Category: News

As the world careens toward a climate catastrophe, the biggest banks in the world are still financing fossil fuels in the trillions of dollars.

That’s according to a recently released report by a cohort of environmental groups including the Rainforest Action Network and the Sierra Club, titled “Banking on Climate Chaos.” The report found that the 60 biggest private banks in the world have financed $3.8 trillion in fossil fuels in the five years since the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2016.

Although 2020 saw a global drop in demand and production due to the coronavirus pandemic, and fossil fuel financing fell 9 percent, the amount spent on fossil fuel extraction projects last year was still more than in 2016 — which means that the practices of the world’s largest banks are fundamentally at odds with the 2016 Paris target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Fossil fuel companies have a couple of avenues for generating capital for their projects. The most common one is to go to a bank for a loan; the other is to sell stock or offer a chunk of future profits — but either way, they need a bank’s help.

Which means that banks have a major role to play in moving the world away from dirty fossil fuels and toward less polluting forms of energy — but only if they choose to do so. And based on the findings of the “Banking on Climate Chaos” report, most are very clearly not choosing to do so.

And though America led the charge in negotiating the Paris agreement more than five years ago, the report found that the four worst banks in the world for fossil fuel financing were all based in the United States.

JPMorgan Chase was the world’s worst “fossil bank,” contributing $51.3 billion in fossil fuel financing last year alone, and a total of $317 billion from 2016 to 2020.

That’s 33 percent more than the second-worst, Citibank, which spent $48.4 billion last year and a total of $237 billion since 2016. Wells Fargo came in third, with $26 billion in 2020, though the report notes that the bank’s fossil fuel financing actually fell by 42 percent in 2020. Bank of America ranked fourth, spending nearly $200 billion in the past five years.

If you add Morgan Stanley at No. 12 in the world and Goodman Sachs at No. 15, “that’s almost a third of bank financing for fossil fuels” coming from the United States, Jason Disterhoft, fossil finance expert at the Rainforest Action Network and one of the report’s author’s, told me.

Because US banks are an outsize part of the fossil fuel funding problem, they must be an outsize part of the solution to address climate change. “The US cannot credibly call itself a global climate leader so long as its banks are driving climate change to this extent, with no plans to phase out that activity,” Disterhoft added.

As a part of its all-of-government approach to attacking the climate crisis, the Biden administration plans to involve the Treasury Department in efforts to end international financing of fossil-fuel-based energy sources.

“It’s the first time we’re seeing an administration sketch out what an agenda in this space looks like,” Disterhoft said.

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But banks in other countries have work to do, too.

France’s BNP Paribas was the worst in the European Union. It spent $41 billion to finance fossil fuels in 2020 — a 41 percent increase from 2019. Japan’s MUFG was the worst in Asia, and sixth-worst overall.

No South American or African banks made the list of the world’s 60 biggest banks.

Where’s the money’s going?

The report includes several case studies that show the impact big banks financing fossil fuels has on communities around the world that are disproportionately impacted by a climate crisis they largely didn’t create.

Citibank was named the worst bank for “funding the expanders” — that is, for funding the top 100 companies that are expanding their use of fossil fuels. One of those companies is the Canada-based energy transportation company Enbridge, whose Line 3 oil pipeline expansion is facing fierce opposition from Indigenous groups in Minnesota.

China’s CNOOC Limited and France’s Total — two of the world’s largest oil and gas companies — have been financing the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, which would carry 216,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Uganda to Tanzania.

If completed, it would become the world’s longest heated pipeline and would blast over 33 million tons of planet-warming CO2 into the air — more emissions than are currently produced by the two countries combined.

And in yet another case, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Equinor are supporting fracking in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta oil and gas reserves in Patagonia. Although Indigenous communities are opposed to the project, big banks have been providing millions in subsidies to oil and gas companies interested in developing the region, which would have catastrophic impacts on global warming.

Ahead of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, the pressure on the world’s largest banks is now twofold: stop funding companies that are expanding their use of fossil fuels, and agree to phase out financing for fossil fuel projects in alignment with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C.

The Biden administration has officially committed to Covax, the global effort to fund and deliver Covid-19 vaccines around the world, including to lower-income countries.

The administration will commit $4 billion to Covax, releasing the first $2 billion immediately to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which is one of the partners in this effort along with the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). Another $2 billion will follow over the next two years, an effort to spur other countries to contribute more money.

The announcement came during President Joe Biden’s attendance at the Group of Seven (G7) meeting of the world’s biggest economies, where the pandemic is at the top of the agenda and where others, including the United Kingdom, have made similar commitments to help global vaccination efforts.

The Biden administration had announced last month that it would join Covax, another example of the White House’s larger recommitment to international cooperation. President Donald Trump had declined to join, one of a few notable holdouts in an initiative that now has more than 190 countries participating.

Congress, however, had set aside $4 billion for Gavi in its December spending bill, which is the money Biden is using for this announcement.

The US announcement also came on the heels of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledging to donate the UK’s surplus vaccines. The president of the European Commission (the European Union’s executive branch) also said Friday that the EU is doubling its Covax contribution to $1 billion.

