Daily Archives: February 8, 2021

According to Michael Goehring, president and CEO of the Mining Association of BC, this once-in-a-lifetime pivot point presents a significant opportunity for the provinces mining industry and broader economy.

We are in one of these once-in-a-century economic changes, fundamentally driven by the ultimate death of our carbon-based economy and the transition to a green energy economy

Mining as an industry is an exciting place to be right now, he said during a panel discussion on responsible mining at the BC Natural Resources Forum last week. Mining as an industry is being viewed as a solution.

Metals and minerals such as those found in B.C. play a necessary part of economies transition to cleaner energy sources and more environmentally friendly products.

Copper is a critical element in our transition to a global green energy economy. Wind turbines, electric vehicles and energy distribution systems all rely on copper, and we expect demand will continue to grow, said Clausen, adding that Copper Mountain Mining is fully committed to that broader economic transition.

But miners ability to supply that transition with sufficient resources to meet demand is not without its barriers. The sheer length of time it can take to get a project approved, built and operating can restrict supply. Weak commodity prices can also erode the economic viability of resource extraction.

Were going to see a gap between supply and demand, and I think thats going to be quite significant, Clausen said.

There are a lot of projects that are marginally economic, unfortunately, in B.C. right now with current copper prices, but we could really see that change overnight and wake up a few years from now and have $6 copper, said Kelly Earle, vice-president of communications with Skeena Resources Ltd. (TSX: SKE).

Earle noted that there has been some global interest in B.C. copper projects. Last year, for example, Australias Newcrest Mining Ltd. (TSX:NCM) acquired a large copper and gold land package from Skeena Resources for $7.5 million.

The key factor though is really going to be the price of copper, she said.

In addition to supporting a climate-conscious pivot to clean energy, B.C. miners are looking inward, and focusing on reducing their emissions and environmental footprints.

Copper Mountain Mining has committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2035, and is striving to be one of the lowest greenhouse gas-emitting open-pit copper mines globally in the next 10 years. This year, it will implement Phase 1 of its electric trolley assist project, to reduce diesel consumption.

Pretium Resources Inc.s (NYSE, TSX:PVG) Brucejack Mine in northwest B.C. emits 0.05 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per ounce of gold 10 times below the average emissions of intermediate gold producers, said company president and CEO Jacques Perron. Pretium is testing battery-powered electric haul trucks to replace the diesel trucks it uses underground.

Responsible mining, at the end of the day, for me it means that we care, said Perron. Responsible mining is making sure that we consider everybody, and we look at all possible ways to minimize the impact of our activities.

Skeena Resources is working to advance the second chapter of the Eskay Creek Mine project, which previously operated as an underground mine powered entirely by diesel. This next phase is envisioned asan open-pit operation thatwill run on green energy, a transition made possible by a hydroelectric power station less than 10 kilometres away.

We are leading the way in building an economy that runs on green power, said Earle.

(This article first appeared in Business in Vancouver)

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Mining key to transition to green economy - MINING.COM - MINING.com - MINING.com

Copper mining, crucial to electrical technology, is among the top sectors powering the green energy revolution | sergeyryzhov/iStock/Getty Images Plus

The CEO of one of B.C.s biggest copper mines believes the ultimate death of the carbon economy will fuel new investments in infrastructure and responsible mining projects.

Fundamentally, I believe that we are in one of these once-in-a-century economic changes, and thats fundamentally driven by the ultimate death of our carbon-based economy which is a mature economy now and the transition to a green energy economy, said Gil Clausen, president and CEO of Copper Mountain Mining Corp. (TSX:CMMC), which operates Copper Mountain near Princeton.

According to Michael Goehring, president and CEO of the Mining Association of BC, this once-in-a-lifetime pivot point presents a significant opportunity for the provinces mining industry and broader economy.

Mining as an industry is an exciting place to be right now, he said during a panel discussion on responsible mining at the BC Natural Resources Forum last week. Mining as an industry is being viewed as a solution.

Metals and minerals such as those found in B.C. play a necessary part of economies transition to cleaner energy sources and more environmentally friendly products.

Copper is a critical element in our transition to a global green energy economy. Wind turbines, electric vehicles and energy distribution systems all rely on copper, and we expect demand will continue to grow, said Clausen, adding that Copper Mountain Mining is fully committed to that broader economic transition.

But miners ability to supply that transition with sufficient resources to meet demand is not without its barriers. The sheer length of time it can take to get a project approved, built and operating can restrict supply. Weak commodity prices can also erode the economic viability of resource extraction.

Were going to see a gap between supply and demand, and I think thats going to be quite significant, Clausen said.

At the time of writing, the spot price of copper was about US$3.60 per pound, according to Kitco Metals around the highest price the metal has fetched in the last five years. Its 60-year peak was nearly a decade ago, at close to US$4.50 a pound.

There are a lot of projects that are marginally economic, unfortunately, in B.C. right now with current copper prices, but we could really see that change overnight and wake up a few years from now and have $6 copper, said Kelly Earle, vice-president of communications with Skeena Resources Ltd. (TSX: SKE).

Earle noted that there has been some global interest in B.C. copper projects. Last year, for example, Australias Newcrest Mining Ltd. (TSX:NCM) acquired a large copper and gold land package from Skeena Resources for $7.5 million.

The key factor though is really going to be the price of copper, she said.

In addition to supporting a climate-conscious pivot to clean energy, B.C. miners are looking inward, and focusing on reducing their emissions and environmental footprints.

Copper Mountain Mining has committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2035, and is striving to be one of the lowest greenhouse gas-emitting open-pit copper mines globally in the next 10 years. This year, it will implement Phase 1 of its electric trolley assist project, to reduce diesel consumption.

Pretium Resources Inc.s (NYSE, TSX:PVG) Brucejack Mine in northwest B.C. emits 0.05 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per ounce of gold 10 times below the average emissions of intermediate gold producers, said company president and CEO Jacques Perron. Pretium is testing battery-powered electric haul trucks to replace the diesel trucks it uses underground.

Responsible mining, at the end of the day, for me it means that we care, said Perron. Responsible mining is making sure that we consider everybody, and we look at all possible ways to minimize the impact of our activities.

Skeena Resources is working to advance the second chapter of the Eskay Creek Mine project, which previously operated as an underground mine powered entirely by diesel. This next phase is envisioned asan open-pit operation thatwill run on green energy, a transition made possible by a hydroelectric power station less than 10 kilometres away.

We are leading the way in building an economy that runs on green power, said Earle.

hwoodin@biv.com

@hayleywoodin

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Mining considered key to building the new green economy - Business in Vancouver

Six experts from Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution are partnering with Innovate Alabama to develop policy recommendations that will grow Alabamas economy, particularly in technology.

Created last summer by Gov. Kay Ivey, the 15-member Alabama Innovation Commission is the first statewide commission focused on inclusive growth in entrepreneurship, innovation and technology.

The commission is tasked with developing policy recommendations aimed at fostering economic growth and encouraging recruitment of technology-based companies, while also establishing and broadening paths to entrepreneurship and jobs in innovation.

The commission, which is supported by an advisory council, is partnering with Silicon Valley-based Hoover Institution to address the starting, recruitment and retention of companies and jobs; the development of innovation hubs; and the commercialization of startups. Within these focus areas, they will identify ways to improve education and skills-based learning and leverage the states successes in a way that creates prosperity for Alabamians.

RELATED: AlabamaInnovationCommissionlaunches website

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is director of the Hoover Institution and is on the advisory council. Alabama Power Executive Vice President Zeke Smith is president of the council.

Growing our states economy in the areas of technology and innovation is at the heart of Innovate Alabamas focus, Smith said. Partnering with the Hoover Institution, and working closely with these talented individuals, adds a level of policy expertise to Innovate Alabama that will help strengthen our inclusive economy, build a national hub for innovation and elevate Alabama.

The six Hoover Institution experts are highly decorated, nationally recognized thought leaders in their fields. Following are excerpts from their bios:

Ralph Banks Racial justice and inequality

Ralph Banks is the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and professor, by courtesy, at the School of Education. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, and a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School, Banks has been a member of the Stanford faculty since 1998. He teaches and writes about family law, employment discrimination law, and race and the law. At Stanford, he is affiliated with the Michelle Clayman Institute for Gender Research, the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and the Ethnicity, the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality. His writings have appeared in a wide range of popular and scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He has been interviewed and quoted by media including ABC News/Nightline, National Public Radio, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Erik Brynjolfsson Future of work and technological innovation

Erik Brynjolfsson holds bachelors and masters degrees from Harvard University in applied mathematics and decision sciences and a Ph.D. from MIT in managerial economics. He is director of the Digital Economy Lab and the senior fellow at Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. He is the Ralph Landau Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and holds appointments at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford Department of Economics and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. One of the most-cited authors on the economics of information, Brynjolfsson was among the first researchers to measure productivity contributions of information technology and the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles. He has done pioneering research on digital commerce, intangible assets and the effects of IT on business strategy, productivity and performance. Brynjolfsson speaks globally and is the author of nine books including, with co-author Andrew McAfee, the best-seller The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies and Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future and more than 100 academic articles and five patents.

Steve Haber: Economic policy and infrastructure (lead advisor)

Stephen Haber is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. In addition, he is a professor of political science, professor of history and professor of economics (by courtesy), as well as a senior fellow of both the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Center for International Development. He is among Stanfords most distinguished teachers, having been awarded every teaching prize Stanford has to offer. He was honored with Stanfords highest teaching honor in 2011, the Walter Gores Award. Haber has spent his academic life investigating the political institutions and economic policies that delay innovation and improvements in living standards. Much of that work has focused on how regulatory and supervisory agencies are often used by incumbent firms to stifle competition, thereby curtailing economic opportunities and slowing technological progress. His current research focuses on three areas: the creation of regulatory barriers to entry in finance; the economic and political consequences of holdup problems created by different systems of agricultural production; and the comparative development of patent systems. He is director of Hoovers Working Group on Innovation and Intellectual Property.

Eric Hanushek: Education reform

Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow and a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education at the Hoover Institution. A leader in the development of the economic analysis of educational issues, his research spans the impact on achievement of teacher quality, high-stakes accountability and class-size reduction. He pioneered measuring teacher quality on the basis of student achievement, the foundation for current research into the value-added evaluations of teachers and schools. His work on school efficiency is central to debates about school finance adequacy and equity. His analyses of the economic impact of school outcomes motivate both national and international educational policy design. Hanushek is chairman of the Executive Committee for the Texas Schools Project at the University of Texas at Dallas, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and area coordinator for Economics of Education with the CESifo Research Network. He formerly was chair of the board of directors of the National Board for Education Sciences. His latest book, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth, identifies the close link between the skills of people and economic growth of the nation, and shows the economic impact of high-quality schools.

Josh Rauh: Economic policy and infrastructure

Joshua Rauh is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Ormond Family Professor of Finance at Stanfords Graduate School of Business. He formerly served at the White House, where he was principal chief economist on the Presidents Council of Economic Advisers and taught at the University of Chicagos Booth School of Business and the Kellogg School of Management. Rauh studies corporate investment, business taxation, government pension liabilities and investment management. He has published numerous journal articles and was awarded the 2006 Brattle Prize for the outstanding research paper on corporate finance published in the Journal of Finance for his paper Investment and Financing Constraints: Evidence from the Funding of Corporate Pension Plans. In 2011, he won the Smith Breeden Prize for the outstanding research paper on capital markets, published in the Journal of Finance, for his paper Public Pension Promises: How Big Are They and What Are they Worth? co-authored with Robert Novy-Marx. His other writings include Earnings Manipulation, Pension Assumptions and Managerial Investment Decisions, co-authored with Daniel Bergstresser and Mihir Desai, which won the Barclays Global Investor Best Symposium Paper from the European Finance Association and appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Other work has appeared in the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial Economics and the Journal of Political Economy.

Macke Raymond: Education reform

Margaret Macke Raymond has served as founder and director of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University since its inception in 1999. The CREDO team conducts rigorous and independent analysis and evaluation of promising programs that aim to improve outcomes for students in K-12 public schools. Their mantra is We let the data speak. The team conducts large-scale analyses under a collaboration with 30 state education agencies. CREDOs studies and reports are relied upon by the U.S. Department of Education, governors, state chief school officers, state legislators, the courts, other policymakers and the media. Supporters and opponents alike point to CREDO findings, moving the debate past evidence disputes to more substantive arguments. She is a regular source for local and national media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Denver Post. Mackes deep belief in building capacity for improved analysis of programs and policy has found its place through service on advisory boards, technical resource groups and peer review panels. She was selected as a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow in recognition of her leadership in U.S. education policy.

Visit the Innovate Alabama website for more information.

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Meet the Hoover Institution experts partnering with Innovate Alabama - Alabama NewsCenter

This piece originally ran on World Resource Institute.

For decades, warning signals sent by ocean ecosystems such as increased sea surface temperature, sea-level rise and ocean acidification have illustrated the urgent need to reduce global greenhouse emissions. As most global economic activity and ultimately man-made carbon emissions occur on land, abatement policies tend to focus on land-based reductions. Meanwhile, the ocean traditionally isviewed as a victim of climate changerather than a source of solutions. That needs to change.

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made clear, limiting the damaging effects of a changing climate requires policies to incorporate an entire ecosystem approach that properly accounts for contributions from the ocean, its ecosystems and economic sub-sectors.

Recent analysis shows that ocean-based solutions could reduce the emissions gap the difference between emissions expected if current trends and policies continue and emissions consistent with limiting global temperature increase by up to 21 percent if the target is keeping temperature rise by 2050 to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or by about 25 percent on a 2C pathway.

Achieving such potential will rely on significant political will and clear policy signals sent to industry, financial markets and domestic agencies over the coming years. Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) can be critical tools in sending these signals and accelerating ocean-based climate action. Additionally, including ocean-based targets, policies and measures in NDCs can help coastal and island states enhance their ambition in line with the requirements of the Paris Agreement. Such ocean-based opportunities also canhelp governments recover and rebuild their economies following the COVID-19 pandemic. World Resources Institute recent publication,"Enhancing Nationally Determined Contributions: Opportunities for Ocean-Based Climate Action," aims to provide the necessary input to assist governments on that journey.

Here are four areas that offer opportunities for ocean-based climate action in NDCs:

Ocean ecosystems serve as the largest carbon sinkin the world. Blue carbon ecosystems namely mangroves, salt marshes and seagrasses are valuable habitats for sequestering and storing carbon. Estimates indicate that these ecosystems can sequester more than double the carbon per area than terrestrial forests. Despite this potential, only a few countries include these ecosystems in their national GHG inventories and NDC targets.

The global mitigation potential is huge. Significantly accelerating the protection and restoration of blue carbon ecosystems potentially could remove up to 0.65 gigatons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to removing roughly all of South Koreas total emissions.

As151 countries have at least one blue carbon ecosystem, including this in updated NDCs can help countries achieve the commitments under the Paris Agreement.

