The summertime is a perfect time for things to trend across social media. One of the more surprising topics to get serious attention was the possibility of a room temperature superconductor that could pave the way for quantum computing and ultrafast high-speed trains.

So was LK-99, as it’s known, too good to be true? To understand, here’s a truncated version of the saga that had internet scientists atwitter over the last month.

It all started in late July when a team of researchers led by Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim at the Quantum Energy Research Centre in Seoul, South Korea released a preprint paper about the discovery of a superconductor made of copper, lead, phosphorus and oxygen that works at room temperature and ambient pressure. The preprint was accompanied by a video of the compound in action. The name derives from Lee and Kim and the fact that the material was identified as a possible superconductor back in 1999.

What are superconductors?

“Superconductors have two properties,” Dr. Michael R. Norman, a distinguished fellow at Argonne National Laboratory, told Straight Arrow News. “They have zero resistance. So they carry current without any loss. The other thing is they have a tendency to expel magnetic fields. And so the combination of this means that not only can you make wires without current loss, you can use coils of superconductors that make the highest field magnets that we know.”

MRI machines in hospitals are one of the biggest applications for superconductors in their current form. For an MRI machine to function, magnetic coils are cooled to negative 270 degrees celsius using helium. The need to reach these low temperatures makes operating the devices very expensive.

What happened with LK-99?

While there was a lot of attention given to the prospect of a room temperature superconductor, the papers hadn’t been peer-reviewed and faced accusations of being published without the approval of two of its authors.

“I would guess that the reason the other two authors didn’t want it posted was they didn’t think it was quite there yet,” Norman added. “The paper needed to be polished, the data needed to be looked over some more, et cetera.”

Weeks after the initial reports, no other researcher has been able to replicate the findings. In fact, researchers found it was not a conductor at all, but an insulator.

A former Harvard researcher was able to replicate the phenomenon of the compound floating above a magnet, but he did so using a pellet of compressed graphite with iron shavings. It was not quite the room temperature superconductor that was promised.

Benefits of a room temperature superconductor

A room temperature superconductor would open up a wealth of possibilities including quantum computers.

“So you know you have your laptop. It works in terms of bits, on/off is zero/one,” Norman said. “So what happens in a quantum computer is the bit is a superposition of zero and one.”

Essentially they offer more computing power than even the most powerful supercomputers. But quantum computers can only be used for very specific tasks.

Room temperature superconductors would also allow for high speed maglev trains, which use magnets to levitate a train on a thin cushion of air above the tracks. These types of trains already exist. A train in China crossed 281 mph at a recent test, making it the fastest train in the world.

At the end of the day, Dr. Norman said these types of claims happen all the time and it’s part of what scientists do.

“This is one of the roles of scientists,” he said. “People make outstanding claims and then they’re worth checking out.”

He also cautioned people in believing that scientific breakthroughs like LK-99, if proven true, would make a tangible impact on everyday life immediately.

“If you look at some of the technology that’s going into the fusion reactor in France, for instance, and into the upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider, those materials were discovered in the 50s,” he says. “And just now in the last decade people are trying to make technological applications out of them, and those things are just alloys of niobium and tin. This material is far more complicated than that.”

But all of the attention in the last month was a welcome surprise for material physicists who don’t get the attention some of their peers in other fields enjoy.

“What we do in materials physics is not hyped like when we see these wonderful photos coming out of the James Webb Telescope,” Dr. Norman says. “But in fact, what we do in materials physics is allow for the laptop and the technology that we’re doing this conversation on. And so I think giving attention to the field is good. What we do with materials physics is we try to discover materials that will impact people’s lives. So I think this kind of attention can have a positive aspect to it.”

At one point, China was so worried about its rapidly growing population that the Chinese Communist Party implemented notorious family-planning policies. But now its population has peaked, its workforce is aging and the party can’t convince its people to have more kids.

In 2023, India will take the long-held title of the world’s largest population from China. In August, state media reported that China’s fertility rate hit a new record low of 1.09 births per woman in 2022. The United Nations population replacement level is 2.1.

Together, these developments represent major headwinds to China’s economy.

“I think the government underestimated what the one-child policy would do,” China sociologist Doug Guthrie said.

Flipping the family-planning switch

After the Chinese Communist Party took control in 1949, leader Mao Zedong encouraged the Chinese to have many children, believing population growth would strengthen the country.

In a two-decade span, China’s population surged from around 550 million to over 800 million. By the 1960s, women on average were having more than six kids each.

“China had a massive population and needed to really think about economic growth in the context of that demographic bubble,” said Guthrie, who is director of China Initiatives at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management.

The CCP determined it was time for a course correct. In the 70s, the party launched a nationwide family planning program, promoting delaying marriage and childbearing, child spacing and limiting fertility.

The fertility rate plunged but by 1980, the CCP took it even further with the one-child policy. China’s fertility rate eventually dropped below the replacement level and after decades of low fertility, the CCP again tried to course correct. In 2016, the one-child policy became the two-child policy, and in 2021, they upped it to three. But still, the fertility rate dropped.

“They thought, ‘If we just take away the regulations, people will have more children and we’ll have a new demographic level growing up to help run the economy,'” Guthrie said. “And I think the cultural change was what the party underestimated because people didn’t immediately start having more children and bigger families. They thought, actually, a single child for two parents is the right number.”

China recorded its first population drop in modern history in 2022. China’s total population could be cut nearly in half by 2100, according to the UN’s medium projection.

I don’t think it’s catastrophic. This is still the second-most populous nation in the world. There’s 1.4 billion people. There’s a lot of people that still live in abject poverty who need to work in the manufacturing sector. And there’s a very robust, private economy.

Doug Guthrie, China scholar and sociologist

The age-old problem

It’s the rapidly aging population that’s of bigger concern for China’s economy. By 2079, there could be more people outside the working-age population than in it, according to the UN’s medium estimate. That would mean a lot of dependents for a shrinking workforce to take care of.

But while that is decades down the road and China’s working population is currently at its peak, there are already economic implications at play for the working age.

“Most of the consumption in a modern system happens when you’re in your 20s and 30s, when you’re buying cars and raising kids and buying homes,” geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan said in a recent SAN commentary. “Because of the one-child policy, the Chinese don’t have much of a generation in that block at all. And since the one-child policy is now over 40 years old, we’ve now had a full generation of people to not have kids and that is manifesting in the data as well.”

Not only are they not having kids, there is a movement of young adults that are not buying into the grind. In China, it’s called the “lying flat” youth, where a generation is rejecting working long hours for little pay.

“Maybe this is a vestige of the sort of cultural residuals of the one-child policies,” Guthrie said. “If you have two parents taking care of you and then you go off to college, maybe you’re not so ambitious, maybe you do just want to lay at home and look on social media. So there’s a big demographic here that I think the government worries about. It’s not just about people not finding jobs, it’s people are not wanting jobs to be the engine of the performance as much as possible.”

For June, China’s urban youth unemployment rate hit a new record of 21.3%. July’s numbers are not publicly known. China said it would suspend reporting the data, mere months after it stopped publishing consumer confidence.  

The latest swell of dedollarization really gained steam after the U.S. levied harsh financial sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine. Russia, its allies and economic partners have gone as far as discussing creating a brand new currency to combat dollar dominance.

As the current world reserve currency, the U.S. dollar is at the center of the vast majority of global transactions.

“It gives us the ability to inject ourselves into any economic exchange, and I don’t mean to minimize how useful that can be. That’s one of the reasons why the sanctions on Iran have been so effective and even relatively light sanctions, in comparison, on Russia have been effective.”

Peter Zeihan, geopolitical strategist

But those sanctions have in turn spurred renewed desires by some nations to move away from the U.S. dollar.

Countries are souring on the US dollar. Is dedollarization really a risk? Watch the full interview with geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan here.

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Peter Zeihan: Financial sanctions actually weaponized the U.S. dollar, really, for the first time against a significant state. I mean, when you do it against Iran or North Korea, it’s really pretty small, it doesn’t matter. Russia matters.

