3rd April, 2020 – Planning Ahead in a Time of Plague
3rd April, 2020 – Planning Ahead in a Time of Plague
Being locked down certainly does give one plenty of time to think, so I thought to send out my April Musing early to set your mental wheels in motion. Right now, we are all focused on the next few weeks. All we know beyond that is that there is going to be a global recession followed, hopefully, by some kind of recovery before we settle into a new normal. In the sections below I have given my thoughts on how the new normal might differ from the old normal of just a couple of weeks ago.
I do hope the world’s leaders are also starting to think ahead. By and large they weren’t at all prepared for the Covid Epidemic. Will they be ready for the next major disaster which could well involve some aspect or other of climate change? Next time will they listen to experts instead of relying on their egotistical gut feel?
People Change:
I thought I would start with some numbers so you can put things in perspective. In 2013, a year before the start of the First World War, the population of the world was 1.8 billion people. During that war, 20 million people died (I’m not sure if this includes the million who perished in the Armenian / Assyrian genocide). The “Spanish Flu” epidemic of 1919 resulted in 50 million deaths or just over 3% of the world population.
Today the world population is above 7 billion people. In 2017, 56 million people died worldwide of all causes. The major causes of death were cardiovascular disease (17.8 million), cancer (9.6 million), respiratory disease (3.9 million) and lower respiratory infections (2.6 million). The other infectious diseases causing deaths were digestive diseases (2.4 million), diarrheal diseases (1.6 million), tuberculosis (1.2 million), HIV/Aids (700,000) and influenza / pneumonia (389,000). Remember, too, that some of those who might otherwise have died from respiratory problems in 2020 will instead succumb to Corovid 19, reducing those other totals.
Some 69,000 people die in the United States each year from drug overdoses.
On a more positive note re another big killer, Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has developed a new blood test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer early. The test uses chemical changes to DNA that is shed by tumours and found circulating in the blood. And an IBM Summit supercomputer housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has identified 77 treatments that may be able to prevent Covid 19 infections.
Climate Change and the Environment:
Climate researchers using satellite data have calculated that during the long hot polar summer of 2019, when temperatures reached record highs, Greenland’s glaciers lost 600 billion tons of ice in two months raising global sea levels by 2 millimetres. The annual minimum extent of sea ice in the Arctic was the second-lowest on record.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef experienced its third mass coral bleaching event in five years. Outbreaks of mass bleaching in 2016 and 2017 killed half the shallow water corals on the reef system.
A new paper published in the Journal of Cleaner Production calculates that methane emissions from coal mines could be more than double previous estimates, making coal mining a bigger source of the gas than the notorious oil and gas industry. This is even more pronounced when accounting for the impact of old coal mines that continue to seep methane long after they have been abandoned.
On a more positive note, the Cambodian government announced it would not build any new hydropower dams on the mainstream Mekong River for the next decade, providing a reprieve for the river’s fragile biodiversity.
A United States federal court, acting on an action brought by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, has ordered the Trump administration to conduct a full environmental review of a controversial segment of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a long-standing focal point of tribal and environmental activism. The tribe claimed that the Army Corps of Engineers violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it issued permits in 2016 without conducting adequate environmental reviews. Across the border, where expensive tar sand crude oil can only fetch US$ 10 per barrel, the Alberta government is preparing to spend billions to get the Keystone XL Pipeline completed so crude oil can flow to American refineries.
Another bit of positive news is an article in Nature which shows that International cooperation on ozone-depleting chemicals over the past three decades is helping to return the southern jet stream to a normal state as the hole in the ozone layer shrinks after decades of human-caused disruption.
Pollution levels, particularly NO2 and PM2.5 particulate, have dropped significantly in cities where denizens have been confined to their homes.
The final item of good news for the environment is that research published in Frontiers in Microbiology identified a new strain of Pseudomonas bacteria which have the ability to convert polyurethane into its basic chemicals. Now that’s one we want to spread around the world!
Food and Water:
A combination of low oil prices and a drop in fuel consumption as American consumers stay home has made the production of ethanol from corn for blending with gasoline uneconomic. The corn can instead be used for food or the land put to better use.
