Global Headlines Roundup | Trump Administration's "Zero Tolerance" Immigration Policy Stirs New Outcry; The Economist Revisits the Solar Industry's Rise and Fall
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column launched in 2018 and still in trial run. It remains committed to helping you understand more.
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column launched in 2018 and still in trial run. It remains committed to helping you understand more.
What the agenda-setters are talking about
The Economist: Can the solar industry survive without subsidies?
Everywhere in the world, solar power leans heavily on subsidies. Generous feed-in tariff (FIT) policies — also called renewable energy subsidy schemes — plus financial incentives for installing solar equipment made Germany the world's largest solar market in 2010. Germany then turned to China for cheap monocrystalline silicon panels: helped by land subsidies and loans, Chinese manufacturers had been able to undercut their European and American rivals from the industry's earliest days.
The eurozone crisis then knocked European solar subsidies down. Through those years the Chinese government kept raising its support for renewable energy, offering favorable FIT terms to remote western regions to encourage solar farms. By 2013 China had passed Germany to become the world's largest market for solar panels. In 2017, newly installed solar PV capacity worldwide reached 102 GW, of which China took 53 GW — nearly five times the capacity of the second-largest market, the United States. Six of the world's 10 largest panel makers are Chinese.
This pattern of booms and busts has a name: the "Solarcoaster," a pun on "rollercoaster." Subsidies can grow a market fast, and shrink it just as fast.
From June 1, the Chinese government began tightening the entry requirements for FIT. On June 18, EnergyTrend said China's solar demand this year is likely to reach only 31.6 GW, down 40% from 2017, and that the global market would feel the effect too, falling to 92-95 GW.
Some analysts expect the price of Chinese-made panels to fall by at least a third as demand drops. This could be the first time since 2000 that the global solar industry has stalled. Analysts estimate that solar subsidies already ran a $15 billion deficit last year — hence the government's decision to cut FIT quotas.
China has recently been testing a new scheme called Top Runner as a replacement for FIT. Under it, the developer that can build and run a project at the lowest cost wins the bid, and its bid price becomes the price it charges for the power it generates under a renewable energy power purchase agreement (PPA). That arrangement has already produced a crop of cheap projects in the United States, Mexico, and India. Paolo Frankl of the International Energy Agency told The Economist that in China, some PPA projects are priced below coal-fired power.
Few dispute that PPAs beat FIT, but critics still call them a market-distorting subsidy in disguise. Building power plants anywhere, though, takes public support. Some argue that fossil-fuel plants that pay no tax on the carbon dioxide they produce are getting a hidden subsidy of their own.
China's recent policy shift could make the global solar industry healthier over the long run and speed up consolidation at home. Bloomberg says that before 2019, falling panel prices will push more markets to adopt this energy source more widely. With the Trump administration's 30% tariff in place, lower prices could also help Chinese manufacturers win back ground in the US market.
Worth noting, though: solar still supplies only 2% of the world's electricity, and technological progress is slowing. China's Top Runner scheme proposes rewarding companies that test the newest photovoltaic technology — but the scheme is open only to Chinese companies.
Newsmakers of the last 24 hours
Under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy, nearly 2,000 children were forcibly separated from their parents or guardians at the southern US border in six weeks. The news drew wide coverage, and US First Lady Melania Trump and three former first ladies spoke out in criticism one after another.
In May, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a "zero tolerance" policy toward people crossing illegally into the United States from Mexico: adults would be jailed, and the children who crossed with them placed elsewhere.
According to information the Associated Press obtained from the Department of Homeland Security, 1,995 children were separated from immigrant parents on the US-Mexico border between April 19 and May 31 — about 48 children a day.
To house the surge of non-immigrant children, US authorities put up many temporary holding centers. Photos released by US Customs and Border Protection showed a facility that migrants call "La Perrera" (Spanish for "the dog kennel"). The AP reported that each cage, roughly 100 square meters, held 20 children, with empty water bottles, chip bags, and foil sheets used as blankets scattered around.
Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon led a group of Democratic lawmakers on the 18th through a shelter converted from a Walmart store that now holds about 1,500 migrant children. Merkley said: "To hurt children to gain a legal advantage — that's a malicious thing to do."
Former First Lady Laura Bush published an op-ed in The Washington Post on Sunday, June 17 calling the "zero tolerance" policy both "cruel" and "immoral," and saying it broke her heart.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama retweeted Mrs. Bush on Monday, June 18: "Sometimes truth transcends party."
Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and a former first lady, also said on Monday that what was happening on the southern border was a "moral and humanitarian crisis."
Current First Lady Melania Trump issued a statement through a spokeswoman on Sunday: "Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform. She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart."
Trump responded in a CNN interview on the 15th that "this is the Democrats' fault." On Monday, the Financial Times and other outlets ran pieces arguing that Trump should not be shifting the blame.
That same day, Trump said separating children from parents who try to enter illegally was "a sad thing," but that "a country without borders is not a country at all. We want our country to have security, and that begins at the border."
What else happened in the world
Trump calls for tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese goods. In a statement issued Monday night, Trump said he had instructed US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to draw up a list of $200 billion worth of Chinese goods to be hit with an extra 10% tariff. The move answers China's tariffs on $50 billion of American products. Last Friday Trump announced a 25% tariff on $50 billion of Chinese goods; China then published its own list of $50 billion of American goods facing a 25% tariff.