And the Europeans made the decision as part of that process to basically make the euro, from a legal point of view, a subsidiary of the U.S. dollar system. So you now have the three biggest currency blocs in the world, the dollar, the euro and the yen, that have basically moved into lockstep.

So if you want to have a currency system, you have to have one that is now outside three of the four largest economies in the world, and the remaining one, China, is not convertible. So you are saying that you would have to build an independent currency that trades alongside of these that is fully convertible to all of them that is not under their control.

So then the question becomes, whose control is it under? Because if it’s an independent authority, wow, the best way to get what you want for your country is to bribe the hell out of that authority. And that’s one of the reasons why this just can’t work. You can really only have one.

Brent Jabbour: Peter, is this why the idea of the BRICS currency can’t work? Because there’s no possible way that it can’t be bought and paid for by somebody?

Peter Zeihan: Either it’s independent, in which case it’s the most corrupt system you can imagine, or one of the countries manages it, in which case that country manages it for his or her own economy, in which case everyone else is left on the outside.

Even with the United States weaponizing the dollar, it is still the least bad option for everyone, even the Russians. One of the things that the Russians discovered when they dumped a bunch of money into the yuan is they went back a few months later and tried to pull it out and the Chinese were like, “No, no, that’s okay. We don’t want it back. You can keep it.”

And they had to go back to basically pulling dollars off of international exchanges on the black market and then flying gold around because it was really the only other option they had.

Simone Del Rosario: I read that Russia is holding about a third of the tracked world reserve currency in yuan, is that correct to your understanding?

Peter Zeihan: That sounds about right, yes.

Simone Del Rosario: That’s a significant stake there when you’re talking about global proportions, for Russia to be holding a third.

Peter Zeihan: And as the Chinese have shown them, it’s not something they can do anything with.

Catch the full interview with Peter Zeihan here.

The U.S. dollar has been the world’s dominant reserve currency for as long as most people alive can remember. Dedollarization talk in the past has never amounted to much, but with renewed calls to dedollarize, is king dollar about to lose its reign?

I should say never is a very long time. I shouldn’t say never. We’re nowhere near it today, how about that?

Peter Zeihan, geopolitical strategist

Most strategists will agree the dollar is in a safe space at the top for now. But history shows nothing lasts forever and a look back at previous world reserve currencies proves it.

Countries are souring on the US dollar. Is dedollarization really a risk? Watch the full interview with geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan here.

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Simone Del Rosario: If we look at the timelines of reserve currencies in history, I would say they average about a century in power. The U.S. is kind of getting up to that point now, so why is it so out there for you to think that another currency is going to rise and take its place?

Peter Zeihan: Well, I should say never is a very long time. I shouldn’t say never. We’re nowhere near it today, how about that?

So if you look at the big currencies of the past, first you had Spain, which was basically a metals-based currency based off the Potosi silver mines in what is today Bolivia. And for several decades, the Potosi mine produced more silver than the rest of the world combined.

So we got the worst kind of inflation you can possibly imagine out of that. Silver was available in limited quantity and so if you wanted to have trade, you had to get silver, which pushed up the value of the currency.

But the Spanish were literally mining the currency. And whenever the Spanish had an interest, they would go into a local market and buy up whatever they needed: equipment, steel, ships, men, whatever, to launch wars.

So you got disruption, you got supply-side inflation, you got demand-side inflation. At the same time, you had global disconnects and disruptions. So yes, it was our first true global currency, but it was never going to last because of the way the Spanish managed it.

The Brits came up with the pound and gold and that was a technological currency because they had their technological revolution at a very similar time frame. And as they became the global navy, combined with the industrial revolution, they were able to do it on military and economic terms and that was much better for everyone, unless of course you are one of the hundreds of countries that happened to be under the colonial boot every once in a while because the Brits really did control everything for a while.

That was ultimately displaced when the technologies of industrialization went other places. By the time we get to the end of World War II, France is industrialized, the Netherlands is, Germany is, Japan is, the United States is. And because of the destruction of the war, the United States emerged from the war with an economy roughly the same size as everybody else put together, meaning we didn’t even have an option as to what the currency would be then.