Low Cost Renewable Energy:
The Global Wind Energy Council estimated that the global offshore wind industry installed a record 6.1GW of new capacity in 2019, a rise of more than one third on 2018 and bringing the global total up to 29GW. Europe accounting for 59% of all new installations and the Asia Pacific region for the remaining 41%. China was again the leader, installing more than 2.3GW of capacity followed by the United Kingdom with 1.8GW of newly installed capacity and Germany with 1.1GW of new capacity.
Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association calculated that in 2019 America added 13.3 GW of solar in 2019, more than 2.8 GW of it residential solar, beating new wind and gas capacity. Cumulative operating PV capacity in the USA now tops 76 GW.
Economists have speculated that building new green energy capacity could add jobs once the Covid 19 crisis is over, while others speculate that there will be no funding available for any kind of climate mitigation projects.
Australia’s independent Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee has rejected attempts by lobbyists to access the federal government’s Climate Solutions Fund in order to cover the cost of upgrades that would extend the operational life of coal-fired generators. The gall of it!!
With populations locked down everywhere, electrical power usage has dropped accordingly.
Mass Data Mining and Storage:
Long time readers of these musings will remember that I have been harping on for a long time about the dangers of mass data mining and storage, both by companies for commercial purposes and by governments for similar nefarious ends. The EU is taking the lead in protecting its citizens from at least the worst excesses, but elsewhere governments are taking advantage of the pandemic as an excuse to introduce more intrusive monitoring of citizens, mostly through their cellphones, while Amazon’s “essential” delivery services are hoovering up ever more of our personal data.
Taiwan is using location-tracking to ensure people who are quarantined stay in their homes with police and local officials alerted if those in home quarantine move away from their address or turn off their phones. Officials also call twice a day to ensure people don’t avoid tracking by leaving their phones at home.
In Hong Kong, location-tracking wristbands are given to those put under quarantine. The Singapore government uses text messages to contact people, who must click on a link to prove they are at home. Thailand has rolled out a mobile app that anyone arriving at an airport must download to help monitor where they go next in case they test positive for the virus. Vietnam also launched a mobile app to help track cases. Other countries, including South Korea and Israel, are using satellite-based phone tracking to determine where infected individuals might have passed SARS-CoV-2 to others by coming too close.
On a lighter note, Karnataka state is reported to be requiring quarantined citizens to send in a selfie every hour to prove they are staying at home. I hope they’ve got a powerful face recognition system to process the selfie stream!
The global mobile phone industry is exploring the creation of a global data-sharing system that could track individuals around the world. The question raised by all of these endeavours is what will happen once the pandemic is over? And, with an international system, who will own or have access to the data?
Meanwhile the Chinese government and Huawei are planning to implement an alternative Internet and have submitted a proposal to the ITU.
Automation Based Unemployment:
China staffed an entire field hospital with robots which carry out basic screening tasks such as monitoring temperature, heart rate and blood oxygen levels.
Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence based application that can turn brain activity into text.
Old habits die hard, so we’re told. But what about new habits? The longer we stay in lock down, the more used we are going to be used to working, shopping and learning from home. Managers have learned to manage their subordinates’ output rather than the hours they spend in the office. Workers have gained an hour or more of personal time they don’t have to spend mindlessly commuting to and from the office. Online shopping takes a fraction of time compared to heading off in your gasoline powered car to the nearest mall then toiling up and down the store aisles.
So what is going to happen when the lockdown is over? Are we going to revert to our old ways? If we stubbornly embrace the new then there will be huge changes in the offing. At rush hour the streets will be quieter and there will be seats on public transport. Office buildings and malls, already decimated by rental non-payment and retail liquidations, are going to suddenly become redundant as retailers retreat to their warehouses.
Who will be the winners and the losers? Companies employing white collar staff will save both through smaller offices and piggy backing on IT infrastructure paid for by their home based employees. Retailers with an online ordering presence will gain market share over their offline competitors, at the same time minimising or closing their physical stores. Less commuting by car will reduce gasoline and diesel sales. Jobs will be lost and new jobs will be created delivering goods. I can see coffee shops popping up in the suburbs where before there was no one to imbibe of a working day. Taking a cruise will no longer be a popular holiday pursuit. And can governments afford to bail out airlines when they have so many other pressing priorities?
That’s just the start of it all. I leave you to think through other implications for yourself!
