Buckle Up For The Coming Storm. Global Warming To Monkeys – Drop Dead. Corporate Social Irresponsibility. RIP Mike Hanley (1969-2024) – Plus More #211.
Grüezi! I’m Adrian Monck – welcome!
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1️⃣ Rough Riders – The Coming Storm
A US cold warrior contemplates the next three years.
Philip Zelikow has spent a lifetime around US diplomacy. He has an extremely long and thought-provoking essay out.
Geopolitics will be rough in the next three years, as the US confronts adversaries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
“Americans and Europeans feel economically and financially fragile.
“They will be fearful of initiating a conflict that will immediately trigger an apocalyptic global economic and financial crisis...
“Chinese leaders may believe they are better able to weather it.”
Zelikow thinks China’s current offer of “peaceful coexistence” is similar to Khrushchev’s in the late 1950s – a prelude to heightened confrontation. In the 1950s Berlin was the epicentre of superpower showdowns. Today it is Taiwan.
China has options for asserting indirect control over Taiwan that would place the burden of any response on the US, and the US is weaker today compared to the past. Its rearmament will be slow.
Buried in there too?
“The future viability of Israel itself is coming into play...”
I highly recommend it. Not to agree but to see how strangely and how coldly things can possibly play out.
⏭ How the “national interest” manifests itself in Britain.
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2️⃣ The Climate’s Dead Primates
Howler monkeys sound a silent alarm.
Howler monkeys are quietly dropping dead in their scores amid Mexico’s brutal heatwave, when temperatures hit 45°C.
“They were falling out of the trees like apples.”
Record heat, drought, wildfires and deforestation have taken the monkeys’ shade, water and food.
Miami just experienced the hottest May on record, with the heat index reaching 44.4°C. Meteorologists called it “insane.”
In India, hundreds of millions are suffering through temperatures above 46°C, with New Delhi and other cities recording temperatures above 48°C.
It’s not even June yet.
But it’s not an emergency until we do something.
Yet from Florida to India, political will has wilted.
Florida just passed a law to stop local authorities insisting on heat protection for outdoor workers.
India’s election has seen climate change absent from political campaigning, despite the country’s vulnerability.
In Mexico, climate change has finally made it onto the political agenda. Elections are in June. But the country’s politicians still put energy security ahead of climate survival.
⏭ Is climate change accelerating?
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3️⃣ Will Tariffs Help the US Auto Industry Survive?
Or will America’s cars be the Trabants of the 21C?
That’s a couple of Ozzies reviewing last month’s Beijing Auto show. The Biden administration was so impressed it slammed 100% tariffs on incoming Chinese EVs.
Kyle Chan has a great stab at answering as the Biden administration balances three major goals:
Creating American jobs;
Competing with China;
Pushing decarbonization.
No easy feat. The 100% tariff on Chinese EVs is clearly aimed squarely at electoral swing states like Michigan and Ohio. It’s designed to show support for the US auto industry and union workers, but sacrifices some progress on cutting carbon.
Will it work?
Tariffs can help infant industries grow. Just look at Japan and South Korea’s car industries. But can they help aging industries adapt?
Countries like Ethiopia aren’t waiting to find out. The nation of 126 million is going all out on electric, and that’s good news for Chinese car makers. And as nearly all Ethiopia’s power comes from hydro and renewables, it means no foreign currency going on fossil fuel imports...
⏭ Should US carmakers collaborate with Chinese manufacturers?
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4️⃣ A Tale Of Corporate Social Irresponsibility
3M, “Forever Chemicals” and doing business badly.
The New Yorker/ProPublica have a long report on 3M – motto “Science Applied to Life” – and PFOS, the toxic “forever chemical“ they produced.
It has a checklist of corporate social irresponsibility:
Profits over public safety – 3M continued to produce PFOS even after learning of its toxicity.
Zero transparency – 3M concealed evidence of PFOS toxicity and human exposure for decades rather than disclosing it.
Drag your feet – 3M was slow to study PFOS despite early warning signs, and did not voluntarily phase it out until facing regulatory pressure.
Sideline employee concerns – 3M marginalised a whistleblower rather than heeding the troubling implications she uncovered.
Ignore societal and environmental impacts – The global contamination and health toll from 3M’s “forever chemicals” will persist for generations.
Deny accountability – 3M is now paying billions in settlements but has still not admitted wrongdoing for its conduct regarding PFOS.
What a playbook...
⏭ Meanwhile, read why 3M thinks fluorochemical regulation is unnecessary.
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5️⃣ Portrait Painting Was A Technology Once
When we look at the past it helps to think in their future.
When you think about art, do you ever stop to think that court artists were once the DALL-E technologists of their day?
Hans Holbein painted 500 years ago, yet his pictures still seem fresh and natural to our modern gaze.
Holbein’s cutting-edge images were better than the highest tech Venetian mirror.
Like CT scans or MRIs they could help doctors predict longevity and reveal to rivals and royals the details of your character through the “science” of physiognomy.
⏭ How did one of Holbein’s most famous portraits end up in Manhattan?
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6️⃣ You Can’t Fake It with Finns
News that is.
⏭ Spotting misinformation for nursery kids.
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7️⃣ Michael Leopold Hanley (1969-2024)
It hurts when your friends die.
I had hoped my friend Mike would say a few inappropriate words at my funeral. But the clumsy b*****d slipped down a cliff one early Sydney morning. A man at ease in mountains felled by a metaphoric molehill.
I met him at LBS. We wrote a couple of books. Toured Australia in a minivan. And then worked together at WEF, taking us from Nairobi to Naypyidaw by way of Davos.
I loved the guy – and if you check here you’ll see that so many other people did too.
As Philip Larkin wrote, that’s what survives of us.
Love to those who loved him most.
⏭ If you’re ever in Vienna, go to Demel and order Kaiserschmarrn for Mike.
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If you enjoy this newsletter – please recommend it!
Best,
Adrian