We are now entering a period where globalization is breaking down and the United States was already, of the major countries, the one least involved in trade. So again, at this moment, the United States is the only one on the board.

If you fast forward 50 years, if we get a different global economic system that is based on something else, if we find out what sort of economic model we’re going to get in an environment where demographic decay has been going on for decades and capitalism and socialism and fascism no longer work, then we’ll have a conversation about what the currency is going to be.

But right now, the United States has the healthiest demography of all of the G20 countries except for Argentina. It’s the largest economy by far. It’s the least involved in international trade and it has rule of law. So you might not like the United States for this, that or the other reason, but from a mechanical point of view of what makes a good currency, no one else even scratches one of those categories, much less all three.

Watch the full interview with Peter Zeihan here.

The U.S. dollar’s global dominance has been a sure thing for about a century. Now emerging economies are looking to dethrone it.

Foreign ministers from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, nations known collectively as BRICS, have recently discussed using alternative currencies to challenge U.S. global influence. Representatives from the bloc gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, in early June ahead of a pivotal August summit.

“In the aftermath of the United States doing some pretty severe financial sanctions on the Russians, people are wondering if there’s a way to get away,” geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan told Straight Arrow News’ Simone Del Rosario.

View the full interview here.

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BRICS influence

The BRICS bloc already consists of more than 40% of the world population and about a third of global economic output. Now it is considering expanding its ranks for the first time in more than a decade.

At least 19 countries have asked to join the emerging-nations group, according to Anil Sooklal, South Africa’s ambassador to the group. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates are among those interested in joining.

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Back to dedollarization

With the likes of China and Russia in the group, it’s unsurprising BRICS is looking for ways to diminish U.S. influence. Since its creation, BRICS has been a counter to Western economic influence, from using the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency to the U.S.-centric World Bank.

BRICS countries established the New Development Bank in 2015 as an alternative to the World Bank to facilitate funding for projects in developing nations.

While the NDB currently uses the U.S. dollar for most of its financing, President Dilma Rousseff announced this year the bank plans to finance more projects in local currencies to avoid foreign exchange fluctuations.

“We need to create a diversified global currency system,” Rousseff said in May. “In the future, it is unlikely that one single currency can dominate the world’s currency system.”

More than 58% of global reserve currencies tracked by the International Monetary Fund are held in U.S. dollars as of 2022. Less than 3% is held in the Chinese renminbi, the currency of the second-largest economy in the world and the most dominant nation in BRICS.

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Would a BRICS currency work?

While BRICS members have discussed the possibility of creating a BRICS currency to counter the U.S. dollar, Zeihan expressed serious doubts about establishing a new currency.

“If it’s an independent authority, wow, the best way to get what you want for your country is to bribe the hell out of that authority. And that’s one of the reasons why this just can’t work.”

Peter Zeihan, geopolitical strategist

“Either it’s independent, in which case it’s the most corrupt system you can imagine, or one of the countries manages it, in which case that country manages it for his or her own economy, in which case everyone else is left on the outside,” Zeihan said. “Even with the United States weaponizing the dollar, it is still the least bad option for everyone, even the Russians.”

Without naming the Russians, South Africa Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said the purpose behind exploring alternative currencies is, “to ensure that we do not become victim to sanctions that have secondary effects on countries that have no involvement in issues that have led to those unilateral sanctions.”

The next BRICS summit is scheduled for late August in South Africa but Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be in attendance. The International Criminal Court has issued a war crimes arrest warrant for Putin, and as a member of the ICC, South Africa is theoretically required to arrest him if he steps foot in the country.

Read about the effect Russian sanctions have had on the move away from the U.S. dollar here.

Countries are souring on the U.S. dollar. Is dedollarization really a risk? Catch the full interview with Peter Zeihan here.

