Green city experiments are happening worldwide. 20thC was all about building cities around cars. Coronavirus allows for emergency measures that permanently revitalize neighborhoods & public spaces. bit.ly/pandemicurbani… #CoronavirusImposesCarbonTax
In Paris,Anne Hidalgo used lockdown time to create more cycling lanes. Residents can get up to 500 euros to buy an electric bike & a €50 reimbursement to repair an old bike. Unsurprisingly, a cycling boom in a car-mad city. 3/ #CoronavirusImposesCarbonTax time.com/5864707/paris-…
Bogota's mayor, Claudia López, opened up nearly 72 miles of new bike routes in March. With car traffic down, the city replaced 35kms with new 'emergency' bike paths. Similar $100M plan in New Zealand. Guerrilla urbanism! 5/ discerningcyclist.com/2020/04/pop-up…
N. American cities: ~50% of commuters drive. Cost? Pedestrian fatalities, congestion, sprawl & .
European cities: ~50% of commuters cycle. Benefits? Safer, healthier, wealthier & greener.
Cities are cash-strapped & greener is way cheaper. 2020 could be a turning point. 6/
Bicycles are selling like hot cakes and in the best kind of supply-chain disruption story (remember #CoronavirusImposesCarbonTax?) manufacturers can't keep up w demand. Cycle sales in the US have been the highest since the oil crisis of the 1970s!! dw.com/en/covid-19-ca…
1/ "What's happening in Guyana isn't just happening there. All over the globe, oil companies are racing to tap as many of the remaining fossil fuel reserves as they can"
@jeffgoodell :
2/ This is not a a story of Guyana’s PM lecturing western liberals over hypocrisy climate, oil & Amazonian forests.
But a geopolitical story of developing country elites working with western firms (Exxon) to sell to western markets (oil goes to europe) phenomenalworld.org/analysis/offsh…
3/ "Guyana is now producing nearly as much oil as Venezuela -1 of the largest oil exporters since the 1920s & founder of OPEC
This amazing article on Exxon shows that the logic of imperial exploitation of natural resources is alive & kicking"-@GaraviniG phenomenalworld.org/analysis/offsh…
White House request to Congress for $106 billion in emergency funding for foreign aid.
A budget tells you more than words about actual priorities. Full breakdown in this PDF incl military aid to Ukraine, Israel, intl development (World bank) etc Thread whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…
2/ UKRAINE: US so far has sent more than $75 billion to Ukraine. Of new $106B, Biden asks $61B for Ukraine.
~$50B military aid, loans for military gear, DOD stocks of weapons etc (Pg 4-27_
~$11.75B economic (pg 42)
3/Reminder why Biden's request for emergency funding looks the way it does-$106B for ukraine,israel,border, humanitarian. US congressional politics when governed by Dem president+Dem senate+Republican house makes funding requests look like a dogs breakfast
Three guesses:
1 Energy transition is from fossil fuels to metal-based economy
2 Revenues from metals is tiny compared to selling fossils => No current petrostate turns into electrostate.
3 Hi Capital requirments =>Majority of extraction will take place in Global North not South
if 2 is true, then the future has no electrostates. None. Not Indonesia, Australia, certainly not Canada.
Revenues that a state will earn from digging metals & processing it will be too tiny to support an entire population with welfare or dividends. ft.com/content/0d2fba…
sure, very metal specific. cobalt, nickel, copper etc will continue to be in global south countries
to clarify, by majority I meant more than half, not less than half. in most ppls minds, global south is going to do all of it
Ppl forget Australia+Canada+US have capital & metals
The deranged idea—as @GhoshAmitav describes—that we are safe, that things are under control, that bad things only happen to people who are far away, persists.
Amid the climate crises, other records have been smashed too: the most air travel passengers in a single day in the US; the highest-ever profits for European carriers IAG and Air France-KLM; record oil consumption and record coal production. phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa…
Former US National Security advisor Fiona Hill acknowledged that the “Rest” were rebelling against the West. She cited an Indian interlocutor asking, “Where are you when things go wrong for us?”
Climate needs investments. But there is global Austerity. Countries make terrible choices between debt payments & food, energy, social services. And they almost always choose to make debt payments to not risk further downgrades. phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa…