The Weekly Wrap for Saturday, 13 October 2018

Follow us on Twitter @inkl. And if this was forwarded to you, subscribe here. Talking points Is politics downstream of culture? PHOTO: Washington Post Kanye West lauded Trump's "male energy" at the White House; meanwhile Taylor Swift backed Democrats Jair Bolsonaro progressed to Brazil's run-off vote, sparking protests China acknowledged and retroactively legalised its Uighur re-education camps The pugnacious US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley resigned Hurricane Michael flattened towns in the Florida Panhandle Cyclone Titli forced the evacuations of 300,000 in eastern India Also in India, the #MeToo movement swept into Bollywood Romania's anti-same sex marriage referendum failed on low-turnout  Sara Netanyahu stood trial in Jerusalem for misusing public funds Malaysia's cabinet agreed to abolish the death penalty Deep Dive Say goodbye to these. PHOTO: Getty The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released a damning new report. Commissioned by the United Nations, the 132 authors scoured 6,000 peer-reviewed articles to discern what our near future looks like. Why does 1.5ºC matter? During the 2015 Paris Agreement all 195 signatories agreed to corral global warming at 2ºC above pre-industrial levels, with an eye to keep it below 1.5ºC. This report reveals just how optimistic they were. Not only will the target be breached, the best-case scenario now consists of longer droughts, more violent storm systems and sea-level rises that could displace tens of millions. And it will take an enormous amount of change to limit the impact to just that. A 0.5ºC variation (between 1.5ºC and 2ºC) looks vanishingly small on paper, but in reality it is a vast gulf. A world that is 2ºC warmer than pre-industrial levels will be nigh unrecognisable. Many species would go extinct. And first amongst these would be pollinating insects (on which our global food chain depends). Increasingly acidic oceans would spill onto land. And the Arctic would regularly be ice-free in summer.  Places like Florida would no longer worry about losing coastal homes to increasingly violent hurricanes: they would already have relocated inland as the sea swallowed large portions of the Panhandle (bar, perhaps, the sea-walled metropolises of Miami and Tampa). Can we still avoid this future? Yes, but only through revolutionary change the like of which we have never before accomplished: human-caused emissions must drop to zero by 2050. That means the 42b tonnes of carbon-dioxide pumped into the atmosphere annually need to disappear entirely. It means that fossil-fuelled power-generation must be phased out within a few decades at the latest, not to mention our high-emitting cars, planes and ships. Renewable energy must become the dominant force in power generation quickly. Vast swathes of agricultural land must be reclaimed and replanted with forests. And carbon taxes - a bridge too far for so many - must be mandatory. Coincidentally, on Monday William Nordhaus won (half of) the Nobel Prize in Economics for his research on the benefits of taxing carbon.  Even with all this, merely stopping emissions is not enough. We must instead become proficient at removing carbon already in the atmosphere. Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technology is a fascinating area of science, but one that is not growing nearly quick enough. Carbon-capture facilities must be built to sequester power-generation emissions underground. Likewise, the (so-far) largely untested direct-air capture techniques must also be perfected. And soon. The IPCC report suggests that we have just 12 short years to implement the radical change required to avoid an overshoot. But will we avoid it? The mirage of a scientific solution to this problem is fast dissipating; blind hope for the invention of some new technological deus ex machina is no better than praying for a miracle. So we will have to confront this crisis through collective action. And yet, the report states that the action required, "has no documented historic precedents". The truly herculean task of stopping the world from overheating is less about engineering than about politics and economics. We need universal solidarity to engender mobilisation on a global level. And yet, most nations are still gripped by inertia, and some are even going backwards. Australia, for example, has brushed aside the IPCC recommendation to phase out coal-power by the middle of the century. Rather, the government has said it will continue to burn the stuff and exploit the nation's vast coal-seams for export. The country is increasingly unlikely to meet its Paris target. It has no meaningful climate policy in place. And emissions continue to increase. The political paralysis gripping many major economies is so bad that the business sector may have to self-regulate on emissions. Such a move would be worthy of praise, though it must be noted that just 100 companies are responsible for 70% of greenhouse gas emissions - those will be the hardest to convince. The business community can also help by investing heavily in renewables and CDR technologies. Whether that leadership can occur, or can bear fruit in time, is anyone's guess. EDITOR'S NOTE: The report's prescriptions - and the scientific analysis that they rest upon - are incontrovertible. Yet some contrarian voices have attempted to discredit the IPCC. Do not be swayed: at this late, hot moment in our existence, there should be no room for baseless, pointless debate. Worldlywise Missing, feared dead. PHOTO: Al Jazeera Rules? What rules... On October 2 the veteran Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared into the bowels of his home nation's consulate in Istanbul. The Washington Post columnist, a