Options for incorporating blue carbon ecosystems in new or updated NDCs include:

Fisheries are highly energy-intensive and emissions from fishing vessel fuel use are the largest contributor to ocean and coastal fisheries-related greenhouse gas emissions. Between 1990 and 2011, emissions from the global fishery industry increased by 28 percent. Despite this significant contribution to global emissions, the full carbon footprint of fisheries including supply chain emissions such as transport, refrigerant loss and waste disposal often are excluded from global GHG assessments.

Ocean-based renewable energy could reduce GHG by the equivalent to all ofUAE or even all ofRussiasemissions.

NDCs can serve as the entry point for governments to quantify and include non-fuel related emissions from motorized and non-motorized vessels as part of their national targets.

Options for including fisheries in new or updated NDCs include:

For many coastal or island countries, ocean-based renewable energy such as offshore wind (fixed or floating), tidal, current or floating solar energy technologies represents the most viable opportunity to significantly expand renewable energy capacity. Increasing ocean-based renewable energy by 2030 and 2050 could lead to an estimated mitigation potential of between 0.24 and 2.48 gigatons of carbon dioxide. This is equivalent to reducing all of United Arab Emirates emissions on the low endand all of Russias emissions on the high end.

NDCs can play a critical role in supporting the acceleration of this industry by sending clear, consistent signals to the industry. They also can help to stimulate further investment, research and development for less mature technologies such as tidal, current and geothermal energy. These technologies are particularly relevant for small island developing states attempting to lower the energy costs associated with importing liquid fuel.

Options for including ocean-based renewable energy in new or updated NDCs include:

Ocean transport accounts for about 2.5 percent of global emissions. Significant technical and decarbonization opportunities in the marine transport sector slow steaming and hydrogen-based fuels such as ammonia serveto enhance the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Reducing both international and domestic emissions in marine transport could lead to a 2030 and 2050 estimated mitigation potential between 0.50 and 1.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide. This potential is equivalent to removing most of Indonesias energy sector emissions and the United States transport sector emissions, respectively.

Options for including domestic ocean-based transport in new or updated NDCs include:

Addressing the climate crises requires governments and local stakeholders to ramp up their ambition levels on national climate action policies. Making sure ocean measures synergize with existing climate strategies can become a key component of this goal. These measures are particularly necessary due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in blue economy sectors such as fishing, seafood production, tourism and marine transport.

Furthermore, about 3 billion people rely on the ocean for their livelihoods. Many of these people live in developing countries particularly coastal and island states and will continue to experience the catastrophic impacts of climate change unless the global community continues to make strides toward climate mitigation. As a result, coastal and island statesparticularly can benefit from adopting these policies to support enhanced global ambition towards the Paris Agreement.

The solutions offered by the ocean cannot continue to be overlooked in climate policy. On the flip side, ocean-based solutions are not the whole solution. They must accompany deep cuts in land-based sources of emissions and protection of natural sinks. Limiting temperature rises and preventing the worst impacts of climate change requires using every available solution in tandem.

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Ocean-based climate solutions are an important and overlooked pathway | Greenbiz - GreenBiz

The wisecrack about West Virginia is that it can now have whatever it wants: fancy new highways, a federal installation or two, maybe a few extra grand per capita in stimulus checks.

Joe Manchin, the states senior senator and a centrist Democrat, has swiftly become one of the most powerful politicians in Washington, a critical swing vote in an evenly divided Senate. By himself, he can shoot down filibuster reform, shape the economic recovery or moderate liberal hopes for the minimum wage. So just give the man what he wants, Democrats laugh uneasily.

But there is a deeper possibility in this unusual alignment of one senator, one struggling state and one suddenly attentive capital.

The joke is that were going to have a futuristic West Virginia, said Kelly Allen, the executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. The honest answer of it, from our perspective, is that West Virginia and Appalachia deserve an outsized piece of any federal recovery policy.

Thats because the regions decades-long role in powering the nation through coal, she said, came at enormous cost to the health of local residents, their environment and their economy. A serious federal response to that history could both bolster the state and be a model for other parts of the country that have been left behind.

West Virginia ranks among the most distressed states in child poverty rates and median incomes, in population loss and in working-age adults out of the labor force. Economists and local community leaders agree that the federal government has done a poor job helping to lift up such places. Maybe West Virginia, with all its newfound leverage, can force Washington to do better.

The states residents have ideas. They dream of broadband, vast brownfield cleanup efforts, greater aid to community lenders who operate where traditional banks wont, more resources for high-quality housing and health clinics investment on a scale that would return to the region all the wealth that was taken out of it by resource extraction.

What we see is a part of the country that has been neglected by the change of an industry, and nothing came behind it, said Jim King, the president and chief executive of Fahe, a network of more than 50 organizations working to make Appalachia more prosperous. And it seemed that no one noticed or cared outside of our region.

Within West Virginia, a number of organizations short of money are already operating with what Brandon Dennison, an eighth-generation resident, described as a righteous anger about rebuilding the state.

On a spiritual level, in my bones, I know this place, its good, I know it has a lot to offer, said Mr. Dennison, who founded Coalfield Development, an organization that provides work force training and jobs in construction, tourism and solar power, across the southern part of the state hurt most by coals decline. And I know its not been able to offer all that it can because of various barriers.

Many of those barriers went up generations ago, said William Hal Gorby, a historian at West Virginia University. In the 1870s, the state established a system for legally separating land ownership from mineral rights. This meant that families who owned land seldom profited from the coal underneath, which was mined by companies based out of state and used to power industrialization elsewhere. The coal industry also amassed political power early in the 20th century faster than anyone could mount a campaign to tax it. So to this day, West Virginia doesnt have the kind of longstanding permanent fund that enables some other states to return resource wealth to their residents.

The big theme of West Virginia historically is our wealth and our income is not here, its taken somewhere else, said Sean OLeary, a senior policy analyst with the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. That leaves us with very little to grow and invest and work on ourselves.

And, indeed, much of the country prospered as West Virginia remained poor. Changing that picture now may require rethinking what it means for this part of the country to get its fair share from Washington.

Many of the dynamics today in West Virginia would be familiar in old industrial towns in the Northeast, or in rural communities across the Midwest. The population is declining as young residents move away. So the tax base and ability to fund services are also shrinking. That makes it hard to support businesses, to prop up the housing market, to reinvent the economy.

This is a relatively new pattern: that broad parts of the country are falling further behind, as other places grow more prosperous. For much of the 20th century, poorer parts of the country were catching up in wages. That trend ended around 1980, according to economists, when globalization and knowledge work began to reorder the economy, with tremendously unequal consequences depending on where you live.

Today, however, no one in Washington is responsible for confronting that pattern, said John Lettieri, the president of the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington think tank that has proposed a new cabinet-level office to do that. Economists have only recently paid more attention to what they call spatial inequality, or the widening economic gaps between places. And policymakers are even further behind.

Were never going to have equal growth in the country geographically, Mr. Lettieri said. But we cant tolerate a situation where a significant share of the country is actually losing ground as the national economy grows.

In Washington, the problem isnt simply that the federal government lacks a comprehensive strategy for the state and others like it; many existing federal programs werent designed for these places. To qualify for federal housing aid, families must earn below a given share of the local median income. But entire counties in Appalachia have median incomes below the poverty line, leaving many poor families ineligible.

Federal grant programs often require local matching dollars money the poorest communities dont have. Some health programs devote extra resources to rural communities, but misclassify which ones are rural. The federal government incentivizes banks to invest in struggling neighborhoods. But those incentives dont work well in rural communities with no local bank branches. The government also has an array of tax credit programs to support development. But they work best with large-scale urban projects, not small rural ones.

