It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Moniz: Texas blackouts show need to protect infrastructure against climate change
Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on Monday told lawmakers that recent extreme weather events in Texas underscored the need to better incorporate climate change risks into energy infrastructure.
“Climate change means that the weather patterns of the past are not adequate to inform those of the future,” Moniz said at a hearing hosted by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“As we increase electrification of key sectors, we must thoughtfully approach these requirements for, and risks to, a modernized electric grid,” he added. “In addition, increased electrification of other parts of the economy necessitates a substantial buildout of the grid system, from transmission lines to substations and transformers, to distribution systems and [electric vehicle] charging stations, all the way to heat pumps for homes.”
Moniz, who served during the Obama administration, noted that both the failure of the Texas grid and rolling blackouts in parts of California were indicative of the need to protect energy infrastructure from extreme climate events.
“Research, development, and demonstration of grid resilience technologies will be critically important to preserving reliability, an essential role of the federal government,” he added.
Moniz’s comments came during a hearing on the Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow's America Act, a wide-ranging infrastructure bill introduced last week by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Later in the hearing, Moniz added that “one of the major lessons” from the Texas blackouts had been that “as we do grid modernization, we have to look at the intersections with other infrastructures … in particular the failure to integrate response on the gas side and the electricity side was a huge problem.”
Congressional Republicans and Democrats have clashed on the extent to which hearings should be held on the failure of Texas’s self-contained grid. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) has said he intends to investigate “to what extent Texas should be part of the national grid.”
Unlike other states, Texas operates a standalone grid, allowing it to sidestep most federal regulations.
Some Republicans, however, have said Congress does not need to get involved in a state issue.
Interview Raymond Antrobus: 'Deafness is an experience, not a trauma'
There’s a story that Raymond Antrobus often tells, from the time before his deafness was diagnosed when he was six: when his father read him a picture book, Antrobus would nestle into his father’s chest, and feel the story he could not hear through the vibrations of his body. The book was often his favourite, Happy Birthday Moon; both the memory and the book would, decades later, give him the name of a poem in his prize-winning debut The Perseverance. “I’d like to be the Moon, the bear, even the rain. / Dad makes the Moon say something new every night / and we hear each other, really hear each other. / As Dad reads aloud, I follow his finger across the page.”
Now the memory has also inspired his first picture book, Can Bears Ski? Antrobus finally became the bear: the book follows his cuddly little protagonist, who hears the book’s title when adults ask, “Can you hear me?”, until his deafness is finally recognised.
Antrobus, 34, originally declined to write a children’s book when he caught the eye of publishers while reading Happy Birthday Moon at a literary festival. “I told this story all the time but I never thought of it as a kids’ book. The thing is, I still very much see myself as a poet,” he says. “Poetry is the thing I live for. But I’ve realised that a lot of my worry has been ego. A lot of poets I love also write for children. I think it’s just snobbery. In the poetry world, if I am honest, there’s just so much mean-spirited snobbery. And maybe I’ve just been in it for too long and that’s why I didn’t want to write a kids’ book. But I feel fine about this book now. I am so, so proud of it.”
Can Bears Ski? by Raymond Antrobus, illustrations by Polly Dunbar.
Photograph: Polly Dunbar
A while after the festival, standing in the library at Blanche Nevile, the deaf school in London that Antrobus once attended and where he now teaches, he checked the shelves. “There were no books for young children that had a deaf central character. There was nothing. So I decided I would give it a go.”
Antrobus then met children’s author Joyce Dunbar, who is profoundly deaf, at a literature festival. “Joyce was so supportive. I was worried that I would be stepping into a lane that’s not my own. Getting approval from a veteran was a blessing for me – if you think this is OK, no one can really tell me anything now.” By chance, the illustrator assigned to Can Bears Ski? was Polly Dunbar, Joyce’s daughter. When Antrobus saw her illustrations, he cried: “I just had to step outside the office, I couldn’t quite believe how well she nailed it.”
Antrobus has been getting messages from all over the world about Can Bears Ski?: from grandparents who use the book to explain their deafness to their grandchildren; a boy who wrote that he would ask his friend about his hearing aids for the first time; a whole school in Canada that was so inspired, they organised a skiing trip. “And none of them have been, ‘Oh, the poor deaf bear!’” he says. “Deafness is an experience, not a trauma. A diagnosis is not a tragic story, but managing it is a very real concern. I have hearing parents and they didn’t know whaonists. It is a symptom of a mainstream culture that is failing everyone. So my book t to do. It’s ridiculous to me that there weren’t more kids’ books with deaf protagis having a life beyond what I could have dreamed of, and that is really exciting.”
Antrobus is in an Oklahoma hotel room when we speak, waiting out a huge snowstorm that has taken out the heating in his home. His wife is American and Antrobus is currently living in the US with her, as they have both been caught up in immigration delays amid the pandemic. To further complicate matters, they are now expecting their first child: “We’ve been seeing midwives and looking at how much a birth costs in the US compared to the UK where it is free,” he huffs. “I am just being hit with constant new things.”
One positive new thing snuck in just weeks before the pandemic: after giving a talk to a roomful of audiologists, Antrobus was swamped by offers to improve his hearing aids. I’ve met Antrobus before and seen his previous hearing aids from the NHS; the devices in his ears now are entirely invisible on Zoom. He says they have changed his life, that he can hear sound through walls for the first time.
