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The Myths and Realities of South Korea’s Green New Deal
by Philippa Kaur 13 December 2021, 14:34
The Green New Deal is a progressive wish list that combines the reduction of carbon emissions with investments in Green technologies and Green jobs. In the United States, the Green New Deal has largely remained aspirational: a non-binding resolution that has not yet come to a vote in Congress.
In South Korea, on the other hand, the Green New Deal is a policy reality. In 2020, the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) put its version of a Green New Deal at the center of its platform. When South Korea held its parliamentary election that April in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, that platform helped propel the liberal DPK bloc to a landslide victory and a legislative super-majority. Emboldened by this victory, the liberal Moon Jae-in administration officially made the Green New Deal a part of government policy several months later.
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It wasn’t the first time that a South Korean government tried to address these problems. “When we heard about the Green New Deal in 2020, I asked myself, ‘Haven’t we seen this policy before?’ We had a pretty similar policy in the Lee Myung-bak administration that was called Green Growth,” remembers Lee Taedong, a political scientist at Yonsei University. Beginning in 2008, the conservative Lee Myung-bak government had indeed promoted a green stimulus program that addressed the twin crises of climate change and economic stagnation.
For President Moon’s government, which took office in 2017, the Green New Deal was not just an electoral ploy. South Korea was facing a reputational crisis. Successive governments had stressed the importance of addressing climate change. But the country was, as of 2018, the seventh-largest emitter of carbon in the world.
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“South Korea is the ninth-largest consumer of energy in the world, and 95% of that energy is imported from outside,” notes Hong Jong Ho, an economist at Seoul National University. “It has the highest nuclear power plant density in world and the lowest renewable proportion among the 38 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.”
Contributing to South Korea’s dirty profile was its export of coal-fired power plants. “Along with Japan and China, South Korea was a lead financer of coal projects, mainly in Southeast Asia,” explains Kim Joojin, the managing director of the Korean NGO Solutions for Our Climate. “Because of abundant financing, countries like the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam had a lot of new coal-fired power plants in their future that were really straining the global carbon budget.”
Korean climate activists have worked hard to narrow the gap between the government’s rhetoric and its actual behavior. A key part of Korea’s climate action community are young people. “It’s limited how much pressure we can exert, as youth, on the government,” points out Kwon Yoo-Jung, an activist with Green Environment Youth Korea (GEYK). “But we have to communicate that we are aware of the financing of coal-fired plants abroad and we’re not proud of it and it has to stop, even though the government is not doing this in front of us but in other countries.”
Thanks to a sustained campaign of civic activism, the South Korean government finally announced this year that it would no longer finance overseas coal-fired plants. The Moon government also pledged in the lead-up to the Glasgow climate summit that it would, by 2030, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 2018 levels on the way to becoming carbon neutral in 2050. It has also promised to increase wind and solar energy production by more than double by 2025.
One of the chief sticking points in the country’s overall energy transition, however, has been South Korea’s singular focus on rapid economic growth. In the early 1960s, South Korea’s per capita GDP was comparable to that of Ghana or Haiti and 40% of the population lived in absolute poverty. But in the space of little more than a single generation, South Korea became a wealthy country and, by 1996, had joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Fossil fuel, almost all of it imported, was an essential ingredient of that economic success.
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Today, the country struggles to define a different kind of economic success and a different approach to energy policy. South Korea’s Green New Deal is the latest attempt to square the often-conflicting demands for growth and environmental action. It has proved to be simultaneously an inspiration for other countries and a lightning rod for criticism of Korea and the Moon administration.
Origins of the Green New Deal
In 1998, the Kim Dae-Jung administration began to organize South Korea’s first serious response to climate change with a top-level committee on the topic and a comprehensive national plan. Not much came of it. It wasn’t until a decade later that Korea became more proactive.
Lee Myung-bak had built a reputation as the head of Hyundai’s engineering and construction division. As mayor of Seoul, he developed a new profile as something of an environmentalist when, among other things, he removed an old elevated highway in the capital to restore an old waterway. Nicknamed the “bulldozer,” Lee entered the presidential office with the potential to combine both economic growth and sustainability.
Shortly after becoming president in 2008, Lee unveiled his “Green Growth” program. “Lee Myung-bak’s policy vision was one of Green competitiveness,” explains Lee Taedong. “He wanted to make South Korea the seventh-largest economy by 2020 and the fifth-largest by 2050.” The new president also pledged considerable government funds — 56.9 trillion won or about $60 billion — for the mitigation of climate change and the securing of energy independence. Another $30 billion was allocated to creating new engines of economic growth, while $30 billion more went into improving quality of life and enhancing the country’s international standing.
The Green Growth program aimed to decouple growth and carbon emissions by reducing fossil fuel use, expanding green infrastructure and growing the economy, albeit sustainably. Expanding nuclear power was a key part of the Green Growth plan, to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and lessen the country’s reliance on imports. Nuclear energy currently provides between one-quarter and one-third of the country’s electricity.
Lee also imagined that South Korea could become a green growth leader in the international community. He attracted the Global Green Growth Initiative, an intergovernmental development organization, to establish its headquarters in Seoul in 2010. That same year, the UN organization devoted to assisting the Global South in addressing climate change, the Green Climate Fund, also set up shop in Seoul.
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Central to the Green Growth program was separating growth from its usual connection to increased carbon emissions. “Some European countries achieved decoupling of economic growth and greenhouse gas emission,” Lee Taedong explains. “Those that engaged in an emission trading system are more likely to achieve decoupling.”
South Korea under Lee Myung-bak did not, however, achieve decoupling. The country’s economy grew modestly during his five-year term, but its greenhouse gas emissions also continued to rise. Nor did the Green Growth plan achieve much in the way of economic equity. “One big part of Green Growth was the aim to create jobs,” Lee Taedong continues. “However, there is no measure or report of how many jobs were created.”
Another criticism of the Green Growth initiative was all the money that went into construction projects. “We spent a lot of money,” Lee points out, “but we didn’t get a lot of environmental goods from it. For the future, we need to consider how we steer these stimulus funds to make sure that we build up real green infrastructure.”
Elements of the Green New Deal
South Korea’s most recent parliamentary elections took place in April 2020. The ruling DPK, along with its partner Platform Party, won 180 out of the 300 seats. With the Green New Deal as a centerpiece of its platform, the DPK increased its parliamentary delegation by 57 seats and gained a legislative supermajority.
The ruling party’s Green New Deal manifesto contributed to its electoral success. “The key concepts of the Green New Deal manifesto were to achieve carbon neutrality and achieve a carbon-zero society vision by 2050,” explains Kim Joojin. “It promoted market mechanisms including RE100 [a global initiative bringing together the world’s most influential businesses committed to 100% renewable electricity] and allowed more renewable energy producers to supply renewable energy to more consumers. It prohibited coal financing by public institutions. It talked about reforming the power sector and how that sector has not been helpful in terms of renewable energy deployment, which is still an ongoing problem.”
In July, after considerable discussion of the need for a pandemic-related economic stimulus, the government announced the Green New Deal as official policy in July 2020. But, as Kim points out, the new initiative was not focused on climate issues. It devoted only $65 billion to the reduction of carbon emissions by about 12 million tons by 2025. “That’s about $5,000 per ton,” he says. “The current price of carbon is $33 ton, so reducing carbon emissions was not really part of the discussion.”
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Instead, the focus was on infrastructure — such as zero-energy buildings, restoring ecosystems and creating safe water management systems — as well as Green innovation with renewables, electric vehicles and other Green technologies. “My intuitive sense is that it’s really a repackaging of already existing policies,” Kim continues. “So, there was a lot of criticism coming from the public, especially young people, who were asking, ‘Is it a Green New Deal or a Grey New Deal?’”
The price tag for the program is 73.4 trillion won or about $62 billion. The funding is thus less than what the earlier administration devoted to the Green Growth initiative.
Another key element of the program is the creation of 659,000 jobs by 2025. Lee Taedong warns that the Green Growth initiative didn’t follow through on its job promises. “We don’t want to see the same outcome from the Green New Deal. If we don’t see clear evidence, this policy won’t be worth very much,” he suggests.