Scale is really the enemy of rural development, said Dave Clark, the executive director of Woodlands Development Group and its partnering community lender, which have helped restore historical properties in small West Virginia downtowns. Nobodys getting rich off of these projects. We can structure them in such a way that people wont lose money. But theyre not going to be making a lot of money off these projects with the current tools we have in place.

The economics of redevelopment in the state are particularly tricky given that the state government has limited resources, local governments have meager tax revenue, and philanthropic dollars are scarce (those out-of-state coal companies didnt leave behind a lot of local family foundations).

Resources all resources tend to flow to places of density, said Jen Giovannitti, president of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, the largest donor in West Virginia of any private foundation. Im talking about philanthropic density, population density, the institutional density. All of that money tends to cluster there.

That leaves the federal government as an essential actor, with Senator Manchin in a rare position, he has acknowledged, where one vote truly changes everything.

His predecessor, Robert C. Byrd, joked during his 51-year Senate career that he would be a billion-dollar industry for the state unto himself (and, indeed, he was).

What is potentially different for Senator Manchin today is that his influence is rising as recognition of spatial inequality is, too and that this comes as the economy is in the midst of another jolt.

The pandemic, for all its pain, has hastened a number of trends that could aid West Virginia. It has driven a shift toward telehealth, a vital tool in rural communities. It has pushed more consumers into outdoor recreation, a market West Virginias scenic gorges and mountain trails are primed to capture. It has boosted political will in the state to prioritize broadband. And the pandemic has sped up a move toward remote work to parts of the country with a more affordable cost of living.

This last trend, which is tied to the other three, could have broad consequences for how states think about economic development. If more workers can live anywhere, states dont have to throw tax breaks at companies to attract them. They can try to attract workers directly.

Making a place a good place to live becomes much more important now, said Adam Ozimek, the chief economist at the freelance platform Upwork. Thats also a much healthier type of competition than whos going to give the Bass Pro outlet the biggest tax cut.

That idea reframes the major infrastructure investments Senator Manchin and President Biden have proposed. Broadband, above all, is an essential precondition to remote work. Well-maintained roads, new parks and other public amenities also enhance quality of life. And major investments in environmental cleanup because the environment is central to West Virginias allure become an economic development strategy, too.

Until now, many organizations in West Virginia lament that the state has focused too heavily on luring outside employers, rather than building up the states own assets.

If were going to think big about this, do we want any job at any price? said Karen Jacobson, who leads the housing authority in Randolph County. From any employer whos going to take the deal now and leave 10 years from now?

An effort to leverage remote work could also help the state keep more of its college graduates. William Franko, a political scientist at West Virginia University, said many of his students who leave wish they didnt have to.

My sense is they would love to stay in the state after they graduate, he said. Most West Virginians love the state. But I think they look at the economic landscape, and they say, I dont see how I can make it work.

Mr. Lettieri and Mr. Ozimek have also proposed that the federal government do more to stem population loss and its harms, offering heartland visas to skilled immigrants who commit to settling in communities that have been shrinking. That idea is the kind of place-based program that recognizes whats different about Southern West Virginia than, say, North Carolinas Research Triangle three hours away.

All of this, locals said, would have to work alongside investments in residents who are unlikely to have remote jobs, but who could build the infrastructure, or run the tourism businesses, or remediate the land. After coal, many are leery of relying on any one fix-it-all idea, whether thats tourism or remote work. What theyre asking for is something more comprehensive, something that will take years to grow.

We have generational problems, said Mr. Dennison, the head of Coalfield Development. And theyre not going to be solved in one appropriations cycle, or even two or three.

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West Virginia Has Everyones Attention. What Does It Really Need? - The New York Times

Although the sociopolitical effects of COVID-19 have become increasingly clear, the pandemics political and economic causes have largely been ignored. Evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace explains that whats really striking about the recent outbreaks, like COVID-19, is the expedient refusal to grasp that each new Covid-19 is no isolated incident. This pandemic is closely linked to food production and the profitability of multinational corporations. He explains how capital-led agriculture has created the need for large swaths of open land, which results in deforestation and the destruction of natural barriers against pathogens. This is not the first time exploitation of the environment has led to world-wide crises, nor the first time eco-fascism has been the response. As the marginalized continue to face the brunt, while the rich can hide away in the Hamptons and receive the first doses of the vaccine, its increasingly clear that humans are not the virus, capitalism is.

We cannot decouple economic growth and the climate crisis.

Its useful to trace the history of capitalism and colonialism to understand the root of our current ecological problems. Modern capitalism was developed during an era of colonialist resource extraction that persists to this day. In fact, our economy is built off of the same motive for infinite economic growth and expansion that created the conditions for slavery, a legacy that still endures in our food, prison and banking systems, continuing to exploit labor in all sectors of the economy. This same logic of growth justifying the means also led to the extraction of natural resources, expansion of power and domination of land, committing atrocities against people of color and the environment they relied on to survive. We saw this strategy at work when American buffalo were hunted to extinction in order to power a market while pushing Native Americans off of their land. We still see to this day the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color. History has shown that the environment is also a battleground used by colonizing powers to expand profit and exploit populations.

For the US and its fellow imperialist powers, their ill-begotten wealth is based off of the same model of colonization that continues to dominate and exploit resources and labor -- and its the same system thats degrading the environment and polluting the Earth. This isnt just a bumbling Empire that disregards the consequences of its growth, but rather an efficient, and often insidious, machine that is operating just as it was engineered to.

Whats really dangerous about capitalism and imperialism is the way they promise to solve the problem they create. A good case study can be seen with Bolivia in 2019, where the nationalization of the lithium industry threatened the profit margins for green-tech companies based on lithium-battery tech, a vital part of electric vehicles. In the Global North, EVs are often touted as the solution to transportation-caused carbon emissions, but this technology comes at the expense of the Global South. The nationalization of lithium was not only in direct opposition to that, but represented a move against unregulated exploitation of resources. A few months later, the president of Bolivia was ousted in a U.S.-supported military coup (one of many throughout history). The new right-wing, anti-Indigenous regime, in the resulting protests, killed many Indigenous protestors. Any purported solution that claims to solve environmental issues using the same systems that perpetuates them is doomed to cause rather than resolve harm.

Green capitalism generally represents a co-optation of the environmental justice movement and obscures the central fact that (once again) one cannot decouple economic growth from the climate crisis. Neoliberal reforms like the Green New Deal dont get to the core of the issue, which is that economic growth, often at the expense of the Global South, drives environmental damage, which results in climate refugees and environmental racism. Its more than a watering down of what could be a crucial intervention; its a diversion and co-optation by imperialism.

Many suffer from the unrealistic belief that new technology can save us from the circumstances that we have created. That solar energy, electric vehicles and even space exploration will lead us to a cleaner planet for one more chance at making the right decisions this time around. Green tech seems like the best of both worlds, environmentally conscious while still generating a profit for energy companies. Buying into green tech allows us to continue living in a fantasy where we can enjoy the conveniences that we have come to expect and somehow avert ecological catastrophe. But the reality of the matter is that, once again, we cannot decouple economic growth and the climate crisis. Rather than buying into supposed reforms that reinforce the same systems, we must embrace degrowth.

Degrowth is a politics and a practice that questions the need for economic growth and seeks to build new structures and sustainable communities that resist profit-motives and expansionist resource extraction. It stems from the understanding that infinite growth (i.e. endless resource extraction) on a finite planet, as is necessary under capitalism, is not possible. When capitalism (inevitably) fails, what will be our back-up plan?

