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Webber 'rapt' with special victory

Mark Webber said he was 'wrapped' after winning the Spanish Grand Prix in dominant fashion on Sunday




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Button critical of Schumacher

Jenson Button criticised seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher for his move around the outside of him as he rejoined the circuit after his pitstop in the Spanish Grand Prix




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Barrichello happy with ninth

Rubens Barrichello confessed himself happy with his Spanish Grand Prix after the Williams driver netted two points from a gritty ninth place finish




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Massa bemoans difficult race

Felipe Massa complained about a lack of grip from his Ferrari after finishing a disappointing sixth in the Spanish Grand Prix




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Environmental Insights Interview with Nick Stern

An exclusive interview with Lord Nicholas Stern, one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change.

 




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Why Matter Matters: How Technology Characteristics Shape the Strategic Framing of Technologies

The authors investigate how the executives of the two largest research institutes for photovoltaic technologies — the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, USA and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) in Freiburg, Germany — have made use of public framing to secure funding and shape the technological development of solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies. The article shows that the executives used four framing dimensions (potential, prospect, performance, and progress) and three framing tactics (conclusion, conditioning, and concession), and that the choice of dimensions and tactics is tightly coupled to the characteristics of the specific technologies pursued by the research institutes.




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Geopolitical and Market Implications of Renewable Hydrogen: New Dependencies in a Low-Carbon Energy World

To accelerate the global transition to a low-carbon economy, all energy systems and sectors must be actively decarbonized. While hydrogen has been a staple in the energy and chemical industries for decades, renewable hydrogen is drawing increased attention today as a versatile and sustainable energy carrier with the potential to play an important piece in the carbon-free energy puzzle. Countries around the world are piloting new projects and policies, yet adopting hydrogen at scale will require innovating along the value chains; scaling technologies while significantly reducing costs; deploying enabling infrastructure; and defining appropriate national and international policies and market structures.

What are the general principles of how renewable hydrogen may reshape the structure of global energy markets? What are the likely geopolitical consequences such changes would cause? A deeper understanding of these nascent dynamics will allow policy makers and corporate investors to better navigate the challenges and maximize the opportunities that decarbonization will bring, without falling into the inefficient behaviors of the past.




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Harvard Business School Professor Rebecca Henderson Outlines Ways Organizations are Changing in Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic and Climate Change in New Edition of "Environmental Insights"

Rebecca Henderson, the John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, shared her perspectives on how large organizations are changing in response to the coronavirus pandemic and climate change in the newest episode of "Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program," a podcast produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. Listen to the interview here. Listen to the interview here.




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Transatlantic Dialogue: The Missing Link in Europe’s Post-Covid-19 Green Deal?

This policy brief emphasizes that the European Green Deal's effectiveness in a post Covid-19 world will require the involvement of strategic partners, especially the US. In the context of a potential US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the consequential vacuum, it will be even more important to engage the US in implementing the GD. In light of divergence between the US and the EU during past climate negotiations (e.g. Kyoto, Copenhagen, and Paris), we suggest a gradual approach to US engagement with GD initiatives and objectives.




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Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset In Disguise

The world is on the cusp of a geopolitical reset. The global pandemic could well undermine international institutions, reinforce nationalism and spur de-globalization. But far-sighted leadership could also rekindle cooperation, glimmers of which appeared in the G-20’s offer of debt relief for some of the world’s poorest countries, a joint plea from more than 200 former national leaders for a more coordinated pandemic response and an unprecedented multinational pact to arrest the crash in oil markets.  




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Low Prices, Full Storage Tanks: What's Next for the Oil Industry

When the economy slows, so does the demand for oil. Prices have plummeted and storage tanks are filled to capacity. We look at the future of the oil industry.




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How to Topple Dictators and Transform Society

Nonviolent resistance scholar Erica Chenoweth explains the key ingredients of successful social movements.




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What Makes for a Moral Foreign Policy?

Joseph Nye's new book rates the efforts of presidents from FDR to Trump.




