The Eurasia Group presents its ten largest global political risks for 2021. They are:
- 46* (Biden legitimacy)
- COVID-19 isn’t going away soon
- Net zero meets G-Zero (Biden Administration’s embrace of opposing global warming)
- US-China tensions broaden
- Global data reckoning
- Cyber tipPing point (immanence of cyberwar)
- Turkey
- Continuing low oil prices threaten stability in the Middle East
- Europe after Merkel
- Latin America
What do you think of that list? They consider the prospect of conflict with Iran a red herring. It will be a red herring until it isn’t. If Israel engages in a pre-emptive attack against Iran, does anyone question that will be the greatest risk in the world?
I think that civil unrest in the U. S., something not mentioned by them, is also a grave risk.
What are the top political risks of 2021?
Another collapse in the repo market causing wild stock market swings leading to more Fed intervention. Possibly calls for a new stimulus program.
I don’t know, Iran seems to swallow hard and take it lately. An Israeli strike, I presume on nuclear facilities, might just lead to a barrage of missiles from proxy states.
“Civil unrest” misses the main point. There is an actual, ongoing, armed insurrection in Portland and other cities. The Portland insurrection has gone on for nine months. How can anyone miss that?
By the way, Portland is what a real insurrection looks like. What happened in DC was a low intensity riot/high intensity demonstration. It was peaceful by Democrat standards.
They missed EU-Russia tensions. Lavrov has threatened a total break with the EU if they impose more sanctions. I imagine that would be a total trade embargo, expulsion of EU citizens and diplomats, and confiscation of EU property.
How China, which just signed CAI with EU, would respond would determine the future of Russia-China relations.
Agree with Bob, I would put “West/Russia relations” or “Russia” as a top ten risk.
I don’t pretend to know what the men in the Kremlin think, but the whole Navalny affair, returning to Russia from Germany and then organizing protests, with the strenuous support of foreign governments; is reminiscent of Lenin. Given Russian experiences of the last two regime changes in 1916 and 1990…. either way I don’t foresee good things coming from this.
I disagree with “Continuing low oil prices threaten stability in the Middle East”. As I mentioned, when the price of oil went to zero last year, price has nowhere to go but up.
An outlier pick. The shortage of semiconductors; which will bring an uncomfortable focus that Taiwan / South Korea produce most of the worlds semiconductors that is an essential component of everything. They are both at risk of major war at anytime and will tighten tensions in that area even more…
Pretty sure Pakistan and India still dont like each other. If you think largest means most likely then someplace in Africa should be on the list. By and large the world doesnt really care what happens there so it is unlikely to have global consequences. North Korea will want attention soon.
Steve
“Civil unrest†misses the main point. There is an actual, ongoing, armed insurrection in Portland and other cities:
That may well be true, but it’s like an orchid growing in a greenhouse in Antarctica, if the local civil government didn’t support it it would be gone overnight.
But then they do, so, if that support is what you refer to, the Federal Government should not support them financially in the current round of ongoing stimulus funding.
My comment is kind of related to #3 and possibly #8, but it is mostly off-topic.
If all the fossil fuel vehicles were turned into electric vehicles, the fossil fuels would still be produced. Refining oil to produce plastics and chemicals produces gas, diesel, jet fuel, kerosine, also. Furthermore, there is no amount of money or technology that can alter that fact. It is physics.
Fossil fuel and nuclear power plants do not simply push as much electricity into the grid as needed. The grid pulls electricity from the power plants as needed. When the grid needs more power, the plant generation equipment automatically speeds up, and like an engine, they have an RPM redline.
(Technically, the grid operates at a set frequency, and as it fluctuates, the motors adjust RPM to compensate.)
When the generating turbine nears the RPM limit, the plant automatically disconnects from the grid, and the remaining plants must supply the lost power. Since they have limits as-well, they will begin to disconnect from the grid, and blackouts are the result.
In order to limit large scale blackouts, the grid is segmented into regions, and there are control centers to re-route the flow of electricity to keep the grid balanced (usage = generation). Brownouts are used to control the amount of power drawn from the grid, and thus prevent blackouts.
Solar panels do not have this problem. I am not sure about wind turbines, solar thermal, hydro, or geo-thermal, but I think they are safe, as-well. Battery backup can eliminate the problem, but an enormous number of batteries are needed. Charge duration is also an issue.
While grid frequency is not a problem for renewables, it can be a problem for customers. Appliance motors will spin slower as the frequency decreases, and depending upon sensitivity, long term frequency fluctuations can damage other electronic equipment.
Usually, the device will increase the current (amps) being drawn, and this produces more heat. The additional heat can damage electronic circuits or cause fires. There are methods of protecting equipment, and especially for expensive equipment, this is mostly standard.
(An Uninterruptible Power Source can help to improve the power quality for computers.)
I saw that some wind turbines have frozen, and I suspect that ice/snow covered solar panels are a problem, as-well. About a month ago (01/2021), the European grid had a near-blackout event, and I read that Germany has fired-up those much hated coal plants.
The problem with progressive science is that you wind up cold and in the dark, and no amount of government spending can create technology that violates the laws of physics.
Basically, other than nuclear there’s no such thing as zero-carbon power generation. Both wind and solar require backup power generation and that backup will be fossil fuel
The plan is, to use legislation and carbon credit costs to increase the price of electricity, the only legal future energy conduit to the point that you will willingly shiver hungry in the dark to make ends meet.
Climate activists have been warning for decades of severe weather events caused by heat trapping CO2, and we didn’t listen. Now we have a nearly nationwide brutally cold, unnatural, man made, catastrophic climate change related event.
