I want to highlight the tree-planting study under the ‘Climate Change’ section and encourage people to read the entire study.
It shows a lot of evidence that planting trees at a civilization-level scale (including urban forestation), would chip away at how quickly temperatures rise over the coming decades.
Over the 20th century, the US reforested enough acreage to cover all of France, probably making the eastern part of the country cooler. That was also prior to modern technologies that may help us plant trees in places like Phoenix or Las Vegas.
Reforestation will not solve climate change, but it’s so clearly effective that it seems essential that we significantly ramp up efforts to fill every potential gap with a tree.
Enjoy the issue!
Followups on A6 topics
Over 300 detained in Russia as country mourns the death of Alexei Navalny
US signals it will block proposed Gaza ceasefire resolution at UN
Senegal president aims to hold delayed election ‘as soon as possible’
A6 - Where the World Happens
Indonesia elects old guard as new president
Indonesia last week elected Prabowo Subianto as its next president with a decisive victory, about 58% of the vote. Second place Anies Baswedan only won 25%.
This is Prabowo’s third attempt at the presidency, as he previously lost two elections to rival-turned-kingmaker Joko Widodo.
While intellectuals and analysts are concerned that Prabowo represents a backsliding in democracy, most Indonesians don’t share that concern.
Prabowo has shady ties to a series of kidnappings during the Suharto regime when he served as an army general, and he is also the son-in-law of the late dictator. Prabowo is volatile and emotional and was previously banned from entering the US for almost two decades, starting in 2000.
But he has also undeniably transformed his public image, abandoning his populist rhetoric and promoting himself as someone who can leverage government to get things done.
The unanswerable question at this moment is whether the tiger changed its stripes, and if Prabowo will return to his authoritarian tendencies when in power. Or, as many people believe, if the populism of before had been his strategy to land a presidency that would have inevitably moderated him.
One reality of Indonesia is the country is beset by corruption, to the point of being somewhat expected in elite politics. It is a factor that can make academic political analysis difficult, as decisions may not be made for reasons of democracy vs. autocracy, but rather whose pocket it lines.
Outgoing president Joko Widodo will leave office as a very popular figure in Indonesia, but not as the reformist he promised to be when we rode a wave of momentum to the presidency in 2014.
He was a capable manager who oversaw significant economic growth, successfully stayed friendly with both China and America, and made it clear that Indonesia’s sheer size and resource advantage would make it another force in our increasingly multipolar world.
However, many of Indonesia’s problems were entrenched under Jokowi. There was no relevant crackdown on corruption, Indonesia still struggles to manage its globally-important rainforests, and it has shown a tendency to drift away from secular foundations that make it unique in the Muslim world.
Greece becomes first Orthodox Christian country to pass same-sex marriage
The Greek parliament voted 176-76 to legalize same-sex marriage, becoming the first Orthodox Christian nation to do so.
The law will also allow same-sex couples to adopt children but does not allow them to have children via surrogacy.
The wide victory margin was notable because it came in defiance of the church and seemed to highlight that loud political defiance was not as widespread as it had initially appeared.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said, “This is a milestone for human rights, reflecting today’s Greece – a progressive and democratic country, passionately committed to European values.”
Greece was lagging behind the rest of Europe on this issue because it has a large socially conservative population, and the church still has a lot of power in the country.
It is now the only country in southeast Europe to have legalized gay marriage, and it became the 21st European country to do so.
Myanmar is set to draft 60,000 people for flagging war
The Myanmar junta’s war effort is flailing, so the government passed a new law that would create a draft to conscribe 60,000 young people to fight for their side in the ongoing civil war.
The conscription will pick 5,000 people monthly, starting with four rounds of only men before women become eligible. The age limit will be 35, but people like doctors or other “necessary occupations” could be drafted as old as 45. About 14 million out of the total population of 56 million people will be eligible.
Armed resistance forces have appeared to make significant gains in recent months, particularly around the border with China, which has dramatically increased pressure on the government to find a ceasefire.
The conscription could, ironically, boost the resistance fighters, as the new law has created significant apprehension among regular civilians, who have posted on social media their plans to either flee the country or find their way into rebel-held territories.
What is unclear is how effective the draft will be, especially if we consider the reality that tens of thousands of people have already deserted the military.
Additionally, if Myanmar pursues brutal enforcement methods, it will further isolate a country that is already in survival mode. The government said draft dodging would be punishable by 3-5 years in prison.