The Green New Deal is part of a larger government stimulus package that includes a “Digital New Deal” and a stronger social safety net. It is intriguing that the Korean government separated out the environmental component of its stimulus package from the equity elements and the high-tech digital projects. It is also interesting that, although the investments into digital infrastructure are less than half of those going into the Green New Deal, they were projected to create many more jobs (903,000) by 2025.
Many environmental activists in Korea view the Green New Deal as necessary but insufficient. Six youth organizations held a press conference two months before the government released the program demanding that the government detail how South Korea would reach net carbon zero in 2050, that it protect and retrain workers in carbon-intensive industries, and that it create a mandatory educational curriculum for climate change and the environment. In addition, the groups demanded that the government phase out coal by 2030 and increase the share of renewable energy.
When it was launched, the Green New Deal reflected only a small portion of these demands. Still, one of those youth groups, the Green Environment Youth Korea (GEYK), participated in a video commending the Korean Green New Deal. “We considered the Green New Deal a milestone,” explains GEYK activist Kwon Yoo-Jung. “We wanted our youth to understand why it was so important, to make sure that they understand that it’s a Green New Deal not a Grey New Deal.”
Korea’s Overall Energy Picture
Lee Myung-bak had hoped that his Green Growth program would catapult South Korea to the very top ranks of the global economy. By 2020, South Korea had risen from 16th place to the 10th spot, just ahead of Russia. The country hadn’t become the seventh-largest economy in the world as Lee had hoped, but it was still an impressive achievement.
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That growth was accompanied by increased carbon emissions, which peaked finally in 2018. Traditionally, Korean economic growth has been associated with heavy industry: car manufacturing, shipbuilding, steel production. And that industry has drawn heavily on the energy derived from fossil fuel.
Currently, Korea is home to three of the largest oil refineries in the world, all located near the zones of heavy industry in the southeast: the SK energy complex in Ulsan, the GS-Caltex refinery in Yeosu and the joint project of Aramco and Hanjin also in Ulsan. South Korea also has three of the top seven coal-fired power plants in the world at Taean, Dangjin and Yeongheung. These and other facilities have helped make South Korea a leader in the production of fine particulate matter (PM) — a key element of air pollution — with the highest PM2.5 concentration in the OECD.
These fossil fuel interests form a powerful lobbying force in Korean society that has made a transformation of the energy infrastructure very difficult. “The industry-related stakeholders, including academics in government, are very powerful, their lobbying power is very strong,” notes Hong Jong Ho.
This is not just a domestic problem. South Korea has also been a key player in promoting fossil fuels around the world. Until recently, it was financing coal-fired power plants, particularly in Southeast Asia. Its shipping yards also produce many of the vessels that transport fossil fuels. For instance, South Korean companies have a virtual lock on the production of liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers, manufacturing 98% of them in 2018 and securing 94% of orders so far this year.
“The Korean Export-Import bank provides a lot of money for oil and gas financing,” explains Kim Joojin. “In fact, it’s 13 times higher than coal financing.” South Korea is no longer financing overseas coal projects, but it didn’t join the 20 countries that agreed in Glasgow to end public financing of all overseas fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022. Earlier, the Asian Development Bank made a similar pledge, so Korea is increasingly out of step with the region as well. “There’s a discussion in Korea as well as in Europe about whether gas can be considered Green, and behind that is a strong gas lobby,” Kim continues. “COP26 struck a critical blow against coal. The next climate discussion will be gas.”
Given the power of fossil fuel interests, it’s not surprising that South Korea has such a dismal record of incorporating renewable energy into its overall electricity generation. “In 2020, renewables in South Korea were only 7.2% of its energy,” explains Hong Jong Ho. “The OECD average is over 30%. Germany and the UK are close to 50%, while Denmark and Austria are around 80%. Even Japan and China are close to 20%.”
Most of South Korea’s electricity production is derived from coal, liquefied natural gas and nuclear energy. “South Korea has the highest nuclear power plant density in world,” Hong continues. “Korea is the only OECD country with over 90% of its electricity coming from the traditional three sources (nuclear, coal, natural gas).”
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Moon Jae-in ran on an anti-nuclear energy platform but has since embraced nuclear power as a way to reduce carbon emissions and maintain economic growth. But nuclear energy is not carbon-neutral. When factoring in the entire life cycle of a nuclear power plant — construction, operation, transport of spent fuel, decommissioning — such facilities produce three to four times as much carbon emissions as solar panels across their life span.
Another important aspect of Korea’s energy market is the pricing. “The energy market is so distorted,” Hong Jong Ho points out. “No country in the OECD has this type of energy price system. The government totally controls the price of energy.” Electricity is generated by the Korean Electricity Power Company (KEPCO), whose six subsidiaries effectively form a monopoly and which favors through its pricing the coal, gas, and nuclear facilities. The market power of KEPCO keeps the prices of renewable energy inflated and discourages the entrance of private actors into the renewable sector.
The overemphasis of coal, gas, and nuclear also has employment implications. “If you can expand the renewable energy sector alone, we can create a lot of jobs in the coming years,” Hong continues. “Compared to nuclear or coal, the renewable sector can create many more jobs.” According to his calculations, a moderate transition scenario would create 24,000 jobs by 2050, an advanced scenario would generate 270,000 jobs, and a 100% renewable future would create 500,000 jobs. In comparison, about 490,000 Koreans are currently employed directly and indirectly in the auto sector.
The resistance to renewables doesn’t come only from the coal, gas and nuclear lobbies. Farmers are often uncomfortable with on-shore wind power while fisherfolk are often opposed to off-shore wind. It’s not just a question of livelihoods. It’s often a question of values.
“The older generation, including my parents, endured prolonged poverty in the 1960s,” Hong recalls. “Their goal was the modernization of Korea. They all know that fossil fuel and nuclear have been the driving source of energy to have the rapid economic growth in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They are so accustomed to this idea of supply-oriented, centralized generation. On the other hand, renewable wind and solar are very different, with distributed generation and an emphasis on demand management, energy efficiency and reducing energy consumption. This is an idea very different from what the older generation has become accustomed to.”
Hong laughs when he thinks about how his parents view his work. “Whenever I talk to my parents, my father scolds me. ‘Your idea is wrong,’ he says. ‘How can wind and solar generate enough electricity to continue to power our economic growth in Korea. That’s absurd!’”
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The focus on overcoming poverty, dealing with political disruptions and ensuring that Korea becomes an advanced industrialized country has meant that “Koreans generally focus on the present,” Hong adds. “The future is not something they have the presence of mind to consider. But the climate crisis is a long-term problem that requires a consistent policy to be successful.” Still, the situation is changing. “The Korean people are slowly trying to understand the circular relationship between economy, climate and jobs,” he continues, “and familiarize themselves with the virtuous cycle between climate, economy and more employment.”
One hopeful sign is a statement on June 5, 2020, from 226 local government heads — mayors and provincial governors — that declared a climate emergency and called for a transition to a sustainable society. Since there are only 229 local autonomies in Korea, this list represents virtually all the heads of local governments.
“Irrespective of political party or whether they’re liberal, conservative, or progressive, they all joined together to say that the climate emergency is a critical issue,” Hong points out.
Overseas Coal Financing
Over the years, South Korea has financed coal-powered plants in India, Morocco and Chile. But it has focused on Southeast Asia where it financed three projects in Indonesia and seven in Vietnam. This kind of financing was long considered a natural extension of South Korea’s own coal-powered industry.
But that picture began to change about four years ago. Civic pressure on industry and government was enormous. “There were ads in publications with global circulation, like one that said, ‘President Moon, is this really Korea’s idea of a Green New Deal?” Kim Joojin recalls. “And there was one in the Financial Times that read, ‘Samsung, make the right call on coal.’ There were demonstrations in front of big institutions.”