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Hong Kong, a Democratic Voice in China

Hong Kong is unique. While the writer Han Suyin’s description—“a borrowed place, on borrowed time” —seemed redundant upon the return of the territory to China on July 1, 1997, the former British colony appears to be perpetually exposed to uncertainty over its future. Despite long months of sociopolitical crisis and violence, Hong Kong has once again shown that it has lost none of its personality. Amidst the climate of upheaval and faced with a Chinese regime determined to obstruct any hopes of democracy, the people of Hong Kong have managed to attract international and media attention, marking them out from any other Chinese territory—including those that enjoy special status: Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Macao, and even Xinjiang, where nearly a million people from the minority Uyghur ethnic group are confined to “re-education” camps. No other Chinese region has been able to attract such attention.




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Armed Rebel Groups Lobby in D.C., Just Like Governments. How Does That Influence U.S. Policy?

Armed rebel groups push for funding and recognition, and often get it.




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Grow Up About Dictators, America!

The U.S. Democratic primary has exposed an obsession with morality when it comes to foreign policy that is harmful to strategic and moral objectives alike, Stephen M. Walt writes.




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How Do Past Presidents Rank in Foreign Policy?

How do presidents incorporate morality into decisions involving the national interest? Moral considerations explain why Truman, who authorized the use of nuclear weapons in Japan during World War II, later refused General MacArthur's request to use them in China during the Korean War. What is contextual intelligence, and how does it explain why Bush 41 is ranked first in foreign policy, but Bush 43 is found wanting? Is it possible for a president to lie in the service of the public interest? In this episode, Professor Joseph S. Nye considers these questions as he explores the role of morality in presidential decision-making from FDR to Trump.




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The Future of the Transatlantic Defense Relationship: Views from Finland and the EU

February 7, 2020: With the advent of the digital age and the rise of Russia and China as global powers, the EU must do more to defend itself and its relationship with the United States, according to Janne Kuusela, Director General Janne Kuusela. In an event moderated by  Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship he explained why Finland could be a potential paradigm for the EU’s defense strategy. 

 




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We Must Prepare for the Next Pandemic

Bruce Schneier explains why accurate information will be just as important as effective treatments when the next pandemic strikes.




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Capital Choices: Sectoral Politics and the Variation of Sovereign Wealth

Capital Choices analyzes the creation of different SWFs from a comparative political economy perspective, arguing that different state-society structures at the sectoral level are the drivers for SWF variation. Juergen Braunstein focuses on the early formation period of SWFs, a critical but little understood area given the high levels of political sensitivity and lack of transparency that surround SWF creation. Braunstein’s novel analytical framework provides practical lessons for the business and finance organizations and policymakers of countries that have created, or are planning to create, SWFs.




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Civil Action and the Dynamics of Violence

A new book edited by Erica Chenoweth, Deborah Avant, Marie Berry, Rachel Epstein, Cullen Hendrix, Oliver Kaplan, and Timothy Sisk, Civil Action and the Dynamics of Violence, looks at recent conflicts in Syria, Peru, Kenya, Northern Ireland, Mexico, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Spain, and Colombia to explore the role that civil action played.




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Home, Again: Refugee Return and Post-Conflict Violence in Burundi

In post-conflict societies, divisions can emerge between returnee and nonmigrant groups, which can in turn lead to violence and destabilization when government institutions favor one group over another.




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China’s African Envoys Take Twitter Tips from Trump in PR Offensive

Chinese diplomats in Africa are robustly defending Beijing’s policies on Twitter as part of a new and sometimes aggressive public relations campaign which is playing out across the globe as the country’s envoys answer President Xi Jinping’s call to “tell China stories well”.south chi




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How to Topple Dictators and Transform Society

Nonviolent resistance scholar Erica Chenoweth explains the key ingredients of successful social movements.




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Armed Rebel Groups Lobby in D.C., Just Like Governments. How Does That Influence U.S. Policy?

Armed rebel groups push for funding and recognition, and often get it.




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COVID-19 Pandemic Accelerates the Rise of Digital Payments

Could using the cash in your pocket have the potential to spread covid-19? That question has rarely appeared in the news, but many governments and leaders in the digital payments industry are wondering how the virus might impact the use of cash. Several countries have already taken drastic measures to limit circulation of bank notes. Could such interventions lead to the end of cash payments?




