Trent Matthews grew up commercial salmon fishing in Southeast Alaska. Ten years ago, he took a job on a trawler operated by US Seafoods, the Alaska Endeavor, which is involved in the Bering Sea groundfish fishery. It was the best money he’d ever made — about $1,000 a day. But after five weeks he quit. Matthews said he was appalled by the waste, particularly halibut, but also crab and non-commercial fish species, and what he described as the leveling of marine ecosystems. (US Seafoods declined to comment.)
“Once I started seeing the destruction, it was hard to watch,” Matthews said.
Alaska’s fisheries, once lauded as the best managed and most abundant in the country, appear increasingly fragile. Climate change — the Arctic is warming at least two times faster than the rest of the planet — has led to sea ice loss and warming ocean temperatures, which is further stressing already vulnerable populations. Last year, NOAA surveys revealed that nearly 11 billion snow crab in the Bering Sea had disappeared over the last two years, a population collapse across all size and age classes, which the agency has attributed to a “marine heat wave.” Others, though, have questioned whether warming seas can fully explain the decline.
It’s not just commercial fisheries that have been impacted by warming waters and decades of industrial fishing. The decline of chinook and chum salmon, species that are integral to Native communities on the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers, led to the closure of subsistence fisheries in 2021 and 2022 and forced the state to fly in thousands of pounds of frozen fish to remote villages for the first time ever.
NOAA Fisheries, which is part of the Department of Commerce and is responsible for overseeing the nation’s fisheries, is still working to understand the recent salmon and crab declines. It says that preliminary genetic analysis shows that bycatch makes up a relatively small percentage of chinook and chum salmon bound for the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, and that “unprecedented warming” is thought to have led to poor growth and survival of the species. But when runs are as low as they are, even relatively small amounts of bycatch, depending on where they are occurring, can make a difference, according to Gordon Kruse, a fisheries biologist who served on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s science and statistical committee for more than two decades.
“If [bycatch] is proportional and just evenly spread out, then it might be hard to make a case that this is impacting the populations of salmon,” Kruse said. “On the other hand, if salmon are aggregating by river system in the ocean and most of the catch is coming from a few rivers or streams, then the impact could be huge.”
NOAA also noted that environmental and “human activities” likely affected Bristol Bay red king crab which was heavily exploited in the 1970s and early 1980s. In addition, commercial crabbing associations and conservation groups allege that the agency is likely undercounting the volume of crab bycatch in the Bering Sea. NOAA only counts whole crab that end up in the trawl nets brought on board. Individual animals that are maimed and crushed or that slip through the nets that drag along the ocean floor where crab tend to cluster are not counted. This is known as “unobserved mortality.”
In a written statement, NOAA Fisheries said, “The level of unobserved mortality of crab species…is unknown,” but that the agency factors this variable into its population estimates.
According to Jon Warrenchuk, a senior scientist with the conservation group Oceana, 165,000 square miles of ocean floor, an area roughly the size of California, has been impacted, most of it in the Bering Sea. NOAA confirmed the figure and said, “The area of the EEZ (exclusive economic zone) off Alaska is more than 900,000 square miles. So approximately 18 percent of the ocean floor has been impacted by trawl nets or trawl gear.” Once compromised, it can take decades if not longer for these areas to recover. One recent NOAA study has shown that deep sea sponges, invertebrates attached to the seafloor that provide habitat for juvenile and adult fish, have been damaged by trawl fishing which, the agency noted, can permanently alter the deep-sea ecosystem.
In part because of its natural abundance, pollock also plays an important role in the larger ecosystem. Some studies have linked the growth of the commercial U.S. pollock fishery, beginning in the 1970s, to the decline of Steller sea lions, now an endangered species, and fur seals, which have declined by about 70 percent. Seabirds, including kittiwakes and murres that nest on the Pribilof Islands in Bering Sea and rely on pollock, have also decreased significantly during the same period.
“The footprint of industrial trawling is huge — it’s massive,” said Warrenchuk. “We would contend there is ecosystem overfishing occurring.”
[ad_2]
#Alaskas #Fisheries #Collapsing #Congresswoman #Industry #Blame
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Pulwama March 1: In South Kashmir’s Pulwama district, where apples and other fruits are cultivated on a large scale, there are thousands of canals in the district where only almonds are cultivated.
The people of these areas are associated with almond cultivation for centuries. But due to the lack of attention to the horticulture department, almond cultivation is on the verge of decline.
