(of a person presiding at a meeting or debate) call on (someone) to speak.
‘As the presiding officer, he recognises those members who wish to speak.’
More example sentences
‘The gentleman's time is expired. The Chair recognizes Governor Thompson.’
‘The chair recognized Representative Hochberg to explain the measure.’
今回のグレタ・トゥーンベリさんの発言の肝は以下でしょうか。
Greta Thunberg: (01:14)
If you compare the current so-called climate policies to the overall current best available science, you clearly see that there’s a huge gap. The gap between what we are doing and what actually needs to be done in order to stay below the 1.5 degrees Celsius targets is widening by the second. And the simple fact, an uncomfortable fact is that if we are to live up to our promises and commitments in the Paris Agreement, we have to end fossil fuel subsidies, stop new exploration and extraction, completely divest from fossil fuels, and keep the carbon in the ground now. Especially the US taking into account the fact that it is the biggest emitter in history. And just to be clear, that is not my opinion. It is what the science clearly shows.
With coronavirus surging in Japan and internationally, this summer’s Games are a risky prospect
As coronavirus swept the globe last spring, Japan portrayed the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics until this summer as an opportunity as well as a necessity. The delayed Games would be the light at the end of the tunnel; a celebration of humanity’s victory over Covid.
With around 100 days to go, that promise now looks not merely optimistic, but flat wrong. The Olympics are approaching amid a resurgence of the virus and the opposition of the vast majority of the host nation. Grumbles are a familiar part of the Games cycle, dispelled as momentum builds in the final weeks. But the current concerns go far beyond the usual worries about slow ticket sales or uncompleted venues.
The big issue, though the Olympic movement does not care to acknowledge it, is the billions of dollars at stake. Set against that are the lives that could be lost. The head of the IOC, Thomas Bach, insists that there is no plan B (though he said that last March too). But Japan and the IOC must ask themselves whether this event can really be justified. If they decide that the Games should go ahead, they must ensure that the rules are not just communicated but enforced. Undoubtedly, the cancellation of the Games would lead to disappointment and financial losses. However, these factors must be weighed against any risk that the Olympics could make the pandemic worse.
Displacements, human rights violations, health concerns and overspending have dogged the Games in recent years. The Olympic mission is a mess in need of long-term fixing.
By Kurt Streeter Published April 12, 2021
Are the benefits worth the costs?
利点はコストに見合うものか。
Should the Olympics continue to exist if they keep causing such harm?
オリンピックは引き続き存在すべきか、このような損害を生み出し続けるにもかかわらず。
What could genuine reform look like?
本当の改革はどのようなものになりうるのか。
Here are a few ideas.
ここに幾つかのアイデアがある。
Stop awarding the Games to authoritarian nations that blatantly disregard human rights.
人権を全く尊重しない独裁国家で大会を開催しないようにすること。
Give athletes greater power — not just so they can protest from the medal stands, but so they can be equal partners in shaping the entire Olympic movement.
Instead of hopscotching across the world, consider alternatives. Maybe park the Games permanently at a pair of well-used venues — one for summer, one for winter. That would cut costs, environmental damage and displacement. It would also end the churn of a bidding process that invites corruption.
Or decentralize. Hold individual events in already built sites across the globe during a three-week window. Sure, we’d have to give up the spectacle of a lavish opening ceremony and the thought of athletes from different sports mingling in Olympic Villages. But in an interconnected world full of lavish spectacle, is all that still a must?
In this unique and challenging situation, Japan has weighed the options and effects, has been transparent about its decision, and appears to have adopted an approach in accordance with globally accepted nuclear safety standards.
The Government of Japan (GOJ), in close coordination with the International Atomic Energy Agency, has taken measures to manage the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in March 2011, including radiation monitoring, remediation, waste management, and decommissioning. The GOJ announced its decision on the Basic Policy on Handling of the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) Treated Water to dispose of the treated water by discharging it into the sea.
The United States is aware that the GOJ examined several options related to the management of the treated water currently being stored onsite at the Fukushima Daiichi site. In this unique and challenging situation, Japan has weighed the options and effects, has been transparent about its decision, and appears to have adopted an approach in accordance with globally accepted nuclear safety standards. We look forward to the GOJ’s continued coordination and communication as it monitors the effectiveness of this approach.
We thank Japan for its transparent efforts in its decision to dispose of the treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi site. We look forward to the Government of Japan's continued coordination with the
With such a warm greeting from US top diplomat, the Japanese government may decide to instead send the water as a gift to the White House and Foggy Bottom. It’s IQ Boost water.