Trump orders the Pentagon to create a sixth branch of the armed forces, a "Space Force". Speaking on the 18th at a White House meeting with members of the National Space Council, Trump said it was not enough for the United States merely to have a "presence" in space — it needed "dominance." The idea of a Space Force also appeared in the National Defense Strategy report published in March. So far neither the Pentagon nor the Air Force has responded to Trump's decision.
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake hits Osaka, Japan, killing 4 and injuring more than 300. The quake struck at 7:58 a.m. local time on the 18th. More than 1,300 people are still sheltering in about 500 public buildings. In Takatsuki, near the epicenter, a road collapsed and water gushed out, flooding several stretches of pavement. About 900 public primary and middle schools in Osaka closed temporarily, as did more than 1,400 schools in the affected parts of Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures. A number of national-treasure relics and sites were damaged, among them a Sengoku-era tea room designated a national treasure and the standing statues of the Four Heavenly Kings at Todai-ji in Nara.
Shooting in Malmö, Sweden, wounds 5. The shooting happened after 8 p.m. local time on Monday, June 18. Witnesses said they heard 15 to 20 shots near the city center. Police have sealed off the area and say the incident is not linked to terrorism.
South Korea may abolish the death penalty by the end of this year. Yonhap reports that Shim Sang-don, head of the policy and education bureau at the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, said on Monday the 18th that the commission is pushing for President Moon Jae-in to formally announce abolition on December 10, the 70th anniversary of the UN's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. South Korea has carried out no executions in the 20 years since December 1997, but the government has never formally declared the death penalty abolished. The commission plans to hold a forum on abolition in September, run a survey on abolition and alternative punishments in October, and issue a statement on October 10, the World Day Against the Death Penalty.
World Cup Group F, first round: Sweden beat South Korea 1-0. Group G, first round: Belgium beat Panama 3-0 and England beat Tunisia 2-1.
Someone said
"Comment is free, but facts are sacred."
C. P. Scott, editor of The Guardian, wrote this in 1921 in an essay marking the paper's centenary.
Two newly published reports on the news business turn up some interesting facts on the subject.
The first, "Americans and the news media: what they do – and don't – understand about each other", was run jointly by the American Press Institute and the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It surveyed 2,019 American citizens and 1,127 journalists about what they expect from the news. Both groups stressed accuracy and fairness, and both saw transparency and trust as linked. But journalists value their role as a watchdog on power far more than the public does (93% against 54%).
The second, published by the Reuters Institute, is the "2018 Digital News Report". It looked at how 74,000 news consumers in 37 countries see the industry and found that as people rely less on social media such as Facebook for news, their willingness to pay for professional journalism is rising — though most still prefer to reach information by side doors rather than going straight to traditional news publishers.
Three further findings:
- Trust in news held steady at 44%, and only 51% of people trust the outlet they use most. Other channels do worse: 34% of respondents said they trust the news they find through search, and 23% said they trust news on social media.
- Most respondents think publishers (75%) and platforms (71%) bear the greatest responsibility for fixing fake news, since the false reports they complain about often come from those mainstream outlets too.
- Readers with strong news literacy are more likely to get information from newspapers than from television, and they use social media for news differently from the general public. They are also warier of government intervention.
Things you might also be interested in
The World Health Organization classifies gaming addiction as a mental illness for the first time.
The 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases, released by the WHO on Monday, June 18, lists gaming disorder as a mental health problem worth attention.
Under the classification, gaming disorder has three marks: weakened control over gaming (its frequency, intensity, duration and so on); giving gaming priority over other interests and daily activities; and continuing or stepping up gaming despite the harm it causes.
A diagnosis requires this pattern of behavior to last at least 12 weeks.
New survey finds 4 in 10 people deleted a social media account in the past year over privacy worries.
The US public relations firm Edelman released the findings at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It surveyed more than 9,000 people in Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, the UAE, the UK, the United States and elsewhere.
Forty percent of respondents had deleted at least one social media account in the past year over privacy concerns, and 62% wanted tighter regulation of social platforms. Seventy percent wanted companies and advertisers to press social media sites to cut down on false information; 48% thought advertisers should bear the main responsibility if their ads ran next to hate speech or violent content.
Oprah Winfrey becomes the first Black woman entrepreneur on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Oprah Winfrey's total wealth reached $4 billion on Monday, putting her on Bloomberg's list of the world's 500 richest people at No. 494, just behind Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and Perot Group founder Ross Perot.
Most of Winfrey's fortune comes from owning the talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, which has a 25-year history. Weight Watchers International, Inc., the weight-management company she invested in in 2015, has also done well on the market: its share price has doubled this year, adding $427 million to her wealth.
Including Winfrey, 65 women are currently on Bloomberg's list of the world's 500 richest people, six of them entrepreneurs.
On this day
June 19, 1623: French mathematician, physicist and philosopher Blaise Pascal was born.
June 19, 1925: The Canton-Hong Kong Strike began.
June 19, 1945: Aung San Suu Kyi was born.
June 19, 1956: IBM founder and CEO Thomas Watson died.
June 19, 1961: Kuwait became independent.
June 19, 1975: The first World Conference on Women opened in Mexico City.
Cover image from Techcrunch
Translated from the original QDaily article. Original publication date retained.