Locals from the district said that nobody from the authority is willing to accept the contribution of this industry as a result the almond industry is vanishing from the map of Jammu and Kashmir.
“Wild animals have created havoc, damaged all these almond trees, but nobody cares and comes forward,” said a local from Trichal village of district of Pulwama.
Instead of focusing on this industry, different types of plants are introduced.
The local residents from Newa Parigam, Zaddora, Rehmoo said that wild animals have completely damaged their almond trees. “This land is good for almond cultivation and a little bit of attention from the government can flourish this industry,” said Abdul Gagar.
The locals accused the horticulture department of negligence saying not a single officer visited these villages where the almond industry can flourish. [KNT]
Hyderabad: Telangana IT minister KT Rama Rao (KTR) on Sunday announced a pharmaceutical investment of Rs 500 crores in the state.
He announced a collaboration between Corning Incorporated and SGD Pharma, a pharmaceutical primary packaging company. He said that through the collaboration facility for pharmaceutical packaging, glass production will be established in Telangana.
KTR said, “I’m delighted that Corning, which is a fortune 500 company, and SGD Pharma will be setting up a world-class facility here. The manufacturing of pharmaceutical packaging glass from Telangana will accelerate the growth of life sciences sector by ensuring adequate and seamless supply of the world-renowned corning glass tubing sets to our manufacturers.”
“We are proud to partner with Corning and Telangana to reinforce the strength of the pharmaceutical industry in Telangana by securing the full supply chain of primary packaging,” said Managing Director of SGD Pharma Akshay Singh.
Pune: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday virtually dismissed the idea of helping Pakistan to come out of its economic mess.
Speaking at the annual Asia Economic Dialogue organised by the external affairs ministry here, Jaishankar said he will consider the local public sentiment while making a big decision.
“I would have a pulse (on) what do my people feel about it. And I think you know the answer,” he said.
Pakistan is grappling with an economic crisis and has not been successful in getting an agreement from multilateral institutions either. In the recent past, India has helped neighbours like Sri Lanka as it struggled to come out of its economic woes and regularly helps others in the neighbourhood as well.
However, when it comes to Pakistan, the fundamental issue impacting the New Delhi-Islamabad ties is terrorism, Jaishankar said, adding that one must not be in denial of this problem.
“No country is ever going to come out of a difficult situation and become a prosperous power if its basic industry is terrorism.
“Just as a country has to fix its economic issues, a country has to fix its political issues too, a country has to fix its social issues,” he said without naming Pakistan.
Jaishankar also made it clear that it is in nobody’s interest to see a country get into severe economic difficulties, and that too a neighbour.
Once a country is in the throes of a serious economic problem, it has to make policy choices to get out of it, the career diplomat-turned-politician said, adding that others cannot solve it for the country.
The world can only provide options and support systems, Jaishankar said, making it clear that Pakistan will have to make “tough choices”.
He said India has also undergone the same challenges several times in its modern history, with the last one being 30 years ago with the balance of payment crisis.
Meanwhile, Jaishankar said ever since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, the country’s approach to the neighbouring countries has undergone a perceptible change and also reminded all about the Prime Minister’s decision to call heads of state for the swearing-in function to start a new relationship.
Citing the case of Maldives, he said India’s help in the recent past includes the Greater Male project and also added that he was present at the foundation stone laying event a few weeks ago.
India is also buying or selling power with many of its neighbours, Jaishankar said, adding that it recently started buying power from Nepal.
Going forward, the country is also mulling to up its focus on education and healthcare spending in the neighbourhood, Jaishankar said.
He also assured that India will also be using its G-20 presidency to give a voice to the problems of the ‘global south’ and asserted that India is the best-placed country to do that.
The prime minister and his top ministers have spoken to 125 countries in the past month in India’s effort to be an effective voice of the global south, Jaishankar said.
Speaking at the same event, Maldives’ Minister of Finance Ibrahim Ameer said climate finance is a big challenge and expected help to flow through on the commitment at the earliest. His counterpart from Bhutan, Lyonpo Namgay Tshering said an easing of global financial conditions is also the need of the hour.
Jaishankar said there are multiple second and third-order impacts of the major world events and policy decisions, which India will be flagging to the world as part of its G-20 presidency.
The EAM also said that the G-20, with nearly 200 events across the country, is a marketing of India to influential people across the world by exposing them to cultural and socio-economic changes taking place in the country.