Young people were a major part of that civic pressure. Established in 2014, the Green Environment Youth Korea (GEYK) is an organization of around 60 youth activists who are working to ensure that youth are at the forefront globally to press for climate justice. In a busy district of Seoul, they participated in a campaign of chalk painting on the sidewalk devoted to phasing out coal as well as a social media campaign that bombarded key players — Hanabank, KEPCO, the Blue House — to communicate that citizens were not happy with their policies. Back in 2017, they were involved in a coal-ending bicycle trip from the city of Cheonan to Dangjin, where the largest coal plant in the world at the time was located.
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“This plant was not something to be proud of,” says GEYK activist Kwon Yoo-Jung. “It was something to be ashamed of given the impact of the coal-fired plants on community health.”
In 2017, debate over coal financing began in the Korean parliament. “In 2018, two Korean pension funds announced that it would make no new coal commitments,” Kim Joojin continues. “In 2020, KEPCO, the national utility finally decided to no longer sponsor coal projects. Samsung said it would not do any more coal financing in the future. Also that year, there was a national debate around the Korean-financed projects in Indonesia and Vietnam. Those projects eventually went forward, but close to 100 financial institutions committed to not financing coal projects. Coal became a no-go zone in our financial sector.”
As part of their activism, GEYK members went to the areas overseas where the coal plants were planned under the banner, “People Live Here.” South Korean activists linked up with residents in Indonesia who were protesting the plants. “Due to the impact of the coal plant emitting so much air pollution, they can’t continue their way of living,” Kwon Yoo-Jung notes. “This is a moral question as well. Local residents had no say in the decision-making process, even though they suffer all the impact from the project. The community faces severe health issues. People are moving out of village.”
Furthermore, she explains, the coal-fired plant in Indonesia will soon become a “stranded asset,” because electricity from solar energy will be cheaper to produce than electricity from coal three years after the plant comes on line.
The pressure campaign culminated in April 2021 at a summit convened by US President Joe Biden when Moon Jae-in announced no more coal-financing projects in 2021. It was part of a trend. “Japan made a similar announcement at the G20 in the United Kingdom the following June,” Kim Joojin notes. “At the UN General Assembly in September, Xi Jinping said that China would no longer finance coal. There’s some discussion about how specific these commitments are and what they will cover, but the heads of the state of these economies were saying that coal financing was wrong.”
As a result of these announcements, “Indonesia and Vietnam had to dramatically cut their coal portfolios, especially new coal projects,” he adds.
Phasing out coal is an integral part of reforming Korea’s energy sector. The official date for a phase-out is 2050, though the National Council on Climate and Air Quality, chaired by former UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, has recommended an earlier date of 2040 or 2045. “Five years ago, there was not much discussion of whether coal is the right thing to do,” Kim continues. “There were 11 coal-fired plants commissioned in 2016-17, and seven began construction. But then came efforts from provincial governments, and the social license of coal power dramatically changed.”
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“The reality is that our government can provide a more ambitious coal phase out, for instance, in the 2030s,” he points out. “But what’s bogging down our government is how to compensate the already made investments. The same discussion is taking place in Germany around coal phase-out, but here in Korea, at least there is practically no coal mining.”
Korea has made a commitment to net zero carbon in 2050. But with such a large coal portfolio, meeting the goals in the near term will be difficult. Cutting carbon emissions by 40% by 2040 “relies on overseas offsets and carbon sinks that are not considered policies with the most environmental integrity,” Kim notes.
With its Green New Deal, South Korea is addressing both climate change and economic equity. But the effort is not yet commensurate with the challenge. Quoting Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, a poet from the Marshall Islands who addressed the UN Climate Summit in 2014, Kwon Yoo-Jung concludes: “We deserve to do more than just survive. We deserve to thrive.”
*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Targets like 'net-zero' won't solve the climate crisis on their own | Mathew Lawrence
by Evelyn Reynolds 30 April 2021, 10:00
Last week was a critical time in the global response to the climate emergency: the US vowed to cut its emissions by at least 50% by 2030, while the UK government committed to reducing emissions by 78% by 2035, relative to a 1990 baseline. Both announcements were important steps that reflected the significance of one particular tool in climate governance: the target. From the legally binding targets in the UK’s Climate Change Act (2008) to those of the 2015 Paris agreement, targets define a sense of direction and signpost of ambition. Alone, however, targets are not enough. We need more than just targets to transition to a post-carbon future. We need planning.Despite what free-market economists may suggest, markets are not “free”, nor do they emerge spontaneously. They are created and sustained by governments, laws and political institutions, which plan how they operate and whose interests they serve. What’s more, the global economy, far from being organised by the anarchy of competition, is itself structured by institutions with vast planning power. Targets may dominate the headlines, but it’s these institutions of planning that are central to the climate struggle.Central banks are at the apex of economic planning. The actions of central banks during the Covid-19 emergency, such as buying assets to stabilise turbulent financial markets and controlling interest rates, reflect the coordinating function they perform. Financial institutions, from banks to treasuries, also structure the global economy and plan our economic and environmental future by choosing which businesses and activities to invest in. Decisions about who gets liquidity and who doesn’t are the difference between a business living or dying, stagnating or thriving.These economic institutions all have a common theme. They are responsible for planning, and therefore bringing to life one particular version of the future that is accelerating environmental breakdown and stark inequality. The world’s biggest 60 banks, for instance, have provided $3.8tn of financing for fossil fuel companies since 2015. The Bank of England’s corporate bond holdings as of June 2020 are consistent with – and contribute towards – catastrophic average temperature increases of 3.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2100, and provide no-strings attached finance to carbon-intensive companies. These priorities are also reflected in the UK’s public policies; while the government has committed itself to climate targets, it still supports the development of fossil fuel extraction and carbon-intensive infrastructure, while providing inadequate support for low-carbon public transport or net-zero housing.Announcing new climate targets without rethinking how our global economy is planned can quickly amount to “greenwashing”. In 2018, the increase in fossil fuel production was more than three times higher than in renewables. Since then, fossil fuel giants have announced “net-zero” goals that still envisage a critical role for oil, gas and coal in 2100. In this way climate targets can give a green veneer to plans that merely continue the carbon-intensive status quo.The political challenge is to ensure that planning itself is more democratic and centred on meeting our needs and decarbonising our economy. To reach the UK and world’s climate targets, we’ll need to reimagine planning: the tools we use, the time horizons involved, the voices and values that shape these plans, and how they are enacted. This is not about centralising power in an unresponsive and overweening state, turning our futures over to algorithmic decision-making, or further concentrating corporate power. Instead, it’s about prioritising our ability to plan for the common good: in our homes, in our communities, and in a democratic economy, from workplaces and markets to the state.What might this look like? As John Maynard Keynes foresaw when he called for the steady socialisation of finance and the “euthanasia of the rentier” in 1936, investment should be organised by needs, rather than short-term profits. In our era of sustained economic stagnation, we can’t afford to wait for a revival of capitalist dynamism to trigger investment. Instead, governments should be coordinating a green industrial strategy and heavily investing to build the low-carbon infrastructures, industries and institutions we need. There is so much to be done, and yet current plans fall dangerously short; even Biden’s much-trumpeted infrastructure plan fails to deliver the levels of public investment needed to decarbonise at the pace and scale the climate emergency requires.If we’re to rethink how planning works, central banks will play a crucial role. By consciously embracing their planning function, central banks could steer societies toward rapid decarbonisation. They could do this through changing the relative cost of “green” versus “dirty” capital, for example, by enforcing higher capital requirements for carbon-intensive industries and guiding credit to low-carbon activities. They could also introduce new, socially just rules for carbon pricing that would ensure private investment is geared towards tackling the climate crisis.Part of rethinking planning will also involve rethinking the tools that are used to organise the global economy: the legal contracts, accounting and auditing processes, property claims and financial flows at the heart of it. Currently, these tools and processes are geared towards maximising short-term returns in an economy that excludes ordinary workers and communities from decision-making. We need to refocus these on securing social and environmental wellbeing.Targets are necessary, but they’re only half of the picture. In addition to setting ambitious goals, governments now need to decarbonise the global economy and democratise how it is planned and organised. Our economy isn’t a natural state, but a malleable creation. We still retain the power to reimagine what version of the future it is hurtling towards – and now we must urgently embrace this. More
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Does Afghanistan Have a Green Future?
by Philippa Kaur 25 April 2021, 22:45
Everyone has a different doomsday scenario for Afghanistan once US and NATO troops withdraw by September 11. The Taliban will take over and reimpose their repressive social agenda. Al-Qaeda will multiply rapidly and again become a global threat. Rival warlords will split apart the country. Another wave of Afghan refugees will overwhelm Europe. And then there’s the scenario in which China basically takes over the country, or at least the most sought-after parts of the country: the resources that lie beneath Afghan soil.