All of these commitments are welcome news, and will make up for real funding shortfalls in the purchase of vaccine doses. At the same time, though, many of these wealthier countries are also racing to inoculate their own populations, securing doses for their citizens at all costs and purchasing far more doses than they need, while the rest of the world, especially lower-income countries, lags very far behind.

About one-quarter of the world’s population, mostly in lower- and middle-income countries, may not have access to vaccinations until 2022 — a precarious situation that could give new variants a chance to emerge and that could extend the pandemic for everyone.

This is a good first step, but “vaccine nationalism” is still the order of the day

The COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility, or Covax, was designed as a financing instrument to ensure all countries — wealthy and less-wealthy alike — have equitable access to a vaccine. Higher-income countries contribute to the fund, pooling their resources to invest in several different vaccine candidates and fund free vaccine doses to 92 lower-income countries.

The perk for higher- and middle-income countries is that they increase their odds of landing a successful vaccine; these collective investments would also ideally lower the cost of doses. And, of course, priority groups like health care workers and the elderly would get early access to the vaccine in lower-income countries, easing the worst toll of the pandemic.

The idea was born out of the lessons learned from the 2009 swine flu pandemic, when rich countries bought up all the vaccines and immunized their populations, and only then donated to other countries, at which point the worst of the pandemic had passed.

A version of this is happening now, just on a more dramatic scale. In January, more than 80 million Covid-19 vaccine doses had been distributed around the world, while only 55 doses had gone to people in low-income countries. The pace has picked up since then, but vaccinations have only started in 87 countries, the bulk of them happening in higher- and middle-income countries.

Even though many rich countries joined Covax and pledged funds, most still made individual pre-purchase agreements with pharmaceutical companies to bet on promising vaccines and secure their own doses.

Rich countries — with 14 percent of the world’s population — have bought up more than 53 percent of the vaccines most likely to be successful. An analysis from ONE campaign, an international anti-poverty group, said the United States has an estimated 453 million excess Covid-19 vaccine doses, or what would be left over after every eligible person in the US has at least two shots.

But that doesn’t mean the US or any other country has millions of doses just hanging around; right now, demand still exceeds supply. Richer countries, because of these procurement deals, are very often at the front of the line, and their ability to make huge purchases also can drive up the cost of doses.

All of this has meant that lower-income countries are struggling to even begin vaccination campaigns, if they’ve started at all. Covax has set the goal of delivering 2 billion vaccines to poor countries by the end of 2021, with deliveries happening in the first quarter of this year, most of which will begin in March.

An estimate by the Economist Intelligence Unit suggests some lower-income countries won’t really be able to achieve widespread vaccination coverage until about 2023. In the United States, by comparison, it may be this summer.

Additional funds for Covax are important, as it will allow Covax to enter into more agreements with vaccine makers and deliver more doses. But as Vox’s Julia Belluz reported last month, the bilateral vaccine deals have already undermined Covax.

Rich countries “want to have it both ways,” Georgetown global health law professor Lawrence Gostin told Belluz. “They join Covax so they could proclaim to be good global citizens, and at the same time rob Covax of its lifeblood, which is vaccine doses.”

The United Nations has called on richer countries to donate vaccine supplies, but other than Norway, few have said whether they’d do it while still trying to inoculate populations at home. The United Kingdom has said it would donate surplus supply, but didn’t give a timeline. According to CNN, the Biden administration is looking to donate doses once “there is sufficient supply in the US.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said in a recent interview with the Financial Times that the EU and the US should set aside 5 percent of their current Covid-19 vaccine supplies and get them to poorer countries “very fast, so that people on the ground see it happening.”

But neither the EU — which recently took dramatic steps to try to secure more vaccine doses for its own struggling campaign — nor the US seems ready to make those moves, despite rivals like China and Russia making a show of “vaccine diplomacy” by sending their own doses to countries in Africa and Latin America.

Beyond delivering doses, rich countries could also do more to build up manufacturing and production capacity in lower-income countries and to pressure pharmaceutical companies to potentially waive intellectual property rights to better share knowledge and technology.

The United States and its allies putting leadership and money behind such efforts is a public health necessity. The globe can’t recover from the pandemic, or the economic crisis it created, unless the rest of the world joins richer countries in getting closer to herd immunity.

The United States and its partners making greater commitments to Covax and other global vaccine efforts is a real and important step toward these efforts. But it’s just the first.

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Facebook’s sudden move on Wednesday to cut Australians off from the news (and the rest of the world from Australian news) was as surprising as it was draconian. It blocked Australians from sharing any news links, Australian news publications from hosting their content on the platform, and the rest of us from sharing links to Australian news sites. It also may be a preview of how the platform will respond to the almost-certain future attempts to regulate its business — not just in Australia, but all over the world.

Now that we’ve had a few days to see how it’s played out, it seems like the general consensus from media experts is that no one is a winner here, but Facebook at least has a point. Many experts also just don’t like the proposed Australian law that inspired Facebook’s move. So while Facebook was right to balk at the law, the way it went about registering its objection was too abrupt, clumsy, and potentially harmful.