The Geographical Survey of India (GSI) revelations that Reasi hills hold vast treasures of rare and expensive lithium have triggered hopes of a better carbon-free future and a lot of prosperity. The inferred deposits have implied flip side too, reports Khalid Bashir Gura
On February 9, an otherwise non-descript village nestled in the high mountains of Reasi suddenly became a national cynosure. The village’s long solitude was disrupted as hoards of people started thronging the belt. Salal Kotli Sarpanch, Preetam Singh’s kept ringing as requests came for guiding the visiting officials to the area.
In 2018, a Geological Survey of India (GSI) team reached Salal, said Singh, to collect samples for research. They were following up the 1995-1997 survey by geologists KK Sharma and SC Uppal who spotted higher values of lithium in the area suggesting further exploration. Then, Lithium was in less demand, a situation that dramatically changed later.
The outcome of the 2018 exercise was made public on February 9, when the Ministry of Mines announced GSI’s success in locating “inferred” resources (G3) of 5.9 million tonnes of lithium in the Salal-Haimana belt.
“We have been about told the economic prosperity the discovery of the lithium will bring,” Singh said. “But simultaneously we find ourselves worrying about our possible displacement.”
New Oil
Officials say the discovery will boost Aatma Nirbhar Bharat and make it self-reliant in a metal that is now fuelling growth. The crucial discovery coincided with the climate-change-impacted world transitioning from fossil fuels to zero-emissions energy sources in which lithium holds the key. Over the years, especially by Industrial Revolutions 3 and 4, the shiny grey-light metal has evolved over the years in the global market as a ‘white gold.’
“Price of lithium has gone to insane levels! Tesla might actually have to get into the mining and refining directly at scale, unless costs improve,” Twitter owner, Elon Musk, the world’s top capitalist who invests in future technology including Tesla founder tweeted on April 9, 2022.
Apart from being used in batteries to power smartphones, laptops and almost all other gadgets, Lithium is a vital component in the rechargeable batteries that run electric vehicles (EVs). Its low weight and enormous capacity to store energy led markets to exhibit lithium hunger. The discovery is expected to end India’s import dependence and help in achieving its goals of reducing carbon footprints as the country aims at deriving about 50 per cent of cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel energy resources by 2030. In 2022, India sold more than a million EVs and the plan is to reach 10 million units by 2030.
“Lithium batteries are the new oil,” asserted Elon Musk, insisting by 2027 30 million EVs must be created. This, he said, would require 1.8 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent. “This would require a 473 per cent increase in output of lithium carbonate equivalent to 1.8 million tonnes from levels in 2019.”
“No doubt now, that India’s future will be ‘electrifying,’” Industrialist Anand Mahindra tweeted, hailing the discovery.
Better Quality
Against the normal grade of 220 ppm (particles per million), the Reasi lithium found is 550 ppm indicating the presence of the best quality in abundant deposits, earth scientist Prof Shakil Romshoo said. “India may become the world’s major producer and the EV industry will get a shot in the arm as India is committed to increasing the number of EVs by 30 per cent by 2030.”
NITI Aayog data suggests the total EV sales by 2030 could go up to 80 million from the current 1.3 million sales reported till July 2022. A Central Electricity Authority (CEA) report claims that by 2029-30, India will have 2.700 MWs of battery storage capacity.
These requirements have triggered massive price escalations for lithium, now dubbed ‘white gold’.
A group of excited resident in Reasi’s Salal area with soil blocks that has Lithoium in it. The GST said in February 2023 that the area has 5.9 million tonnes of Lithium.
Asserting that the discovery will help India to tackle the climate change crisis, Ramshoo said, “now India can deliver on its international promise of becoming carbon neutral by 2070” If climate targets set in the Paris Agreement are to be met, he said green technology especially EV’s have to be promoted on large scale in India, China, US, and Europe.
Import Dependence
While Chile, Australia, Argentina and China are home to the world’s highest lithium reserves, the path-breaking discovery put India on the map of the world’s largest lithium mines, only next to Chile. According to government data from the Ministry of Commerce and Industries, between April-December of 2022-23, India shelled out Rs. 163 billion for the import of lithium and lithium-ion
The present discovery will reduce the country’s dependence on imports. Reports appearing in the media suggest in 2020-21, India imported Rs 173 crore worth of lithium metal and lithium batteries for Rs 8,811 crore. In 2022, between April and November alone, Rs 164 crore worth of metal and Rs 7,986 crore worth of batteries were imported.