In this all-too-possible-future, we have two options.

One response to environmentally driven disasters is eco-fascism, which hoards resources for the few while failing to support those who suffer. Its the same reasoning that fuels population growth narratives that believe that the quantity of resources is the problem, rather than their distribution. If we believe that the number of humans is the problem, it becomes all too easy to justify their deaths. This response is the type of behavior that our neoliberal logics motivate.

Fighting against structures of extractioncapitalism, colonialism, imperialism and white supremacyis the most effective way to fight for the climate. The US military produces more greenhouse gas emissions than up to 140 countries, yet even so-called GND supporters vote for the expansion of the military budget year after year. It destroys whole communities and ecosystems by occupying and destroying land, driving the way for multinational corporations to extract resources and exploit countries within the Global South, as weve seen in all of the conflicts that the US has involved itself in the Gulf.

Alternatively, work is being done by Black ecologists, Indigenous communities, ecofeminists, ecosocialists and more that provide solutions to disaster capitalism in ways that are truly liberatory. As a response to the GND, Indigenous organizers wrote The Red Deal, a revolutionary document that calls for decolonization of the Americas and ending the ongoing genocide of Indigenous people. Supporting movements that stop the construction of pipelines, military bases and power plants is also supporting movements toward decolonization, anti-imperialism, and socialism. Fighting for farmworker movements, fighting against imperialism and fighting for Indigenous movements allow us to get to the root of the issue while centering those that should be centered in the climate debate.

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While this pandemic does seem to be coming to an end, similar crises will continue to sweep across the world. Rather than characterizing them as isolated incidents, we can fight against their root causes and build structures to help each other when the neoliberal government inevitably fails us. As the Global South continues to suffer and each new pandemic and natural disaster hits closer to the imperial core, we can and must choose degrowth.

Rachita Gowdu is a Trinity sophomore. Celine Wei is a Trinity sophomore. Her column, "a spectre is haunting Duke," usually runs on alternate Fridays.

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COVID is no isolated incident - The Chronicle - Duke Chronicle

This blog is based on the December 2020 edition of the Knowledge4Jobs newsletter, curated by the World Banks Jobs Group and Labor and Skills Global Solutions Group. Clickhereto sign up for the Knowledge4Jobs newsletter.

This month we look at employability through the lens of governments, higher education institutions, employers, and students. We focus on institutions response to the pandemic fallout and the strategy of the World Bank Groups International Finance Corporation (IFC) for improving employability in a rapidly changing world.

COVID-19 has severely affected millions of young people around the world, particularly students who were looking forward to graduating in the summer of 2020 and beginning their professional lives. Many who planned to enter the job market have had their hopes of employability dashed. The Corona Class of 20 is facing an unexpected global recession that will impact them for years to come, as they struggle to find jobs and pay off student debt. We have been down this road before, although this time we are experiencing a larger impact. Previous crisis cohorts of graduates during the 80s, 90s, and more recently during the 2008 recession, were similarly hit and continue to lag behind in lifetime earnings and job prospects. Thus, gaining a better understanding of the employability landscape can inform future directions in policy and practice.

IFCs education strategy is predicated on investing in quality education and training to strengthen human capital and enable people to prosper and be productive in rapidly changing economies. As we look to the future, stakeholders are considering a broad range of issues including the skills gap, aligning curricula to labor market needs, employer/higher education institution linkages, digital internships, and skills mismatch. IFC has developed an Employability Tool that helps higher education institutions assess the quality of their current employability services. Such advisory solutions can assist in improving employability of young people in developing countries.

Graduate Employability During COVID-19

A Business Commitment Framework that can help institutions make investment choices in upskilling and reskilling their workforces. (World Economic Forum, November 2020)

Kay et al. outline how the University of Waterloo, Canada and RMIT University, Australia are responding to pandemic-caused challenges and opportunities to work-integrated learning programs. (Kay et al, November 2020)

A comprehensive report providing quantitative data and analysis to assess how college career services operations were before the pandemic. (National Association of Colleges and Employers, August 2020)

Abehala et al. analyzes the role of higher education institutions in promoting the development of competences for employability. (Abehala et al, July 2020)

Zao-Sanders and Palmer show that while college degree programs are no longer keeping pace with how fast things are changing in the workforce, new graduates are still well-qualified to bridge their own skill gaps. (Zao-Sanders & Palmer, September 2019)

The VET Toolbox provides partner countries with guidelines to improve the effectiveness and inclusiveness of VET reforms. (Enabel & British Council, 2020)

Essential Readings

The report explores the development of employability skills by using insights from 414 career advisory staff from institutions in 25 countries. (Department for Business Innovation and Skills, June 2011)

The report identifies how countries can successfully transition young people from education to employment, as well as identify possible challenges that may arise during such transitions. (McKinsey, January 2013)

Recommendations to better support international students in their employment and further study. (Universities UK International, January 2020)

The future of jobs report identifies the skills need and occupational requirements from the perspective of some of the worlds largest employers.(World Economic Forum, January 2016)

Heres the 2020 edition of The Future of Jobs Report.

The book provides a detailed description of research and application outcomes from the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills project, which explored a framework for understanding the nature of skills.. (Care et al., 2018)

Broader Jobs Agenda

The challengesto youth employment in Asia and the Pacific now worsened by the COVID-19 crisis (International Labour Organization, 2020)

The GMAC annual report concludes that although graduate management talent is not immune to the impact of the pandemic, employers remain confident about their skills. Eighty-nine percent of employers said they plan to hire MBA graduates in 2021. (GMAC, September 2020)

Promoting social mobility and fair access to opportunities will be more important than ever after the pandemic. (Holt-White and Montacute, July 2020)

Kamaruddin et al examines the readiness of Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia final year students to internships and graduate programs during the lockdown period. , they also assess their future employment prospects. (Kamaruddin et al., October 2020)

COVID-19 Related Articles

Response to COVID-19: Preparing for School Re-Opening The Case of China (English): this note documented a digital resource platform made available nationwide, guidelines for distance learning in select provinces, and the results of a national teacher survey from the distance learning experience during school closures.

The graduate unemployment rate mirrors problems in the wider economy and as a result many students may prolong their time in education through postgraduate study. (Institute of Student Employers, July 2020)

The blog discusses how recent graduates are coping as a result of the pandemic. (Jessica Jones, September 2020)

Panel discussion: What does Employability mean amid global pandemic and recession? (Henseke et al., July 2020)

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What we've been reading: How to improve graduate employability - World Bank Group

No one can fully predict the future, but there are techniques to read the signals that foresee where it might lead. Recent Nokia research has revealed three areas of opportunity for communications service providers (CSPs): new forms of broadband access, mixed reality applications and the (physically distanced) community economy.

Heres why these matter, and how CSPs can position themselves to reap the benefits as they evolve.

As governments continue to push for universal broadband as an enabler of health, educational and economic advantage, many are seeking fast, flexible alternatives to fiber rollouts. Thats driving interest in High Altitude Platforms (HAPs), which deliver connectivity from balloons and airships hovering above the earth but within the atmosphere.

One of the HAPs making a mark today is SpaceX-built Starlink Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite,[1] which received $856 million in rural digital opportunities funding from the Federal Communications Commission in December 2020 a hint of the HAP markets potential for CSPs.

While not every CSP is in the position to launch a HAP solution, those that are may want to focus on this growing opportunity and those that arent could consider sourcing coverage from an existing provider.