Can Bears Ski? by Raymond Antrobus, illustrations by Polly Dunbar.
Photograph: Polly Dunbar
“They are like the most powerful hearing aids that exist and they have been a godsend. I have been living in a whole new world of sound in the pandemic. I have been on NHS hearing aids my whole life – these are worth thousands and I wouldn’t have access to these otherwise. The kids I work with, they don’t have access to this. But my god, has it made a difference.”
Like everyone in lockdown, he has watched a lot of TV, but for a very different reason: armed with his flash tech, he is now watching all the films he remembers seeing without captions as a child. “All my ideas of my favourite childhood films are wrong!” he says. “This whole thing has opened up to me, I’ve had different stories for all of them.” In lockdown, he’s also made a BBC Radio 4 show, Inventions in Sound – a programme about captioning.
While Can Bears Ski? began with a memory of his father, the role the bear’s father plays in the book – finding lost hearing aids, juggling appointments – was all his mother. “I could never really talk to my dad about my experiences, that world was completely alien to him,” Antrobus says. “He didn’t participate. I don’t want to make excuses for him. But I did want this book to challenge gender roles. Before it came out, I had to tell mum, ‘I am not giving dad the credit here, I am just providing a model.’ He just wasn’t present. He didn’t have any language, he never even called me deaf, he’d just call me ‘limited’. That was always his word and the way he used it, it did affect me. We would call that ableist language now. So in a way, the book models the childhood I wish I had with my dad. But I hope it also honours what my mum did.” He’s promised that his next poetry collection, out in September, is “all about her”. “And she’s come around now,” he laughs.
Goldman Sachs' junior bankers rebel over '18-hour shifts and low pay'
Younger staff in London follow revolt in US offices over remote-working conditions
Junior Goldman Sachs staff in london have joined a revolt over working hours and pay during the pandemic. Photograph: Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
The reputation of Goldman Sachs as the most desirable employer for aspiring investment bankers is at stake. Legendary for its pulling power with the best graduates, the bank is now facing a rebellion in its lower ranks.
Junior staff who used to tolerate long working hours thanks to office camaraderie have been forced to manage burnout at home, alone, throughout the pandemic. Some have started demanding change, while others are plotting their exit. What began as a little local trouble at a US office in February has now spread to the UK.
“It used to be either you get paid a lot, and your life is hell, or your life is better and you’re not paid that well,” one London-based banker, hired by Goldman last year, said. “At the moment we have neither.”
The banker, who spoke to the Guardian on the basis of anonymity, said staff were worried about speaking out on issues including 18-hour shifts that left juniors earning less than the living wage, or the number of colleagues on sick leave due to burnout. The employee – who is one of 100 recruits hired to work at Goldman each year – did not want their gender disclosed due to fear of repercussion.
“I knew what I was signing up for at Goldman. But then things changed really quickly with remote working during Covid,” they said.
With the Fleet Street head office closed, some colleagues moved home, while the banker, in their early 20s, was left to work out of a three-bed flat shared with two other roommates in London.
Goldman chief executive David Solomon has acknowledged the vast pandemic workload. While an investment banking boom helped push profits up 135% to $4.5bn (£3.8bn) in the fourth quarter of 2020, it has taken a toll on staff.
“There are three to six people on sick leave for burnout per team in London at all times. It’s actually pretty rough,” the London banker said. Some juniors are regularly working until 4-5am, and occasionally through to morning. “I’ve spoken to some analysts that have lost nearly 1 or 2 stone in one year just because they don’t have time to cook.”
Solomon was forced to address similar complaints laid out in a leaked presentation by 13 aggrieved first-year Goldman bankers this week, who complained that long hours, and abuse from co-workers had created “inhumane” working conditions.
The complaints, which date from February, indicate that Goldman is still grappling with the high-pressure culture that was exposed when 22-year-old Goldman analyst Sarvshreshth Gupta took his own life in 2015. Gupta was found dead after complaining of toiling 100 hours a week and throughout the night.
Inquiries suggest Goldman is not just overworking a small group of US hires, but that the problem is widespread and affecting junior bankers overseas.
In a company-wide message on Monday, Solomon pledged the bank would ramp up efforts to hire more junior bankers, transfer staff to stretched teams and strengthen enforcement of a no-work-on-Saturday rule. “We are not asking for crazy stuff, just for the existing rules to be enforced,” the London banker said.
Banks such as Goldman Sachs are able to demand long hours by adding a clause to contracts that opt staff out of 48-hour working week rules.
“Some days you don’t shower,” the London banker said. “Same with eating … You just don’t have time to say ‘Oh hey I need to go shopping for groceries and then cook’,” they said.
“We are supposed to work “whatever the business requires” but these requirements have kept increasing and we have no control on our hours. Senior employees can choose to pass on a deal if they don’t have the bandwidth, but we are just obeying orders,” the banker said.
To its credit, Goldman Sachs has tried to offer some remote perks, such as yoga or mental health webinars. “But you don’t even have time to sleep. So how would you have time to login for one hour on Zoom?” the banker said.
First-year bankers are weighing up the costs. Starting on a base salary of roughly £50,000, analysts who regularly work 18-hour shifts, six days a week, will earn roughly £8.90 an hour before tax – less than the £10.85 living wage for London – unless they last until bonus season.