Last year, Parliamentary Affairs, Coal and Mines Minister, Pralhad Joshi informed Rajya Sabha, that India imported Lithium-ion worth Rs 8,574 crores in FY 2018-19, Rs 8,819 crores in 2019-20 and Lithium-ion worth Rs 8,811 crores in 2020-21.
India did not manufacture lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells till 2020 and would import from China or Taiwan and assemble them here. “India imported US$1.23 billion worth of Li-ion batteries between 2018 and 2019,” a February 2022 report by the India chapter of the World Resources Institute (WRI) said. “Over 165 crores lithium batteries are estimated to have been imported into India between FY17 and FY20 at an estimated import bill of upwards of US $3.3 billion.”
Reasi could change the situation now.
While the officials said the work will start soon, it remains to be seen how the extraction will start. Lithium can be extracted in different ways, depending on the type of the deposit — generally either through solar evaporation of large brine pools or from hard-rock extraction of the ore.
A Long Way
As the deposit is being described as “inferred resources,” an official in the mining department, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “we should wait for some time till the final stages of assessment before proper identification of the proven reserve.”
Earlier, in 2021, the 1,600 tonnes of lithium ore discovered in Karnataka were also classified as being in the “inferred category”. A lot of steps are involved before India could become a producer of Lithium.
Many assessments and samplings are required. The exploration of mineral deposits is divided into four stages — reconnaissance (G4), preliminary exploration (G3), general exploration (G2) and detailed exploration (G1). In Reasi, GSI is at G3.
“These are initial estimates. The process will take many years before actual mining starts,” said, Professor Pankaj Srivastava, Department of Geology, University of Jammu. “To arrive at a high confidence level, the exploratory companies will undertake the G2 level of assessment after G3, where the indicative resources are calculated, which tells us how much of the deposit could be mined with more facts. Later in the G1 level, the real ‘proved resource assessment’ is done.”
Experts say the “inferred” mineral is a resource for which quantity, grade and mineral content are estimated only with a low level of confidence. It is based on information gathered from locations such as outcrops, trenches, pits, workings and drill holes that may be of limited or uncertain quality, and also of lower reliability from geological evidence.
“As our level of confidence is low, it may increase or decrease. It is at a preliminary stage. Lithium is present in both forms. It is in the lattice of the mineral and it does not have its own mineral but the bauxite at the site is lithium-rich,” Srivastava said. “We need technology to extract lithium out of the rocks.
GSI Findings
Geologists have found the solubility of lithium is amenable to dissolution only by hydrofluorination with perchloric acid, which means the metal is present either in silicate or in the lattices of bauxite mineral, the GSI Survey of 1995 to 1997 reveals.
As analytical results have indicated high values of Li (averaging 883.80 ppm), according to study, as the mineralogical studies have failed to identify the mineral phase except in one sample where cockeite was indicated, the higher values of lithium are persistent throughout the belt (where bauxite is exposed) in the bauxite column. “Lithium prospect in the bauxite column in the area investigation appears to be promising. The bauxite column in Salal-Panasa-Sangarmarg (Saroda Bas) and Chakar areas appears to be a promising horizon for lithium and may be taken up for further detailed work,” the study stated. “The higher values of Lithium are persistent throughout the belt (Where bauxite is exposed) in the bauxite column). Lithium prospect in the bauxite column in the area investigation appears to be promising.”
Ecological Concerns
Amidst all these hopes and planning, environmentalists have raised a clarion call to save the flora and fauna of the region.
Romshu suggested that the mining and exploration of the lithium ore would have a significant environmental cost, which needs to be minimised, by employing the latest environmental-friendly exploration technologies.
Happy otherwise, even the residents know the flip side of the discovery. “We are apprehensive about an uncertain future. There will be economic prosperity but what will happen to us, our lands and homes,” Balbir Singh, a local transporter said. Almost 8000 people live in 2500 homes.
“We have learned that mining triggers pollution and people are displaced from demarcated areas,” Preetam Singh, a Sarpanch said. “Worried residents have called for a panchayat meeting. We cannot stop its extraction but the government has to think about us before embarking on the project.”
The EU has failed to sign off on a much-anticipated round of sanctions against Russia, leaving the bloc struggling to finalize a deal in time to mark the first anniversary on Friday of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Talks will now run into Ukraine’s official commemorations of its first year at war, casting into doubt European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s recent promise to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv to deliver a 10th round of sanctions by then.