Worldwide spending on augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) could reach $72.8 billion by 2024, driven by 5G consumer use (thanks to companies like Apple building Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology into their devices) and by a growing array of enterprise applications as well.[2] This is an opportunity for CSPs, whose networks will provide the bandwidth and low latency to support the necessary processing of these applications in the cloud.

By partnering today with application developers to address the new resource requirements and start capitalizing on the emerging ecosystem of mixed reality content, CSPs can be well positioned to reap the benefits as the market builds.

Digital twins are a particularly promising class of mixed reality application, making it possible to simulate, explore and test upgrades or changes to physical environments without disrupting them. City officials in Helsinki, for example, recently invited companies to use digital twins to design new services based on public data about buildings energy consumption.

CSPs may want to think about these both as customer-facing applications to support and also as tools to use themselves creating models of their own networks to simulate events, changes and upgrades without physically interfering with the live network.

Farther down the road, many observers expect AR/VR to lead to the creation of the spatial web, which will map the physical world onto virtual spaces and layer virtual elements onto physical ones essentially breaking down the divide between physical and virtual in an experiential way.

In every case, mixed reality will depend on a robust ecosystem of device providers, platforms and content. CSPs can be the critical channel that connects all of these players.

If ecosystems are the future of enterprise service creation and delivery, communities are much the same on the user end of things. The community-based economy will continue to change how businesses engage with customers and how people engage with each other.

CSPs can support the community-building efforts of their enterprise customers and, at the same time, develop their own communities to provide answers and advice and showcase new products or services through virtual events, interactive content and videos. In the Netherlands, T-Mobiles online community the largest telco forum in the country helps cut costs and boost customer loyalty by handling 40 percent of support requests.[3]

Beyond brand-specific communities, there will be the larger phenomenon of living and working online to support in the wake of COVID-19 as businesses and individuals continue with remote, physically distanced ways of getting things done.

CSPs have already played a critical role in the global pivot to this new reality. Going forward, there will be more opportunities to enrich that experience. Spanish CSP Telefonica, for example, has collaborated with startup iUrban to help Silken Hotel Group create an entirely digital and mobile experience to ensure all of its 25 hotels comply with local COVID-19 safety protocols.[4]

Getting an early read on these signals of future opportunity gives CSPs time to develop strategies and prepare to make the most of them in ways that make sense for their markets and businesses. Nokia will continue to look beyond the horizon to decode the next set of signals from the future. Download our new report Know, now to learn more about them and the potential they hold for CSPs worldwide.

Leslie Shannon is Nokias head of Ecosystem and Trend Scouting.She scouts for new developments in technologies outside the telecommunications industry to understand what the networks of five years from now will need to support, how these technologies will interact with each other, and where new business opportunities will be.

See more here:

Past the horizon: A look into the CSP future - Developing Telecoms

Doowan Lee is a strategic advisor to the Institute for Security and Technology and adjunct professor of politics at the Univ. of San Francisco.

Phil W. Reynolds is a visiting scholar at the Center for Futures Studies at the University of Hawaii and is the author of Ouroboros: Understanding the War Machine of Liberalism.

OPINION The War Gods face has become indistinct. That line is from a 1999 China defense paper that delineates the Chinese Communist Party (CPP)s understanding of todays global battlefield. For China, a war with the world would encompass the fundamentals of strategic competition: economic warfare combined with information warfare. The battlefield the CCP envisions includes foreign economies and information environments as legitimate targets.

Worsening Strategic Asymmetry

In the ongoing conflict between China and the United States, the economic and information domains have become decisive. The United States is on the defensive but has the wherewithal to move to the offensive. We are not arguing for any kind of traditional military options Quite the opposite. The CCP sees traditional war as a strategic blunder. Accordingly, the CCP has chosen other means to achieve its end. That end derives from the CCPs basic operating principle, and its model of Leninist thought with Chinese characteristics which provides state supported capitalism with no political representation. In order to provide material choice in lieu of personal choice, Beijing is already at war with the U.S. As a result, great power competition, as noted in the current national security strategy, is taking place within a strategic asymmetry where the CCP gains faster in the economic and information domains than the U.S. An inconvenient truth is that the long-term prospect of strategic competition between the CCP and the US is stacked in favor of the former if the latter relies purely on defense. We layout potential options for the U.S. to regain the initiative.

On Defense

For now, the U.S. is playing defense in the economic domain. Unlike the Soviet Union, which was easy for the world economy to bypass, in this new Cold War, Beijing has co-opted the capitalist system. Unlike the Soviet Union, the U.S. cannot bypass the sprawling industrial and production infrastructure the CCP has built. The massive protections the CCP builds into its own market distorts the global economy and prevents other countries from building competitive advantages, particularly in value added scales. Official CCP policy provides easy credit to manufacturers to the tune of $44 trillion as of the end of June 2020, having more than quadrupled in size since the global financial crisis at the end of 2008. This distorts the market. Beijing provides massive subsidies to companies to keep production costs cheap, and it draws on a massive labor pool with few protections and regulations that raise the costs of labor. This moves the production system towards labor, a fixed resource, and away from capital, a fungible resource, which reduces system efficiencies. Intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers reduces the profit incentive of inventors and innovators and reduces investment in research and development. Increasingly, the CCP not only wants to control the products but control the subsidiary production of everything from iron ore, rare earths, and energy components. This makes it very hard for emerging economies anywhere in the world to develop their own industry and labor outside of the Beijing consensus. This model is fundamentally at odds with an open and rule-based international trading system, like the WTO, which China joined in 2001. The CCP plays in a cheap, export-based system, not a value-trading system like the rest of the world.

This hasnt stopped the rest of the world from playing with the CCP. In November 2020, China and 10 countries signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Significantly, the RCEP includes the western oriented economies of South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Beijing has left the door open for India to join. Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea participate with their strong regulatory states alongside Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. It is true that ASEAN started the RCEP talks, but China is the strategic winner. Japan and South Korea, who had no trade agreements between themselves will benefit to the tune of income growth of perhaps 1 percent.

The increasing weaponization of the CCPs economic expansion is not just physical but also virtual. For instance, the CCP and its affiliated outlets have extensively used social media to promote the perception that the CCPs leadership in the RCEP signals the rise of a new economic sphere. Given the extensive use of propaganda in social media to justify its political monopoly and domestic order, this is hardly surprising. However, the CCPs integration of information warfare during the COVID pandemic suggests three major developments.

First, CCPs information warfare has become increasingly external, targeting the US and its allies. Second, it relies on more technical means such as bots, trolls, hijacked accounts, and 3rd party outlets to magnify its messages. This indicates that the CCP understands how to create resonance without human interaction. Third, it works with other nondemocratic regimes to promote its foreign policy objectives in overseas information environments. The CCP controls the media to manipulate what people see and hear and runs a global influence campaign. In Kenya, the basic cable television package includes Chinese state news while omitting popular international outlets like CNN and BBC. The CCP has threatened media executives in the U.S. as revealed in this brief to the FCC. In South Africa, a reporter was fired when his newspaper was bullied by the CCP over his negative coverage of Chinese influence. In other words, the CCPs economic activities heavily incorporate elements that enhance its information operations at the expense of open competition.

Moving to the Offensive

This sets the conditions for an information offensive as the CCP becomes more exposed in foreign countries with its economic expansion. To gain the initiative in the information domain, mobilization of people-networks, in the sense that some groups are disadvantaged by their sustained interactions with the networks of the CCP, can provide common purpose, solidarity and energy. In order to address this, the U.S. must capture and take advantage of the repressive conditions China produces in the mainland and foreign countries. For instance, the CCPs discrimination against Africans during the COVID pandemic is well documented. Economic exploitation can be a powerful grievance that enables local resistance to Belt and Road Initiative projects.