“If you don’t get your bonus, you’ll get paid less by the hour than a McDonald’s employee. And everyone knows about that, but it also increases the pressure, in the sense that people are scared of voicing concerns, myself included,” they said.
The banker said a number of analysts had quit halfway through their second-year – refusing to wait for their bonus. “They said, ‘It’s not worth it. I’d rather have time off and then start to work where I’ll be paid more, than suffer like hell.’”
Meanwhile, Goldman has left bankers footing the bill for their own home-working equipment – including computers, screens, phone, chairs and desks – during the pandemic.
Staff have also been stripped of meal perks that allowed them to expense up to £20 a day when working overtime – and £60 on Sundays – since they left the office. “Juniors tried pushing for evening meals to be covered as used to be in the office but the firm didn’t reply. This has a huge impact as it amounts to 20% of net salary,” they said.
The banker claimed Goldman was aware it could pay workers less, and replace them quickly, thanks to the power of its own brand and prestige. “That’s the really perverse thing about it. Goldman keeps saying the real force of Goldman is its people. And if that was the case, they’d treat the people better,” they said.
The bank did not deny that staff had been overworked, but said in a statement: “We are actively engaging with our managers to ensure that everyone in their teams, including junior staff members, has the support they need given the high-levels of client activity and ongoing challenges of working from home.”
Goldman Sachs boss responds to leaked report into 'inhumane' working hours
David Solomon says he takes survey in which junior analysts claimed damage to physical and mental health very seriously
BRUCE WILLIS EVIL TWIN
David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, told staff on Sunday in a recorded message that he was taking further action to limit excessive working hours. Photograph: Kena Betancur/Afp/AFP via Getty Images
Goldman Sachs’s chief executive, David Solomon, has broken his silence over a report by some of its junior bankers that claimed staff were facing “inhumane” working conditions, saying he took the complaints “very seriously”.
In a recorded message sent to the bank’s 34,000 staff across the world on Sunday night, Solomon said the Wall Street firm was taking further action to address issues raised in the leaked presentation last week.
The slides, which were created by a small group of newly hired investment banking analysts in the US, said they were working 100-hour weeks and facing abuse from colleagues that was severely affecting their mental and physical health
“I can imagine that many of you saw the presentation that a group of analysts shared with their management recently about their lack of work-life balance,” the chief executive said, according to a transcript seen by the Guardian. “This is something that our leadership team and I take very seriously.”
The complaints suggested bankers at Goldman are still struggling with the long hours and high-pressure culture that was exposed when 22-year-old Goldman analyst Sarvshreshth Gupta took his own life in 2015. Gupta was found dead after complaining of working 100 hours a week and working all night.
Solomon said junior staff were facing “a new set of challenges” due to remote working, acknowledging that some staff felt they had to be connected 24/7. “This is not easy, and we’re working hard to make it better.”
The banking boss is famously opposed to home working, having called it an aberration that must be corrected as soon as possible.
Solomon, who was previously head of Goldman’s investment banking division, said the lender was responding to complaints by strengthening enforcement of a no work on Saturday rule, ramping up efforts to hire new junior bankers and transferring staff internally to help teams that were stretched. “We’re also being more selective about business opportunities that we pursue, and we’re working to automate certain tasks in our business,” he added.
Despite fears that the 13 junior bankers may have faced repercussions for raising their concerns – which were first brought to managers before they started circulating on Twitter last week – Solomon said he encouraged staff to speak up.
“In this case, it’s great that this group of analysts went to their management. We want a workplace where people can share concerns freely. So we want to encourage all of you to take the opportunity to speak with your management. If there are any issues, do not hesitate to reach out to ask for help,” the message said.
However, he cheered the fact that Goldman was attracting enough business to keep its investment bankers so busy. “In the months ahead, there are times when we’re going to feel more stretched than others, but just remember: If we all go an extra mile for our client, even when we feel that we’re reaching our limit, it can really make a difference in our performance.”
THE JACK MA PHILOSOPHY 996
Stray review – exquisite dog's eye view of Istanbul
Elizabeth Lo’s film about the street dogs of the Turkish metropolis is the perfect companion piece to Kedi, a 2016 work about its cats
Queen of the road … Zeytin in Stray. Photograph: Dogwoof films
At last, just what world cinema really needs right now: an exquisitely made film about street dogs in Istanbul, satiating that universal desire to see distant lands, coo over beautiful, noble animals, and satisfy the audience’s need to feel guilty about the misfortune of poorer, unluckier people. Director Elizabeth Lo’s first feature-length documentary ticks every box, while also providing a companion piece to Kedi, Ceyda Torun’s equally wonderful ode to Istanbul and Turkey’s feral felines. Together, the two films would make the perfect night in of viewing for quarantined animal lovers with frustrated wanderlust, especially anyone who loves the magnificently grotty Bosphorus metropolis.
Filmed seemingly with a low-slung camera held for great chunks of the running time at dog-head height, the film follows a gaggle of orphans both canine and human whose paths intersect and converge. A trio of Turkish-speaking refugees from Syria live in squatted building sites and doorways, and the camera stands back and watches while they huff glue from bags and space out. The actual protagonist is a yellow mutt named Zeytin, a Labra-something cross probably, with the most soulful eyes you’ll see in any movie this year. Dragging a slightly crook leg and sometimes palling up with dog friend Nazar – a dark, stockier lady of a certain age – Zeytin hangs with the Syrian boys and then saunters off to look for food when the fancy takes her, queen of the road, blithely unconcerned about cars.