Diplomats said agreement had been reached on nearly all of the package, but Poland was objecting to proposed restrictions on imports of synthetic rubber that it claims aren’t strong enough.
While acknowledging holding up the package, Warsaw denied being the problem. “We are not blocking sanctions,” a Polish official said on condition of anonymity. “We just want to have sanctions that make sense.”
All other points have been agreed on, four EU diplomats said.
The Commission was continuing talks with some EU countries on Thursday evening in search of a compromise, according to two of the diplomats. Another meeting of ambassadors from the 27 EU member countries will be held on Friday morning, four diplomats said, to try and secure a deal.
Poland’s objection related to proposed restrictions on imports of synthetic rubber from Russia. Sanctions hawks had called for a complete ban, but in an effort to appease other countries that rely on those imports the Commission suggested setting a quota limit at 560,000 metric tons, an EU diplomat said.
That’s even higher than current imports, thePolish official said. While several EU diplomats said Poland had been the most outspoken opponent of this quota, others have also expressed their discontent over derogations for certain companies. One EU diplomat said that the proposed quota “makes the sanction meaningless.”
Trade data show that imports from Russia haven’t exceeded that quota in the last decade.
The current package already excludes other controversial points, like a ban on Russian diamond imports, making it easier to sanction the family members and the entourages of oligarchs, or sanctioning certain employees of state nuclear company Rosatom.
Patience was running out, with another EU diplomat calling Poland’s move “unsustainable.”
Victor Jack contributed reporting.
[ad_2]
#eve #war #anniversary #fails #finalize #Russia #sanctions #deal
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
DOT also highlighted a rule in the works to require a minimum train crew of two people, which industry has opposed, and pledged to spend resources from the 2021 infrastructure law that can be spent on rail safety improvements.
DOT also wants railroads to give state authorities a heads-up when hazardous gas tank cars will be passing through. DOT said it’s also working on requiring this through regulation, “but railroads should not wait.”
The department is asking the railroads — including but not limited to Norfolk Southern — to do the following:
— Proactively let state emergency response teams know when they are transporting tank cars with hazardous gases through their states;
— Join FRA’s whistleblower protection program, which many smaller railroads and passenger railroads participate in but which the major freights do not;
— Deploy automated track inspection technology without asking to get rid of human inspectors;
— Move up the phase-in of safer, more durable tank cars that railroads had lobbied to delay until 2029, currently slated for 2025; and
— Provide workers paid sick leave, the unfinished business of the resolution of the strike threat last year.
What DOT wants from Congress: DOT called on Congress to increase maximum fines for rail safety violations from the current $225,455 cap, which the agency called “a rounding error” for profitable companies.
In a letter Sunday to Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw, Pete Buttigieg noted the railroad’s “exceptionally profitable business,” running a 38 percent operating margin and issuing $18 billion in stock buybacks and dividends over the last five years — “reportedly twice as much as the amount Norfolk Southern invested in its railways and operations.”
[ad_2]
#DOT #pledges #actions #hazardous #trains #asks #Congress #industry #steps
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
MUNICH — Countries able to send battle tanks to Ukraine should “actually do so now,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Friday, trying to rally support for a Europe-wide fleet of tank donations.
Speaking at the opening of the Munich Security Conference, a gathering of global political and security leaders, Scholz said “Germany acknowledges its responsibility for the security of Europe and the NATO alliance area, without ifs and buts.”
This is, he added, “a responsibility that a country of Germany’s size, location and economic strength has to shoulder in times like these.”
Concretely, the chancellor said Germany would “permanently” adhere to the NATO goal of spending 2 percent of its economic output on defense — a target that Berlin is currently set to miss this year and probably also next year, despite a massive €100 billion special fund for military investment.
Germany needs to boost its defense industry and switch to “a permanent production of the most important weapons we are using,” the chancellor added.
Scholz’s remarks came just hours after his defense minister, Boris Pistorius, told reporters in Munich Germany must commit to even higher spending targets to follow through on its security pledges.
“It must be clear to everyone: It will not be possible to fulfill the tasks that lie ahead of us with barely two percent,” Pistorius said.
Western allies are gathering in Munich for a series of high-level talks focused primarily on the war in Ukraine, one year after Russia invaded the Eastern European country.
Scholz said it would be “wise to prepare for a long war” and to send a clear message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he’s making “a miscalculation” if he is counting on Ukraine’s Western allies eventually growing war-weary and pulling back from their military support.