Freedom from the Poison Cartel through Agroecology”
Vandana Shiva, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology
In just 100 years, the chemicals and technologies of war-based conglomerates, which produced and profited from the chemicals that killed millions of people during the two world wars, have continued their destruction, wiping out millions of species by spreading poisonous agrichemicals, destroying our fragile ecosystems, poisoning our soils and entire web of life, undermining every aspect of our lives for financial profit. They have enlarged their empires and established monopolies through free trade neoliberal policies and deregulation of commerce, broadening their control over our lives. They are attacking life on earth and biodiversity and threatening farmers’ rights to seed and people’s rights to affordable medicine through patents and intellectual property rights (IPRs). The “Big 6” chemical and GMO corporations that own the world’s seed, pesticides and biotechnology industries are now enlarging their empire with mega buyouts. Syngenta has merged with ChemChina ($43 billion deal). Dow Chemical, which bought up Union Carbide responsible for the Bhopal disaster killing over 20,000 people, has merged with Dupont ($122/130 billion deal) while Bayer has merged with Monsanto (over $63 billion deal).
We will discuss research and publications on the toxicity of glyphosate – the main chemical in Monsanto’s RoundUp – and legal cases which have brought Monstano to justice including the San Francisco based Dewayne Johnson vs. Monsanto (2018, $78M) and the Monsanto Tribunal in the Hague (2016). Additionally, we will discuss the effectiveness of Navdanya’s current resistance and political advocacy work for Poison-Free Food & Farming by 2030, and the global movement for agroecology as a living alternative.
In 1973, the history of the Bishnoi (aka the OG tree huggers) became the key inspiration and impetus for nonviolent protests against deforestation in Northern India, in what is now known as the Chipko movement. The now broadly used tree hugger term entered our collective psyches through the popularization of the Chipko movement (chipko, “to hug” or “to embrace”), which continued for eight years, until 1981. (This past March marked its 45th anniversary.)
Alongside the praise it received within India itself, the international attention these protests attracted can be largely attributed to a few reasons:
インド国内でも賞賛を受けたが、国際的な注目をこの抗議活動が集めたのは、主に以下の理由によるものだ。
1. Its element of nonviolence;
2. the leadership and bravery of the women who placed themselves between the would-be loggers and the trees;
3. its significance in ecofeminist thought and discussion;
4. and finally, the ability for the story to travel as fast as it did. The Chipko movement took place in the ’70s as opposed to the early 1700s, and attracted mass media attention.
Previous spats have blown over, but the split over Xinjiang is both more intractable and more expansive
Apr 3rd 2021 edition
まず気になるのはなんでボイコットが起きたのかですよね。
The boycotts were apparently triggered by the co-ordinated announcements on March 22nd by America, Britain, Canada and the European Union of sanctions against Chinese officials for abuses in Xinjiang. China responded with sanctions of its own. The Communist Youth League, a party affiliate, then dug up a months-old statement by h&m expressing concern about reports of Uyghur forced labour. Hua Chunying, a foreign-ministry spokeswoman, made the message clear. “The Chinese people will not allow some foreign companies to eat Chinese food and smash Chinese bowls,” she said.
Europe has so far refrained from banning products from Xinjiang. China’s decision to focus its ire on h&m rather than on an American firm may be a warning to EU officials to keep it that way. But the aggression poses a risk. In December the EU and China signed an investment deal which would give European industrial and financial firms greater access to the Chinese market. The European Parliament may now have second thoughts when asked to ratify it. “After seven years of negotiations, we hoped for seven years of wellness. Now it looks like it might be seven years of drought,” says Joerg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China.
We are working together with our colleagues in China to do everything we can to manage the current challenges and find a way forward.
China is a very important market to us and our long-term commitment to the country remains strong. Having been present there for more than thirty years, we have witnessed remarkable progress within the Chinese textile industry. Being at the forefront of innovation and technology, China will clearly continue to play an important role in further developing the entire industry. We are proud our suppliers are being part of that development and we want to continue contributing to driving progress together with our partners and stakeholders in the country. We want to be a responsible buyer, in China and elsewhere, and are now building forward-looking strategies and actively working on next steps with regards to material sourcing. Together with all relevant stakeholders, we want to collaborate to be part of the solution and jointly build a more sustainable fashion industry.