The spliced-in grandiloquent quotes about dogs and philosophy and whatnot from Diogenes that pepper the film aren’t really necessary; the action speaks for itself. Perhaps because the star species here is more biddable and less camera-shy than the average cat, Lo’s film stays closer to its non-human heroine than Kedi did, creating a more lyrical, less anthropological study. That poetic vibe is richly enhanced by composer Ali Helnwein’s keening, cello-centric score that’s nimbly synched up to the editing. That said, nothing tops the vocal performance from Zeytin herself at the end, howling hauntingly along with a muezzin’s call to prayer.
Stray is released on 26 March on digital platforms.
'What appointments did these dogs have to keep?': long lunches and brief liaisons in a radical new dogumentary
‘One indomitable bitch’ … Zeytin in Stray. Photograph: Magnolia Pictures
To mark National Puppy Day, Elizabeth Lo’s acclaimed film Stray gives humans rare insight into the canine gaze, courtesy of homeless mutts in Istanbul
From the moment Zeytin makes her first appearance in Elizabeth Lo’s feature Stray, there is no doubt you are in the presence of a unique spirit. As she surveys an Istanbul side street at dawn, her features are alert, her gaze is uncompromising and her deep, dark eyes sparkle with intelligence. There’s something of Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen about her, or maybe Brad Pitt in one of his less kempt moments. But non-dog comparisons don’t do her justice. This is one indomitable bitch.
Lo first encountered Zeytin and her friend Nazar on a 2017 casting trip to Turkey, and knew immediately that she had found the star she was looking for – which is to say, a dog who could carry a human film. “We were wandering through a busy underground tunnel filled with people when suddenly these two giant stray dogs streaked past us,” she says. “They were running with such a sense of purpose and it was so intriguing. What appointments did these dogs have to keep?”
Lo and her small crew of Turkish co-producers ended up tailing Zeytin, Nazar and another dog, Kartal, to all of their appointments around Istanbul for a period of over two years, trying to answer that question. Her documentary, filmed entirely at dog-height and given an immersive soundtrack by the sound artist Ernst Karel, reveals a rich social calendar, as the dogs trot to meetings with fishers on the Galata Bridge, lunches with refuse collectors on the Istiklal Caddesi, brisk liaisons with male dogs and long nights sleeping on construction sites with Jamil, Halil and Aliof, three refugees from Aleppo.
Stray, Lo’s debut feature-length documentary, is already a cult hit on the (virtual) festival circuit, enthusiastically received by human and dog audiences alike. However, it defies the sentimentality of pet movies such as Marley & Me or even non-human-centred stories like Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar. Instead, it is a meditation on non-human intelligence that seems to open the way towards a new interspecies cinema. Zeytin, stubborn and independent, was the one dog throughout the whole casting process who didn’t try to follow the human crew around. “It allowed us to follow her, for her to take us places and for audiences to be enveloped in a non-human will and agency,” says Lo.
It’s no surprise to find that Lo is a dog-lover. She grew up in Hong Kong with a sheepdog named Mikey and when Mikey died, she vowed to make a film that honoured a dog’s life on its own terms rather than through the prism of ownership. “It was about recentring a narrative, visually and sonically, around a non-human gaze, breaking away from an anthropocentric way of viewing the world,” she says.
Her initial thought was to make a documentary comparing the treatment of stray dogs in different cities around the world, but the unusual legal status of stray dogs in Istanbul ended up consuming her attention. For most of the last century, Turkish authorities have battled against stray (and often rabid) dogs, ultimately resorting to inhumane methods such as mass poisonings – which only made the dogs more hostile and dangerous. Eventually, public outcry forced a change in the law. Since 2004, it has been illegal to euthanise or capture any stray dog in Turkey. The result, in Istanbul, is that dogs now eat, sleep, defecate and mate wherever they choose. The authorities merely vaccinate, sterilise, tag and provide medical attention to the strays. What Lo saw as she followed Zeytin, Nazar and Kartal around was a city of 15 million people taking communal care of the city’s estimated 130,000 dogs, who lead far more fulfilling lives as a result.
‘It was about recentring a narrative, visually and sonically, around a non-human gaze, breaking away from an anthropocentric way of viewing the world’ … Stray. Photograph: Magnolia Pictures
"The hours-long adventures that these dogs would take themselves on!” she marvels. “Walks upon walks upon walks upon walks. Most pets don’t ever get to experience that. It made me realise the potential that dogs have, the desires that are not often fulfilled, even under the care of people as pets. I hope the film acts as a decolonising tool, to challenge Eurocentric views on what a humane and just city looks like.”
What she witnessed in Istanbul was that dogs could successfully integrate into a city without becoming nuisances or harming themselves – and the dogs were, not coincidentally, far better socialised than the vast majority of pets in LA, where Lo has lived for most of the last decade. There are no interviews or commentary in the film – only a bit of overheard gossip – though there are some choice maxims from Diogenes of Sinope in 360BC: “Human beings live artificially and hypocritically and would do well to study the dog.” While Lo says she wouldn’t presume to speak for animals, this is a polemical film, strongly influenced by Donna Haraway’s writings about interspecies relations and John Berger’s essay, Why Look at Animals? And Lo’s camera can’t help but make implicit comparisons, notably between the status of the dogs and the Syrian refugees who befriend them. It was to these “stray” men that Zeytin and Nazar were running to when Lo first encountered them in the tunnel and their bond is at the heart of the film. Again, the relatively hospitable treatment given to the refugees also took her by surprise. In the film, we do see them being moved on, but the security guards who are doing so are generally apologetic as they do so. “I felt a lot of compassion there. When I asked people how they felt about refugees, oftentimes, people would say: ‘They are our brothers, they are in need and Turkey is a haven for those in need.’ Even government officials would sometimes say that.”