Is the U.S. dollar really at risk of losing its reserve currency status? Dedollarization talks are heating up as more countries look to cut the U.S. dollar out of trade transactions. What would a move away from the U.S. dollar mean for the U.S. economy and what currency could replace it? Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan joins Straight Arrow News for an in-depth conversation.

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This year’s buzzword: Dedollarization

In 2023, more and more countries are talking about mobilizing against the U.S. dollar, which has been the global reserve currency for nearly a century. The idea of dedollarization is not new but the world is seeing renewed momentum behind it, enough to get the attention of bigwig economists and major financial institutions.

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First, the basics: What does it mean to be the world’s reserve currency?

The global reserve currency is the dominant currency countries hold and use for international trade. For example, over the past two decades, about three-quarters of trade invoicing in Asia happened in U.S. dollars, not the Japanese yen, not the Chinese yuan. Central banks and other financial players hold more U.S. dollars than any other currency by a long shot. The U.S. dollar became the official global reserve currency in 1944 (read more about how that happened here).

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What does it take to be the world’s reserve currency?

A reserve currency needs to be stable and safe. There has to be a massive amount of that currency in circulation to be able to facilitate transactions all over the globe.

“You have to not care at all what happens to the value of your currency on any given day because if you go in and actively manipulate the exchange rates for trade purposes, then no one is going to use your currency because they don’t know what it’s going to do. It’s not reliable,” geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan told Straight Arrow News.

Because of that, Zeihan said it’s hard to see a currency like the Chinese yuan taking the place of the U.S. dollar someday.

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What’s driving dedollarization talk?

The most pressing anti-dollar movement is coming from BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). The group of nations is discussing whether to introduce a common currency to use for trading purposes to cut out the greenback.

Why is this significant? The BRICS bloc consists of more than 40% of the world population and about a third of global economic output.

Despite heads of state proposing a BRICS currency as an option, Zeihan told Straight Arrow News he has serious doubts the bloc would ever agree to it.

“We’ve got R and C whose relationship is a tryst. We’ve got R and S who compete. We’ve got R and I who don’t trade, I and C who don’t trust, C won’t let enough happen to make anything move and that just leaves B and S and you know, color me a skeptic.”

Peter Zeihan, geopolitical strategist

Here’s what other people are saying about a BRICS currency

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A BRICS currency isn’t the only threat.

Even without BRICS nations agreeing to create a new currency, international investors are still moving away from the U.S. dollar, weakening its dominance as the global reserve currency. Trends show investors and countries are diversifying into the euro and yuan, mainly.

What’s driving it? Inflation and higher interest rates are piling on the dollar’s problems. Then, in August, Fitch Ratings cut the U.S. government’s credit rating in the latest blow to dollar dominance.

The U.S. dollar’s share in central bank reserves has fallen from 71% in 1999 to less than 59% in 2022, according to IMF data.

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The sanctions sting

The U.S. action to aggressively sanction Russia following its invasion of Ukraine was largely so powerful because of the U.S. dollar’s standing as the world reserve currency. But the move is now also triggering dedollarization fears as countries look at how to get away from the overpowering influence of the U.S.

“They’re creating a secondary economy in the world totally independent of the United States. We won’t have to talk about sanctions in five years because there’ll be so many countries transacting and currencies other than the dollar, that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida

The U.S. weaponized the dollar. But here’s why Zeihan says it’s still the “least bad option for everyone, even the Russians.”

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Would your money lose value if another currency takes over?

There are a lot of dedollarizing theories out there, even though most experts cast doubt the U.S. will lose the reserve currency status anytime soon. One such theory is that the U.S. dollar would become worthless if it is not the reserve currency.

While Zeihan insists dedollarization will not happen — “I should say never is a very long time, I shouldn’t say never” — if it did, he said the dollar would just revert back to a normal currency.

“There is a cost in that scenario that would probably force our political leaders to be a little bit more judicious with their spending in the long run because we wouldn’t be able to just dump our debt on everyone else’s system. That’s probably the real superpower: It allows us to not be fiscally responsible.”