By also demonstrating the sizable role the platform plays in keeping users informed, Facebook is taking what could be a huge gamble. On one hand, it could prompt the Australian government to come up with a law that Facebook prefers so that it’ll reverse the news block — the outcome Facebook almost certainly prefers, other than there being no new law at all. But the situation could just as easily prove just how much market power Facebook has. This, in turn, might make the case for regulations to check Facebook’s power that much stronger.

The News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code — which is currently making its way through the Australian parliament and will likely pass before its session ends on February 25 — will require Facebook and Google to negotiate payment agreements with news organizations if they allow users to share news content on their respective platforms. If they don’t, an arbiter will figure out a payment agreement for them. Google and Facebook initially threatened to pull their services from the country if the law were to pass, but, as that passage looked more and more likely, their responses were very different. Google started making deals with publications. Facebook, “with a heavy heart,” cut the country off at the knees by banning news outlets altogether.

Australians suddenly found themselves unable to share news links on their timelines, and publications found their pages essentially wiped of content. There was a global impact as well: Australians couldn’t share international news links, as international news publications were blocked in the country just like the native ones.

The ban didn’t just affect the news, however. While Facebook told Recode that it intended to take “a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted,” the company appears to have been overzealous in its banning. Facebook blocked a lot of pages and links that weren’t news, including charities, bike trails, Facebook itself, and government agencies, including health sites, as the country prepares to begin its Covid-19 vaccine rollout. Either Facebook’s block was hasty and careless, or it was spiteful — or it was a combination of both. In any case, it wasn’t a good look.

“Facebook managed to turn attention away from a flawed piece of legislation and on to its own reckless, opaque power,” wrote Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. “Even for a company that specializes in public relations disasters, this was quite an achievement.”

Techdirt founder and media analyst Mike Masnick, on the other hand, thought Facebook was perfectly within its rights to do what it did. He even argued that the news ban is in the best interests of a “free and open internet,” as the Australian law will force Google and Facebook to pay a “link tax” that he feels is “inherently problematic.”

“A bunch of lazy newspaper execs who failed to adapt and to figure out better internet business models not only want the traffic, they also want to get paid for it,” Masnick wrote. “This is like saying that not only should NBC have to run an advertisement for Techdirt, but it should have to pay me for it. If that seems totally nonsensical, that’s because it is. The link tax makes no sense.”

Many of those who criticize the new Australian law point out that Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp dominates Australian media, likely stands to gain the most from it. After all, when enacted, the law would require Google and Facebook to pay Murdoch, who used his considerable influence on the Australian government to push for legislation like this for years. Case in point: News Corp has already made a multi-year, multi-million-dollar deal with Google (Facebook’s ban was announced and implemented just hours after the Google-News Corp deal was announced). Australia’s other media giants, Seven West Media and Nine Entertainment, also worked out big deals with Google. But it remains to be seen how the law — or the threat of it — would benefit smaller publishers that don’t have the same resources or power to negotiate deals with one of the biggest companies in the world.

Among those who have a problem with the law itself, many agree with the motivation behind it: Google and Facebook have benefited from the news industry. The platforms get traffic from users who are reading and sharing the news, but more importantly, they dominate the digital ad industry. Because most news outlets rely heavily on digital ads for revenue, they’re almost forced to agree to Facebook’s and Google’s terms and prices. So the tech giants get a nice cut from those ads, while news publications have effectively lost their business model.

That dominance — and the media’s decline — is why the law was the recommendation of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which has been looking into Google and Facebook for years. Commissioner Rod Sims has said that he believes the two have too much market power, and the law is needed for media companies to have a chance at a fair deal for a cut of the profits those platforms have made off of their content.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison strongly urged Facebook to reconsider and “friend us again,” saying that the block was “not a good move” and may well have ramifications for the company beyond Australia’s borders. Canada, France, and the European Union are believed to be considering similar laws, and the United States is pursuing antitrust actions against Facebook, Google, and other Big Tech companies, both on state and federal levels.

“There is a lot of world interest in what Australia is doing,” Morrison told the Associated Press. “That’s why I invite, as we did with Google, Facebook to constructively engage because they know that what Australia will do here is likely to be followed by many other Western jurisdictions.”

Morrison added: “It’s not okay to unfriend Australia because Australia is very friendly.”

But some of Australia’s 13 million Facebook users were not feeling very friendly in the aftermath of the block. A number of them told Recode that they saw Facebook’s move as an abuse of power, and feared they would now miss out on important news or emergencies, or that the news vacuum caused by the block would be filled with more misinformation. But one Recode reader had a different view: He hoped people would seek the news out on their own, rather than only reading whatever headlines were shared by friends.

“I would be much more comfortable if all Aussies got their news direct from the source,” he said. “I think this would be best for quality journalism and the strength of our democracy.”

It looks like some Australians are trying to do just that: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s app was the most downloaded app in Australia’s App Store in the days following the ban.

We’ll see how things progress. And if you live in Australia, you’ll have to go directly to your favorite news website for updates.

Rebecca Heilweil contributed reporting to this story.

Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.

