change impacts are costing African economies between 3% and 5% of their GDPs,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told the African Union on Feb. 6. “Despite not being responsible for causing climate change, it is Africans who are bearing both the brunt and the cost. The necessary financial flows to enable developing-economy countries in particular to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change remain vastly inadequate.”

African leaders haven’t helped, treating climate-driven problems as a “peripheral issue,” said Saliem Fakir, executive director of the African Climate Foundation. “Governments treat it as an environmental issue largely to be supported by donor assistance and not really integrated into the economic debate.” Poor planning, deforestation and the misuse of developmental funds have made matters worse.

In an index of 182 countries assessed by the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative for climate-change vulnerability, the bottom seven are African. That comes from the continent’s overwhelming dependence on subsistence farming. About half of Africa’s population relies on agriculture. In the eastern parts of the continent, that number rises to 70%. There’s little irrigation, leaving farmers at the mercy of rain.

For many potential climate refugees, poor crops are where their migration journeys start. Mouhoumoudane Mohamed, 34, from a village in the Agadez region in Niger, left for Algeria in 2019, hoping to make it to Europe.

“One bad harvest followed another; the meager crops that you could squeeze from the soil weren’t enough,” Mohamed said. “The problem in Agadez is the lack of water. When it rains, it’s never enough. Or it’s too heavy and destroys the crops.”

He failed, and is back in Agadez, holding off trying again — for now.

A record 4.3 million people were displaced in 2020 in Sub-Saharan Africa alone due to weather events and conflicts, GCA estimates. Migration within the continent creates problems of its own. Desperate farmers moving to greener pastures cause conflict with communities already there. Also, with few opportunities, youths are joining Islamist militants — providing fodder for groups that Europe and the US are trying to fight.

Africa’s rapidly growing cities, to which many of the continent’s poor gravitate, are seeing climate-related problems of their own. About half of Africans now live in cities, and the urban population is expected to nearly triple by 2050, according to GCA. Seventy-nine African cities, including 15 national capitals, are at extreme risk of climate change, according to Catlyne Haddaoui, a global policy and research manager at the Washington-based Coalition for Urban Transitions.

“An increase of 2 degrees Celsius in average world temperature doesn’t have the same effect in Nigeria as it does in the US where you have air conditioning from your car to your office to your house and everywhere,” Haddaoui said. “It would be way more difficult to deal with in Africa and way more deadly.”

With extreme weather only likely to intensify and drive more people to migrate, “developed countries have both a responsibility and an interest in helping some of the most vulnerable countries,” said Taylor Dimsdale, director for Risk and Resilience at E3G, a climate think-tank.

It might stop migrants like Ali from knocking at their doors. The Somali farmer waited in Tapachula, about 900 miles from the nearest US border, to make the final stretch of his journey to America. With climate change destroying his livelihood, he’s keen to start over elsewhere.

“We depend on the rain and the river, but there was no water,” said Ali. “We lost everything.”

Why India is the big winner as EU’s Russia oil ban redraws energy trade map

‘We have a growing suspicion that India is becoming the de facto refining hub for Europe’: RBC’s Tran

May 31, 2022 

William Watts

David Hecker/Getty Images

In an unexpected twist, the European Union’s plan to ban imports of Russian crude in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine appears to be transforming India’s role in the global oil trade.

“As the EU weans from Russian refined product, we have a growing suspicion that India is becoming the de facto refining hub for Europe,” said Michael Tran, global energy strategist at RBC Capital Markets, in a Tuesday note.

It’s all part of the seismic displacements taking place across the physical market for crude and products in the aftermath of Russia’s late-February invasion and the resulting rounds of sanctions placed on Moscow.

EU leaders agreed Monday to embargo most Russian oil imports into the bloc by year-end as part of new sanctions agreed at a summit. While the agreement marks a hard-fought policy victory for the West, the reshuffling of global trade flows are set to prove economically inflationary for all nations involved as long as the war drags on, Tran said.

That will make sourcing barrels more expensive and keep upward pressure on oil pricing, the analyst said. The U.S. oil benchmark CL.1, +2.90% CLN22, +2.90% ended the day lower on Tuesday after earlier trading near a three-month high just shy of $120, but ended may with a strong gain. Brent crude BRN00, +1.14%, the global benchmark, ended higher and was also up for the month.

Meanwhile, India’s new role comes as it loads up on discounted Russian crude, which it has been refining at a torrid pace and then exporting refined products (see chart below).

RBC CAPITAL MARKETS

Here’s how the puzzle pieces fit together, according to Tran:
India is buying record amounts of severely discounted Russian crude, running its refiners above nameplate capacity, and capturing the economic rent of sky-high crack spreads and exporting gasoline and diesel to Europe. In short, the EU policy of tightening the screws on Russia is a policy win, but the unintended consequence is that Europe is effectively importing inflation to its own citizens. This is not only an economic boon for India, but it also serves as an accelerator for India’s place in the new geopolitically rewritten oil trade map. What we mean is that the EU policy effectively makes India an increasingly vital energy source for Europe. This was historically never the case, and it is why Indian product exports have been clocking in at all-time-high levels over recent months.

So does India’s example mean that Russian crude no longer bound for Europe will just end up elsewhere? That’s unlikely, according to Tran.

He expects the EU ban to back out around 1.2 million to 1.5 million barrels a day (mbd) of Russian exports. They will have to find a home elsewhere, particularly Asia.

So far, China has yet to increase imports, let alone Russian barrels, but scope for India, which has “already been backing up the truck and buying discounted Russian barrels in size,” to further boost purchases appears limited. Over time, Russian storage will fill and production will begin to falter, Tran said.

He noted that Russian floating crude storage now stand near 2 million barrels, down from 3.5 million a month ago, while refined products remain unchanged near 4 million barrels.

“This implies that barrels have continued to move in a relatively fluid state and storage levels have yet to be stressed, for now, but given the ban, the directional arrows of process would suggest that the wheels are in motion,” he said.

RUSSIA JUSTIFIES WAR WITH POLAND
Putin's Security Council says that Poland is "moving to seize" Ukraine



Ukrayinska Pravda
Tue, May 31, 2022
"EUROPEAN PRAVDA" — TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2022
NIKOLAY PATRUSHEV, PHOTO BY RIA NOVOSTI

Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said that Poland is moving to seize territories in western Ukraine.

He said this on Tuesday at a meeting on national security in the Volga region."European Pravda" with reference to the Russian agency "Interfax".

He said that the partners of the "Kyiv regime" are not averse to taking advantage of the current situation to further their own interests and have special plans for Ukrainian lands.

"Apparently, Poland is already making moves to seize Western Ukrainian territories," Patrushev said.

According to him, this was confirmed by the visit of Polish President Andrzej Duda to Kyiv and his words that "soon the Polish-Ukrainian border will cease to exist."

Earlier in May, Duda proposed to conclude a new agreement on the friendship between Poland and Ukraine and also said that the border between these two countries should unite, not divide.

Patrushev also said that "a number of states are already actively working on the dismemberment of Ukraine."

Earlier in Russia, they came up with a scenario according to which Poland, in collusion with the United States, seizes western Ukraine.

During the visit of President Andrzej Duda to Kyiv, Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced his intentions to simplify the border crossing between Ukraine and Poland.

For more information, see the article Approaching Schengen: what will give Ukraine joint control over the border with Poland.