Peter Zeihan, geopolitical strategist

Touted by the Environmental Protection Agency as “the most significant climate legislation in U.S. history,” the Inflation Reduction Act also contains a variety of concessions to Big Oil companies. Buried within the legislation is a set of provisions that ties the advancement of some future renewable energy projects to increased American oil and gas production.

“So buried very deeply in there is this provision for any further offshore wind lease, granting that 60 million acres of offshore lands must be offered for offshore oil and gas development,” Clean Ocean Action Executive Director Cindy Zipf said. “That has the potential of almost doubling our current amount of offshore oil and gas drilling. So, in order to get more offshore wind, we’re going to have to allow more offshore oil and gas drilling, which we have fought for decades since we started.”

As a prerequisite for issuing any offshore wind leases, the law stipulates that the Department of the Interior must have held a lease sale for offshore oil totaling at least 60 million acres in the previous year. This requirement is set to remain in place throughout the 10 year lifespan of the Inflation Reduction Act.

“The average offshore lease is about 100,000 acres or so,” Zipf said. “So, if you lease something for offshore wind at 100,000 acres, but you’re going to allow 60 million acres of oil?  What’s the point?  If you’re trying to reduce fossil fuel dependency, what is the point of tying those two things together?”

Additional provisions place restrictions on new land-based wind and solar projects until millions of acres of land have been leased for oil and gas purposes in the previous 120 days. The required amount offered to oil companies must total either 2 million acres, equivalent to about the size of Yellowstone National Park, or cover at least half of the total area that industry groups have expressed interest in.

Failure to fulfill these requirements could result in the suspension of renewable energy projects on public lands and waters.

“This is a climate suicide pact,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s self-defeating to handcuff renewable energy development to massive new oil and gas extraction. The new leasing required in this bill will fan the flames of the climate disasters torching our country, and it’s a slap in the face to the communities fighting to protect themselves from filthy fossil fuels.”

The legislation also extends concessions to the oil and gas industry concerning previously illegal offshore development. This includes the reinstatement of a 2021 Gulf of Mexico oil lease sale, which had been invalidated by a federal judge due to the Interior Department’s failure to transparently disclose the potential greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the lease.

“[The Interior Department] basically said, and then the court said that this is nonsense, that adding more offshore oil and gas would have no effect basically, on the climate, or overall emissions,” Hartl said. “And the courts were like, ‘yeah, pretty sure if you, you know, pull billions of gallons of oil out of the ground, you’re gonna have a climate impact.’ You can’t just say it’s sort of a wash, and it doesn’t matter.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a pivotal figure in the passage of the bill within an evenly split Senate, asserted his role in securing these stipulations for the oil industry.

Manchin contends that these measures will enhance American energy security and generate revenue to support U.S. education, as well as contribute to the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

“I’ve been concerned about efforts by the Administration to throttle back oil and gas leasing and production, so I made sure the Inflation Reduction Act tied the ability to issue wind and solar leases to whether or not [the Interior Department] is holding significant oil and gas lease sales,” Manchin said.

However, opponents of the legislation’s oil and gas leasing provisions remain skeptical. The Center for Biological Diversity intends to challenge every offshore oil lease granted under the Inflation Reduction Act through legal action. They argue that such leasing could have detrimental effects on climate and the environment.

“More oil and gas leasing is completely incompatible with maintaining a livable planet, so we’re forced to fight this,” Hartl said. “This deal is unacceptable. If it passes, we’ll fight every single lease the Interior Department tries to approve. Our climate and the health of our communities depend on it.”

The intention of the Center for Biological Diversity to pursue litigation sets the stage for a potential legal battle that could extend for years, coinciding with the potential lease of hundreds of millions of acres for offshore oil and gas production over the next decade.

Editor’s note: You can access Straight Arrow News’ first special report on wind energy here. You can expect our next report on the topic in September 2023 at SAN.com and the SAN mobile app.

Offshore wind power has arrived in the U.S. In the coming decade, hundreds of giant spinning turbines will work to capture Atlantic Ocean winds, potentially powering 21 million homes in the future.

How did we get here?