I watched the film conditioned by stories such as Black Beauty or White Fang to expect that at some point Zeytin would be subjected to cruelty and violence. But the moment doesn’t arrive; she doesn’t fall into our usual categories of victim or hero, wild or tame. There’s a funny moment when she wanders into the middle of a feminist rally where she is fondled by of the protesters – only to be mounted by a male dog as the protesters yell loudly about consent. “I’m not sure what the scene is saying exactly, but I loved the surrealism of it,” Lo laughs.
Zeytin had charisma, but she made Lo work hard. She was unusual in that she was completely unfazed by Lo’s camera – which allowed all those lingering closeups – but she also proved unbribable with even the choicest cuts of meat, since she was so adept at finding whatever she wanted on the street. “A lot of times, we would just be waiting and waiting and waiting for Zeytin to wake up – and sometimes she wouldn’t wake up until 5pm. Her rhythms were her own. We just had to surrender our desires for whatever we might expect of a film’s story and hand it over to her. Sometimes she would chase after sounds that we couldn’t hear or smells that we couldn’t smell. It was just a process of letting go and trying to immerse.”
After a night of filming, Lo would strap on small GPS devices so that she could find her again the next day. Still more challenging was the gap of almost a year in the middle of filming. Everyone outside of Istanbul thought that she wouldn’t survive long on the streets – but Lo found her within a couple of days of returning to the city. Even now, a couple of years after she finished production, her friends in Istanbul are still sending her pictures of Zeytin and Nazar whenever they see them.
‘A lot of times, we would just be waiting and waiting and waiting for Zeytin to wake up – and sometimes she wouldn’t wake up until 5pm’ … Stray. Photograph: Magnolia Pictures
She hopes that the film will make people reflect on our double standards when it comes to dogs in the west. She is disturbed by the internet – and the lockdown-driven vogue for pure-bred dogs : “Have these pet owners stopped to consider where the mother of their beloved is, how much she has suffered in breeding facilities?” However, she thinks that pet ownership can be a gateway to empathy with other species, noting that in California, pet owners vote in far greater numbers for animal-welfare measures. And she hopes that the film will make us question our assumptions.
“We think that we treat dogs better in the west. But really the fact that New York, London, LA don’t have dogs on the street is indicative of how intolerant we actually are. Unless a dog is property, it has no rights at all. Which is insane if you think about it. We’ve somehow reframed the insanity of killing millions of dogs every year or letting them languish in cells as the moral thing to do when in fact it’s the opposite.”
In Istanbul, she says, she was able to have fulfilling relationships with animals that weren’t based on ownership – and has missed it ever since. “John Berger writes: maybe the impulse to go to the zoo is to fulfil this desire that is so lacking in our modern existence. It’s in our blood to be with other species and to communicate with them. The experience in Turkey showed me what I’d been missing in the cultures I’d grown up in, where the streets are devoid of other species. That’s such an impoverished way to go through the world.”
Stray is available to preview on www.stray-film.co.uk to celebrate National Puppy Day on March 23, ahead of its digital release on March 26
UK startup raises €8m of funding to convert CO2 into animal feed SOY THE MANNA OF VEGITARIANS
Deep Branch aims to create protein that will replace the use of soy, which has been linked to deforestation
A soybean plantation in Rondônia, Brazil. Farmers are seeking a more sustainable food source for their animals. Photograph: Marizilda Cruppe/WWF-UK/PA
A UK company that turns carbon dioxide into protein to be used for animal feed has raised €8m (£6.8m) in funding as it seeks to displace the use of deforestation-linked soy by farmers.
Carbon and hydrogen are fed to a microorganism in a fermentation process similar to what you would see in a brewery. But rather than alcohol, the output is a high-value protein that can be dried and converted into pellets to feed animals.
The need for natural sources of protein such as soy and fishmeal has long been an environmental headache for farmers with animals to feed. Soy is linked to deforestation in regions such as the Amazon, and fishmeal requires large quantities of wild-caught fish to produce.
In contrast, the protein created by startup Deep Branch will rely on recycling carbon from industrial emitters. The waste gas will need to go through a chemical purification process to separate the carbon dioxide from other gases before it can be used to produce protein.
“There are big sustainability drawbacks from the proteins we currently use to produce animal products like salmon fillets and chicken drumsticks,” said Deep Branch’s co-founder, Peter Rowe, “but we can produce a high-quality protein without requiring any arable land or fish.”
Rowe said animal producers faced increased competition for feedstocks such as soy and fishmeal and that Deep Branch’s protein, which is being produced in Europe, offered a more secure food source less affected by geopolitics, seasonality or climate.
Insects have also been touted as a sustainable protein-rich alternative to soy and fishmeal, but Rowe said his firm’s protein would be easier to scale up and produce at lower cost, if it can locate next to industrial plants capturing carbon. The company will start commercial trials of its feed on chickens and salmon by the summer.