“Afghanistan is one of the richest mining regions in the world, holding untapped mineral wealth and rare Earth elements estimated at roughly $3 trillion,” writes Chris Dolan in The Hill. “Competition with China over mineral wealth is intensifying and Afghanistan presents China with a new opportunity to expand its mining and transportation projects in the Belt and Road initiative.”
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So far, the China “threat,” like all the others, is hypothetical since Beijing has been hesitant to invest a lot into the war-torn country. In 2007, China contracted to build a large copper mine at Mes Aynak but has done so little to set up operations there that the Afghan government is considering retendering the contract to another investor. The Chinese have their own complaints about the Mes Aynak arrangement, particularly around security and renegotiating some of the terms of the contract. Other than the stalled copper mine and some oil exploration, Chinese investments in Afghanistan have been minimal compared to what Beijing is pouring into neighboring Pakistan.
Whether to block China, thwart al-Qaeda or muscle through a power-sharing deal with the Taliban, the United States has no plans to abandon Afghanistan completely. The Biden administration is looking to move US bases there to another country, perhaps in Central Asia. In the meantime, Washington will maintain its air war from aircraft carriers or from more distant points in the Middle East, and it will continue to train and provide financial support for the Afghan army.
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As for ensuring that Afghanistan rises from the bottom of the world’s social and economic indices — currently, it’s the least peaceful, one of the most corrupt and one of the worst-off countries in terms of human development — the US appears to be washing its hands of any responsibility. So much for the Pottery Barn rule. From Washington’s perspective, Afghanistan was broken long before the 2001 invasion. Mission (never-to-be) accomplished.
Indeed, in his remarks last week on “the way forward in Afghanistan,” President Joe Biden had very little to say about Afghanistan itself, aside from its military and the various threats the country poses to the United States. He said virtually nothing about the Afghan economy, Afghan society or the Afghan people. At most, the United States appears to be bracing for the worst-case scenario and preparing to minimize the impact on US national interests.
A Different Future for Afghanistan
When Seth Warren Rose looks at Afghanistan, he doesn’t see red, he sees green: the green of money, yes, but more importantly the green of environmental sustainability. “I grew up with Vietnam being considered a war not a country,” he told me. “Afghanistan is the same. Americans think of Afghanistan only as a war. But there are 30 million-plus people living there.”
Rose’s outfit, the Eneref Institute, is gathering support from Afghan politicians for a bold initiative to make Afghanistan carbon-neutral. “If you look at the carbon footprint of Afghanistan, it’s minimal,” Rose continued. “They haven’t really industrialized. Obviously, they’ll let the world in once they establish a peace. But why don’t they establish a mechanism, as long as they’re selling their resources, to do so in a way that’s non-toxic, energy-efficient, and net-carbon zero?”
As Rose explained to me, Eneref’s proposal is to keep Afghanistan’s oil in the ground but to develop methods of extracting other valuable underground resources in an environmentally more sustainable manner. In this way, the country could “use its mineral wealth to leapfrog industrialization.” This Lead the Leap campaign has lined up a number of prominent Afghans as advisers and secured the support of the Afghan senate.
Extracting Afghanistan’s mineral wealth in a carbon-neutral fashion is easier said than done. Extractive industries are notoriously dirty, responsible for 80% of the planet’s biodiversity loss and half the world’s carbon emissions (and that’s just in the extraction process). Workers die in large numbers in the mining sector, whether immediately in accidents or through exposure to dangerous substances over the long term. Communities around mines have to deal with often-horrifying pollution in their air, land and water. And wherever mines extract valuable substances, conflict is sure to follow (see, for example, “blood diamonds”).
Nor is it so easy to leapfrog over the extraction industry into a clean energy future. Many green technologies, such as solar panels, are dependent on an array of minerals like copper and zinc, while wind turbines and electric vehicles require inputs like cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements.
Eneref’s bid to green Afghanistan’s mining sector is part of a much larger effort to make the entire production chain of the extraction industry sustainable. The World Bank, for instance, has launched a Climate Smart Mining initiative that focuses on using renewable energy in mining operations, preventing deforestation and promoting sustainable land-use strategies, and reusing minerals to minimize waste.
The mining industry is also responsible for its share of “greenwashing,” making only cosmetic changes before proceeding with business as usual. Civil society organizations, shareholders and committed politicians can put pressure on companies to adhere to international regulations and corporate codes of conduct. But particularly in poor countries like Afghanistan, which are desperate enough for revenue in the short term to overlook longer-term environmental consequences, mining companies are more willing to cut corners when it comes to carbon emissions.
But there’s another option.
The Next OPEC?
Afghanistan has little leverage over mining operations beyond the $3 trillion of natural resources beneath its soil. That wealth is useless, however, if Afghanistan can’t get it out of the ground. Perhaps the Chinese reluctance to invest more into copper extraction is a godsend. China, after all, pays little attention to sustainability in its extraction operations overseas.
Many countries, like Congo and Venezuela, are in the same position as Afghanistan. If they rebuff China or any other potential investor, the latter can turn to more amenable investment opportunities elsewhere.
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Unless, of course, all mineral-rich countries form a new cartel. Let’s call this cartel OMEC, the Organization of Mineral-Exporting Countries. This mineral-version of OPEC could impose its own carbon-reducing restrictions on the extraction industry. “No one country has the wherewithal, the power, the influence, to demand that Russia, China and the United States follow carbon-neutral rules,” Rose concluded. “So, let’s gather a third of the world to create a union.”
Remember, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) wasn’t just a mechanism to extract more money from the petroleum-desperate. It was originally designed to restrict oil production. As Lester Brown recounts in “Building a Sustainable Society,” the founder of OPEC, Venezuelan Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso, believed that “his mission in life was to stop the waste of valuable energy resources. When describing his early vision of OPEC, he said, ‘Most people see OPEC as a way to raise oil prices, but I see it as a way to lower the use of energy.’ Shortly before he died in late 1979, he referred to OPEC as the ‘leading ecology group in the world.’”
OMEC could similarly perform a valuable ecological function by regulating the extraction of minerals to keep the price high, reduce waste and help turn countries like Afghanistan into the mineral equivalent of a Gulf state. Of course, to avoid the “resource curse,” OMEC members would have to submit to serious anti-corruption programs, devote profits to communal advancement rather than individual wealth and set aside a portion of proceeds to future contingencies (like Norway’s oil fund).
But most of all, OMEC members must leverage their relatively small carbon footprints into economic advantage. I’ve written elsewhere about how a country like North Korea, which lags far behind South Korea on virtually every economic and social indicator, could parlay its single advantage of a smaller carbon footprint into a clean energy future that would lead the Korean peninsula and the region. Like Afghanistan, North Korea has significant mineral resources that could finance such a transformation.
For decades, countries like North Korea and Afghanistan were promised material advancement — leading perhaps someday to membership in the club of richest nations called the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — if they just followed the conventional path of industrialization. The poorest of the poor haven’t made much progress in the last couple decades, and that industrial model has proved disastrous on a number of levels. Perhaps it’s finally time for them to band together according to an entirely different model of economic cooperation and development.
*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Shaping the Future of Energy Collaboration
by Philippa Kaur 22 April 2021, 14:03
The cancelation of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s much-awaited visit to India is disappointing but unsurprising. India, a country with nearly 1.4 billion people, is currently confronting a second wave of COVID-19 infections. Though all is not lost as bilateral talks are expected to take place virtually on April 26. High on the agenda remains the launch of Roadmap 2030, which will foreseeably set the tone for India-UK relations in a post-COVID era and pave the way for a free trade agreement.