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Myanmar saw its largest nationwide protests since the military coup earlier this month, with hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in the streets and businesses shutting down across the country.

Monday’s protests are the latest in a nearly month-long civil disobedience campaign that erupted in response to the February 1 takeover by Myanmar’s military that saw the country’s civilian leaders detained and ended the country’s decade-long experiment with quasi-democratic governance.

Since then, mass demonstrations have taken place across the country and citizens have engaged in acts of resistance, from lying across train tracks at a station in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, to work stoppages that now threaten Myanmar’s economy.

Monday’s demonstrations — which some are calling the five twos, or the “22222 uprising” — saw hundreds of thousands of protesters take to the streets of Myanmar’s cities; stores, banks, and fast food chains shut down in solidarity. Protesters chose the date because it echoes the August 8, 1988 (8/8/88) protests against military rule, which the military suppressed in a bloody crackdown.

Monday’s action went forward despite the military’s threats that mass resistance would lead to “a confrontation path where [people] will suffer the loss of life.”

In cities like Yangon, authorities set up barricades and parked armored vehicles to try to block the mass gatherings, but the protesters were undeterred. The demonstrations were largely peaceful, though there were sporadic reports of violence and arrests, particularly in the capital of Naypyidaw.

But at least three people have died in confrontations with police since the protests began, including two protesters who were killed in Mandalay when police fired live and rubber bullets into a crowd of striking workers. The first protester to die — a 20-year-old woman who was hit by a bullet at a Naypyidaw protest — has helped galvanize the movement, despite fears of an even more aggressive crackdown from the military rulers.

The military junta continues to impose internet and communication blackouts, an attempt to prevent people from organizing. Activists also worry that the blackouts may give authorities cover to try to arrest protesters and other political organizers. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), a Thailand-based human rights organization, 684 people have been arrested, charged, or sentenced since the February 1 coup, and 637 people are still in detention or face outstanding warrants.

The protesters are proof the Myanmar coup is not going as planned

The protesters are demanding the end of the military junta and the restoration of the democratically elected civilian government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, won overwhelmingly in elections in November.

But just as the new government was set to be sworn in, the military interceded and insisted the election results were invalid because of widespread voter fraud. Neither the country’s Union Election Commission nor international observers found evidence of widespread irregularities that would have changed the outcome of the vote. Still, the military has claimed that it will retain control until it can host new elections in a year.

The military retained a degree of control even after the country undertook democratic reforms about a decade ago, but the February coup dispensed with even a nominal democratic government. The ousted Suu Kyi was detained and eventually charged with allegedly importing illegal walkie-talkies. Another charge — of meeting with a large crowd in defiance of Covid-19 public health measures — was announced last week as the leader’s trial began in secret.

But Myanmar’s civilians have met the military’s actions with sustained resistance, pulling from a wide swath of Myanmarese, including students, teachers, doctors, bankers, and laborers. Members of Myanmar’s persecuted ethnic and religious minority groups — who still faced repression under Suu Kyi’s leadership — have also joined in the uprisings.

Protesters have also called out the military’s repression of the Rohingya and other minority groups with signs during the demonstrations, a remarkable show of solidarity.

Activists inside and outside Myanmar continue to worry that the military will lose patience and decisively try to crack down on the movement; at the same time, the pro-democracy resistance is strengthening despite the junta’s warnings and attempts to cut off communications.

The international community has also condemned the Myanmar coup. The Biden administration is sanctioning military members who orchestrated the coup, preventing them from accessing about $1 billion in the United States. It represents one of the first international tests for the White House, though its options are limited in how much pressure it can place on Myanmar. Still, the administration has made clear that it is closely watching as the uprisings unfold.

“The United States will continue to take firm action against those who perpetrate violence against the people of Burma as they demand the restoration of their democratically elected government,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Sunday night. “We stand with the people of Burma.”

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The Biden administration has begun allowing tens of thousands of asylum seekers who were forced to wait in Mexico for a chance to obtain protection in the United States under a Trump-era program to cross the border.

Some 28,000 asylum seekers — primarily Cubans, Hondurans, and Guatemalans — have active cases in former President Donald Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which became known as the “Remain in Mexico” program. It is one of many interlocking Trump-era policies that, together, have made obtaining asylum and other humanitarian protections in the US next to impossible.

On Friday, the Homeland Security Department announced that it had allowed 25 of those asylum seekers to cross the US-Mexico border at the San Ysidro port of entry, which connects the city of Tijuana with San Diego, California. International organizations, including the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), had registered the asylum seekers in advance and given them an appointment to show up at the border during which they verified their eligibility to enter the country on a US Customs and Border Protection mobile app and tested negative for Covid-19.

“Today, we took the first step to start safely, efficiently, and humanely processing eligible individuals at the border,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement on Friday. “It is important to underscore that this process will take time, that we are ensuring public health and safety, and that individuals should register virtually to determine if they are eligible for processing under this program.”

Another 25 asylum seekers arrived at the port of entry on Monday to be processed.