Nature intervened, diverted the jet stream to shut down the toxic south Texas oil refineries.
Almost poetic justice.
“Battery backup can eliminate the problem, but an enormous number of batteries are needed. Charge duration is also an issue.”
Batteries, an environmental damage of a different kind; and dissipated – wasted – energy.
“…the device will increase the current (amps) being drawn, and this produces more heat.”
And if the heat is more than the usual amount, more wasted energy.
“Now we have a nearly nationwide brutally cold, unnatural, man made, catastrophic climate change related event.”
Now we have a nearly nationwide brutally cold, natural, event, the same as we’ve had forever. There, fixed it for you.
And boy do I remember those from the late 70’s and early 80’s walking to class at Purdue and on the edge of Lake Michigan when essentially working outdoors at the mill. And who could forget the same type of cold during the season of the greatest NFL defense ever: the 1985 Chicago Bears.
You’ve fixed, it.
Now fix the OCD thinking that has swept the nation.
They truly intend to use economic tools to distort energy markets. Harming, as usual women, children ,people of Color, and the poorest among us. Their measly tax credits won’t be enough to allow us to buy boatloads of windmills and batteries that will freeze and burst, or grind to a halt at -25 degrees.
Truth is, for millions of people around the world, cheap, plentiful energy is the only thing between us and old fashioned, sustenance lifestyles.
It, is, Bullshit.
I tried, Grey, but the fix was in in PA, GA, MI, AZ…..
Now we have “middle of the road†Joe (snicker) paying off the lefty nut jobs. And as you note. Look who gets screwed.
https://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/citi-2020/environmental-justice/3541/
Descendants of American slaves happily picking produce in a New York City park.
Careful with propaganda like The Atlantic, Grey:
“When members of low-income communities of color are forced to rebuild after hurricanes and other destructive weather events—supercharged by rising global temperatures”
There is no credible evidence that hurricanes are either supercharged or more numerous. Not from real professionals.
“—they can be subject to “climate gentrification,†in which they are permanently displaced from their homes and neighborhoods. In Miami, for example, rising sea levels have pushed wealthier developers and homeowners away from oceanfront property and toward traditional communities of color in Liberty City and Little Haiti”
I live on the coastal marshes and rivers of Bluffton, SC. It is categorically false that poor people are being driven away. In fact, its the opposite. Beaufort County, which includes Bluffton, Beaufort, Parris Island and Hilton Head Island are busting at the seams with high end homes constructed at sea level. In nearby Pritchard, just south of Bluffton and not exactly upscale, and sitting a robust 30 ft above sea level, and no one is being driven out. In fact, growth along the coast is being naturally curtailed due to space constraints. The growth is to the west into Okatie.
In Naples, FL the undeveloped pockets in the stretch from Bonita Springs to Marco Island is similarly being developed robustly (at sea level) and none of the very prominent Mexican or Haitian areas along the East Trail are being displaced. None. If you actually go to Miami you will see the same.
This is a classic case of a tiny sliver of an example being used by The Atlantic to make a point while ignoring the larger and overwhelming reality of these areas. Shorter: its propaganda.
If you really want to find a place where the poorer people are victims of pollution (though not easily convertible into politically advantageous global warming propaganda tripe) go the the old industrial areas, especially in the north. One I know very, very well: the steel mill belt from Valparaiso, IN/Gary, IN around to Hammond/Whiting, IN. Look it up. Now that’s nasty.
Propaganda:
Exactly what was gnawing at my craw. Why I posted that.
In a moment of weakness, I bought a year’s subscription to The Atlantic.
Reading it makes me so mad it’s actually better than any blend of coffee to bring me fully awake and pissed off.
That garden article was not directed at New York’s inner city Black residents, but at upper class whites who want to believe these things are true. Bias validation. Propaganda.
When the cost of living goes through the roof and American’s feel the pinch, they’ll wake up and act. Probably install wood stoves to burn the city’s trees and old copies of the Atlantic.
It’s an overly broad take, perhaps, but my top political risk is “political miscalculation.”
Information technology evolves. Propaganda techniques evolve along with it. But human decision-making (as an invariant, universal process) doesn’t evolve alongside the other two, even though our understanding of it does, at least in theory.
I worry that our advances in understanding how human decision-making works haven’t kept pace with our accelerating advances in the other two areas.
We are swimming in technology-generated data without having added much by way of sense-making consensus, and our divided politics reflects that. The stage is set for miscalculation on an epic scale.
I just don’t yet know what political form that miscalculation will take.
“I tried, Grey, but the fix was in in PA, GA, MI, AZ…..”
They still make real tinfoil or do you guys use aluminum now?
Steve
WRT that Atlantic article, the irony is that they’re returning to the practices of their great-grandparents who were unquestionably sharecroppers. If they’d had 100% shares, they’d probably have never left the Carolinas (which is where the ancestors of most NYC blacks moved from during the Great Migration).
Piercello:
Today that is a contentious statement. There are people today (not me I should point out) who at least apparently believe that human decision-making is completely and seamlessly malleable.
Let’s not confuse the motivations of The Great Migration I and II, or even its reversal, with a narrow and hysterical reference to minorities forced out of the coasts due to global warming.
The former was grounded in realities. The latter in lunacy.
‘They still make real tinfoil or do you guys use aluminum now?’
I get the whiff of peanuts wafting down as I look up into the second balcony.
I must not have COVID.
File this under “No shit, Sherlock.†Or, alternatively, dogmatic Steve’s denial.
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/comey-told-intel-chief-steele-dossier-was-not