As the world becomes aware of the human cost of doing business with the CCP, divestment campaigns could be mounted, such as the campaigns against South Africa, Israel and fossil fuel companies. Already, some colleges are distancing themselves from the Beijing funded Confucius Institutes because of their blatant attempts at propaganda dissemination and student control. The academy is seeing that easy money for research comes with strings. Chinas social credit system and experiments with student coercion mean that information elites in the U.S. find themselves in an ethical dilemma. Their colleagues in China have lost jobs in schools and universities from the CCPs spot-the-Spy game, in which students monitor and report on professors attitudes and lectures and disloyalty to the CCP. Here, there is great potential for division. Academic boycotts could potentially reach a vast audience with their built-in megaphones (professors) and captured audiences (students). The Israel and fossil fuel campaigns are popular on college campuses and todays eighteen-year-olds are the futures corporate leaders.

So, what can be done? Few can argue that the US currently has viable or immediate military options to stop the rise of the CCP. We propose a two-prong strategy to ensure long-term competitiveness of the U.S.

Find a Balancing Strategy

First, we advocate for a robust internal balancing strategy where economic vitality underpins the U.S. long-term competitive edge. The essence of internal balancing is endogenizing technological innovation and economic production. This will require some sacrifice. The most popular consumer products in the West have kept their costs low to western consumers because of low production costs and the revenue from Chinese markets.

Take a Stand

Use the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (IDFC), created in 2018, to steer investments from the U.S. to countries under threat of Chinese economic hegemony and to incentivize corporations to move production from China. Japan has already paid companies to move production from China since the COVID pandemic revealed deep supply chain risks. The U.S. could do the same. There is other low-hanging fruit. The three biggest suppliers to Apple, the global juggernaut, are owned by Taiwan. Taiwan investments are a sixth of total internal investment in China and three of the biggest twelve manufacturers of Chinese consumer goods are Taiwanese. Foxconn has explored moving production to the U.S. and there is much policy that could encourage more moves in this direction.

To compete against pro-Beijing programming, some sort of private company-government partnership must emerge in the West. Already in Taiwan, the app LINE has done this. Facebook began informing users when they had interacted with posts that were flagged as false or misleading. Twitter suspends accounts that promote violence or misinformation. YouTube removed hundreds of channels that appeared to coordinate indigenous information with the Beijing led crackdown on the Hong Kong protests in 2019. Rules being drafted for hate speech or illegal content could be used to provide screening for CCP propaganda. Some proposed penalties are not token and could reach up to 10% of the companys global revenue.

The U.S. should also renew the battle over data sovereignty and privacy, looking closely at mobile apps like Tik Tok. The CCP gathers vast amounts of personal information from users that feed into its social control programs. The information offensive needs to harness cyber civics education to raise the cost of adversarial information operations that have freely roamed until now, which goes far beyond the defense mechanisms of cybersecurity. Education about online responsibilities must include teaching the skills to distinguish between disinformation and misinformation, and not just focus on individualism and rights heretofore parroted by digital mobs.

The U.S. should recreate the United States Information Agency as a cabinet level, independent agency with strong coordination with law enforcement, the intelligence agencies, and the departments of Defense and State. During the Cold War, USIA budgets approached $2 billion and the agency was credited with influencing generations of people throughout Europe. Acting today, these persistent exchanges would provide the seedbeds of networks and cross messaging with the organic resilience to withstand and overcome state repression. The local networks working the USIA can identify and push back malign influence propagated by the CCP, the Kremlin, and other strategic competitors in the information environment. The Great Fire Wall would make it dangerous for citizens inside China to resist. However it would be difficult for Beijing to stop networks around the world without resorting to exporting its surveillance technology at scale. While these are exceptionally anti-democratic developments, we also see great potential for a sustained backlash against the CCP and its aligned regimes.

Create Strategic Depth

The U.S. and its partners and allies make up to 50% of the worlds trading capacity. This is a big stick.

The U.S. should leverage the existing international organizations and create new ones to hold China accountable to the rules, which would level the playing field and slow Chinese expansion. The Paris Climate Agreement can be a vehicle for raising the costs of doing business in China. China, for ill or good, has become the world leader in renewable energy. A potential future problem is that China is vertically integrating the supply chains, controlling costs, and given the CCPs desire for leadership within the Paris framework, could control global environmental policies. Make no mistake that this would be to the U.S. detriment. The U.S. would become the dirty producer of coal and oil, a position that some backward-looking nationalists would attempt to sell as a benefit.

The U.S. should work to strengthen the World Trade Organization so it can become the anvil its creators wanted it to be. There are problems, not least the veto power that any one country can wield. This has allowed the CCP to keep the organization in line, defanged from any ruling that would hurt China. Hence, the worst policy the Trump administration proffered was its war against the WTO. In 2019, Trump blocked any new appointments to the WTOs Appellate Body, which governs the WTOs dispute settlement function. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. vetoed naming any new members to the appellate board, a critical body that adjudicates trade disputes. Reform is needed, but the WTO is the organization the West can use to curb China, given its mercantilist policies.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership must be immediately revived. The RCEP gives Beijing a big stick to herd what it will no doubt see as unfaithful bureaucracies but the RCEP has none of the constraints on moral imperatives like labor and environmental standards the U.S. led TTP had. The U.S. must provide a safe haven where those countries can turn once the gilt fades from their erstwhile economic overlords. Given the poor track record of Trumps limited trade war, with China, it will be a heavy lift for the Biden administration to revamp a real economic competition with China. However, combined with a renewed focus on information warfare, an economic strategy that weans the global supply chain from the CCP can impose disproportionate costs on the CCP. More importantly, it must be done to reverse the strategic asymmetry.

Read more expert-driven national security insight, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

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The Strategic Offensive Against the CCP - The Cipher Brief

B Academics is a global network of educators, researchers, students and practitioners working to ... [+] advance the state of academic study into business as a force for good

Business school professors and leaders are finding an enthusiastic audience for the movement to reshape the global economy into one built on stakeholder capitalism. College students, who are among the generation most likely to be affected by changes to the economy as the workers, consumers, and community members of the future, are seizing new opportunities to build their knowledge and experience by learning about and working with Certified B Corporations through an expanding network known as B Academics. B Academics connects the growing community of B Corps pursuing a more inclusive and regenerative economy with students looking to work for, learn from, or do business with purpose-minded companies.

Jessica Yinka Thomas is the cofounder, President and Board Chair of B Academics. The group is a global network of educators, researchers, students and practitioners working to advance the state of academic study into not just B Corps, but also benefit corporations and business as a force for good by sharing best practices, identifying opportunities for collaborative research and engaging with the B Corp movement.

Professor Thomas is Director of the Business Sustainability Collaborative and Assistant Professor of Practice at the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University and oversees the universitys B Corp Clinic, where students get real-world experience working with companies pursuing B Corp Certification or otherwise striving to strengthen their social and environmental impact. Thomas says the collaborations energize her and her students, while also benefiting the company and the movement toward stakeholder capitalism.

I have never seen anything that really captures the imagination and inspires students like B Corps, Thomas says. Its a combination of a very clear and ambitious vision for the movement, and a comprehensive and clear framework for explaining what it means to have a strong impact across your business stakeholders. Something just clicks with the students. They say, I get this. I want to work at a B Corp. I want to buy from B Corps. I want to learn more about what it means to be to be a B Corp.