The Missing Pieces to Avoid a Climate Disaster
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This shared vision, forming a critical piece of the “global Britain” agenda and the UK’s post-Brexit foreign policy, is expected to lay out a framework for enhanced cooperation across a much broader set of policy pillars. One such area is climate action, which is a key part of economic growth strategies and the global green energy agenda for both countries.
As signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement — the international treaty on climate change — India and the UK have sizable ambitions to invest in creating cleaner and sustainable energy systems. This time last year, the United Kingdom experienced its longest coal-free run to date, a significant milestone for an economy that generated about 40% of its electricity from coal just a decade ago. While India’s green energy transition is comparatively nascent, it has made significant strides toward expanding its renewable energy capacity, especially in solar power, where it is emerging as a global leader.
Energy Sources
Although the two countries have vastly different energy sources and consumption patterns, this creates a unique opportunity for each economy to capitalize on its individual strengths. In offshore wind power, the UK is the largest global player, while India has only begun to scratch the surface of its wind potential. The United Kingdom’s technical prowess will play a crucial role in supporting the growth of India’s offshore wind energy — from the meteorological expertise required to evaluate wind patterns and energy production potential to joint research and development opportunities.
The growth of electric vehicles (EVs) is another area where each market has distinct strengths. India, for example, can rely on the UK’s experience as it undertakes the massive infrastructure exercise of deploying smart charging EV stations. The UK can draw on India’s success with battery-powered three-wheelers to develop sustainable last-mile connectivity solutions. Strengthened bilateral cooperation on these fronts will not only accelerate the EV revolution globally but can also serve to contain China’s dominance in this market.
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The Indian and British governments are closely collaborating around climate action. This is evident from recent trips to India by the UK’s Alok Sharma, the president of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) that will take place in Glasgow, and Lord Tariq Ahmad, the minister for South Asia and the Commonwealth.
It is, however, important to expand the scope of these engagements to include small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which constitute a powerhouse of skill and experience. SMEs based in the UK can play a significant role in supporting India’s energy transition. British companies could adapt their innovations for the local market, while in turn benefiting from India’s strong manufacturing base and engineering skills. To tap into this market opportunity, governments could facilitate SME-focused trade delegations as well as joint-venture opportunities for cleantech startups.
Green financing would play an equally important role in truly unlocking the value of such partnerships. This would be through existing bilateral instruments like the Sustainable Finance Forum and Green Growth Equity Fund or the UK’s soon-to-be-launched revenue mechanism that will mobilize private investment into carbon capture and hydrogen projects. This is especially important for India, which is looking at green hydrogen in a big way and is set to launch its first national hydrogen roadmap this year. As the UK’s carbon capture market grows, this could support India’s plans to produce hydrogen from natural gas, creating new avenues for technology sharing.
If one thing is clear, it is that the opportunities are immense and the existing foundation is strong. With the stage set and the actors in place, Roadmap 2030 could certainly stand to benefit not just India and the UK, but the world at large in delivering a cleaner, more affordable and resilient energy future.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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The Missing Pieces to Avoid a Climate Disaster
by Philippa Kaur 25 March 2021, 19:06
After stepping down as Microsoft CEO in 2000, Bill Gates gradually shifted his focus to the operations of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which set out to improve global health and development, as well as education in the US. Partially through his role with the foundation, Gates came to learn more about the causes and effects of climate change, which was contributing to and exacerbating many of the problems he and his wife were looking to remedy.
Outside of the foundation, he has become more vocal about climate change and has founded and funded a number of ventures that address innovation challenges connected to climate change. His recently published book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” continues this path. It summarizes what the last decades have taught him about the drivers of climate change and plots a path of necessary actions and innovations.
© Ash.B / Shutterstock
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The book spends only a few initial pages making the argument for the anthropogenic nature of climate change, as it is clearly intended for readers who accept the scientific consensus for it. Early on, Gates asserts that the mere reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is not sufficient to avoid a climate disaster. The only real goal, according to Gates, must be achieving net-zero emissions, taking as much GHG out of the atmosphere as we put in, year by year.
However, significant political, economic and infrastructural hurdles have to still be overcome to electrify personal transport. Decisions to exit or curtail carbon-free nuclear power production seem to largely be following public opinion rather than science. These examples demonstrate that scaling viable, existing carbon-neutral solutions is already hard. Finding and utilizing affordable green alternatives to problems where we currently have none is even harder.
Gates points to the fact that without finding scalable carbon-neutral ways of producing steel, cement or meat, we will not be able to arrive at a net-zero economy in the 21st century. Even if humanity was able to produce all of its energy in carbon-neutral ways and cut carbon emissions from transport, agriculture and deforestation, as well as from heating and air conditioning by half, we would still be left with more than half of the GHG emissions we currently produce. This point is further exacerbated once we consider the growing global population and rising wealth and consumption in populous countries like China, India or Nigeria.
© Roschetzky Photography / Shutterstock
What’s More Important Than Innovation?
Innovation, for Gates, does not stop with technology. It is of little help if a revolutionary technological solution is developed, but there is no way or incentive for an individual person, company or city to use it. Innovation, to use Gates’ words, “is also coming up with new approaches to business models, supply chains, markets, and policies that will help new innovations come to life and reach a global scale.” Ideas like carbon taxation and regulation, which are often cited as crucial incentives for climate innovation, may trouble some free market enthusiasts, but, as Gates argues, it is important to realize that getting to net-zero is also a “huge economic opportunity: The countries that build great zero-carbon companies and industries will be the ones that lead the global economy in the coming decades.”
Gates heavily utilizes the concept of a “Green Premium,” which he understands as the extra cost of a carbon-neutral alternative compared to today’s carbon-producing equivalent. For example, today, the Green Premium of an advanced biofuel is 106%, making biofuel 206% as expensive as gasoline. He stresses that innovation cannot only aim to develop carbon-neutral alternatives. It must also make them competitive and accessible, lowering green premiums as far as possible and driving infrastructural and political incentives.
It should not come as a surprise that Gates approaches the challenge of getting to net-zero as a capitalist and a technology optimist. He firmly believes that a dollar in the Global North is better spent on carbon innovation than on disincentivizing the utilization of carbon-intensive products and services — a doctrine that his own investments certainly follow. However, spending public climate funds on research and development in cement production or generation IV nuclear reactors, rather than on bike paths in Berlin, Paris or New York, will be a difficult sell.
: © PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek / Shutterstock
A Clear Roadmap
Bill Gates has received criticism of varying degrees of legitimacy for many of the stances he has taken, going back to the United States v. Microsoft antitrust litigation and beyond. With “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” however, he has achieved what many of our political leaders have not: clearly defining and communicating a holistic and evidence-based roadmap that leads us to a net-zero carbon future and mitigates the most horrific scenarios of runaway, anthropogenic climate change.
“Show me a problem, and I’ll look for a technology to fix it,” Gates proclaims. Being a believer not only in his own, but also humanity’s ability to innovate its way out of the gloomiest odds, he remains optimistic, whilst conceding the momentous nature of the challenge we face: “We have to accomplish something gigantic we have never done before, much faster than we have ever done anything similar.”
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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The Nation-State vs. The Climate
by Philippa Kaur 28 January 2021, 11:37
For the past year, many commentators have assumed that once the COVID-19 pandemic fades away, the world’s governments will understand that another global task awaits them: addressing the consequences of climate change. COVID-19 has already upset those calculations, at least in terms of timing. Even when things appeared to be improving during the summer of 2020, none of the governments, even the ones that seemed most successful in controlling the pandemic, showed an interest in thinking about future challenges. Instead, they focused on how the consumer economy might get back to its “normal” pattern of continuous growth and how the accumulated debt provoked by the crisis could be accounted for.