“It won’t all be plain sailing from here, though,” said Mike Allen, a professor in environmental sciences at the University of Exeter and Plymouth Marine Laboratory. “I imagine they will face significant challenges with scaling up their process, and they’ll still need to blend their product with other types of biomass to provide the full nutrient profile required for healthy animal growth.”
The startup has already attracted support from leading animal feed companies in Europe, BioMar and AB Agri, and is close to agreeing to build its first commercial production facility in Norway, where it hopes to supply the country’s aquaculture sector. Norway is the world’s leading salmon exporter and has a number of carbon capture and storage projects in development.
However, Allen said the company should not be seen as a climate-saving project. “Any process that utilises industrial CO2 emissions is great in theory, but they’ll have to be honest and realistic about how much CO2 they are actually remediating, and what their overall carbon footprint is.
“Most of the CO2 run through their bioreactors will pass straight through, I imagine. And the hydrogen will come with a carbon footprint too. This isn’t a carbon capture technology, despite how it may be branded – it’s a protein production platform,” he said.
While global demand for meat remained high, Rowe said, Deep Branch’s protein feed was a more sustainable alternative to soy or fishmeal.
“Yes, reducing meat consumption also reduces our impact on the environment, but not everyone sees it that way, so if we can reduce the impact of animal protein production, then that’s only a good thing,” he said.
WWF said it welcomed attempts to reduce dependence on soy. “These bacterial processes using excess materials like carbon dioxide and agricultural byproducts are a good thing, as they don’t, like soy, cause deforestation, biodiversity loss and don’t need freshwater or fertiliser,” said the charity’s aquaculture lead, Piers Hart.
“We shouldn’t be using precious land and fresh water to grow crops for feed when it could be used to grow crops for food, so we shouldn’t be using soy and maize to feed animals.
“Whether they [alternative proteins] will completely displace soy will come down to cost in the end. We hope that increasing demand and scaling production will bring the price down and also that people will say that, yes, it may be slightly more expensive, but it’s that much better for the planet that we will use it,” said Hart.
Elitism, murder and the other MCC: the complex story of cricket in Mexico
Mexico was one of the first countries outside England to embrace the game – so why is it not a Test-playing nation?
Mexico’s national side celebrate winning the 2018 South American Cricket Championship in Bogotá. Photograph: The Mexico Cricket Association
“Had one been asked to name the thing with which there was the least chance of meeting in a country like Mexico,” wrote William Bullock in the mid-19th century, “one might very well have fixed on a game of croquet.” But even in Montezuma, his fellow Victorians still insisted on getting a game in.
It was around the same time as he stumbled upon croquet that Bullock – an English journalist and a first-class cricketer – discovered its near namesake was even more popular in the country. His book of his travels, Across Mexico in 1864-65, contains the first written account of cricket in Mexico, but by the time he committed it to paper, the game had been flourishing in the country for several decades.
Mexico was, in fact, one of the first countries outside England to embrace the game. It had arrived on its shores in the 1820s, along with the British who had travelled to work in and profit from its silver mines in the years immediately after it gained independence from Spain. In the mountains of Hidalgo they quickly established no fewer than three cricket clubs in and around Pachuca\
As well as their love of sport, Cornish miners introduced their most famous foodstuff. You can still buy Cornish pasties all over the country – they’re a popular snack in Mexico, where they were adopted, adapted and improved on. So why didn’t the same happen with cricket, which was introduced a good 60 years before organised football made its appearance? What stopped Mexico becoming a Test-playing nation?
It’s a question that author Craig White has been pondering during lockdown, as he finally writes that history of Mexican cricket that the world has been waiting for. “I’ve actually been working on it for more than 10 years,” says White, who’s the secretary of the Mexican Cricket Association, “but I’ve never had the time to do it properly before. And so much information has been lost over the years that I’ve had to reconstruct a lot of the history from old newspaper accounts.”
As an NGO worker who began his career in the country at the British embassy, White is well aware of the international power dynamic that accompanied the sport during the 90 years before the Mexican Revolution ended its heyday. “The sport was a real celebration of Britishness at the time when Britain was the world power,” says White. “I was reading about one game played during the Boer war that was accompanied by a band playing patriotic songs and Union Jacks flying.”
There was no interest in spreading the game among the general population. “It was played in sports clubs that were well out of reach of all but the richest,” says White. In Mexico, cricket remained very much a sport of and for the elite – Eric Gomez, an ESPN journalist currently writing a history of Mexican football, points out that most Mexicans couldn’t afford a day off work to play a game, let alone spend money on kit, but they could kick a ball about with fellow workers at the end of their shift. This was one of the chief reasons that football prospered where cricket failed.
But then, cricket’s exclusivity was its very appeal – the game became a bulwark of power and prestige, just as it had in Britain’s colonies. Bullock was travelling through Mexico during the brief, doomed reign of Emperor Maximilian, the Austrian archduke put on the throne with the help of a French invasion. Sure enough, captured in a photograph by François Aubert, there is Maximilian all kitted out for one of the Mexican Cricket Club’s – or MCC’s – reds-v-blues Sunday games. Within a couple of years, Maximilian would be immortalised in a very different way when his death by firing squad was captured on canvas by Édouard Manet.