I am a tree hugger. I spent much of my childhood on the great lower limb of a massive copper beech, alternately reading and looking up at the sky through its branches. I felt safe and cared for and connected to something infinitely larger than myself. I thought the trees were immortal, that they would always be here.
But I was wrong. The trees are dying. Climate change is killing the cedars of Lebanon and the forests of the American West. And it's not just the trees. Since 1998, extreme heat has killed more than 160,000 people, and unchecked climate change could kill millions more. How did we get here?
Under pressure to renounce cotton harvested in a Chinese region marked by gruesome repression, they face a backlash from nationalist Chinese consumers.
By Peter S. Goodman, Vivian Wang and Elizabeth Paton April 6, 2021
But supply-chain experts caution that multinational manufacturers frequently game the audit process.
“The key tool it’s used for is rubber-stamping conditions in supply chains, as opposed to trying to deeply figure out what is going on,” said Genevieve LeBaron, an expert on international labor at the University of Sheffield in England.
In Xinjiang, efforts at probing supply chains collide with the reality that the Chinese government severely restricts access. Not even the most diligent apparel company can say with authority that its products are free of elements produced in Xinjiang. And many brands are less than rigorous in their audits.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Impossible Foods is launching its first national advertising campaign as the leading food tech startup accelerates growth and takes advantage of mounting economies of scale.
The campaign, titled “We Are Meat,” features TV spots with the meaty, mouth-watering images and salacious sizzle of the company’s award-winning burgers. Produced by Portland, Ore.-based Wieden+Kennedy, the advertisements proudly and unapologetically claim that Impossible Burger, which contains no animal ingredients, is meat for meat lovers — made from plants.
Impossible Foods is preparing for a public listing which could value the U.S. plant-based burger maker at around $10 billion or more, according to people familiar with the matter.
This would be substantially more than the $4 billion the company was worth in a private funding round in 2020. It would highlight growing demand for plant-based meat products, driven by environmental and ethical concerns among consumers.
In some ways, Gates’s book could be read as a long-winded advertisement for his investments, because he devotes many pages to promoting the need for new technologies to fight climate change. At one point, Gates even calls on the US government to become a co-investor in advanced nuclear energy companies, like the one he founded, TerraPower (which has yet to put any energy into the power grid).
The perpetuation of ecologically damaging practices
Fake food advocates claim it is a real solution to climate change and solves environmental degradation, while also ironing out animal welfare concerns. For instance, Impossible Foods[34] declare their plant-based meat needs 96% less land, 87% less water and emits 89% fewer greenhouse gases than conventional animal-based products.
However, fake food has a larger carbon footprint than less-processed plant proteins[35]. Plant-based substitutes are up to seven times more GHG-intensive than whole pulses. Cell-based meat also emits more GHG than animal products, like pork or poultry. Recent research even suggests that over the long-term, the environmental impact of lab-grown meat[36] could be higher than that of livestock.
Moreover, fake food is advertised as “eco-friendly”, and yet it is made with proteins from pea, soy, or corn which are being grown on a large, industrial scale, relying on tillage, monocultures, toxic pesticides, and often, GMOs. The Impossible Burger is made with GMO Roundup-sprayed soya, leading to massive ecological devastation[37]. Total levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible Burger by Health Research Institute Laboratories were 11.3ppb, making its consumption highly dangerous[38] as only 0.1ppb of glyphosate can destroy gut bacteria, damage to vital organs like the liver and kidneys, cause reproductive abnormalities, or even tumors, as glyphosate is also a “probable human carcinogen”. More broadly, the reliance on pesticides is directly linked with long-term chronic health problems, for consumers and farmers.
さらに、模造食品は「環境に優しい」と広告されているが、それでも豆やトウモロコシからのプロテインから生産されているので、大規模な産業化されたやり方で育てられ、耕地、単一作物、有害な殺虫剤、時にGMOに頼っている。除草剤に含まれているグリホサートがImpossible社のハンバーガーで見つかったとHealth Research Instituteの研究所が発表したのだが、11.3ppbで食するのが非常に危険なレベルだった。グリホサート0.1ppbほどで腸のバクテリアを破壊し、肝臓や腎臓などの重要な臓器を損傷させ、生殖異常や腫瘍などの原因となるとされる。またグリホサートは発癌性物質ともみられている。さらに一般的には殺虫剤に頼っているため慢性的な健康被害を消費者と生産者に対して直接引き起こす。
Genetic engineering is an essential part of our mission and our product. We’ve always embraced the responsible, constructive use of genetic engineering to solve critical environmental, health, safety and food security problems, and have long advocated for responsible use of this technology in the food system. We wouldn’t be able to make a product that rivals or surpasses beef on flavor, texture, nutrition, sustainability, versatility and accessibility without it.