Well, the idea of capturing power from the wind goes back thousands of years. As early as 5000 B.C., Egyptians harnessed wind to sail the Nile.

Between 500 and 900 A.D. Persians made vertical-post windmills out of clay, straw and wood for grinding grain. Amazingly, some of these are still in use today.

In 1,200 A.D. the Dutch were constructing trellis windmills more in the style we’re used to now, also for milling grains.

Hundreds of years later, in 1854, inventor and businessman Daniel Halladay patented the first commercially viable windmill. It could automatically swivel to face changing wind directions, and regulate its own speed.

By 1890, farmers and ranchers in the U.S. were using wind power to pump water and generate small amounts of electricity. 

That decade brought steel blades (1890) and a wind power appearance at the 1893 World’s Fair.

The 1970s oil crisis renewed interest in wind energy, and in 1978, former President Jimmy Carter signed the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act, which encouraged renewable energy production.

The first large wind farms were installed in 1980 in California.

In 1991, the world’s first offshore wind farm was built in Denmark.

In 2003, former Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy (D) made it clear in an opinion piece that he disapproved of an offshore wind project near Nantucket, writing “our national treasures deserve better.”

Of course, the Kennedy’s Hyannis Port property would have faced that wind farm, disrupting their ocean view.

By 2012, there were enough wind turbines in the U.S. to produce 60 gigawatts of electricity–enough to power 15 million homes.

In 2013, we took to the sea, as the U.S. developed its first grid-connected offshore wind turbine.

The first offshore wind farm, called the Block Island Wind Farm, was built in 2016.

In 2021, the first commercial scale project in the U.S. was approved.

As of summer 2023, steel is in the water for the first commercial scale project off of Martha’s Vineyard as foundation installation begins. Vineyard Wind expects the farm to be completed next year, generating electricity for more than 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts.

ESG, the practice of rating companies based on environmental, social and corporate governance, has become a hot-button issue in recent years. With political pressure building, the movement is losing steam. Here are five of the latest blows to ESG in this week’s Five For Friday.

5: Don’t say ESG

The term ESG alone is enough to draw the ire of a whole section of the political spectrum and companies are paying attention. Forty-eight percent of firms that have faced backlash say they have adjusted their terminology, according to research from the Conference Board.

The term has most often been replaced by sustainable, which appears to be more palatable. The term has become such a problem ESG pioneer BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink said he won’t use it because it’s been “weaponized” and “misused” by the far left and far right.

4: BlackRock’s board

BlackRock has become somewhat of the poster child for ESG-minded investment firms, which makes naming Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser to its board even more shocking.

Critics question how the firm can remain committed to environmental causes with the head of the world’s largest oil company at the table. But Aramco does have a goal to hit net-zero emissions by 2050. That doesn’t address the human rights concerns that surround Saudi Arabia, which has led to allegations of “sportswashing” to clean up its image.

3: ESG month

Generally July is a time for family vacation and celebrating Independence Day. But this July, Republicans in Congress dubbed it “ESG month.” Their agenda to protect investors from progressive activists included proxy voting reform, rating oversight and protecting U.S. companies from regulations in the EU. That said, nothing was accomplished before lawmakers took off for the August recess.

For those less concerned about ESG, July is also hot dog month, ice cream month and picnic month.

2: Activism decline

One of the big criticisms of ESG activism is companies bowing to a few loud shareholders. In fact, one of the biggest ESG wins was when tiny hedge fund Engine No. 1 won a 2021 battle with Exxon over board members and carbon footprint.

This year, things are different.

Proposals to cut Exxon and Chevron emissions failed to make an impact at shareholder meetings. It wasn’t even close, either; activists failed to get even 20% of Chevron shareholders to back their proposals in May.

1: So long, scores

ESG scores can be particularly controversial, and S&P Global just dropped them from credit assessments of companies in favor of written analysis. This comes after Elon Musk called ESG “the devil” due to S&P giving Tesla a lower ESG score than cigarette-maker Philip Morris. If you really want to see a numbered ESG score, you can still check out Moody’s.