Even after the republic reasserted itself, cricket prospered – in no small part due to President Porfirio Díaz, dictator-to-be. His economic policies made Mexico a magnet for foreign investors from Britain, Australia and New Zealand, while a young Mexican elite learned the game in the British public schools to which many were sent to polish both their education and social standing. Luis Amor, who returned from Stonyhurst College to a life as a sugar plantation owner, established the Mexico Cricket Club in 1896, with the help of his brothers Alejandro, Victor and Pablo – all of whom had also fallen for the game at Stonyhurst.
It is a complex history, and one that deserves to be told, if nothing else as a cautionary tale of how cricket’s elitism and classism has so often been its own downfall. But also as a reminder that sport is never separate from politics. Not long after the Santa Rosa Athletic Club, whose cricketers called themselves “Los Rancheros”, celebrated a 65-run victory against Porfirio Díaz city, their president David McKellar was ambushed and murdered. He had angered Mexican ranchers by fencing off his land.
Bullock wrote, of the Sunday cricketers he met: “They assured me that they had never allowed political events to interfere with their game, which they had pursued unconcernedly, more than once, in view of the fighting going on in the hills around them.” But come the Mexican Revolution – swiftly followed by the first world war – many British and other expatriates returned to their home countries; their departure triggered the demise of Mexico’s cricket league and the sport in general.
“There’s a real similarity with Denmark and the Netherlands and other countries where cricket arrived early but remained among the elites,” says White. “It was a missed opportunity – cricket had a head start on football and baseball by at least half a century and it was squandered.” The Mexican Cricket Association has had considerable recent success establishing a national women’s team, and hopes that the game will finally reach the Mexican population through girls’ cricket. In the meantime, White is putting the finishing touches to his history – and publishers are encouraged to get in touch.
Berlin's plan to return Benin bronzes piles pressure on UK museums
British Museum and Pitt Rivers under pressure to hand back sculptures looted from Nigeria
BM REFUSES SAY'S THEY ARE A TOURIST ATTRACTION
The British Museum in London holds the single largest collection of Benin bronzes. Photograph: Adam Eastland/Alamy
Berlin is negotiating to fully restitute hundreds of the Benin bronzes in a shift of policy that has been welcomed in Nigeria but will put pressure on museums in London and Oxford to also return artefacts looted from Britain’s former west African empire in 1897.
More than 500 historical objects including 440 bronzes from the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now southern Nigeria, are held at the Ethnological Museum in the German capital. Half of the collection was due to go on display this autumn at the Humboldt Forum, a newly opened museum of non-European art in the city centre.
However, Hartmut Dorgerloh, the director of the Humboldt Forum, told German media on Monday that the complex could instead exhibit only replicas of the bronzes or leave symbolic empty spaces, and that the sculptures and reliefs could be returned to Nigeria as soon as the autumn
The exhibition, due to open at the end of the year, would “critically engage” with the history of the west African kingdom and its capture by British troops, a spokesperson for the Prussian Heritage Foundation told the Guardian.
“Especially in view of the current debate, we consider it essential to address this issue,” they said. “As a matter of principle this does not exclude the restitution of the exhibited works.”
Andreas Görgen, the head of the German foreign ministry’s culture department, visited Benin City last week for discussions with the Nigerian government, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Under the terms of the agreement as reported by the Art Newspaper, Germany would take part in archaeological excavations in the region, provide training for Nigerian museum employees, participate in the construction of a new museum in Benin, and restitute the looted Benin bronzes held in Berlin to the Restoration Legacy Trust, an NGO set up in 2019.
The bronzes were looted by British soldiers and sailors on a punitive expedition to Benin City in 1897 and subsequently scattered across museums in Europe and North America. The single largest collection of Benin bronzes is held by the British Museum, and a further 300 objects are held at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
The museums have formed a Benin dialogue group to support the new museum, plans for which have been drawn up by the Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye, but until recently they had agreed only to provide looted works on a rotating loan basis. New museum in Nigeria raises hopes of resolution to Benin bronzes dispute
“This would be a hugely significant shift”, said Victor Ehikhamenor, a Nigerian artist and trustee of the Legacy Restoration Trust, which would receive the restituted artefacts. “If Germany follows through with these plans, then any European country that holds on to Benin bronzes no longer has a moral ground to stand on.
“The time has come for the British Museum to finally join in this debate. The current situation is a bit like a thief has stolen your watch and sold it to a pawn shop, but the pawn shop is refusing to hand it over to the police. It makes no sense.”
Bénédicte Savoy, a French art historian who resigned from the Humboldt Forum’s advisory board in 2017, criticised plans to exhibit the Benin bronzes in Germany in a recent interview, telling Der Spiegel that “with every month, with every day, it becomes less likely that you can show the bronzes without embarrassing yourself”.
A spokesperson for the British Museum, which is working with the Legacy Restoration Trust on an archeology project linked to the new museum, said in a statement: “The devastation and plunder wreaked upon Benin City during the British military expedition in 1897 is fully acknowledged by the museum and the circumstances around the acquisition of Benin objects explained in gallery panels and on the museum’s website.
“We believe the strength of the British Museum collection resides in its breadth and depth, allowing millions of visitors an understanding of the cultures of the world and how they interconnect over time – whether through trade, migration, conquest, or peaceful exchange.”