Initially, the realization that our societies can continue to function in non-optimal conditions, even after the shutdown of a significant proportion of economic activity, led to speculation about how we may no longer really need to spend hours in traffic jams, submit to choking air pollution and jump from one plane to another to get our pressing business done. A change of lifestyle seemed in the works. The idea emerged that we could to some degree adapt to something less frenetic than what had become the high-tension consumer society obsessively committed to exponential growth.
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The confusion wrought by an accelerating — and a more devious than anticipated — pandemic, now accompanied by the increasingly ambiguous hope that the arrival of vaccines will bring closure, has left all those hopes of lifestyle change in a state of suspended animation.
While no one can now predict what the economy will look like at the end of 2021 and whether the businesses forced to press the pause button for the better part of a year will function, most people are aware that the clock is still ticking on the climate crisis. The Guardian now informs us that humanity is crying out for an answer: “The biggest ever opinion poll on climate change has found two-thirds of people think it is a “global emergency.”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Global emergency:
1. For human beings, an existential threat.
2. For politicians, a minor annoyance that urgently needs to be sidelined.
Contextual Note
Most people will not be surprised by the results of this survey, for the simple reason that the numbers tell us what most people actually think. In contrast, if we polled the governments of the world to find out how many had begun acting to counter this global emergency, the answer would be zero or close to zero. Until January 20 of this year, the most powerful economy in the world had decided to not even think about the question.
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To demonstrate that at least thinking was now possible, on January 27, newly elected US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his commitment to return to the Paris Climate Agreement and “signed a sweeping series of executive actions — ranging from pausing new federal oil leases to electrifying the government’s vast fleet of vehicles — while casting the moves as much about job creation as the climate crisis.”
For the moment, Biden’s plan is modest, to say the least. He has put more emphasis on purchasing emission-free vehicles (presumably made in the USA) with a view to creating jobs than on the work of transforming an economy built to deplete resources and deregulate the climate. One of his initiatives seeks to “identify new opportunities to spur innovation,” which is also more about economic growth and the creation of jobs than it is about economic paradigm shift.
The Times offers this realistic reminder: “Mr. Biden called on the campaign trail for overhauling tax breaks to oil companies — worth billions of dollars to the oil, coal and gas industries — to help pay for his $2 trillion climate change plan, although that plan is expected to face strong opposition in Congress.” Recent history tells us that Congress is extremely accomplished at engineering bailouts and tax cuts for oil companies, but singularly lacks experience in actually taxing them. In contrast to the predicted inaction of the new administration, The Guardian notes the eagerness and sense of self-sacrifice of the ordinary people polled: “Even when climate action required significant changes in their own country, majorities still backed the measures.”
Historical note
For five hundred years, the world has been organized around two concepts: the nation-state and a globalized economy. The development of a global economy required the existence of nation-states with effective central governments. The emerging nation-states rapidly evolved to become mature managers of their own increasingly industrialized economy. They did so precisely because of their ability to mobilize the resources of a global economy. That implied setting the rules permitting them to exploit, effectively and efficiently, other people and their resources. The model of the nation-state could not have taken its modern form without pursuing a policy of deliberate colonialism tending toward economic empire.
Along the way, modern nation-states, most of which began as monarchies, evolved into either democracies or people’s republics. This essentially meant offering a stake in the gains to the nation’s population to ensure its acceptance of a system that was built on exploiting other populations and resources. If many of the citizens of these democracies did not directly profit from the colonial system that defined the global economy, they at least had indirect access to some of the gains thanks to manufacturing and the gradual development of a consumer society. They could also feel privileged and culturally superior to those who were exploited overseas. This became a major psychological contributor to the stability of modern nation-states.
It has also led to a state of severe, endemic instability for the entire planet. All political power lies in the individual nation-states who compete for their maximum share of global resources. No state is willing to give ground to another or even to a well-organized group of nations. No effective global conscience, let alone global government, is possible. At the same time, the people of the earth, and especially the young whose lives will extend decades into the future, are beginning to understand that something must be done while realizing that their own nation-state is not likely to make it happen.
The United States has consistently preferred to defend the status quo of an economy. After all, it sets the economy’s rules — thanks to the dollar, its omnipresent military and its successful engineering of a global consumer economy. Republicans have built climate denial into their civic credo. Democrats have done what is necessary to appear more open than Republicans. But the party stalwarts, with Biden as the archetype, have shown no commitment to going further than seeming marginally more committed than the Republicans.
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This poll demonstrates how the current global system based on the idea of competing democratic nation-states has betrayed the fundamental principle of democracy. When the ideology of democracy began to prevail in the late 18th century, its stated intention was to ensure that the interests of the people would prevail. Because all political logic was confined within the boundaries of individual states, the shared interests of the people of the earth could be forgotten or dismissed as irrelevant.
That is what we are seeing today. Distancing himself from Donald Trump, Joe Biden promises to marginally reduce the massively disproportionate contribution of the US to global warming. To do so, he must emphasize job creation rather than seek a response to a global emergency. This solution implies more manufacturing, not less damage to the environment. With its global hegemonic position, the US is the only nation that can lead and set the tone for the rest of the world. The sad reality is that Biden and the Democrats cannot even lead at home. In all likelihood, the timid measures Biden is proposing will be blocked or watered down by the Republican opposition.
Two-thirds of humanity are crying out for a solution to two obvious crises. The nation-states have demonstrated their ineptness at addressing the pandemic. Populations, even in peaceful countries like the Netherlands, are already revolting. What the nation-states have failed to do for their own populations reveals how unlikely it is that they can respond to the needs of all of humanity. It may be time to rethink all of our institutions. Or rather, it may be too late.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Welcome Back, America?
by Philippa Kaur 13 November 2020, 16:32
America may well be divided about Donald Trump, but the rest of the world isn’t. The soon-to-be-former president has gotten high marks in the Philippines and Israel, a passing grade in a couple of African countries and India, and dismal reviews pretty much everywhere else. US allies in Europe and Asia are particularly relieved that Joe Biden will be taking the helm in January. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, summed up world sentiment with a pithy tweet: “Welcome back, America.”
The international community is happy that the American people have taken down the world’s biggest bully. The heads of international bodies — from the World Health Organization to Human Rights Watch — are delighted that soon Trump won’t be undermining their missions. Perhaps the 2020 presidential election will inspire people elsewhere to dethrone their lesser bullies like Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Narendra Modi in India, even Vladimir Putin in Russia. Short of that, however, the removal of Trump from the international scene will restore a measure of decorum and predictability to global affairs.
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With a slew of executive orders, Joe Biden is expected to press the reset button shortly after his January inauguration. The Washington Post reports: “He will rejoin the Paris climate accords, according to those close to his campaign and commitments he has made in recent months, and he will reverse President Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He will repeal the ban on almost all travel from some Muslim-majority countries, and he will reinstate the program allowing ‘dreamers,’ who were brought to the United States illegally as children, to remain in the country, according to people familiar with his plans.”
Just as Donald Trump was determined to delete the Obama administration’s legacy, Joe Biden will try to rewind the tape to the moment just before Trump took office. That’s all to the good. But the world that existed just before Trump began starting messing with it wasn’t so good: full of war, poverty and rising carbon emissions. Will Biden to do more than just the minimum to push the United States into engaging more positively with the international community?
Dealing with Russia, China and North Korea
The paradox of Trump’s foreign policy is that he often treated US adversaries better than US allies. Trump was constantly berating and belittling the leaders of European and Asian countries that had come to expect at least a modicum of diplomacy from Washington. The abrasive president berated NATO allies for not spending enough on their own defense, and he was constantly trying to pressure Japan and South Korea to pony up more money to cover the costs of US troops on their soil.
Trump loved to insult what should have been his friends: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was “dishonest and weak,” British Prime Minister Theresa May was a “fool,” and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was “stupid.” But Trump was positively glowing about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (“We fell in love”), Chinese President Xi Jinping (“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great”), and Russian President Vladimir Putin (“he might be bad, he might be good. But he’s a strong leader”). On the campaign trail in the fall, Trump reiterated: “One thing I have learnt, President Xi of China is 100 per cent, Putin of Russia, 100 per cent … Kim Jong-un of North Korea, 100 per cent. These people are sharp and they are smart.”