We use two key genetically engineered ingredients: heme (soy leghemoglobin) -- the “magic” molecule that makes meat taste like meat -- and soy protein.
Uniqlo's Yanai says 'no comment,' but will halt business with human rights violators
SUGURU KURIMOTO, NAOKI MATSUDA and HIROKO MATSUMOTO, Nikkei staff writers
April 9, 2021 02:33 JST
TOKYO/SHANGHAI -- At an earnings briefing on Thursday, Tadashi Yanai, president of Uniqlo operator Fast Retailing, insisted the Japanese apparel company was neutral when it came to politics.
"Of course if we find any human rights problems in any of our factories or cotton production, we immediately stop doing business" with such a supplier, Yanai said when asked by reporters on China's treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority population in Xinjiang.
But he added: "We are politically neutral. If I say any more, it will become political, so I will stick to 'no comment'."
We are aware of reports raising serious concerns on the situation for Uighurs in Xinjiang, China. No UNIQLO product is manufactured in the Xinjiang region. In addition, no UNIQLO production partners subcontract to fabric mills or spinning mills in the region.
We are also aware of claims made in a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) that links UNIQLO to these two factories: Youngor Textile Holdings Co. Ltd and Qingdao Jifa Huajin Garment Co. Ltd. We can confirm that we do not have any business relationships with these factories.
Vicky Xiuzhong Xu , Danielle Cave , Dr James Leibold , Kelsey Munro & Nathan Ruser
@ASPI_ICPC 01 Mar 2020
‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang.
What’s the problem?
The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen.
This report estimates that more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019, and some of them were sent directly from detention camps. The estimated figure is conservative and the actual figure is likely to be far higher. In factories far away from home, they typically live in segregated dormitories, undergo organised Mandarin and ideological training outside working hours,are subject to constant surveillance, and are forbidden from participating in religious observances. Numerous sources, including government documents, show that transferred workers are assigned minders and have limited freedom of movement.
China has attracted international condemnation for its network of extrajudicial ‘re-education camps’ in Xinjiang. This report exposes a new phase in China’s social re-engineering campaign targeting minority citizens, revealing new evidence that some factories across China are using forced Uyghur labour under a state-sponsored labour transfer scheme that is tainting the global supply chain.
やたらGreen Revolutionを推していて、本でも化学肥料の大切さをビルゲイツが強調していたのは、彼の財団がAlliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)というものに関わっているからかもしれません。ノーマン・ボーローグはロックフェラー財団と協力して進めていたのですが、このAGRAもまさにロックフェラー財団が関わっているというのです。ノーマン・ボーローグの伝記を紹介するなら、しれっと紹介するのではなく、自分のプロジェクトの関わりに触れるべきですよね。
This approach is exemplified by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an initiative launched in 2006 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. AGRA’s programs support the use of high-yielding commercial seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and chemical pesticides in a monocropping model to increase yields per acre. Surprisingly, advocates of this approach seem largely unaware that similar projects in many Asian developing countries previously produced medium-term results that were mixed at best and were often associated with major ecological problems.
AGRA initially aimed to double the household incomes of 20 million small-scale African farmers by 2020, and halve food insecurity in 20 countries through productivity improvements. It then adopted the more ambitious targets of doubling yields and incomes for 30 million farming households by 2020. But with the deadline approaching, AGRA has shifted the goalposts, and is now promising, much more modestly, to increase incomes (by an unspecified amount) and improve food security for 30 million smallholder farm households in 11 African countries by 2021. In a recent response to criticism, AGRA was even more circumspect, claiming that its goal is to reach only nine million farmers directly and the remaining 21 million indirectly (though what that means is not clear).
Moreover, the report showed how the adverse outcomes associated with Green Revolution practices elsewhere were also evident in AGRA countries. Land use shifted away from more nutritious and climate-resilient traditional crops like sorghum and millet toward “high-yielding” maize that required farmers to buy more expensive seeds, often causing indebtedness. Monoculture and heavy use of chemicals (such as petroleum-based fertilizers) led to soil acidification and other ecological problems affecting future cultivation. Monoculture has also made diets less diversified and nutritious by reducing production of staple root crops like cassava and sweet potato.