The German chancellor said Ukraine’s allies with German-made, modern Leopard 2 tanks in their stocks should join Berlin in delivering them to Ukraine, adding that his government would use the three-day Munich conference to “campaign intensively for this.”
The German chancellor himself hesitated for months over whether to send Leopard 2 tanks, only changing course last month, when he vowed to build an international alliance that would give Ukraine 80 of the German-built tanks.
But he is struggling to deliver on that commitment. Some allies like Finland are dragging their feet on tank donations, while others like Portugal are not sending as many as Berlin had hoped.
Other countries like Poland or Spain are only sending an older version of the tank, the Leopard 2 A4. Scholz said he hopes “some more will also join” Germany in sending the more modern Leopard 2 A6.
Scholz also said that Germany “will do everything it can to make this decision easier for our partners,” offering to provide logistical support or training Ukrainian soldiers on the tanks. “I see this as an example of the kind of leadership which everyone is entitled to expect from Germany — and I expressly offer it to our friends and partners.”
Just before Scholz spoke, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that “speed is crucial,” underscoring the German leader’s point.
[ad_2]
#German #chancellor #vows #leadership #call #arm #Ukraine
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Joe Biden’s European friends may be miffed about his climate law.
But the U.S. president’s America-first, subsidy-heavy approach has actually gained some grudging — and for a Democrat unlikely — admirers on the Continent: Europe’s conservatives.
Within the center-right European People’s Party, the largest alliance of parties in the European Parliament, officials are smarting over why their own politicians aren’t taking a page from the Biden playbook.
Their frustration is homing in on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — a putative conservative the EPP itself helped install. Officials fear they have let von der Leyen lead the party away from its pro-industry, regulation-slashing ideals, according to interviews with leading party figures.
Biden’s law has now brought their grumbling to the surface.
On Thursday, a wing of EPP lawmakers defected during a Parliament vote over whether to back von der Leyen’s planned response to Biden’s marquee green spending bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Their concern: it doesn’t go far enough in championing European industries.
Essentially, they want it to feel more like Biden’s plan.
The IRA was an “embarrassment” for Europe, said Thanasis Bakolas, the EPP’s power broker and secretary general. The EU “had all these well-funded policies available. And then comes Biden with his IRA. And he introduces policies that are more efficient, more effective, more accessible to businesses and consumers.”
A bitter inspiration
European leaders were blindsided last summer when Biden signed the IRA into law.
Since then, they have complained loudly that the U.S. subsidies for homegrown clean tech are a threat to their own industries. But for the EPP, ostensibly on the opposite side to Biden’s Democrats, the law is also serving as bitter inspiration.
“It’s a little bit like in the fairy tale, that someone in the crowd — and this time it wasn’t the boy, it was the Americans — pretty much pointing the finger to the [European] Commission, and saying, ‘Oh, the king is naked?’” said Christian Ehler, a German European Parliament member from the EPP.
Viewed from bureaucratic, free-trading Brussels, Biden’s climate policy looks more sleek, geopolitically muscular — and, notably for the EPP, more appealing to voters on the right than anything actually coming out of the EPP-led Commission | Oliver Contreras/Getty Images
Under the EU’s centerpiece climate policy, the European Green Deal, the European Commission, the EU’s policy-making executive arm, has doggedly introduced law after law aimed at squeezing polluters from every angle using tighter regulations or carbon pricing. The goal is to zero out the bloc’s net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Biden’s IRA approaches the same goal by different means. It is laden with voter- and industry-friendly tax breaks and made-in-America requirements. Viewed from bureaucratic, free-trading Brussels, Biden’s climate policy looks more sleek, geopolitically muscular — and, notably for the EPP, more appealing to voters on the right than anything actually coming out of the EPP-led Commission.
For some, the sense of betrayal isn’t directed at Washington, but inward.
“We learned that we lost track for the last two years on the deal part of the Green Deal,” said Ehler, who is using his seat on Parliament’s powerful Committee on Industry, Research and Energy to push forfewer climate burdens on industry. “We are in the midst of the super regulation.”
The irony is that Biden and the Democrats probably wouldn’t have chosen this path were it not for Republicans’ decades-long refusal to move any form of climate regulation through Congress.
The IRA was a product of political necessity, shaped to suit independent-minded Democratic senators such as Joe Manchin of coal-heavy West Virginia.If Biden and his party had their druthers, Biden’s climate policy might have looked far more like the Brussels model.