Biden can be expected to reestablish the more routine praise of democrats and condemnation of autocrats. But will the reset go beyond rhetoric? During the campaign, for instance, Biden hit Trump hard on his China policy. The president, according to the Democratic candidate, wasn’t tough enough on China. Biden pledged to force Beijing to “play by the international rules” when it comes to trade and security. In addition, “under my watch America is going to stand up for the dissidents and defenders of human rights in China,” he has said.
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The US-China relationship had begun its slide before Trump took office. The consensus, therefore, is that Biden’s election won’t reverse the trend. As Steven Lee Myers writes in The New York Times, “While many will welcome the expected change in tone from the strident, at times racist statements by Mr. Trump and other officials, few expect President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to quickly reverse the confrontational policies his predecessor has put in place.”
Remember, however, that China-bashing has become a time-honored element of US presidential campaigns. Biden was not different. He saw an opening to criticize Trump and an opportunity to look tough on foreign policy, a perennial requirement for Democratic candidates. Once in office, however, presidents have generally adopted a more business-like approach to Beijing.
My guess is that Biden will largely abandon the tariffs that Trump applied on Chinese goods because those were self-inflicted wounds that hurt American farmers and manufacturers. But he’ll continue to use sanctions against Chinese companies — on the grounds of intellectual property theft or security concerns — and against individuals associated with human rights abuses. Practically, that would mean shifting tensions to more targeted issues and allowing the bulk of US-China economic cooperation to proceed.
More focused cooperation might be possible on environmental issues as well. In 2011, China and the United States established the Clean Energy Research Center to combine efforts to develop technology that can wean both countries of their dependency on fossil fuels. The funding runs out this year. Trump would not have renewed the project. Biden can do so and should even expand it. Of course, just talking would be a good start. The United States and China need to dial back tensions over Taiwan, the South China Sea and the global economy. Biden will likely move quickly to lower the temperature so that he can focus on cleaning up some other foreign policy messes.
The same applies to Russia. Despite some rather conventional hawkish language about Russia, Biden is clearly interested in reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US military policy. He is not only skeptical about the huge cost of modernizing the US arsenal but has shown some support for a no-first-use pledge, which would put him to the left of Obama. These positions should facilitate arms control negotiations with Russia, beginning with an extension of New START, even if the two sides remain far apart on issues like Ukraine, human rights and energy politics.
The prospects for a resumption of negotiations with North Korea are perhaps not as rosy. Biden will probably order a strategic review of relations with Pyongyang, which will conclude after several months with various recommendations for cautious engagement. Those proposals, not terribly different from the ones that the Obama administration embraced in 2008, will not entice North Korea to give up its nuclear program. There might be negotiations, but they won’t be any more successful than the Trump administration’s efforts.
The end result: the same “strategic patience” approach of the Obama years. But perhaps a more flexible Biden administration will allow South Korea to move forward with its own slow-motion engagement with the North.
The Greater Middle East
Trump tilted US policy toward the Israeli hard line. He was a great deal more accommodating of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, particularly around Yemen and human rights. And he substantially escalated tensions with Iran.
Biden’s first and perhaps least controversial step will involve the nuclear deal the Obama administration negotiated with Tehran. Biden has indicated that he favors rejoining the pact, and Iran would welcome such a move. To begin with, he’ll likely negotiate the removal of Trump-era sanctions in exchange for Iran reversing some of the nuclear moves it has made over the last three years.
“One option for a Biden administration to jumpstart the process would be to revoke National Security Policy Memorandum 11, which formally ended U.S. participation in the JCPOA on May 8, 2018, on day one of his administration,” the National Iranian American Council recommends. “Sanctions-lifting could be accomplished by the same mix of statutory waivers, Executive order revocations, and U.S. sanctions list removals as performed by President Obama when implementing the initial U.S. commitments under the nuclear accord.” It can’t come too soon. Iran will hold its presidential election by June 2021, and the reformists need to demonstrate that their strategy of engagement with the United States is still effective. The reform camp did poorly in last spring’s parliament elections.
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Another important first move would be for Biden to end US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The cancellation of all military assistance, from intelligence-sharing to spare parts for planes, would seriously compromise the war effort, and it’s a move that even some Senate Republicans support. “He should publicly and privately tell the Saudis that he will do this on day one,” Erik Sperling, of Just Foreign Policy, told In These Times. “This will pressure them into negotiations and may end the war before he even enters the White House.”
The Saudis, not thrilled with Biden’s victory, have been slow in sending their congratulations. In addition to his stance against the Yemen war, the next president will take a harder line on Saudi human rights violations, including the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. On the other hand, Biden might find a bit more common ground with Saudi Arabia in piecing together a new approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Donald Trump put a heavy thumb on the scale to favor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Biden will seek to correct the balance. Writes Yossi Melman in the Middle East Eye:
“It is very likely that once Biden enters the Oval Office, his foreign and national security team will renew contacts with the Palestinian Authority, reinstate the Palestinian embassy in Washington and re-open the US Treasury’s pipes to allow the smooth flow of financial aid to the Palestinians, which were blocked and closed by the outgoing administration.
From sources close to the Biden campaign, Middle East Eye also learned that the CIA will once again cooperate with its Palestinian counterparts and engage in mutual security collaboration to tackle terror threats. But at the same time, PA President Mahmoud Abbas will be asked to tone down anti-Israeli rhetoric and to resume talks with Israel.“
Biden favors a two-state solution, but it’s not clear whether this option still exists after Trump and Netanyahu teamed up to undermine the Palestinian negotiating position.
Climate Crisis and Security
Unlike the progressive wing of the Democratic Party — or major political parties in Europe and other countries — Joe Biden has not fully embraced the Green New Deal. Instead, he has put forward his “clean energy revolution,” which envisions a carbon-neutral United States by 2050 and would invest around $1.7 trillion into job creation in clean energy and infrastructure.
Biden’s positions on the climate crisis are in marked contrast to Trump’s denialism. According to the president-elect’s website, he “will not only recommit the United States to the Paris Agreement on climate change – he will go much further than that. He will lead an effort to get every major country to ramp up the ambition of their domestic climate targets. He will make sure those commitments are transparent and enforceable, and stop countries from cheating by using America’s economic leverage and power of example. He will fully integrate climate change into our foreign policy and national security strategies, as well as our approach to trade.”
This plan, if implemented, “would reduce US emissions in the next 30 years by about 75 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide or its equivalents,” reports The Guardian. “Calculations by the Climate Action Tracker show that this reduction would be enough to avoid a temperature rise of about 0.1C by 2100.”
Achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement is certainly a major improvement over Trump. But those goals themselves are insufficient. The pledges of Paris would still result in an increase of more than 3 degrees Celsius, well above the 2-degree target. Moreover, those pledges were voluntary, and many countries are not even meeting those modest goals.
Of course, Biden will face considerable resistance from the Republican Party for even his modified Green New Deal. That’s why he has to focus on the jobs and infrastructure components to force the Republicans to appear “anti-job” if they stand in the way of the “clean energy revolution.” To pay for his green transition, Biden plans to rescind the tax cuts for the wealthy and leverage private-sector funds. He hasn’t discussed reallocating funds from a sharply reduced military budget. Indeed, Biden hasn’t talked about reducing military spending at all, right he favors reducing American military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Joe Biden is rather unexceptional when it comes to his views on American exceptionalism. The Foreign Affairs article that outlined his foreign policy approach was titled “Why American Must Lead Again,” after all.
Granted, Biden was focusing more on the soft-power side of American leadership, leading on climate change, human rights and democracy, nuclear non-proliferation. His tone in the Foreign Affairs article is a welcome antidote to Trump’s bombast: “American leadership is not infallible; we have made missteps and mistakes. Too often, we have relied solely on the might of our military instead of drawing on our full array of strengths.” He emphasizes diplomacy, international cooperation, openness.