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is a favorite cause among Western donors — including Germany. But a study finds that the work of the organization is actually counterproductive.
The billionaire’s new book, a bid to be taken seriously as a climate campaigner, has attracted the usual worshipful coverage. When will the media realize that with Gates you have to follow the money?
By Tim Schwab February 16, 2021
In some ways, Gates’s book could be read as a long-winded advertisement for his investments, because he devotes many pages to promoting the need for new technologies to fight climate change. At one point, Gates even calls on the US government to become a co-investor in advanced nuclear energy companies, like the one he founded, TerraPower (which has yet to put any energy into the power grid).
Late last year, the US Department of Energy awarded TerraPower an $80 million contract to demonstrate its reactor design, and has a seven-year plan to potentially give hundreds of millions more.
I am aware that I'm an imperfect messenger on climate change. The world is not exactly lacking in rich men with big ideas about what other people should do, or who think technology can fix any problem. And I own big houses and fly in private planes-in fact, I took one to Paris for the climate conference - so who am I to lecture anyone on the environment?
I'm also a technophile. Show me a problem, and I'll look for technology to fix it. When it comes to climate change, I know innovation isn't the only thing we need. But we cannot keep the earth livable without it. Techno-fixes are not sufficient, but they are necessary.
Finally, it's true that my carbon footprint is absurdly high. For a long time I have felt guilty about this. I've been aware of how high my emissions are, but working on this book has made me even more conscious of my responsibility to reduce them. Shrinking my carbon footprint is the least that can be expected of someone in my position who's worried about climate change and publicly calling for action.
Gates has been buying land like it’s going out of style. He now owns more farmland than my entire Native American nation
Mon 5 Apr 2021 13.45 BST
And Bill Gates’ new book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster positions himself as a thought leader in how to stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and how to fund what he has called elsewhere a “global green revolution” to help poor farmers mitigate climate change.
thought leaderという言葉はジーニアスは見出語に採用して「思想的指導者」という訳語を載せていましたが。ソートリーダーとカタカナで紹介している日本の記事が多いようです。
（オックスフォード）
thought leader
a person whose views on a subject are important and have a strong influence
She is one of the key thought leaders in our business.
The “billionaire knows best” mentality detracts from the deep-seated realities of colonialism and white supremacy, and it ignores those who actually know best how to use and live with the land. These billionaires have nothing to offer us in terms of saving the planet – unless it’s our land back.
ビルケイツの本は英文も平易で大変読みやすいので、気候変動に少しでも興味がある方は読んでみることをオススメします。先進国は人工肉を食べるべきだという主張は6章のHOW WE GROW THINGSにありました。こちらは昨年にビルゲイツが気候変動でオススメの本を紹介している動画ですが、15分あたりで植物由来の人工肉を食べるべきだという主張をしていました。インタビューをする人はBeyond Meatを食べていると語っています。この記事の日本人のサイトでの感想はほぼ反対一色だったのと比べて温度差を感じられます。
The expression "the green revolution" is permanently linked to Norman Borlaug's name. He obtained a PhD in plant protection at the age of 27, and worked in Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s to make the country self-sufficient in grain. Borlaug recommended improved methods of cultivation, and developed a robust strain of wheat - dwarf wheat - that was adapted to Mexican conditions. By 1956 the country had become self-sufficient in wheat.
Success in Mexico made Borlaug a much sought-after adviser to countries whose food production was not keeping pace with their population growth. In the mid-1960s, he introduced dwarf wheat into India and Pakistan, and production increased enormously. The expression "the green revolution" made Borlaug's name known beyond scientific circles, but he always emphasized that he himself was only part of a team.
Borlaug is a warm adherent of birth control. The object is to strike a balance between population growth and food production.
1 the increase in the amount produced by crops, such as wheat and rice, in several poorer countries in the 1960s and 1970s. This was due to improved scientific methods of farming
The Green Revolution transformed agriculture in Asia and Latin America.
2 the growing interest in protecting the environment shown by countries with a developed economy
（ケンブリッジビジネス）
Green Revolution
noun [ S ] ENVIRONMENT
1. the big increase in the production of crops during the 1960s and 1970s because of the use of modern methods:
The Green Revolution of the '60s and '70s fed many hungry mouths in Asia.
India's Green Revolution
2. the development of interest in protecting the natural environment:
Energy-saving light bulbs are just one sign the Green Revolution.