Autonomous Electric Vehicles:
Continuing on the theme from the last section, Reuters reports that American demand for traditional auto sales through dealers dropped 13% in the first 19 days of March. By contrast, car makers that use online sales platform Roadster are seeing a 6% increase in traffic. Carvana, which sells used vehicles online, expanded the number of cars it sold to retail customers by 89% in 2019 from 2018. Tesla customers can now simply visit the Tesla website, configure a vehicle to their preference and hit the buy button. With the ability to assign a vehicle to a customer’s smart phone via the Tesla app, this removes the need to drop a car off face-to-face and hand over a key or fob. Instead, staff drop off the car in a delivery car park, disinfect and leave the vehicle ready for the owner to pick up after dropping off paperwork at a nearby location. Tesla first quarter 2020 sales were the best yet, up 40%, compared with a 35% decrease for the overall US auto market. Prior to Covid 19, only 15% of cars were sold online.
New research has again shown that, overall, it takes less energy to create and maintain electric cars than fuel-based ones in 95% of the world.
An international research team, led by Monash University, has developed an innovative new filtration method that could significantly reduce lithium extraction times from salt while improving the recovery rate from the current 30% achieved using solar evaporation to 90%. The lithium, of course, will largely be used in batteries for electric vehicles.
Siemens and ubitricity have converted all the lamp posts on a central London residential street into "hidden" electric vehicle chargers.
The Trump administration is rolling back the US government’s strongest attempt to combat the climate crisis, weakening rules which compel auto companies to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. Critics say the move will lead to more life-threatening air pollution and force Americans to spend more on gasoline. The changes will allow vehicles to emit about a billion more tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, equivalent to some 20% of annual US emissions.
While our attention has been grabbed by the Covid 19 pandemic, another major event has been unfolding. As people became housebound and stopped driving, flying and cruising, liquid fuel sales dropped dramatically. The normal response from OPEC, and its ally Russia, under similar circumstances, is to cut back oil production so prices remain high. However, this time round Russia decided to flood the market in order to put America’s high cost shale oil producers permanently out of business. Not to be outdone, the Saudis followed suit and opened their taps with the result that crude oil prices have dropped to a fraction of their price just a month ago. It’s not just America’s frackers who are suffering, so too are the likes of the major oil companies, the Canadian tar sand producers and oil producing nations around the world. Not only do they have to cope with the fallout from the Covid pandemic, but they no longer have the revenue stream to cover existing costs, let alone the medical, unemployment and business support bills.
Analysts are divided on how this will all end. Some say low gasoline prices will make it more difficult for cash strapped consumers to afford electric cars. Others speculate that this is the beginning of the end for the oil powerful oil industry. We can but wait with bated breath.
Increasing Inequality:
If nothing else, the Covid 19 pandemic has highlighted the gap between rich and poor. Billionaires, with their trusty personal physicians and a couple of precious ventilators in tow, helicoptered off to their island retreats or private yachts. Mere millionaires scarpered behind the high walls of their beach or countryside estates, having first made sure to jump to the front of the queue for testing, even ahead of healthcare workers exposed to the virus all day long. Those of us living in houses and apartments retreated there to zoom and gloom, the irregular arrival of a food delivery interrupting the monotony.
Now, working and learning from home all sounds part of the American dream but it turns out that some 22% of households there don’t have home internet, including more than 4 million households with school-age children who are meant to be learning online. Poor families and people of colour are particularly impacted with only 56% of households making less than $20,000 a year having home broadband.
But they’re not the worst off. It’s a shame on our society that some of the lowest paid people are the ones in the front line – just think of nurses, cleaning staff and delivery drivers on gig contracts. Worse still, are the really poor, many having lost their jobs, who are crammed along with their families into one roomed shacks in squalid slums, where self-distancing is impossible, specially if you share germ-ridden toilets and taps with your neighbours.
To my mind, the only answer is to tax the rich to the hilt and implement a basic income grant delivered electronically to everyone’s phones, with no bureaucracy in between.
Globalisation:
When globalisation is mentioned, we immediately think of international trade rather than viruses that can hop over borders so it’s interesting to find that President Trump's trade war with China is threatening the American fight against the pandemic. The administration's 2018 tariffs on Chinese medical products have cut imports of these products from China and may be contributing to shortages and higher costs of vital equipment at a time of nationwide crisis. And the Chinese are, not surprisingly, giving preference to their loyal customers elsewhere.