DHS has said that the asylum seekers, once admitted to the US, will be placed in “alternatives to detention” programs, under which they are released into the US but monitored, usually by a social worker, in an effort to encourage them to show up for their immigration court dates. Such programs are humane and relatively low cost compared to immigration detention.

Ports of entry in El Paso and Brownsville, Texas — which is directly across the border from one of the largest encampments of asylum seekers in Matamoros — were expected to start processing people subject to MPP this week, but CBP said Monday that certain “operational considerations” specific to those ports could delay that plan.

They will start by processing 25 migrants daily and eventually ramp up to 300 per day, but DHS has yet to publicly commit to a date when that will occur.

“Many of them are now going to be in dignity with their families here in the US as they await their cases to be heard,” said Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-CA), who was scheduled to meet with border officials at San Ysidro and nonprofits aiding migrants on both sides of the border on Monday.

Many asylum seekers are still anxiously awaiting an appointment to cross the border

Asylum seekers who have not yet been given an appointment to be processed at the border say that they remain “anxious and worried” about ensuring that they get a spot in line.

While waiting in Mexican border cities, they remain at risk of extortion, kidnapping, and rape at the hands of cartels and other criminal entities. Some have found housing in shelters, hotels, or rooms for rent. But for others, only colorful tents and tarps stand between them and the elements. They continue to rely on volunteers for basic necessities and medical care.

An online platform created by UNHCR that allows migrants subject to MPP to register for an appointment at the border has been a source of confusion. Migrants have to fill out a four-page virtual form, including information from their court documents, that UN officials will use to identify which migrants are most vulnerable and should be prioritized for processing. Among other factors, they will take into consideration a migrant’s age and health, as well as whether they are victims of crimes or trauma or single mothers with children.

The Monitor’s Valerie Gonzalez reported that the site went live at noon on Friday, but migrants quickly encountered difficulty registering due to “weak internet reception, an inundation of web traffic, and unaccommodated disabilities.” On Monday, migrants in Matamoros said they had been unable to access the site since 10 pm on Sunday night, and the UNHCR phone line was continuously busy.

MPP is one of many barriers to asylum erected under Trump

More than 71,000 migrants have been subject to MPP over the lifetime of the program as of the end of January, according to new data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The vast majority are not being represented by a lawyer, and less than 2 percent of those whose cases have been completed have received some form of protection in the US.

Before the pandemic, asylum seekers would often have to wait months for a hearing. But last March, the Trump administration suspended all their hearings indefinitely.

Faced with the prospect of waiting many months in Mexico to be called in for their court dates in the US, many migrants who were enrolled in MPP decided to return to their home countries and were ordered deported in their absence. Biden administration officials have signaled that they also intend to identify those people and admit them to the US for a chance to seek protection.

President Biden announced last month that the US would stop enrolling people in MPP, but he stopped short of ending it entirely. He had also promised on the campaign trail to “surge humanitarian resources” to the border, including asylum officers who could conduct an initial screening of migrants’ claims for protection, and ensure that US Citizenship and Immigration Services’ asylum division takes the lead on processing their cases in order to ease the burden on the immigration courts.

Biden’s decision to start processing asylum seekers subject to MPP signals that he is taking a more compassionate approach to the border. But some immigrant advocates have argued that he isn’t acting quickly enough to reverse Trump’s policies, including a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order that has allowed the US to turn away the vast majority of migrants arriving at the border on pandemic-related grounds. White House press secretary Jen Psaki has said the CDC order will remain in place for now.

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The Arctic is now open for business year-round after a large commercial ship sailed the Northern Sea Route from Jiangsu, China, to a Russian gas plant on the Arctic coast, for the first time ever during the month of February, when winter temperatures normally make the icy waterway impassable.

The tanker, owned by Russian maritime shipping company Sovcomflot, was able to make the trip through the Arctic sea ice because it is no longer frozen all winter due to human-induced global warming.

The ability to make this trip 365 days a year opens up vast new possibilities for the shipping industry, which carries 80 percent of the world’s cargo by volume and 70 percent of global trade by value. But it also raises concerns about how the scramble to capitalize on the new route could upend geopolitics.

To get a better understanding of what this new possibility in the Arctic means for the rest of the world, I spoke to Juliette Kayyem, Belfer senior lecturer in international security at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Kayyem served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, where she played a key role in handling major operations, including the administration’s response to the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Kayyem reacted on Twitter to the news of the Arctic tanker’s historic trip, writing that the moment was “so consequential you can’t get your head around it.” To find out more about why she thinks this is so monumental, I gave her a call. Our discussion, edited for length and clarity, is below.

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Jariel Arvin

What exactly has changed with this news?

Juliette Kayyem

In the past, trade had to work in a north-to-south way, just because the Arctic had never been navigational. Now ships can go from Europe to China on an east-west route. It’s going to put more competition on the north-south passages to retain their commercial activity.

Eighty percent of the world’s goods by volume are shipped by cargo, so this is no joke. For 100 years, cargo has essentially followed the same pathway through the Suez Canal. So, with days cut off transit time, as well as [not having to pay] all the taxes and fees that align with being a port city or canal like the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal — that’s all going to change.

