Beyond Labels

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss some of the challenges facing the “clean energy” transition. We’ll start with the focus of the following two articles:

• A New Surge in Power Use is Threatening U.S. Climate Goals (NYT)
• How a simple fix could double the size of the U.S. electricity grid (WP)

And we’ll probably drift from there into other clean energy transition challenges.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll even touch on the Trump convictions…but the press and pundits may have already said pretty much all there is to say.

President Xi’s recent trip to Europe and the passage of new Tik Tok legislation, we decided it’s a good time to revisit “China.”

It started with this suggestion:

“What were the objectives of Xi Jinping’s grand European tour, and did he achieve them?”

Chinese President Xi’s trip to Europe: ‘Charm offensive’ or canny bid to divide the West? (msn.com)

When Xi publicly embraced Putin after the start of the Ukraine war he inadvertently unleashed the unintended consequence of uniting the European and U.S. interests in mutual fear of China as a geopolitical as well as economic threat.  His European tour is an attempt to reverse that disastrous (for Xi) consequence.  How well will he succeed in reestablishing the divide between Europe and U.S. – between western Europe and eastern Europe?  

Closer to home, the TikTok “ban” has been getting a lot of press (TikTok faces toughest challenge yet with lawsuit against divest-or-ban bill | The Hill).

And there continue to be regional frictions between China and its maritime neighbors (Malaysia’s appetite for oil and gas puts it on collision course with China | Washington Post)