Southern Africa:
The South African government is in talks with cell phone service providers to create a Covid monitoring system similar to those used in Asian countries. To my mind it’s a case of too little, too late. And I’m not sure I want government snoopers watching my every move anyway.
In January South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed the Coal Transporters Forum’s long-running effort to nullify 2.3 GW of power purchase agreements which financially troubled utility Eskom signed with solar and wind developers in the country’s fourth national tender round in 2015.
The South African government is slowly moving towards the next bid round for renewables. However, in the meantime they have made two serious missteps, especially bearing in mind that pollution is a known cause of respiratory problems, making people more vulnerable to the corona virus and flu. First the Department of Environmental Affairs doubled the emission limits for sulphur dioxide, then the national electricity company, Eskom, declared force majeure on its contracts with independent wind farms so that its old coal fired power stations can provide the reduced power requirements of a locked down nation. The officials responsible should be locked up, not down!!
Planning Ahead:
Governments and companies claim to be competent planners who routinely identify potential risks and prepare for them. Despite numerous warnings from all manner of expert bodies, the Covid crisis has shown our governments pay lip service to the outcomes of their planning sessions. Now’s the time they should be thinking ahead to at least two crises that await them.
Once a vaccine has been found and everyone inoculated so they can emerge into daylight again, every country is going to face high unemployment, bankrupt companies, broken transport systems, high levels of indebtedness, an empty fiscus and a whole lot more. Now is the time that world leaders should be banding together to formulate a joint response, rather than each going its own way. To some extent they are presented with a blank sheet on which they can design a better world for all of us, not just the rich in the richest countries.
What other disasters lurk? Are we ready for another equally deadly virus? When a deadly hurricane hits, we should be prepared to mop up efficiently. More importantly we should be thinking through how we can reduce the number of storms, instead of making them more frequent and ever more deadly. It’s time professional planning producing real plans came back into vogue.
There you have it for now. I am sure you, in your locked down state, will have your own views on all of this. I look forward to hearing them.
Being locked down certainly does give one plenty of time to think, so I thought to send out my April Musing early to set your mental wheels in motion. Right now, we are all focused on the next few weeks. All we know beyond that is that there is going to be a global recession followed, hopefully, by some kind of recovery before we settle into a new normal. In the sections below I have given my thoughts on how the new normal might differ from the old normal of just a couple of weeks ago.
I do hope the world’s leaders are also starting to think ahead. By and large they weren’t at all prepared for the Covid Epidemic. Will they be ready for the next major disaster which could well involve some aspect or other of climate change? Next time will they listen to experts instead of relying on their egotistical gut feel?
People Change:
I thought I would start with some numbers so you can put things in perspective. In 2013, a year before the start of the First World War, the population of the world was 1.8 billion people. During that war, 20 million people died (I’m not sure if this includes the million who perished in the Armenian / Assyrian genocide). The “Spanish Flu” epidemic of 1919 resulted in 50 million deaths or just over 3% of the world population.
Today the world population is above 7 billion people. In 2017, 56 million people died worldwide of all causes. The major causes of death were cardiovascular disease (17.8 million), cancer (9.6 million), respiratory disease (3.9 million) and lower respiratory infections (2.6 million). The other infectious diseases causing deaths were digestive diseases (2.4 million), diarrheal diseases (1.6 million), tuberculosis (1.2 million), HIV/Aids (700,000) and influenza / pneumonia (389,000). Remember, too, that some of those who might otherwise have died from respiratory problems in 2020 will instead succumb to Corovid 19, reducing those other totals.
Some 69,000 people die in the United States each year from drug overdoses.
On a more positive note re another big killer, Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has developed a new blood test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer early. The test uses chemical changes to DNA that is shed by tumours and found circulating in the blood. And an IBM Summit supercomputer housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has identified 77 treatments that may be able to prevent Covid 19 infections.