Jariel Arvin

How does this change, for example, how a Chinese cargo ship would have traveled?

Juliette Kayyem

To do Europe alone, China would have gone from the Netherlands through the Suez Canal — south of India, up to China to Dalian, which is their main area. Now if you look at the route, it’s cut off by half. Now, you can go the northern route, east down. It’s mind-boggling.

Jariel Arvin

So, Russia and China are obviously going to be interested in moving goods up through that Northern Sea Route. Which other countries will be vying for a stake?

Juliette Kayyem

Japan, Vietnam, Russia, pretty much every country. Australia is going to want to go through there. I mean, why wouldn’t they, since it’s so much shorter? Now there’s going to be pressure and competition. Now you’ve just [opened up] a huge, huge competitive market.

Jariel Arvin

What about the US?

Juliette Kayyem

The United States, because we don’t really sign treaties anymore, is not signatory to the Law of the Sea. But we are a member of the Arctic Council, which is a sort of ad hoc [international] system to try to deal with everything in the Arctic, from who has access to what minerals to [how to manage] traffic.

Jariel Arvin

What do you think will be the impact of this new competition?

Juliette Kayyem

There are two pieces: the environmental piece and the geopolitical piece. For the environment, this is the equivalent of an ocean opening up. The waters are going to move in ways that they hadn’t moved before. The ice is melting in ways that mean that the water has to go somewhere, and that is going to cause sea level rise, impacting coastal cities throughout the world.

And the role of human activity in accelerating this change is undeniable. Global warming has impacted the Arctic considerably. As I’ve written for the Boston Globe, it was about a decade ago that things began changing up there in the sense that countries were positioning themselves to take over.

You’re going to start seeing cruise lines. It’s beautiful up there. So this is why even 10 years ago, I started to feel — anticipatory nauseousness is how I would describe it — anticipatory because we’ve known the opening of the Arctic to all sorts of traffic was going to happen, and nauseous because there’s no question that human-induced climate change was having a major impact.

Jariel Arvin

So what do you think the future holds for the Arctic in terms of geopolitics?

Juliette Kayyem

You’re going to have a lot of countries with a lot of interest, without a lot of governance, and with a lot of traffic. And that, to me as a security person, spells trouble.

Jariel Arvin

Why is that trouble?

Juliette Kayyem

Well, it sets off a number of questions which bring up national security concerns. One of them is, who gets what routes when? And who gets to drill where? So let’s say a bunch of geologists discover that there’s a massive oil patch much further out so that no country has ownership of the well. So who gets to drill?

Jariel Arvin

As of right now, who is in control of helping manage these international tensions in the Arctic?

Juliette Kayyem

These are the kind of issues that the Arctic Council is going to have to deal with. It is also going to have to enforce things like offshore drilling, mineral ownership, traffic, and who gets to go first, which are all tough issues. Accidents are a huge issue. What if there’s an accident? There are now going to be a lot of issues to address.

Jariel Arvin

Is there anything that can be done about this new reality?

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Juliette Kayyem

I think this new reality will mean greater US engagement in the Arctic, so this will be a big test of leadership for the Biden presidency because this is an issue in which we need a counter to Russia and China.

This also will be a big moment for John Kerry, who was pushing for greater Arctic governance against a Republican Senate when he was secretary of state and couldn’t get it through. It’s something Kerry’s been focused on a long time. And now, wearing the environmental hat as Biden’s climate envoy, the potential for him to get it done is much greater.

President Joe Biden has been presented with three broad options for how to prolong or end America’s involvement in the 20-year Afghanistan War — and all three have significant drawbacks for the administration and the Afghan people.

Here’s what Biden’s military and intelligence advisers offered up in recent days, as reported by the New York Times and the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, details of which I later confirmed.

The first option is to adhere to former President Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban, which would require Biden to withdraw all remaining 2,500 US troops in Afghanistan by May 1. The second is to negotiate an extension with the insurgent group, allowing American forces to remain in the country beyond early May. And third is to defy the Trump-Taliban pact altogether and keep fighting in Afghanistan with no stated end date.

Each plan has serious pitfalls, experts and US officials say.

If the US leaves in the next three months, it’s likely the Taliban will overrun the US-backed Afghan government and once again make life worse for millions of Afghans, especially women and children.

Staying in Afghanistan just a little bit longer would likely delay that takeover, but would also expend any diplomatic capital the US has left with the Taliban and keep US troops in harm’s way.

Finally, violating the terms of the agreement and remaining indefinitely will almost certainly lead the Taliban to restart its campaign, put on hold ahead of the May 1 deadline, to kill American service members in the country.

“These are all bad options,” said Asfandyar Mir, a Stanford University expert on the Afghanistan War.

Multiple US officials told me in recent days that the administration’s Afghanistan policy review is nearing its end, with one telling me they expect Biden to make a decision “very soon.”

“I don’t know which way the president will go,” said this official, who like others spoke with me on the condition of anonymity to talk freely about a sensitive national security deliberation. Another person familiar with the Afghanistan discussions told me it’s clear a full withdrawal by May 1 is “off the table.”

Public statements from the Biden team offer additional clues as to which way Biden will lean.