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Factoring Pandemic Risks into Financial Modelling

Today’s economic crisis leaves us with an unsettling and perplexing regret. Why weren’t financial portfolios already adjusted for risks that stem from health events such as pandemics? After all, financial portfolios are adjusted for liquidity risks, market risks, credit risks, and even operational and political risks.




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Oil Markets Provide a Glimpse of the Post-Pandemic Future

Henry Kissinger warns that many existing domestic and international institutions that have helped govern the past decades will not survive the Covid-19 crisis. He is surely correct.




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What Caused the COVID-19 Testing Deficit?

As the divergent experiences of the US and South Korea show, testing can be the difference between disease containment and catastrophe. Rather than relying on national governments to ensure the rapid development, production, and deployment of diagnostics during outbreaks, the world needs a global coordinating platform.




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Environmental Insights Interview with Nick Stern

An exclusive interview with Lord Nicholas Stern, one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change.

 




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Why Matter Matters: How Technology Characteristics Shape the Strategic Framing of Technologies

The authors investigate how the executives of the two largest research institutes for photovoltaic technologies — the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, USA and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) in Freiburg, Germany — have made use of public framing to secure funding and shape the technological development of solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies. The article shows that the executives used four framing dimensions (potential, prospect, performance, and progress) and three framing tactics (conclusion, conditioning, and concession), and that the choice of dimensions and tactics is tightly coupled to the characteristics of the specific technologies pursued by the research institutes.




ic

Geopolitical and Market Implications of Renewable Hydrogen: New Dependencies in a Low-Carbon Energy World

To accelerate the global transition to a low-carbon economy, all energy systems and sectors must be actively decarbonized. While hydrogen has been a staple in the energy and chemical industries for decades, renewable hydrogen is drawing increased attention today as a versatile and sustainable energy carrier with the potential to play an important piece in the carbon-free energy puzzle. Countries around the world are piloting new projects and policies, yet adopting hydrogen at scale will require innovating along the value chains; scaling technologies while significantly reducing costs; deploying enabling infrastructure; and defining appropriate national and international policies and market structures.

What are the general principles of how renewable hydrogen may reshape the structure of global energy markets? What are the likely geopolitical consequences such changes would cause? A deeper understanding of these nascent dynamics will allow policy makers and corporate investors to better navigate the challenges and maximize the opportunities that decarbonization will bring, without falling into the inefficient behaviors of the past.




ic

Harvard Business School Professor Rebecca Henderson Outlines Ways Organizations are Changing in Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic and Climate Change in New Edition of "Environmental Insights"

Rebecca Henderson, the John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, shared her perspectives on how large organizations are changing in response to the coronavirus pandemic and climate change in the newest episode of "Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program," a podcast produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. Listen to the interview here. Listen to the interview here.




ic

Transatlantic Dialogue: The Missing Link in Europe’s Post-Covid-19 Green Deal?

This policy brief emphasizes that the European Green Deal's effectiveness in a post Covid-19 world will require the involvement of strategic partners, especially the US. In the context of a potential US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the consequential vacuum, it will be even more important to engage the US in implementing the GD. In light of divergence between the US and the EU during past climate negotiations (e.g. Kyoto, Copenhagen, and Paris), we suggest a gradual approach to US engagement with GD initiatives and objectives.




ic

Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset In Disguise

The world is on the cusp of a geopolitical reset. The global pandemic could well undermine international institutions, reinforce nationalism and spur de-globalization. But far-sighted leadership could also rekindle cooperation, glimmers of which appeared in the G-20’s offer of debt relief for some of the world’s poorest countries, a joint plea from more than 200 former national leaders for a more coordinated pandemic response and an unprecedented multinational pact to arrest the crash in oil markets.  




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Low Prices, Full Storage Tanks: What's Next for the Oil Industry

When the economy slows, so does the demand for oil. Prices have plummeted and storage tanks are filled to capacity. We look at the future of the oil industry.




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Foreign policy experts call for end to hate crimes against Asian American community

Recent hate crimes and violent assaults against people of Asian descent should sound an alarm for America. Within the past couple of weeks alone, ac acid attack against a woman in Brooklyn caused her to suffer severe burns, and a man in Texas has been charged with attempted murder after attacking an Asian American family. Such stories have become disturbingly frequent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the FBI has warned that this trend may continue.