Climate Change and the Environment:
Climate researchers using satellite data have calculated that during the long hot polar summer of 2019, when temperatures reached record highs, Greenland’s glaciers lost 600 billion tons of ice in two months raising global sea levels by 2 millimetres. The annual minimum extent of sea ice in the Arctic was the second-lowest on record.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef experienced its third mass coral bleaching event in five years. Outbreaks of mass bleaching in 2016 and 2017 killed half the shallow water corals on the reef system.
A new paper published in the Journal of Cleaner Production calculates that methane emissions from coal mines could be more than double previous estimates, making coal mining a bigger source of the gas than the notorious oil and gas industry. This is even more pronounced when accounting for the impact of old coal mines that continue to seep methane long after they have been abandoned.
On a more positive note, the Cambodian government announced it would not build any new hydropower dams on the mainstream Mekong River for the next decade, providing a reprieve for the river’s fragile biodiversity.
A United States federal court, acting on an action brought by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, has ordered the Trump administration to conduct a full environmental review of a controversial segment of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a long-standing focal point of tribal and environmental activism. The tribe claimed that the Army Corps of Engineers violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it issued permits in 2016 without conducting adequate environmental reviews. Across the border, where expensive tar sand crude oil can only fetch US$ 10 per barrel, the Alberta government is preparing to spend billions to get the Keystone XL Pipeline completed so crude oil can flow to American refineries.
Another bit of positive news is an article in Nature which shows that International cooperation on ozone-depleting chemicals over the past three decades is helping to return the southern jet stream to a normal state as the hole in the ozone layer shrinks after decades of human-caused disruption.
Pollution levels, particularly NO2 and PM2.5 particulate, have dropped significantly in cities where denizens have been confined to their homes.
The final item of good news for the environment is that research published in Frontiers in Microbiology identified a new strain of Pseudomonas bacteria which have the ability to convert polyurethane into its basic chemicals. Now that’s one we want to spread around the world!
Food and Water:
A combination of low oil prices and a drop in fuel consumption as American consumers stay home has made the production of ethanol from corn for blending with gasoline uneconomic. The corn can instead be used for food or the land put to better use.
Low Cost Renewable Energy:
The Global Wind Energy Council estimated that the global offshore wind industry installed a record 6.1GW of new capacity in 2019, a rise of more than one third on 2018 and bringing the global total up to 29GW. Europe accounting for 59% of all new installations and the Asia Pacific region for the remaining 41%. China was again the leader, installing more than 2.3GW of capacity followed by the United Kingdom with 1.8GW of newly installed capacity and Germany with 1.1GW of new capacity.
Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association calculated that in 2019 America added 13.3 GW of solar in 2019, more than 2.8 GW of it residential solar, beating new wind and gas capacity. Cumulative operating PV capacity in the USA now tops 76 GW.
Economists have speculated that building new green energy capacity could add jobs once the Covid 19 crisis is over, while others speculate that there will be no funding available for any kind of climate mitigation projects.
Australia’s independent Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee has rejected attempts by lobbyists to access the federal government’s Climate Solutions Fund in order to cover the cost of upgrades that would extend the operational life of coal-fired generators. The gall of it!!
With populations locked down everywhere, electrical power usage has dropped accordingly.
Mass Data Mining and Storage:
Long time readers of these musings will remember that I have been harping on for a long time about the dangers of mass data mining and storage, both by companies for commercial purposes and by governments for similar nefarious ends. The EU is taking the lead in protecting its citizens from at least the worst excesses, but elsewhere governments are taking advantage of the pandemic as an excuse to introduce more intrusive monitoring of citizens, mostly through their cellphones, while Amazon’s “essential” delivery services are hoovering up ever more of our personal data.
Taiwan is using location-tracking to ensure people who are quarantined stay in their homes with police and local officials alerted if those in home quarantine move away from their address or turn off their phones. Officials also call twice a day to ensure people don’t avoid tracking by leaving their phones at home.
In Hong Kong, location-tracking wristbands are given to those put under quarantine. The Singapore government uses text messages to contact people, who must click on a link to prove they are at home. Thailand has rolled out a mobile app that anyone arriving at an airport must download to help monitor where they go next in case they test positive for the virus. Vietnam also launched a mobile app to help track cases. Other countries, including South Korea and Israel, are using satellite-based phone tracking to determine where infected individuals might have passed SARS-CoV-2 to others by coming too close.