Biden promised during the presidential campaign to bring home US combat troops from Afghanistan, but gave himself until the end of his first term to do so (though, importantly, this statement came before the Trump-Taliban deal). He also said he would still potentially keep a small US military presence in the country to continue counterterrorism operations against ISIS and al-Qaeda. That meant it was always possible Biden wouldn’t abide by the terms of the Trump-era deal.

Recent statements by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also suggest a full withdrawal may not be on the immediate horizon. A Pentagon summary of his comments during a NATO ministerial last Thursday said Austin had “reassured Allies that the U.S. would not undertake a hasty or disorderly withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

In comments to reporters the following day, Austin added, “[W]e are committed to a responsible and sustainable end to this war, while preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorist groups … that threaten the interests of the United States and our allies, and ensuring a just and durable end to the long-running conflict.”

The signal many are getting from Austin and others is that Biden will be the fourth president to prolong America’s engagement in Afghanistan, most likely by pushing for an extension to the deadline.

Biden still hasn’t made a decision, though, so it’s worth taking a look at the three options he has in front of him — and why each is fraught with risk and danger.

Option 1: Withdraw all 2,500 US troops by May 1

Few experts or US officials I spoke to believe Biden will adhere to the timeline laid out in the Trump-Taliban peace deal — either because Biden wants to seek a more lasting diplomatic solution to the war in Afghanistan or because his team fears an intensified civil war on the heels of a US withdrawal would make the administration look bad.

In January, Secretary of State Tony Blinken told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that the US supports diplomatic negotiations between the government and the Taliban. America’s hope is to help “achieve a durable and just political settlement and permanent and comprehensive ceasefire that benefits all Afghans.”

But those talks are barely underway and have little to no chance of ending by the May 1 deadline. Both parties hold opposite positions on key questions — among them, how much power can the Taliban have in Afghanistan’s government? — that likely won’t be reconciled in a few months. What’s more, the Taliban hasn’t stopped killing Afghans or curbed it’s relationship with al-Qaeda.

To ensure those talks proceed instead of stalling out, many experts believe a small American troop presence must remain in the country.

Still, there is a vocal contingent advocating for the US to finally withdraw from Afghanistan after 20 years of war.

“I support leaving by May,” said Adam Weinstein, who served as a Marine in Afghanistan and is now a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, DC. “The Afghanistan talks may fall apart if we leave, but they also will fall apart if we stay.”

Weinstein acknowledges that the Taliban will surely intensify its civil war with the Afghan government once the US departs, further destabilizing an already bad situation. But that’s likely to happen whenever America withdraws its forces, whether in May or later. “Leaving by May frontloads these risks while not risking American lives,” he told me.

Which leads to the second reason observers doubt Biden will stick to the May withdrawal timeline: Images of a renewed, bloody war after America’s withdrawal plastered on the front pages of newspapers would embarrass the Biden administration. Pressure would mount on the president and his team to reenter the fray to quell the violence, just like many pushed Obama to send US forces back into Iraq to defeat ISIS.

It’s therefore possible that leaving prematurely might lead the US to reenter the conflict again — perhaps with an even larger troop presence.

Weinstein told me he knows that’s a risk and hopes Biden would resist such pressure. There will be problems, but all this comes down to the fact that America hasn’t proven its ability to win the war against the Taliban, even with tens of thousands more troops in the country.

Today, the insurgents control more territory in Afghanistan than they did in 2001 when the US invaded, making it even harder to push for a military victory.

“You could kick the can down the road, or you could accept the limits of US control of ground realities in Afghanistan,” he said.

In other words, leave now and don’t look back.

Option 2: Negotiate an extension with the Taliban, then leave

This is the option most people I spoke with favor and believe Biden will choose.

They argue that withdrawing by May is simply too soon, but that staying indefinitely is also politically and militarily infeasible. Delaying America’s full withdrawal for a few months or even years, then, allows the peace process to play out and for an unhurried US exit from Afghanistan.

“It’s unquestionable that an extension should be negotiated,” said Laurel Miller, who was the acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Obama administration.

Simply put, the Afghan government and the Taliban won’t strike a deal by April, but they might if given enough time. Penning an agreement would allow officials in Kabul to lead their country without the major threat of violence, while also giving the Taliban some governing power and global legitimacy.

“There’s reason to believe the Taliban would genuinely negotiate and accept some kind of political settlement [that] satisfies their interests,” said Miller, who’s now at the International Crisis Group.

With such a deal in place, the US and its NATO allies could extricate themselves from Afghanistan without fear their absence would lead to more bloodshed.

This is what Ghani, Afghanistan’s president, and others close to him have been pushing for. After NATO last week said its 5,000 troops wouldn’t leave the country imminently, Ghani said their presence would help provide a “window of opportunity to accelerate the peace process.”

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An extension was also the key recommendation in a congressionally mandated report earlier this month from the Afghanistan Study Group, an independent, bipartisan commission of experts co-chaired by retired Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, former Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, and US Institute of Peace President Nancy Lindborg.

But this Goldilocks option has flaws, too.