We, the undersigned, are alarmed by the severity of such hate crimes and race-based harassment against people of Asian descent in the United States - assaults that endanger the safety, well-being, dignity and livelihoods of all those targeted.




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So Do Morals Matter in U.S. Foreign Policy? I Asked the Expert.

In his new book, Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump, Joseph S. Nye developed a scorecard to determine how U.S. presidents since 1945 factored questions of ethics and morality into their foreign policy. In an interview, Henry Farrell asked him a few questions to get to the heart of his findings.




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This Virus Is Tough, but History Provides Perspective: The 1968 Pandemic and the Vietnam War

Nathaniel L. Moir recounts the events of 1968: The war in Vietnam and extensive civil unrest in the United States — and yet another big problem that made life harder. In 1968, the H3N2 pandemic killed more individuals in the United States than the combined total number of American fatalities during both the Vietnam and Korean Wars.




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How COVID-19 is Testing American Leadership

Joseph Nye suggests that a new U.S. administration might take a leaf from the success of the post-1945 American presidents that are described in Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump. The United States could launch a massive COVID-19 aid program like the Marshall Plan.




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Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset In Disguise

The world is on the cusp of a geopolitical reset. The global pandemic could well undermine international institutions, reinforce nationalism and spur de-globalization. But far-sighted leadership could also rekindle cooperation, glimmers of which appeared in the G-20’s offer of debt relief for some of the world’s poorest countries, a joint plea from more than 200 former national leaders for a more coordinated pandemic response and an unprecedented multinational pact to arrest the crash in oil markets.  




ic

What Caused the COVID-19 Testing Deficit?

As the divergent experiences of the US and South Korea show, testing can be the difference between disease containment and catastrophe. Rather than relying on national governments to ensure the rapid development, production, and deployment of diagnostics during outbreaks, the world needs a global coordinating platform.




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Some Trump Officials Take Harder Actions on China During Pandemic

Since the coronavirus spread from a metropolis on the Yangtze River across the globe, hard-liners in both Washington and Beijing have accelerated efforts to decouple elements of the relationship.




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Romney's Reckless China Rhetoric Risks New Cold War

Rachel Esplin Odell argues for a wiser and more conservative strategy that resists the temptation to exaggerate the challenge posed by China.




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We May Be Dramatically Overestimating China’s Capabilities

The outbreak in Wuhan of the novel coronavirus shows how ragged and disorderly the Chinese police state was in the initial weeks of the pandemic. Beijing’s response was to suppress and manipulate information, at home and abroad. Trump administration officials have painted this as a Chinese plot against the West, but it looks more like a frantic effort by a one-party state to survive a domestic crisis.




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The Politics of Climate Change: A Conversation with Joseph Aldy

Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, speaks with Joseph Aldy, professor of the practice of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School. The discussion covers Aldy's experience in government service, and the prospects for meaningful and effective climate change policy in the United States.




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Greener Stimulus? Economic Recovery and Climate Policy

In this edition of Columbia Energy Exchange, host Jason Bordoff and Professor Joseph Aldy explore the role of climate-change and broader environmental policy in the U.S. federal government’s emergency economic stimulus funding package.




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Factoring Pandemic Risks into Financial Modelling

Today’s economic crisis leaves us with an unsettling and perplexing regret. Why weren’t financial portfolios already adjusted for risks that stem from health events such as pandemics? After all, financial portfolios are adjusted for liquidity risks, market risks, credit risks, and even operational and political risks.




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What Economics Can Say about an Effective Response to the Coronavirus

In a recent podcast interview, Robert Stavins and Scott Barrett discussed lessons from historic pandemics, how economists can help with policymaking surrounding the coronavirus, and what the “post-pandemic economic equilibrium” might look like. Resources Magazine has published an abridged version of their conversation.




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Cost Effectiveness Analysis and Finding the Best Policies to Fight COVID-19

Robert Stavins: Cost Effectiveness Analysis and Finding the Best Policies to Fight COVID-19