On a lighter note, Karnataka state is reported to be requiring quarantined citizens to send in a selfie every hour to prove they are staying at home. I hope they’ve got a powerful face recognition system to process the selfie stream!
The global mobile phone industry is exploring the creation of a global data-sharing system that could track individuals around the world. The question raised by all of these endeavours is what will happen once the pandemic is over? And, with an international system, who will own or have access to the data?
Meanwhile the Chinese government and Huawei are planning to implement an alternative Internet and have submitted a proposal to the ITU.
Automation Based Unemployment:
China staffed an entire field hospital with robots which carry out basic screening tasks such as monitoring temperature, heart rate and blood oxygen levels.
Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence based application that can turn brain activity into text.
Old habits die hard, so we’re told. But what about new habits? The longer we stay in lock down, the more used we are going to be used to working, shopping and learning from home. Managers have learned to manage their subordinates’ output rather than the hours they spend in the office. Workers have gained an hour or more of personal time they don’t have to spend mindlessly commuting to and from the office. Online shopping takes a fraction of time compared to heading off in your gasoline powered car to the nearest mall then toiling up and down the store aisles.
So what is going to happen when the lockdown is over? Are we going to revert to our old ways? If we stubbornly embrace the new then there will be huge changes in the offing. At rush hour the streets will be quieter and there will be seats on public transport. Office buildings and malls, already decimated by rental non-payment and retail liquidations, are going to suddenly become redundant as retailers retreat to their warehouses.
Who will be the winners and the losers? Companies employing white collar staff will save both through smaller offices and piggy backing on IT infrastructure paid for by their home based employees. Retailers with an online ordering presence will gain market share over their offline competitors, at the same time minimising or closing their physical stores. Less commuting by car will reduce gasoline and diesel sales. Jobs will be lost and new jobs will be created delivering goods. I can see coffee shops popping up in the suburbs where before there was no one to imbibe of a working day. Taking a cruise will no longer be a popular holiday pursuit. And can governments afford to bail out airlines when they have so many other pressing priorities?
That’s just the start of it all. I leave you to think through other implications for yourself!
Autonomous Electric Vehicles:
Continuing on the theme from the last section, Reuters reports that American demand for traditional auto sales through dealers dropped 13% in the first 19 days of March. By contrast, car makers that use online sales platform Roadster are seeing a 6% increase in traffic. Carvana, which sells used vehicles online, expanded the number of cars it sold to retail customers by 89% in 2019 from 2018. Tesla customers can now simply visit the Tesla website, configure a vehicle to their preference and hit the buy button. With the ability to assign a vehicle to a customer’s smart phone via the Tesla app, this removes the need to drop a car off face-to-face and hand over a key or fob. Instead, staff drop off the car in a delivery car park, disinfect and leave the vehicle ready for the owner to pick up after dropping off paperwork at a nearby location. Tesla first quarter 2020 sales were the best yet, up 40%, compared with a 35% decrease for the overall US auto market. Prior to Covid 19, only 15% of cars were sold online.
New research has again shown that, overall, it takes less energy to create and maintain electric cars than fuel-based ones in 95% of the world.
An international research team, led by Monash University, has developed an innovative new filtration method that could significantly reduce lithium extraction times from salt while improving the recovery rate from the current 30% achieved using solar evaporation to 90%. The lithium, of course, will largely be used in batteries for electric vehicles.
Siemens and ubitricity have converted all the lamp posts on a central London residential street into "hidden" electric vehicle chargers.
The Trump administration is rolling back the US government’s strongest attempt to combat the climate crisis, weakening rules which compel auto companies to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. Critics say the move will lead to more life-threatening air pollution and force Americans to spend more on gasoline. The changes will allow vehicles to emit about a billion more tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, equivalent to some 20% of annual US emissions.
While our attention has been grabbed by the Covid 19 pandemic, another major event has been unfolding. As people became housebound and stopped driving, flying and cruising, liquid fuel sales dropped dramatically. The normal response from OPEC, and its ally Russia, under similar circumstances, is to cut back oil production so prices remain high. However, this time round Russia decided to flood the market in order to put America’s high cost shale oil producers permanently out of business. Not to be outdone, the Saudis followed suit and opened their taps with the result that crude oil prices have dropped to a fraction of their price just a month ago. It’s not just America’s frackers who are suffering, so too are the likes of the major oil companies, the Canadian tar sand producers and oil producing nations around the world. Not only do they have to cope with the fallout from the Covid pandemic, but they no longer have the revenue stream to cover existing costs, let alone the medical, unemployment and business support bills.