As a show of force at the edge of the world, 11 warships from China and Russia were spotted carrying out a joint naval patrol near Alaska. The bold move in early August is just the latest provocation in a region known for chilly receptions.

China-Russia Flotilla Near Aleutians Prompt Calls For Naval Base In Alaskahttps://t.co/RcVQBU44Kd

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) August 9, 2023

“There’s really critically important elements of the geostrategic importance of Alaska and America’s place in the Arctic. As things potentially change with climate, we need to be paying increasing attention to that,” said Peter Brookes, a retired Navy commander, defense and foreign policy expert.

“It’s about time that we pay the attention, the necessary attention, to the Arctic,” Brookes said. “The Russians have been paying attention to it for a long time, and prior to their unjust, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine they were spending a lot of time and effort on modernizing their military bases [in the Arctic]. If Russia were to attack the United States with ICBMs, those ICBMs would likely come over the pole.”

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During the height of the Cold War, Russia operated hundreds of Arctic bases. Today, there are notably less than during that time, but Russia still has more than the U.S.

American armed forces have nine military bases in Alaska, and they’re used by the Army, Air Force and Coast Guard. For right now, though, there’s no naval base.

According to Brookes, the Arctic is a strategic place that has not gotten the attention it deserves because of the challenges the weather and remote location pose. Because of these challenges, the United States doesn’t have a deep-water port of its own in the Arctic.

Enter Nome, the site of the last, great American gold rush. The small village in northwest Alaska will soon have a new claim to fame: home to the first deep-water Arctic port in the U.S. Work will start next year on a $600 million project to expand Nome’s port in three phases.

The northwest Alaska port will see its docking capacity increase from just three ships up to 10. A new, deeper basin will also be dredged. At 40 feet deep, the new Nome port will be able to handle much larger vessels, including cruise ships and anything in the U.S. Navy’s fleet except for aircraft carriers.

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Sen. Dan Sullivan, who represents Alaska in Washington, said the expanded port will “make Nome the centerpiece of U.S. strategic infrastructure in the Arctic.

“Military presence, and military capabilities, [are] always important for protecting, almost always anyway, for protecting American national interests,” Brookes said. “The hope is that we wouldn’t need to use that military force to support our diplomacy, or our economic interests in the Arctic.”

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Arctic diplomacy will be in high demand in the years ahead. Thanks to climate change, the Northern Seas are more crowded. The number of ships transiting Bering Strait shipping lanes almost doubled over the last decade, and it’s not just the traditional Arctic nations that have an eye toward the region.

“Even China has talked about its access and its interest in the Arctic, saying it’s part of mankind’s or humankind’s common heritage,” Brookes said. “They call themselves a ‘near-Arctic nation.’ They’ve built several icebreakers, and they have a couple of ships that make trips up there to do experimentation. I believe that China even has some scientific research places including in European Arctic areas.”

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It’s easy to understand why so many nations have Arctic fever. It’s estimated up to 13% of the Earth’s oil reserves are in the Arctic, along with untold quantities of other natural resources like gold and rare earth elements. And of course, there are lots of fish. Fish that don’t follow territorial guidelines or pay attention to things like exclusive economic zones.

Brookes said the Arctic is unlike any other place on the planet. There are various overlapping claims to territory and the UN still hasn’t sorted those out. In 2007, Russia even planted a titanium flagpole on the Arctic seabed at the North Pole, 14,000 feet below the surface.

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“Remember, instead of looking at a map and holding a globe in your hands, everything kind of comes together at the top. All of these interests and territorial claims, they can conflict,” Brookes said.

If an Arctic territorial dispute led to a military engagement, America has a lot of friends close by. There are eight traditional Arctic countries, and except for Russia, they’re all NATO members. Even if China, the self-proclaimed ‘near-Arctic nation,’ escalated military tensions in the region, the U.S. has partners in the Indo-Pacific like Japan to help keep the peace.”

“The United States is part of a number of partnerships and alliances, and burden sharing is important too,” Brookes said. “Sometimes countries have more capable forces in certain areas than others. Partnerships, alliances, friendships, they’re all very important.”