China’s stock market debacle
Chinese and Hong Kong equities have been a bloodbath for the past year, and it accelerated in 2024, with US$1 trillion in market value wiped off the exchanges in less than two months.
One remarkable statistic is that, had you invested in the Hang Seng Index (Hong Kong) on the day of the 1997 handover and did nothing, you would have lost money, which would have seemed impossible to any investor prior to the pandemic.
The core reason for the drop-off is the struggling property sector, which has spent the past 3-4 years navigating a seemingly endless supply of debt defaults. As property woes drag down the economy, people are choosing to keep their savings rather than invest in equities.
But the other problem is foreign money no longer believes in the Chinese stock market, lowering the floor of how far the market could drop.
The stock market has created political problems in China, highlighted by Chinese netizens turning an innocuous social media post from the US embassy into a wailing wall, inundating the comment section with complaints about their finances.
It is unlikely that Beijing would pass a large bailout to try to accelerate the market, as bailouts have long been anathema to how the country approaches its fiscal strategy.
Climate Change: A century of reforestation helped keep the eastern US cool
A recent study discovered that large-scale reforestation during the 20th century helped keep parts of the United States cooler than it otherwise would have been.
The deforestation of the East Coast from colonization to the 20th century was near complete, but in the 1930s, the government kickstarted a major push to rejuvenate the land, reforesting about 15 million hectares over the subsequent decades.
The result was that, as the rest of North America warmed by about 0.7 degrees Celsius, the East Coast only warmed by 0.3 degrees Celsius.
The study represents a piece of data to support what humans intuitively understand: planting trees will not solve climate change alone, but it is our easiest and most cost-effective tool for making a difference.
Kevin’s article: How a medieval imperial exam helped dismantle the aristocracy in Tang-era China
From the first three paragraphs.
Education is valued today because it is viewed as an avenue for social mobility and a means for people who grew up poor to improve their lot in life and find opportunities to support themselves and their families.
But this phenomenon is not a feature of modernity.
During China’s Tang dynasty, (618–907), one specific test, called the keju, created the means for people to circumnavigate the entrenched aristocracy and begin a career in the bureaucracy, according to a new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, a peer-reviewed journal.
What I am reading
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With regards to reforestation and its impact on climate change and local cooling, I have some remarks of what a drastic event in 2022 has claimed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where I live.
Prior to August 19, 2022, Cedar Rapids was listed as a Tree City USA city, lush with green vegetation that kept it cooler than the surrounding farmland during the hot Iowa summers. A derecho built to the west and blew through Eastern Iowa, and then moved onto Illinois.
But it did the greatest damage to Linn County and specifically Cedar Rapids on August 10, 2022, when sustained winds easily of 90 to 100 mph for 40 minutes, with gusts registering 140 mph, tore through the timber of Cedar Rapids , felling approximately 770,000 trees and other foliage.
The next spring you did not hear a single bird chirp. All of the animals had not returned, or still hiding in the deep ravines that run through the city. It was an eerie quiet at night when all that could be heard were the trains that run along tracks in various parts of the city, many delivering grain to the largest cereal mill in the world, Quaker Oats.
It was recently published in the Cedar Rapids Gazette that summer temperatures along some of the most traveled areas of town recorded summer temperatures 30 higher than before derecho. And many homes still show the wear that no insurance policy would ever cover. Stripped paint, large stumps, half-felled trees, broken gutters, and even more boarded up houses than one would have expected from before the storm.
Some buildings were never re-built. Some businesses never reopened. Some homeowners were ripped off. ((My condo association was one of them.)
The beautiful Tree City USA will never be replaced I. My lifetime. The government has donated thousands of trees to replant what was lost on right of ways. But trees are expensive for homeowners to buy, and to water. Poorer neighborhoods don’t have those resources. And I have a family member who paid $40,000 just to have her trees removed. Her lot in the woods is now barren. She is 95.
Devastation like this derecho created an overnight schism of quality of life to my city. Waiting for buses on a hot day, having more asthma attacks, keeping cool if you don’t have air conditioning… these are issues that mostly affect poorer people. Yet I believe a larger swath of the population experiences health problems and higher utility usage and costs, because we lost our trees.
Our once bountiful parks look sad. Our homes sit exposed with no beautiful canopy. Kids have no trees to climb.
Thirty more degrees along some areas has stolen the lazy days of summer. It was that one derecho that changed my city.
Really liked your article on the Imperial exams in Tang China. I wonder if the elites paid for tutors to boost their kids' results?