本のタイトルThe Man Who Fed the Worldを見て思い出したのは次の曲。Feed the worldというサビを今聞くとなんとも上目線な感じもします。
ビルゲイツの本紹介は新刊本にとらわれず自分が読んで感銘を受けた本を紹介していて好感が持てます。BLMの動きを反映してか数年前に出ていたNew Jim Crowという本を紹介したり、2010年あたりの小説Cloud Atlasを紹介したりしています。
The billionaire’s new book, a bid to be taken seriously as a climate campaigner, has attracted the usual worshipful coverage. When will the media realize that with Gates you have to follow the money?
By Tim Schwab February 16, 2021
Now the people like Memphis Meats who do it at a cellular level—I don’t know that that will ever be economical. But Impossible and Beyond have a road map, a quality road map and a cost road map, that makes them totally competitive.
Governments should set targets to reduce methane emissions
It would rapidly make a difference to climate change
Leaders Apr 3rd 2021 edition
Human activity emits far less methane than carbon dioxide, but methane packs a heavier punch. Over the course of 20 years, a tonne of the gas will warm the atmosphere about 86 times more than a tonne of CO2. As a result methane, sometimes called carbon dioxide on steroids, is responsible for 23% of the rise in temperatures since pre-industrial times. Carbon dioxide gets most of the attention, but unless methane emissions are limited there is little hope of stabilising the climate.
Unfortunately methane emissions have been anything but stable. After briefly stalling in the early 2000s, atmospheric concentrations of the gas started rising again in 2007. A global inventory, concluded last year, found that humans were largely to blame. Chief among the reasons for the rise are the gassy output of livestock farming (cows belch it), rice cultivation (soggy environments harbour micro-organisms that make it) and the fossil-fuel industry (pipelines and rigs leak it). Agriculture and energy each account for roughly one-third of annual methane emissions. China, America, Russia and other big energy producers and consumers are heavy polluters. Countries with lots of livestock produce a disproportionate share of farming-related emissions, too.
That is entirely plausible. A big step would be to stop millions of tonnes of methane from leaking out of fossil-fuel infrastructure each year, through pipes with holes, leaky valves and carelessness. Natural-gas operators will be able to sell more gas in exchange for a moderate investment in monitoring and repairing leaks. The International Energy Agency, a global forecaster, estimates that 40% of methane emissions from fossil fuels, equivalent to 9% of all human methane emissions, can be eliminated at no net cost for firms. The harder task is to reduce emissions from agriculture, but even here farmers can draw on new ideas, including developing new forms of feed for livestock, and altering how rice is irrigated.
現実的で冷笑的なEconomistはビルゲイツのような野暮なお願いはしません。fashionable at the moment in rich countriesと冷めた評価ですね（苦笑）
Asking people to eat less meat and drink less milk, while fashionable at the moment in rich countries, probably goes against the Bismarckian principle of realism in the wider, middle-income world where discretionary spending is rising and diets are improving. But another option is to attack the methanogens themselves. This is now being investigated experimentally, to see if changing what the animals eat can damp down methanogenic activity.
Long-distance supply chains hide costly risks — and those risks may help usher in a new stage of global commerce.
By Marc Levinson
Mr. Levinson, an economist and a historian, has written extensively about international trade, globalization and container shipping.
彼の主張は以下の部分に集約されています。
Yet pronouncements about the death of globalization are not well founded. Rather, the stage of globalization we have known since the 1980s, in which highly trained employees in the advanced economies create physical products to be manufactured where wages are lower, is past its peak. In its place, a new stage of globalization, in which factory production and foreign investment matter less than the flow of services and ideas, is advancing quickly.
But starting in the late 1980s, the combination of cheaper container shipping, vanishing communications costs and improved computing flipped the script. Manufacturers and retailers adopted new strategies — arranging, for example, to buy chemicals in Country A, transform them into plastics in Country B, mold the plastics into components in Country C and deliver them to an assembly plant in Country D.
Container ships made it possible to move parts and components from one country to another at low cost, while technology, soon accelerated by the internet, allowed managers to oversee their supply chains from a headquarters far away.
Meanwhile, the ultralarge container ships like Ever Given that have entered the world’s fleet over the past few years have made long value chains even more problematic. These vessels, some carrying as much cargo as 12,000 trucks, steam more slowly than their predecessors. The complexity of loading and unloading often puts them behind schedule, and the sheer number of boxes moved on and off a single ship tangles ports and delays deliveries.