frequent critic of the Saudi royal family's cruelty and profligacy, needed documentation. The interceding days have been rife with accusations and mystery as to his whereabouts. No more. The Turkish intelligence service has disclosed that it is in possession of audio and video evidence that corroborates their early assumption: Khashoggi was interrogated, tortured, executed and dismembered inside the consulate. But the Turkish spies in question are reluctant to hand over the tapes for obvious reasons: it would reveal the extent to which they've compromised and bugged foreign embassies on their soil. If one thing stands out from this killing it's the ineptitude of Riyadh's accused assassins. A full 15 of them - easily-identifiable members of the Royal Guard - flew into Turkey, did the deed and escaped on easily-tracked private jets. Either they haven't learnt their spycraft or they simply don't care. There is an argument to be made for the second option: Donald Trump made it clear that the killing won't impact lucrative US-Saudi arms deals. Speaking of assassinations, the second Russian 'tourist' in Salisbury was revealed to be a military doctor attached to the GRU.  The push to educate girls world wide. PHOTO: Reuters International Day of the Girl Child The population of girls under the age of 18 will soar to approximately one billion by 2025. They will face the same threats that disproportionately afflict young girls today: child marriage, harassment, sexual violence, genital mutilation and a lack of access to society's resources. While hard to quantify, one of the great injustices girls face is how they are taught to view themselves. One study revealed that by age 6 girls begin to believe they aren't as smart as boys. It's hard to pinpoint when this cognitive dissonance kicks in. The theme for this year’s Intl. Day of the Girl Child, “With Her: A Skilled GirlForce” aims to upend that, and equip today’s girls with the skills to enter the workforce in the same stride as their male counterparts. At a coding camp in Addis Ababa in September, 80 girls from over 34 African countries coded for change. Eno Ekanem, 15, worked on a drone that dispenses medicine to rural areas. Across the Mediterranean, Taffan Ako – a former refugee of the war in Iraqi Kurdistan – has founded EmpowHERment, which helps girls and women who have been sex slaves or victims of human trafficking. They’re just some of the girls across the globe mobilising to challenge the definition of girlhood for good. The Best Of Times... Theorising from beyond the grave. PHOTO: Murdo Macleod / Guardian A lifetime of questions Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair might sound like a good prog-rock band, but it's actually the title of Stephen Hawking's final academic paper. The piece was published posthumously this week and grapples with the information paradox: what happens when objects fall into black holes. It was a question that teased Hawking for decades and consumed him right up until his dying days. In a last gift to the adoring world he left behind Hawking outlined some possible answers to how black holes are changed by entropy. We're sure some scientists somewhere understand it.   The thumb leading the blind Navigating the footpath and crossing roads is something that the able-sighted take for granted. When the blind step out into the street they are entering a precarious world, and nowhere is this more true than the streets of Indonesia. The country's estimated 3.6m blind face serious risk on potholed roads, dangerous intersections and unsealed paths. Now a team of local developers have built an app to help guide the blind through the honking, uneven fray. Tunemap is the beginning of a repository that will catalogue the worst - and best - routes for Indonesia's blind to take through their hometowns. Excellent. The Worst Of Times... A war that can't be won. PHOTO: EPA No end in sight The war in Afghanistan drags on - interminable - losing focus with every passing year. In the first nine months of this year the civilian death toll from suicide bombings skyrocketed nearly 50%. These frequent attacks have claimed 2,343 lives in 2018. Deaths from airstrikes are up 39%. Western troops and the Afghan National Army control the capital and major cities; nearly everything else has been ceded to the Taliban. This mirrors the Soviet experience in the 1980s and Britain's two 19th century incursions. Last weekend marked its 17th anniversary - someone born on the day of the invasion can now enlist in the US military. The baby snatchers It's no great secret that during his long reign the Spanish fascist Francisco Franco drew significant and vigorous support from Roman Catholics. He repaid the favour in many ways; perhaps the most cynical was the practice of giving Roman Catholic families other peoples' newborns. These babies - by some estimations over 300,000 - were taken from anyone deemed a critic or leftist of the regime. This week a court case revealed this practice - only to be thrown out on a technicality. The suit alleged that gynaecologist Eduardo Vela took a newborn Inés Madrigal from her mother and gave her away. While the case ran afoul of the statute of limitations it has cast light on the abhorrent, decades-long policy. Weekend Reading Featured long-reads from inkl publishers: Financial Times on why no-one trusts journalists Businessweek counts Ukraine's guns and Bitcoins The Economist wipes a finger over London's dirty money If you don't have an inkl membership as yet you should get one to unlock these stories and 150,000 more each month. Get 30 days of serious news for just 99 cents.   Tom Wharton and Holly Bodeker-Smith   P.S. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter (and to subscribe, if this was forwarded to you).