Analysts are divided on how this will all end. Some say low gasoline prices will make it more difficult for cash strapped consumers to afford electric cars. Others speculate that this is the beginning of the end for the oil powerful oil industry. We can but wait with bated breath.
Increasing Inequality:
If nothing else, the Covid 19 pandemic has highlighted the gap between rich and poor. Billionaires, with their trusty personal physicians and a couple of precious ventilators in tow, helicoptered off to their island retreats or private yachts. Mere millionaires scarpered behind the high walls of their beach or countryside estates, having first made sure to jump to the front of the queue for testing, even ahead of healthcare workers exposed to the virus all day long. Those of us living in houses and apartments retreated there to zoom and gloom, the irregular arrival of a food delivery interrupting the monotony.
Now, working and learning from home all sounds part of the American dream but it turns out that some 22% of households there don’t have home internet, including more than 4 million households with school-age children who are meant to be learning online. Poor families and people of colour are particularly impacted with only 56% of households making less than $20,000 a year having home broadband.
But they’re not the worst off. It’s a shame on our society that some of the lowest paid people are the ones in the front line – just think of nurses, cleaning staff and delivery drivers on gig contracts. Worse still, are the really poor, many having lost their jobs, who are crammed along with their families into one roomed shacks in squalid slums, where self-distancing is impossible, specially if you share germ-ridden toilets and taps with your neighbours.
To my mind, the only answer is to tax the rich to the hilt and implement a basic income grant delivered electronically to everyone’s phones, with no bureaucracy in between.
Globalisation:
When globalisation is mentioned, we immediately think of international trade rather than viruses that can hop over borders so it’s interesting to find that President Trump's trade war with China is threatening the American fight against the pandemic. The administration's 2018 tariffs on Chinese medical products have cut imports of these products from China and may be contributing to shortages and higher costs of vital equipment at a time of nationwide crisis. And the Chinese are, not surprisingly, giving preference to their loyal customers elsewhere.
Southern Africa:
The South African government is in talks with cell phone service providers to create a Covid monitoring system similar to those used in Asian countries. To my mind it’s a case of too little, too late. And I’m not sure I want government snoopers watching my every move anyway.
In January South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed the Coal Transporters Forum’s long-running effort to nullify 2.3 GW of power purchase agreements which financially troubled utility Eskom signed with solar and wind developers in the country’s fourth national tender round in 2015.
The South African government is slowly moving towards the next bid round for renewables. However, in the meantime they have made two serious missteps, especially bearing in mind that pollution is a known cause of respiratory problems, making people more vulnerable to the corona virus and flu. First the Department of Environmental Affairs doubled the emission limits for sulphur dioxide, then the national electricity company, Eskom, declared force majeure on its contracts with independent wind farms so that its old coal fired power stations can provide the reduced power requirements of a locked down nation. The officials responsible should be locked up, not down!!
Planning Ahead:
Governments and companies claim to be competent planners who routinely identify potential risks and prepare for them. Despite numerous warnings from all manner of expert bodies, the Covid crisis has shown our governments pay lip service to the outcomes of their planning sessions. Now’s the time they should be thinking ahead to at least two crises that await them.
Once a vaccine has been found and everyone inoculated so they can emerge into daylight again, every country is going to face high unemployment, bankrupt companies, broken transport systems, high levels of indebtedness, an empty fiscus and a whole lot more. Now is the time that world leaders should be banding together to formulate a joint response, rather than each going its own way. To some extent they are presented with a blank sheet on which they can design a better world for all of us, not just the rich in the richest countries.
What other disasters lurk? Are we ready for another equally deadly virus? When a deadly hurricane hits, we should be prepared to mop up efficiently. More importantly we should be thinking through how we can reduce the number of storms, instead of making them more frequent and ever more deadly. It’s time professional planning producing real plans came back into vogue.
There you have it for now. I am sure you, in your locked down state, will have your own views on all of this. I look forward to hearing them.
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