So long-distance trade is slower and less reliable than it was two decades ago. That helps explain why exports of manufactured goods account for a smaller share of the world’s economic output than they did in 2008. Once the risks are accounted for properly, manufacturing in distant places with low wages isn’t always a bargain.
Anderson Cooper: You've been criticized for being a technocrat, saying technology is the only solution for-- for tackling climate change. There are other people that say, "Look, the solutions are already there. It's just government policy is what really needs to be focused on.
Bill Gates: I wish that was true. I wish all this funding of these companies wasn't necessary at all. Without innovation, we will not solve climate change. We won't even come close.
Anderson Cooper:あなたは技術信奉者として批判されています。技術が唯一の気候変動の解決策だと主張している点です。次のように言う人もいます。「解決策はすでに色々ある。政策にこそ専念すべきだ」
Bill Gates:それが本当ならいいのですが。これらの企業への出資が全く不要だといいのですが。革新なくて、気候変動は解決できません。近づくことすらできないのです。
By Bill McKibben Published Feb. 15, 2021 Updated March 9, 2021
As London’s Carbon Tracker Initiative explained last year, building new sun- and wind-power facilities is already, or soon will be, cheaper even than operating existing coal-fired power. Most people, Gates included, have not caught on yet to just how fast this engineering miracle is happening.
So why aren’t we moving much faster than we are? That’s because of politics, and this is where Gates really wears blinders. “I think more like an engineer than a political scientist,” he says proudly — but that means he can write an entire book about the “climate disaster” without discussing the role that the fossil fuel industry played, and continues to play, in preventing action.
But by focusing on technological innovation, Gates underplays the material fossil-fuel interests obstructing progress. Climate-change denial is strangely not mentioned in the book. Throwing up his hands at political polarization, Gates never makes the connection to his fellow billionaires Charles and David Koch, who made their fortune in petrochemicals and have played a key role in manufacturing denial.
For example, Gates marvels that for the vast majority of Americans, electric heaters are actually cheaper than continuing to use fossil gas. He presents people’s failure to adopt these cost-saving, climate-friendly options as a puzzle. It isn’t. As journalists Rebecca Leber and Sammy Roth have reported in Mother Jones and the Los Angeles Times, the gas industry is funding front groups and marketing campaigns to oppose electrification and keep people hooked on fossil fuels.
Bill Gates’s faith in a technological fix for climate change is typical of privileged men who think they can swoop in and solve the problems others have spent decades trying to fix.
BY PHILIPPA NUTTALL JONES
Gates is a classic example of a “first-time climate dude”, believes Mann. This phenomenon is “the tendency for members of a particular, privileged demographic group (primarily middle-aged, almost exclusively white men) to think they can just swoop in… and solve the great problems that others have spent decades unable to crack”. The result is a mess, “consisting of fatally bad takes and misguided framing couched in deeply condescending mansplaining”.
Mann argues that science, not “unproven” technology, should be the guiding principle. Electrification, energy efficiency, existing renewable energies – solar, wind, wave, geothermal, hydroelectric and tidal – and energy storage should allow us to “meet up to 80 per cent of global energy demand by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2050”. He is particularly scathing about Gates’s funding of geo-engineering – which aims to counteract climate change by intervening in the Earth’s natural systems, for example, by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Such schemes are largely “science fiction”, Mann writes. “And as with science fiction films, bad things tend to happen when we start tampering with Mother Nature.” Gates is more sanguine. He describes geo-engineering as “a cutting-edge, ‘Break Glass in Case of Emergency’ kind of tool” to have in case disaster strikes. “There may come a day when we don’t have a choice. Best to prepare for that day now.”
It makes sense for supply chains to be more robust. When national security is at stake, governments have a role in making supplies more secure. Yet the world must avoid a stampede back from globalisation that would not only cause great harm, but also create unforeseen new vulnerabilities.
Against such a backdrop, governments have a role in securing supplies—but it is a limited one. They can support research and development, including for new energy sources. Beyond this, subsidies and domestic preference are justified only when a vital input relies on a monopoly supplier that is subject to potential interference by a hostile government. Some rare minerals fall into this category, hand-sanitiser does not.
Self-reliance sounds safe, but politicians and voters must remember that their meals, phones, clothes and jabs are all the product of global supply chains.
Resilience comes not from autarky but from diverse sources of supply and constant private-sector adaptation to shocks. Over time, global firms will adjust to even long-term threats, including tension between America and China and the effects of climate change, by gradually altering where they make fresh investments.