But Biden will be the president of the United States of America, not the Democratic Socialists of America. He believes that the United States has a right to intervene militarily overseas if necessary. He views the United States as an honest broker to mediate in parts of the world — the Middle East, East Asia — where the United States is hardly neutral. He will, like Obama, sell weapons, and lots of them, to almost any country with the cash to buy them (and even some that don’t). And if that weren’t enough, he’ll have a still-strong “America First” constituency in Congress scrutinizing his every move, eager to label him a “traitor.”
The international community, although welcoming the new president, will understandably remain wary of the United States. Dr. Jekyll will be back in charge in the White House, but who’s to say that Mr. Hyde won’t return in four years or even make some guest appearances before the next election? It simply doesn’t make a lot of sense to entrust leadership to a country with a severe personality disorder.
*[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Trump, Biden and the Climate: A Stark Choice
by Philippa Kaur 30 October 2020, 11:28
While the economy and COVID-19 may dominate discussions around the coming US election, environmental issues and climate change, mainly due to the recent wildfires in the state of California, may also be a differentiating factor between the two presidential candidates. Back in January 2017, in my article titled “Trumping the Climate,” I lamented the uncertainties and questions ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration, particularly relating to climate change policy. As we approach the 2020 election, what can we say about the legacy of the Trump administration and its stated future policies, and what of Biden’s policy directions as presented in the party platforms?
360˚ Context: The 2020 US Election Explained
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The contrast between the alternative policies couldn’t be starker. The most baffling aspect is the Republican decision to adopt the same platform the party used in 2016. It would have been logical to update the document and delete sentences such as “Over the last eight years, the Administration has triggered an avalanche of regulation that wreaks havoc across our economy and yields minimal environmental benefits.” The next sentence states that “The central fact of any environmental policy is that year by year, the environment is improving.” Did someone in the Republican camp actually review this document?
Trumping the Climate
But before comparing the Republican and the Democratic platforms, it would be useful to recap the actions of the current administration relating to the environment and climate change. Based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, more than 70 environmental rules and regulations have been officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back under Trump. Another 26 rollbacks are still in progress. Here are some of the most significant rollbacks introduced.
Paris Climate Agreement. The formal notice given by the Trump administration to withdraw from the 2015 Paris accords was a clear signal of its intent to not only cease its cooperation in global actions to address climate change but also to question the science behind it. By doing so, the US became one of only three countries not to sign on to the Paris Climate Agreement. The pulling out of any major player from international climate accords has to be seen as a huge setback — and it is. Perhaps more importantly, such action also undermines US involvement and leadership in other UN and international forums. It may also strain US trade and other relationships with the EU and other nations.
Clean Power Plan. As one of President Barack Obama’s key environmental policies, the plan required the energy sector to cut carbon emissions by 32% by 2030. It was rolled back by Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2017 citing “unfair burdens on the power sector and a ‘war on coal.’” The GOP platform states that “We will likewise forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide, something never envisaged when Congress passed the Clean Air Act.” It can be argued that the energy sector is already heading toward low-carbon alternatives, and clean energy is no more a war on coal than a healthy diet is on junk food. Admittedly, the transition to low-carbon energy will nevertheless require government initiatives and incentives, at least in the short term.
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Air pollution regulations. The control of hazardous air pollution has been significantly diminished through the weakening of the Clean Air Act, whereby major polluters such as power plants and petroleum refineries, after reducing their emissions below the required limits, can be reclassified and can emit dangerous pollutants to a higher limit. Using my earlier analogy, this is like having a single healthy meal, then continuing to eat junk food.
Methane flaring rules. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than, say, carbon dioxide. The rollback of EPA standards for methane and other volatile organic compounds that were set back in 2012 and which resulted in significant reductions in methane emissions. Relaxing those regulations gives states control of their own standards, creating discrepancies in flaring rules between states.
Oil and natural gas. The move to encourage more oil and gas production clearly works against clean air initiatives. Apart from greenhouse gas emissions, the burning of fossil fuels emits significant amounts of other pollutants into the environment. Admittedly, there are economic and international demand-and-supply factors for consideration here. No doubt, US self-sufficiency in oil and gas supply is an important and appropriate dynamic.
Fuel economy rules. The weakening of the fuel economy rules reduced the previously set target of 54 mpg by 2025 for cars made after 2012 to 34 mpg. The fuel efficiency of road vehicles is an important aspect of economic transport and air pollution and its health impacts.
Overall, the fundamental direction of the above changes in policy pulls back progress made by the Obama administration toward cleaner air and mitigating climate change, giving a higher priority to oil and gas, as well as assumed economic growth. More broadly, it ignores the importance of the global agreement and action on climate change and significantly undermines scientific consensus. Ironically, it could also be seen to be contrary to current and future market and economic forces, and as defiance of science in general. Furthermore, it’s intriguing that the establishment of a low-carbon economy, with its technology-driven projects and the building of more resilient infrastructure, isn’t seen as job-creating.
The Trump administration made numerous other environmental policy changes dealing with water and wildlife management and opening of public land for business. Clearly, the Trump administration does not see climate change as a national emergency or an area of priority for policy direction, nor does it see a low-carbon economy as an economic opportunity.
The continuing increase in wildfire frequency and severity as well as other extreme weather events alongside Trump’s persistent denial of climate change impacts continues to intrigue and frustrate experts in the field. On the one hand, the GOP platform asserts that “Government should not play favorites among energy producers” and on the other, appears to ignore renewable energy sources even though these are just as much “God-given natural resource” as oil and gas.
The Biden Plan
Now let’s look briefly at the Democratic Party Platform for the environment and climate change. In summary, the stated initiatives in the Biden plan are as follows.
Climate change. The platform is unequivocal in its acceptance of climate change and its social, economic and environmental impacts, pledging a $2-trillion accelerated investment in “ambitious climate progress” during his first term. It is also unambiguous in the measures it plans to take to reduce inequities in how climate change affects low-income families, and the importance of building “a thriving, equitable, and globally competitive clean energy economy that puts workers and communities first and leaves no one behind.” Economists agree that due to advances made in clean energy and its economics, net-zero emissions are not only achievable, but are now cost-effective and provide a cleaner environment in a world with a growing population and the inevitable increase in the consumption of resources.
Paris Climate Agreement. The platform is once again clear in its intent to “rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and, on day one, seek higher ambition from nations around the world, putting the United States back in the position of global leadership where we belong.” This would help recalibrate the global efforts and provide a boost to the international impetus for progress on climate change. The importance of binding global agreements and actions cannot be overstated if the world is to significantly mitigate climate change.
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Toward net-zero emissions. The platform commits to “eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 through technology-neutral standards for clean energy and energy efficiency.” It further commits to the installation of 500 million solar panels, including 8 million solar roofs and 60,000 wind turbines and to turning “American ingenuity into American jobs by leveraging federal policy to manufacture renewable energy solutions in America.” Reading the platform’s language and overall framework and knowing what I know about renewable energy and low-carbon technologies, I can’t help feeling that the Democratic platform must have accessed credible and comprehensively developed scientific and economic analyses.
Auto industry. The Democrats pledge to “inform ambitious executive actions that will enable the United States to lead the way in building a clean, 21st century transportation system and stronger domestic manufacturing base for electric vehicles powered by high-wage and union jobs … and accelerate the adoption of zero-emission vehicles in the United States while reclaiming market share for domestically produced vehicles.” Numerous other initiatives include transitioning the entire fleet of 500,000 school buses to American-made, zero-emission alternatives within five years and to support private adoption of affordable low-pollution and zero-emission vehicles by partnering with state and local governments to install at least 500,000 charging stations.
Sustainable communities. The platform is ambitiously broad in its coverage of sustainable initiatives across all communities including agriculture, marginalized communities, climate resilience, disaster management, planting of trees for reduction of heat stress, education and training, public land management, energy efficiency and sustainable housing, sustainable energy grids in remote and tribal communities — all with job creation and economic growth in mind.
How the above differences in policy and direction in the US election are likely to play out in November are difficult to ascertain. Whichever way America votes will considerably affect the nation’s future in addressing not only its own climate change responses, but will carry a significant impact for the rest of the world.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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