Let’s get political
As party boss, Bakolas is preparing the platform on which the EPP — a pan-European umbrella group of 81 center-right parties — will campaign for the 2024 EU elections.
He is also flirting with an alliance with the far right, meaning the center-right and center-left consensus that has dominated climate policy in Brussels could break up. Bakolas advocates “a more political approach.”
“We need to do the same [as the U.S.], with the same tenacity and determination,” he said.
One big problem: It’s hard for the European Union, which doesn’t control tax policy, to match the political eye-candy of offering cashback for electric Hummers (something Americans can now claim on their taxes).
“Can Europe, this institutional arrangement in Brussels … act as effortlessly and seamlessly as the American administration? No, because it’s a difficult exercise for Europe to reach a decision … but it’s an exercise we need to do,” said Bakolas.
Within the center-right European People’s Party, the largest alliance of parties in the European Parliament, officials are smarting over why their own politicians aren’t taking a page from the Biden playbook | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
In other words, the EPP is looking to emulate Biden’s law — at least in spirit, if not in legalese.
The conservative thinking is beginning to coalesce into a few main themes: slowing down green regulation they feel burden industry; using sector-specific programs to help companies reinvest their profits into cleaning up their businesses; and slashing red tape they say slows already clean industries from getting on with the job.
EPP lawmaker Peter Liese said he had been “desperately calling” for these red-tape-slashing measures. He was glad to see some in von der Leyen’s contested IRA response plan. But Liese and the EPP want more.
“We can have an answer of the two crises, the two challenges, that we have: the climate crisis and challenge for our economy, including the IRA,” said Liese.
Green groups and left-wing lawmakers argue the EPP is simply using the IRA and Europe’s broader economic woes as a smokescreen to cover a broad retreat from the Green Deal. In recent months the party has blocked, or threatened to block, a host of green regulations proposed by the Commission.
“This is like trying to put on the ballroom shoes of your grandfather and trying to do a 100-meter sprint,” Green MEP Anna Cavazzini told Parliament on Wednesday.
Bakolas rejected that.
He said the party had finally woken up to the need to set a climate agenda that better reflected its own, center-right, free-market ideals.
“What the IRA did,” he said, “is to ring an alarm bell.”
[ad_2]
#Joe #Biden #conservative #hero
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Pelosi told me in a recent interview that Chang, an engineer trained at MIT and Stanford, began with a light remark.
“Fifty billion dollars – well, that’s a good start,” Chang said, according to her recollection.
Four people present for the meeting, including Pelosi, said it quickly became evident that Chang was not in a kidding mood.
With Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, looking on, the billionaire entrepreneur pressed Pelosi with sobering questions about the CHIPS law — and whether the policy represented a genuine commitment to supporting advanced industry or an impulsive attempt by the United States to seize a piece of a lucrative global market.
Chang said he was pleased that his company could benefit from the subsidies; TSMC already had a major development project underway in Arizona. But did the United States really think it could buy itself a powerhouse chipmaking industry, just like that?
That very question now hangs over the Biden administration as it prepares to implement the semiconductor spending in the CHIPS and Science Act. The next phase is due to begin this month with the unveiling by the Commerce Department of a detailed process for awarding subsidies. The law already looks like a useful political trophy for Biden, claiming a prominent spot in his State of the Union Address.
The law is an emblem, in Biden’s telling, of his commitment to creating the jobs of the future and armoring America’s economy against the disruptions that an increasingly militant China could inflict, potentially by attacking Taiwan. Pouring subsidies into chip fabrication would “make sure the supply chain for America begins in America,” Biden said told Congress.
That is far from a sure bet. As Chang told Pelosi, there is a long distance between the cutting of government checks and the creation of a self-sustaining chips industry in the United States.
His candid concerns represent a rough guide to the challenges Biden’s semiconductor policy will have to address if it is to succeed, long after the immediate political fanfare has abated — and well past the point that its generous subsidies for big business have run out.
Over lunch, Chang warned that it was terribly naïve of the United States to think that it could rapidly spend its way into one of the most complex electronics-manufacturing markets in the world. The task of making semiconductor chips was almost impossibly complicated, he said, demanding Herculean labors merely to obtain the raw materials involved and requiring microscopic precision in the construction of fabrication plants and then in the assembly of the chips themselves.
Was the United States really up to that job?