D W Griffith監督の映画The Birth of a Nationの影響を扱った論文をEconomistは紹介していました。キャンセルカルチャーを行き過ぎと見る方もこのような影響の大きさを考えると対策を取らざるを得ないのではないかと思わされます。下記の記事冒頭で引き合いに出されているLeni Riefenstahlは今もドイツでは禁止みたいですから。
How a racist film helped the Ku Klux Klan grow for generations
Lynchings rose fivefold after “The Birth of a Nation” came to town
MAR 27TH 2021
“Triumph of the will”, a Nazi propaganda film, proved how cinematographic innovation could spread evil. Yet long before Leni Riefenstahl filmed Hitler’s troops, an American motion picture tested the toxic power of the new medium.
In 1915 “The Clansman” opened in California. Soon re-titled “The Birth of a Nation”, it was the first film to use extras or a musical score, and among the first of feature length. One in ten Americans saw it.
映画The Birth of a Nationの問題性は過去のブログ記事でも取り上げています。暴力が起こったことはオックスフォードの解説でも触れてくれています。
（オックスフォード）
The Birth of a Nation
a US silent film (1915) by D W Griffith. It tells the story of the American Civil War and the period of Reconstruction after it. Although it was a great success and influenced later films, it made the Ku Klux Klan seem good, and there was violence in several US cities when it was shown.
This paper documents the impact of popular media on racial hate by examining the first American blockbuster: 1915’s The Birth of a Nation, a fictional portrayal of the KKK’s founding rife with racist stereotypes. Exploiting the film’s five-year "roadshow", I find a sharp spike in lynchings and race riots coinciding with its arrival in a county. Instrumenting for roadshow destinations using the location of theaters prior to the movie's release, I show that the film significantly increased local Klan support in the 1920s. Roadshow counties continue to experience higher rates of hate crimes and hate groups a century later.
A new working paper by Desmond Ang of Harvard University unearths firm evidence of the film’s noxious impact. First, he studied how rates of racist violence changed when its jazzy “road show” came to town. On average, lynchings in a county rose fivefold in the month after it arrived.
Second, although the road show visited 606 counties, it skipped thousands more. This let Mr Ang test whether kkk chapters (“klaverns”) were particularly likely to sprout in places where the film was shown.
さらにショックなのは何十年経った今もその影響は有意だというのです。
The film’s effect on white-supremacist activity was just as durable as its impact on cinematography. Among otherwise similar counties, the chances of having an active klavern in 2000 were 18 percentage points greater in places on the road show’s itinerary than in those it passed over.
先ほどの論文は５０ページ以上ある長いものなので、結論だけを読みました（苦笑）結論の前半はEconomistの記事が紹介していたものですが、ここからはメディアの影響を述べているところです。まずはa good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks”とこの映画はスーパーヒーローものの原型を作り上げたものであるとしています。こういうステレオタイプは染み付いてしまっていて意識的に修正できないものなので厄介です。
These findings hold important insights for present discourse and highlight critical areas for future research. While much of the recent concern around “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers” is centered around selective exposure into polarized environments, my results point to the wide-ranging impact of popular entertainment media (Sunstein, 2001a,b, 2018; Pariser, 2011). Viewed from a modern perspective, the racist imagery permeating The Birth of a Nation may be so obvious as to border on harmless caricature. Yet, it is important to caution that many of the film’s underlying themes likely persist - if in subtler form - throughout movies and television today. As Alan Moore, creator of the Watchmen, recently observed, “a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks” which “save for a smattering of non-white characters...are still very much white supremacist dreams of a master race” (Sassaki, 2019). In this light, my findings highlight the continued need to assess the unintended consequences of even seemingly-innocuous forms of entertainment media (DellaVigna and La Ferrara, 2015).
More pressingly, this paper’s findings demonstrate the power of media to propagate extreme movements and ideologies. The Reconstruction-era KKK was a fringe organization, one that operated largely in secrecy in a handful of Southern states. Yet through The Birth of a Nation, a fictionalized version of the Klan was introduced to millions of Americans across the country, leading to the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan on a scale far larger than had ever existed before. While the media landscape has changed considerably over the past hundred years, this same arc is reflected in the spread of modern extremist groups like QAnon from obscure online forums to mainstream media outlets and ultimately to the halls of Congress (Rosenberg, 2020). Better understanding the role of media in fueling this rise may be critical to on-going policy discussions around content moderation in government and the private sector.
