I spent some time on the phone last week catching up with sources in Ulaanbaatar. The situation in Mongolia is dire.
The extreme “dzud” winter that used to come once a decade and slaughter livestock by the thousands with frigid cold has now arrived for a second consecutive year.
It’s yet another sign of how climate change is ravaging a country that contributes less than a fraction of 1% of planet-heating emissions each year. This year’s dzud is particularly bad.
Official statistics estimate 2 million animals are already dead – the entire fortunes of hardscrabble herders wiped out in a matter of weeks, leaving entire families financially ruined. Aid workers say the death toll could be as much as five times higher. There’s time for the number to climb. The die-off isn’t expected to peak for another month or two.
When I visited and stayed with nomadic families during my reporting trip to Mongolia in October, I found them to be stoic, rugged people, not easily disposed to expressing emotional vulnerability.
But one relief worker who had been giving out food and aid in the countryside last week told me: “The herders were saying that they feel [like] vomiting when the snow comes. It is a traumatic experience.”
This latest catastrophe comes just months ahead of Central Asia’s best-functioning democracy going to the polls in a major election, and amid a delicate balancing act. The government in Ulaanbaatar is delicately forging deeper ties with the West while becoming more reliant than ever on China and Russia.
You can read the full story here on HuffPost.
Last Tuesday, the NBC station in Los Angeles hosted the last major debate before California’s nonpartisan primary to succeed the late U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, the current frontrunner, faced his two fellow Democratic Reps. Katie Porter (third place) and Barbara Lee (fourth place), as well as the No. 2 contender, Republican and former baseball star Steve Garvey.
Moderator Conan Nolan asked a very nuanced and well-researched question about the benefits of nuclear energy and whether the candidates supported closing California’s last atomic power plant. In a state that has seen blackouts worsen and electricity rates skyrocket since its nuclear phaseout began, the responses did not inspire much confidence.
Garvey, a political neophyte, made a vague statement of support for nuclear power before launching into a Mad Libs of Republican affirmations about fossil fuels. But all three Democrats came out against keeping the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open.
There were subtle differences. But the moment showed the limits of Democrats’ shift away from the pseudoscientific anti-nuclear politics that animated liberals and greens in the era before climate change.
You can read the full story here on HuffPost.
The ‘model for Xi Jinping’s ethnic affairs policy.’ That’s how Hong Kong’s newspaper of record described Beijing’s controversial assimilation campaign in Inner Mongolia, where the government is placing new restrictions on the Mongol language and history.
‘I owe Toyota an apology.’ JPMorgan’s famed auto analyst is quoted in the FT recanting his criticism of the Japanese carmaker’s reluctance to go all-in on electric vehicles as the hybrid looks increasingly like a more dependable market segment.
Building resistance. Home builders are organizing themselves on a state by state basis to oppose stricter energy-efficiency codes as the fight over electrification butts up against the need for more affordable housing, as The Washington Post’s Anna Phillips reports.
The next COP president. While the world rages over the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navlny in prison, Azerbaijan – set to host this year’s U.N. climate summit – is on the brink of killing Gubad Ibadoglu, a scholar whose daughter describes him as a political prisoner.
An easy transition for transmission? If one of the hardest problems with decarbonization is building enough new distribution lines to accommodate renewables, Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo has found a stupidly simple alternative: Rewiring existing lines with advanced new cables.
Green Palmetto. South Carolina’s leaders may trumpet the typical Republican line on clean-energy investments, but the state is on track to net 14 new battery and electric vehicle factories worth more than $12 billion and 10,000 jobs, per Inside Climate News.
Thank you for your time and attention. I hope you felt this update earned it. If not, perhaps this video will. It’s a 25-minute freestyle session with the Dominican rapper Tokischa:
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Signing off from sunny Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where neighbors safely walking at night on a quiet street where cars get fined $75 for going over 35 miles per hour bond with each other over the disdain for the 24-hour speed cameras perched overhead on Shore Road.