Social Europe: One Small Town Against The Tide Of Italian Populism

Over the last 20 years, Lucano has gained a growing international reputation as the Mayor of accoglienza – welcome – after he started opening Riace’s empty houses to refugees. Since then, thousands of migrants from some 20 different countries have found shelter in the town. And that success has infuriated the xenophobes and extremists who now play a leading role in Italy’s government.[...]

But the charges are just the latest in a series of threats and allegations that have swirled around Riace’s first citizen in recent months. First, the state funding awarded to local authorities to host refugees was slow to arrive, and then blocked altogether. Last year Lucano was accused of misuse of public funds – a charge later dismissed. He has suffered abuse on social media and attacks by the ‘Ndrangheta. RAI, the Italian TV, recently suspended broadcasting of a fictional film based on his work. Finally, this summer, Lucano started a hunger strike, warning that mounting debts would mean the end of the ‘Riace model’, throwing 165 refugees onto the streets, including 50 children.[...]

Not that he enjoys uncritical backing from Italy’s fragmented left. Some people ask whether it is appropriate for an elected mayor to be sidestepping legal tendering rules, for example. “I would do something illegal 1,000 times to save just one human life,” replies Lucano defiantly. Even supporters question the sustainability of the project. Calabria is one of the EU’s poorest regions. Just as local inhabitants are forced out to find work, most of Riace’s refugees have to move on in the long term. Other commentators fear that going to the barricades over Riace will merely increase support for the far right, given the widespread anti-immigrant sentiments in Italy.

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Vox:Sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere, explained

The good news is we already know how to bring carbon back down to earth, from smart land management to high-tech plants that capturing it straight from the air. In fact, nature already soaks up almost one-third of the carbon dioxide we emit.[...]

The field is full of jargon, and there’s confusion around when you can count carbon as truly “removed” or “negative.” To wit: “Carbon capture” typically refers to grabbing the carbon as it’s being emitted, like the flue gas of a coal power plant. “Carbon removal” usually means getting carbon dioxide after it has already reached the atmosphere. And there isn’t enough beer or soda in the world to use all those bubbles, so the captured carbon has to find new uses or get stored away forever.[...]

Every acre of restored temperate forest can sequester 3 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. In the US, forests already offset about 13 percent of the country’s carbon emissions. Globally, forests absorb 30 percent of humanity’s emissions. So restoring forests can be an effective way to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air.[...]

Nonetheless, there are companies that have already pulled this off. Carbon Engineering in Canada has built a plant that captures about 1 ton of carbon dioxide per day. Meanwhile Climeworks is running three direct air capture plants — in Iceland, Switzerland, and Italy — together capturing 1,100 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

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CityLab: Weirdly, Munich Is Now Germany’s Greenest City

All of it, in fact. Across the 1.45 million-strong Bavarian capital, an unprecedented 42.5 percent of votes went to the Greens. That’s a very high proportion in Germany’s multiparty system, and a big score for the Greens: They outpolled the Merkel-affiliated CSU by more than two and a half times. It’s also a shock. Starchy and relatively serene Munich is a well-liked city in Germany; its wealth, sub-Alpine setting and old-looking (but often reconstructed) buildings generally earn it higher popularity ratings than gruff, sprawling Berlin. But Munich has a rather conservative, even slightly doughy reputation (though it’s seen as more progressive than its rural hinterland). In short, it’s an unlikely stage for political upheaval.[...]

It didn’t work. The rightward swing has disgusted many, prompting a 20,000-strong demonstration against the police powers bill in Munich earlier this month. Then last Sunday, the party was pummeled at the polls, falling 10.5 percent to 37 percent of all votes across the region, a result that will make it very hard for the party to form a coalition. Meanwhile, the Green Party surged to 17.5 percent of all regional votes (and almost three times that in Munich), almost doubling its representation.[...]

From this murky picture, three clear trends emerge. Firstly, Germans on all sides of the political spectrum seem disenchanted with the main parties that previously dominated national politics. Secondly, the rise of the country’s extreme right—a source of much international concern—is just one of several swings, and it has itself created a revolted counter-reaction. And thirdly and perhaps most encouragingly, high levels of concern about the environment are becoming increasingly bipartisan.

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Politico: Apple, Google, Facebook line up to pay homage to EU privacy rules

Top executives from Facebook, Google and Apple heaped praise on Europe’s revamped data protection standards Wednesday, just as these companies face ever tighter scrutiny over privacy and the prospect of similar restrictions in the United States. [...]

Noah Phillips, a U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner, acknowledged that the onset of Europe’s new privacy standards had triggered a debate about privacy in the United States. “GDPR has certainly had an impact on the national conversation in the U.S.,” he told POLITICO.[...]

Beyond Europe’s revamped privacy rules, which came into force at the end of May, countries from Brazil to Japan have similarly proposed new data protection standards, while U.S. lawmakers — after a series of setbacks — are again starting to consider federal rules.

Amid this privacy push, some tech companies are quickly changing their tune, with some advocates warning that these firms are now in favor of new legislation so that they can lobby to water it down as much as possible.

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Foreign Affairs: Is Going It Alone the Best Way Forward for Europe?

The ongoing tensions in transatlantic relations are first and foremost about a power imbalance. Americans are frustrated at Europe’s lack of defense investments and do not see the continent as a reliable ally; Europeans resent American unilateralism and disregard for their policy concerns. This isn’t new. With the Soviet Union’s collapse, the United States became the sole superpower and was no longer hindered by concerns of provoking its old enemy. It was also increasingly willing to take unilateral actions, which Europeans were expected to accept. Under President Bill Clinton, the United States led the NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia, ignoring Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s objections. U.S. President George W. Bush ignored European protests when he chose not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Although France (alongside Germany) led the opposition to the Iraq war at the UN Security Council, even threatening to use its veto, Washington moved forward. And the centerpiece of U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign policy in his first term was a strategic pivot to Asia, which inevitably meant a move away from Europe as the core of U.S. economic and strategic interests. [...]

As Europeans begin to ponder the reality of strategic autonomy, they should heed the advice of Macron and Maas—there is no going back to the comforts of dependency after Trump. Strategic autonomy means, first and foremost, a vision for Europe as an actor on the world stage capable of defending itself at home and pursuing its objectives abroad. Although the current imbalances in U.S. and European security and defense spending make such a Europe difficult to imagine, it should nonetheless be the guiding principle for long-term European stability.[...]

Strategic autonomy should, however, not solely be based on defense and security. As the United States’ expansive use of extraterritorial sanctions has shown, Europeans are vulnerable to U.S. weaponization of its economic power. Inevitably, the economic imbalance will mean a reckoning by EU leaders with the role of the euro in the global economy. Taken as a whole, the EU is one of the world’s largest economies, accounting for 22 percent of world GDP. Yet the euro represents a much smaller share of global currency reserves and international trade than the dollar, a sign that investors still don’t trust the long-term future of the eurozone after years of crises and ad hoc responses to address the zone’s shortcomings. Germany, as the economic powerhouse of the eurozone, should work together with France and the European Commission to take concrete steps to ensure the sustainability and competitiveness of the monetary zone.[...]

Chinese foreign direct investment in Europe is nine times larger than in the United States. Some European capitals are concerned that Chinese investments, especially in central and eastern Europe and along the Mediterranean, give China too much political influence. Greece, for example, where China has invested heavily in ports, recently blocked an EU statement on China’s human rights abuses at the United Nations.

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