For example, it’s unclear whether the Taliban would even agree to an extension. Their messaging for America to date, Stanford’s Mir said, is “leave by May 1 or we fight you.” Biden therefore risks adding to the 2,400 dead Americans in Afghanistan if the US overstays its welcome.

And even if it does, staying beyond May 1 would mean Biden chose to prolong America’s engagement despite having a ready-made excuse for withdrawal. That would no doubt anger a lot of people, namely progressives and some on the right, who hoped the Democrat would finally bring the US war effort there to a close.

“What’s worse: Being accused of being too status quo, or being accused of taking risks and having ugly eventualities happen on your watch?” Miller asked, describing the question the Biden team is wrestling with.

There’s also a glaring weakness with this plan: There’s just no guarantee that the Afghan government and the Taliban will actually make a deal. After months or even years of talking, it’s possible neither side will make concessions to the other to hash out a comprehensive peace pact. If that’s the case, US troops will have remained in danger for little to no progress.

Still, experts believe there are ways the US can get the Taliban to agree to an extension and perhaps pave the path toward a negotiated deal. That could include lifting UN and other sanctions on the Taliban, working with Kabul to release some or all of the group’s 7,000 prisoners, and removing the group from the State Department’s terrorist list.

Each of those moves would be politically costly and may end up strengthening the Taliban without eventually striking an agreement.

But for some, taking bold steps to improve the chance of peace after so many years of fighting is worth the risk.

Option 3: Stay in Afghanistan indefinitely

Everyone I spoke with said this is by far the worst option. Continuing the war with no clear end date would keep US troops in harm’s way and further doom any prospects of a negotiated peace, since one of the key reasons the parties are talking is because America said it was leaving soon.

Plus, there’s little popular support in the US for continuing the mission in Afghanistan, as most polling shows Americans prefer a withdrawal sooner rather than later.

More than that, there’s just no clear path to victory in the war.

As mentioned above, the Taliban today controls more territory than it did when the US invaded in 2001. After 20 years of war, trillions of dollars spent, and tens of thousands of deaths, the US has only managed to achieve what Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, humbly described as “a modicum of success” in Afghanistan.

At this point, there’s little reason to expect that the US staying in Afghanistan indefinitely, spending billions more and risking more US lives, will magically improve that outcome. And doing so is just not desirable considering the coronavirus pandemic has killed 500,000 Americans, Iran nears the acquisition of a nuclear bomb, China grows in strength, domestic terrorism threatens the homeland, and more.

So why even discuss this option? It’s not that Biden would pick it, but that he might be forced into it if the limited extension (option 2) fails to actually produce a peace agreement.

Again, few think Biden will withdraw all US troops by May 1, which means he will be keeping US service members in the country with or without the Taliban’s approval. If he does it without their approval, that could lead the insurgents to attack and kill American personnel as they overtake major Afghan cities, perhaps even Kabul.

At that point, withdrawing from Afghanistan would be harder, experts say, because the administration won’t want to look like it’s running away from the fight. A return to a larger war, then, would likely ensue, leading to more death and woes for the millions of Afghans who’ve already suffered tremendously.

“If a negotiated extension fails, there’s not going to be a withdrawal,” said the Quincy Institute’s Weinstein.

If there were a perfect option, the US would have found it by now. It hasn’t, and that’s left Biden with three paths to take, each full of obstacles and risk. It’s a tough spot to be in, but sometimes the options a president has range from horrible to bad.

The hope is he picks the least bad one.

Hong Kong transformed in a year.

Starting in June 2019, the city convulsed with protests over a controversial extradition bill. That expanded into a pro-democracy movement that sought to push back against China’s efforts to further erode the city-state’s already tenuous autonomy, and the freedoms that went with it.

By June 2020, the power of those uprisings brought China’s full might down on Hong Kong, as Beijing implemented a draconian national security law that stifled dissent — or anything that looked even remotely like it in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party.

Do Not Split, an Oscar-nominated short documentary by filmmaker Anders Hammer, charts some of Hong Kong’s most tumultuous months of the pro-democracy uprising and its troubling, unclear end in the face of China’s crackdown. The story is told by the protesters and activists on the front lines, the young people who are trying to protect the freedoms of Hong Kong — freedoms that were supposed to be guaranteed until 2047 under the “one country, two systems” arrangement China agreed to when it took back control of Hong Kong from Britain in 1997 — for as long as they can.

Even it’s a battle they know they are losing.

“It was very difficult to understand how this would work. How could this small group of young people fight China?” journalist and filmmaker Anders Hammer, the director of Do Not Split, told me. “At the same time, it was really something unique to watch how they work together. You could really sense that solidarity among the protesters, and a great deal of sacrifice and this communion feeling in the street.”

Do Not Split follows demonstrators to the edges of the protests: where they regrouped to recover from tear gas, where they camped out in a field after a clash with police at the City University of Hong Kong in November 2019.

The film also reveals just how explosive these protests became; frame after frame shows the escalation, from protesters shielding themselves with umbrellas from assaults of tear gas to protesters flinging firebombs at lines of police. (The full documentary is now available from Field of Vision.)