Liquid gold: beekeepers defying Yemen war to produce the best honey
Beekeepers collect honey comb from hives just outside Ataq, Shabwah governorate, Yemen. Photograph: Sam Tarling/Sana'a Centre
Despite the dangers, more Yemenis are turning to the sector as an alternative means of income
According to the Qur’an a lone sidr tree, or jujube, marks the highest boundary of heaven. On earth, amid the harshness of the Yemeni desert, the sweetness of sidr honey is cherished as a symbol of perseverance.
Yemen has long been renowned for producing some of the best honey in the world, often compared to Mānuka honey from New Zealand. Some of the highest quality, and purest, comes from bees fed exclusively on the flowers of the sidr, producing a pale coloured honey with a fiery, almost bitter aftertaste.
While the war has made travel difficult, closing off many roads, for traditional beekeepers life is much the same: they are some of the only people in Yemen who can traverse frontlines with ease, moving around every few months in search of flowers for their bees.
Honey sellers allow workers to sample their wares in a jewellery shop in Ataq, Shabwah governorate. Photograph: Sam Tarling/Sana'a Centre/Publication “It doesn’t matter who is commanding a checkpoint. They see the beehives in the back of the truck and we don’t have to stop long. Even the Houthis [Yemen’s rebels] are afraid of bees,” said Said al-Aulaqi, 40, as he took a break from looking after 80 of his hives near the village of Khamer in Shabwa.
An estimated 100,000 small-scale beekeepers like Aulaqi in Yemen produce just 1,580 tonnes of honey a year, of which 840 tonnes is exported, according to a 2020 UN report. Sidr honey can sell for up to $500 (£370) a kilogram in neighbouring Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. While honey connoisseurs maintain that the Yemeni product deserves a global market, decades of political instability have meant turbulent growth and limited outside reach.
Keen to improve food stability and bring money into the country, the government has identified honey as a key sector for expansion: beekeepers, wholesalers and exporters the Guardian met in and around Shabwa’s capital, Ataq, say they are keen to share their liquid gold with the rest of the world.
A beekeeper sells tins of honeycomb in the market area of Ataq, in Shabwah governorate. Photograph: Sam Tarling/Sana'a Centre
Aulaqi and his three young employees enthusiastically show off their wooden rectangular hives, opening the doors to display the rows of combs inside. Smoke from burning strips of hemp cloth keeps the bees drowsy and stops them stinging, although all four say they are immune after being attacked so many times.
The 40-year-old has been keeping bees for 10 years, after learning the trade from his uncle. He lost his entire livelihood in 2015, after the Houthis moved into Shabwa and blocked the road to neighbouring Abyan, where his bees died after running out of water.
It took two years to restart with another 300 boxes purchased at a cost of 2m Yemeni riyal (£1,850). Now his hives are scattered around Shabwa’s mountains, desert and coastal plain, depending on the season.
Honeycomb that has just been taken from hives, outside Ataq. Photograph: Sam Tarling/Sana'a Centre
The prized Sidr honey can only be harvested once every 12 months, but lower-grade acacia and desert flowers provide work year-round.
A generation ago, beehives were still cultivated in empty tree trunks and transported on the backs of camels; now, imported machine-made hives and pickup trucks make the work easier, even if beekeepers, like so many others in Yemen, are plagued by fuel shortages.
While there is money to be made in honey, there are also many challenges for beekeepers to overcome. If roadblocks or fighting make it impossible to move hives to more bountiful areas, the bees will die, and the insects are also at risk from unregulated pesticide use by farmers.
Adel Saleh Saber, 28, collects honeycomb from hives just outside Ataq. Photograph: Sam Tarling/Sana'a Centre
The war means beekeeping has become a hazardous occupation for humans too. Unmarked landmines are planted all over the country. And while keepers prefer to move bees at night, when the insects are sleepy, nocturnal movement is often viewed as suspicious by Yemen’s warring parties, and tracked closely from the air by Saudi and US drones.
Mohammed bin Lashar, a wholesaler in Ataq, said one of his suppliers was targeted by an airstrike in Maʼrib governorate. “He was lucky to survive. They probably thought he was al-Qaida,” he said.
Despite the dangers, and as inflation soars and steady work dries up, in Shabwa at least it appears more and more people are turning to beekeeping as an alternative means of income.
While more experienced keepers are happy to share what they know about the trade with newcomers, they are also worried that too many insects in the same area will make it difficult to find adequate food and water for the growing bee population, driving down standards and prices.
The honey market of Ataq in Shabwah, Yemen. Photograph: Sam Tarling/Sana'a Centre
In Ataq’s main square, dozens of beekeepers hawked their wares to individual shoppers and wholesalers, but few people were buying.
“This is my first season as a beekeeper,” said Saleh Al-Hansi, 25. “I like it, I enjoy the work. Other beekeepers encouraged me to start so I’ll have to see how it goes.”
There could be enough work for everyone if the authorities or local charities step in to help by planting more sidr trees, a move local beekeepers are lobbying for. Other necessary steps for expanding the sector include creating a standards agency and food safety certification system to allow Yemeni beekeepers to export their organic product throughout the world.
Aulaqi, proud of his work, would not give up his bees for anything. “It can be lonely sometimes; I only get to see my family once a month. But I used to do construction work in Saudi Arabia and it’s much better than that.
“Bees and honey are a blessing from God,” he said. “There is a lot to be thankful for.”