The industry evolves at incredible speed, Chang continued. Even if the United States managed to build some high-quality factories with the spending Pelosi championed, it would have to keep investing more and more to keep those facilities up to date. Otherwise, he said, Americans would in short order find themselves with tens of billions of dollars’ worth of outdated hardware. A once-in-a-generation infusion of cash would not be enough.
Was America really prepared to keep up?
If the United States wanted a semiconductor industry it could rely on, Chang said, then it should keep investing in the security of Taiwan. After all, his company had long ago perfected what Americans were now trying to devise on their own.
As course upon course of small plates came and went, Chang’s discourse ran on so long that his wife, Sophie, cut in at one point with a terse interjection; Chang told the group she thought he was talking too much. Tsai, observing the whole exchange, noted to Pelosi and the other Americans that Chang had a reputation for always speaking his mind.
Several people described Chang’s remarks on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive private meeting. Indeed, the only person who agreed to speak with me about it on the record was Pelosi. She was also the only one who sounded untroubled by Chang’s skepticism about the United States as a home for the semiconductor trade.
“He knows America quite well,” she said, “and the questions he asked I saw almost as an opportunity to respond, even if some of it was challenging.”
Unlike other people I spoke to, Pelosi said she was not put off by the severity of Chang’s language. Lauding Chang as an “iconic figure,” she told me several times: “I was in such awe of him.”
But Pelosi said she had also delivered a firm message of her own: “That we knew what we were doing, that we were determined to succeed with it – that it was a good start.”
Other Taiwanese executives present voiced hesitation, Pelosi acknowledged, with some questioning whether American environmental and labor laws were consistent with the goal of nurturing a sophisticated industry. In our conversation, she rejected the idea that there might be tensions between her political party’s grand economic and social aspirations, and the narrower aims of the CHIPS law.
Chang, naturally, is not a disinterested observer of the American semiconductor effort. His company is a singular global power; its overwhelming importance in the high-tech supply chain has become a vital strategic asset for Taiwan as it gathers allies in an age of deepening conflict with the Chinese Communist Party. If China blockaded or invaded the island, the impact on TSMC’s operations alone would convulse the international economy. That is a strong incentive for wealthy democracies to defend Taiwan with more than blandishments about self-determination.
Chang has questioned in other settings whether the United States is a suitable environment for semiconductor manufacturing, pointing to gaps in the workforce and defects in the business culture. On a podcast hosted by the Brookings Institution last year, Chang lamented what he called a lack of “manufacturing talents” in the United States, owing to generations of ambitious Americans flocking to finance and internet companies instead. (“I don’t really think it’s a bad thing for the United States, actually,” he said, “but it’s a bad thing for trying to do semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.”)
He repeated a version of that critique over lunch in August, prompting one member of Pelosi’s delegation, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, to speak up and urge Chang to visit Krishnamoorthi’s home state of Illinois to get a better sense of the American workforce. Chang did not indicate he was tempted by the invitation.
When I asked several Biden administration officials about Chang’s criticism, the message I got back was a confident-sounding “stay tuned.” The next stage of CHIPS implementation, they said, would reveal in more detail how the law would be used to unlock a torrent of private-sector investment and make American semiconductor fabrication a sturdy, long-range enterprise. They did not reject Chang’s concerns about the current U.S. workforce, but pointed to American tech hubs like Silicon Valley and North Carolina’s Research Triangle as evidence that we do know how to build dynamic, fully staffed tech hubs in this country. Now, they said, we need to build more of them.
Not long after his luncheon with Pelosi, Chang visited an area that figures to become one of those hubs. In Arizona, he joined Biden at a vast construction site in north Phoenix where TSMC is building a gargantuan complex that may stand as something of a counterpoint to Chang’s overarching skepticism about the law. His company mapped out plans for an Arizona project before Biden became president, but after the passage of the CHIPS law TSMC announced it would massively increase its investment in the state — from $12 billion to $40 billion — and build a second facility there, too.
The final result would be a fabrication center that is expected to supply Apple and other American tech companies, employing thousands in a state that also happens to be a major electoral battleground. Not incidentally, it would likely be eligible for U.S. subsidies.
That, Biden said in December, was more than just a good start. He declared in Phoenix that the United States was “better positioned than any other nation to lead the world economy in the years ahead — if we keep our focus.”
Morris Chang could have told Biden that was a big “if.”
[ad_2]
#U.S #Owning #Powerhouse #Microchipmaking #Industry #Fat #Chance #Taiwans #Tech #King #Told #Pelosi
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