Professor Thomas and I recently talked about the organizations history and plans for growth as part of my research on stakeholder capitalism. She shared more about the B Academics new membership program, plans to build a research platform, host events, and expand knowledge and awareness of B Corps among academics, practitioners and students of all ages.

Christopher Marquis: As a cofounder of B Academics, how did you come up with the idea? How did the group get its start and gain traction?

Jessica Yinka Thomas, co-founder, President and Board Chair of B Academics.

Jessica Yinka Thomas: I learned about B Corps around 2009, when I was running a sustainable business accelerator at the Center for Sustainable Enterprise at University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School. We were looking for an impact measurement tool for the companies going through the accelerator, and I came across the B Impact Assessment (BIA). We ended up using the BIA in the program and collaborating with B Lab to provide feedback on version 2 of the assessment. I continued studying and teaching about B Corps when I moved to the Poole College of Management at NC State University.

Two people who were critical in the early days were the other cofounders Rosanna Garcia and Joel Gehman. Rosanna and I met at NC State and discovered a shared interest in B Corps and really started to think about how we could build a community. Along with Joel who is at the University of Alberta in Canada, and Craig Dalen, who led the B Corps on Campus initiative at B Lab, we planned the first B Academics roundtable in conjunction with the 2016 B Corps Champions Retreat. Since then we have been, from a grassroots level, building what is now a global network of educators and researchers who have this shared vision of studying business as a force for good and teaching the next generation of business leaders, entrepreneurs, and workers how to embed impact into business, address social and economic inequities, while building bottom line business value.

For the first few years it was a very informal network. We hosted regular webinars, an annual B Academics Roundtable and started to build out a founding leadership team. In 2019, we became a 501(c)3 nonprofit and have really started to formalize the organization. B Academics is independent from B Lab, the nonprofit that leads the global B Corp movement. The academics, practitioners and students in B Academics are important stakeholders in the B Economy. We are working to change the education system so that we are better preparing our future purposeful business leaders, conscious consumers, impact investors, progressive policy makers and engaged community members to create a more just, equitable and sustainable economy. Were also conducting research that can inform B Corps, benefit corporations and the broader business as a force for good movement.

Marquis: How many universities are involved now, and how much has the network grown?

Yinka Thomas: We had about thirty people attend that first B Academics Roundtable in 2016 and now we have a mailing list of close to 2,000 people from at least 52 countries, representing more than 600 academic institutions or organizations who have expressed interest in engaging with B Academics. There is a core group of 12 board members at different academic institutions around the world who are deeply engaged in our work. The reason so many of us came together to create B Academics, was to help us institutionalize and scale our research, teaching, and engagement efforts and build a collaborative community. The January 2021 membership launch represents an important milestone in the development of our organization. It helps us to identify and engage with those faculty, students and practitioners who want to be more deeply engaged with our work and provide them with more targeted resources.

Participants at the 2019 B Academics Roundtable

Led by Bel Barroso from Universidad de Mlaga, chair of our communications committee, we're building a resource platform, with over 400 paper abstracts, cases, videos, podcasts just a range of different research and teaching tools that will be accessible to members. Often the research that academics publish is not easily digestible by non-academics, so we are in the process of developing a series of briefs that will translate some of the research of the faculty and our network in a way that highlights the lessons that industry can take away. Garima Sharma from Georgia State University, who chairs our research committee, and Veronica Devenin Vera from Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, who chairs our global engagement committee, are working to create an applied body of knowledge that we can share with other academics but also with those in industry who are part of our network.

Marquis: Share a little bit more about the student experience: How B Corps are incorporated into curricula and how do students react when they are first learning about the B Corp community?

Yinka Thomas: I've had the opportunity to work in academia for about 15 years now. And I have never seen anything that really captures the imagination and inspires students like B Corps. Theres something about having such a clear framework for impact thats very accessible and understandable and at the same time very rigorous and comprehensive but not a one-size-fits-all. It can be understood by entrepreneurs and by business leaders at the same time, which makes it really accessible and attractive and engaging for students

The movement includes well-known brands, like Patagonia, Ben & Jerrys, Seventh Generation, and New Belgium. With these really well-known, highly regarded innovative companies at the vanguard, something just clicks with the students. They say, I get this, I want to work at a B Corp. I want to buy from B Corps. I want to learn more about what it means to be to be a B Corp.

When I first started teaching about B Corps around 10 years ago, I would ask How many of you have seen this logo? And you might get a hand or two. Now I would say its a majority of students I have the opportunity to interact with who are at least familiar with the concept of a B Corp.

We've seen quite a range of strategies where academic institutions are bringing that B Corp framework into the classroom. Calvin Chung, chair of our information sharing platform committee, teaches at Mary Baldwin University where they built their entire MBA program around the B Impact Assessment. Then there is the project-based B impact teams model schools can use to engage with companies. There are many examples of faculty bringing in B Corp leaders as speakers and embedding discussions of B Corps into courses from a range of different disciplines. For example, Summer Brown from DePaul University, our secretary, teaches about B Corps and benefit corporations in a law school context and Emily Landry from University of Tennessee, our B Local engagement chair, teaches from a social sciences perspective.

Maria Ballesteros Sola from Cal State Channel Islands, who leads our membership committee, has even been working with some local teachers to develop a curriculum designed around B Corps for middle school and high school students so moving even earlier in the education pipelines. Now we have high school teachers in our B Academics network, which has introduced questions about whether we have an opportunity to engage educators from across the learning spectrum, from pre-K to higher ed to programs for retirees..

Marquis: Can you tell me a bit more about the B Corp Clinic at North Carolina State and the work students do there?

Yinka Thomas: Weve been through many iterations of the B Corp Clinic since we launched the program in the Summer of 2015, all with a focus on connecting students with local and global companies to drive social and environmental impact using the B Impact Assessment as a roadmap. Over the last 11 semesters, we've worked on 68 projects with more than 60 companies, from start-ups to multinationals, from a range of industries and from around the world. Some are on the road to B Corp Certification and others are recertifying. Weve worked with 15 companies that have become B Corp certified. Each project is customized to the companys strategic priorities. Every semester the program adapts and changes based on what we learned from the student and company feedback.

Theres such a rich range of ways that we can work with companies and each project is unique based on the goals of the company and where they are on that pathway. One of the things thats really exciting about the B Corp movement is a focus on continuous improvement. All of the companies we work with are focused on strengthening their governance, improving their impact on their employees, customers, and the communities in which they work and managing their environmental impact to different degrees.

We have coaches who are typically leaders from North Carolina B Corps who provide guidance and subject matter expertise to the teams. In the first four years of the program, we designed a co-curricular model where students applied to participate in the program. At that point we had students from dozens of different disciplines from business to engineering to environmental sciences, representing seven different academic institutions across the state, including public and private universities, community colleges and HBCUs. The Clinic is now part of a sustainable business strategy course that I teach in our Jenkins MBA program.

Our B Corp Clinic is an iteration on the B Impact Teams model developed by B Lab. The B Impact Teams program at each university looks a little different and you can adapt the model to meet the needs of the companies and the students youre working with undergraduate, grad students, business school students or those from different disciplines. For example, Kristin Joys from University of Florida, who chairs our teaching and curriculum innovation committee, is running the UF Business for Good Lab, based on our NC State B Corp Clinic model, as part of a course that is open to students from across the UF system. And there are other examples B Impact Team programs at University of New Hampshire, University of Georgia and other academic institutions around the world.

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The Future Of Business 101: B Academics Network Connects Students With Real-World Lessons On Stakeholder Capitalism - Forbes