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Welcome to the twelfth 2021 edition of The Nett Report. We began publishing this report in 2020 to provide our clients and friends with new perspectives and insights in hopes of stimulating creative thinking. Please feel free to forward to a colleague! Links to the 2020 reports can be found here and the 2021 reports here.

 
 

 
 

The Political Divide

100 democracy scholars warn democracy is at risk

The June 1, 2021, issue of Letters from an American reported that more than 100 scholars who study democracy have issued a letter warning that “our entire democracy is now at risk.” The letter says that new laws in several states have created “political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.” They urged Congress “to do whatever is necessary … to guarantee the vote to all Americans equally, and prevent state legislatures from manipulating the rules in order to manufacture the result they want. Our democracy is fundamentally at stake.”


Vaccination rates clearly show the political divide

You don’t have to look farther than a graphic about the vaccination rates of U.S. states to see the impact of the political divide. States that went to Trump in the 2020 election show the lowest rates of vaccination and those that went to Biden show the highest rates. In the graphic below, created by NPR for a June 9, 2021, story, the states are visualized by population size with the highest vaccination rates on the right and the lowest on the left side of the graphic. Data came from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and is for percentage of the state’s population age 18 and older that has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

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Government database used by anti-vaxxers to scare the public

A May 26, 2021, article in Science points out the misuse of information in a government database that has been used to scare the public. The public database, known as VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, collects reports of side effects possibly caused by vaccines. This database is really just a radar screen for scientists to identify trends that might be of concern. Just because a condition is reported to the database doesn’t mean it was caused by the vaccination. However, anti-vaccination activists have been using the database to claim the vaccine caused the reported events.

 
 
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Climate Change

“If we don’t have a healthy planet, we can’t have a healthy humanity.”
Kevin Johnson, CEO, Starbucks


Carbon dioxide hits record high despite pandemic

Even though the Covid pandemic throttled the global economy, dramatically reduced transportation, and limited any number of activities that require energy, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a new record high. According to a June 7, 2021, article in the Washington Post and numerous other publications, “turning the tide of climate change will take even more massive efforts over a much longer period of time.” “Fossil fuel burning is really at the heart of this. If we don’t tackle fossil fuel burning, the problem is not going to go away,” said Ralph Keeling, a geochemist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, adding that the world ultimately will have to make emissions cuts that are “much larger and sustained than anything that happened during the pandemic.”


Environmental issues slow industrial solar development

According to a June 4, 2021, story in the Wall Street Journal, efforts to develop industrial scale solar in desert areas have run into opposition from environmentalists who are also ardent supporters of solar. A current battleground is the 14-square-mile Battle Born Solar Project in California's Mojave Desert which would be the largest industrial solar project in the nation, the size of 7,000 football fields. Environmentalists say the project will destroy the land forever. “Their objections range from a desire to keep the land unspoiled to protection for endangered species to concerns that their views would no longer be as beautiful.”


Gates and Buffet to build nuclear reactor in Wyoming

Even while tensions rise between those who want to build industrial solar and rooftop solar advocates, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are planning to build a nuclear reactor in Wyoming. According to a June 2, 2021, story in The Guardian, TerraPower, founded by Gates, and PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, have joined to build the first Natrium nuclear reactor on the site of a retiring coal plant. The story says that “small advanced reactors, which run on different fuels to traditional reactors, are regarded by some as a critical carbon-free technology than can supplement intermittent power sources like wind and solar as states strive to cut emissions that cause climate change.” Experts have said the new technology is riskier than traditional reactors and more of a target for militants looking to create a crude nuclear weapon.


Will zinc batteries replace lithium-ion batteries?

According to a May 27, 2021, article in Science, promising work is underway to replace lithium-ion batteries with ones made of zinc. If historical issues with using zinc batteries can be overcome, the batteries will replace ones that require lithium, a rare metal, is expensive and must use a flammable electrolyte. Zinc is nontoxic, cheap and abundant. More than 1,000 papers on the issue have been published in the last year, an indication of the intensity of research on the technology.


Oil company becomes the largest offshore wind firm

As the world transitions from using fossil fuels for energy to renewables, it is inevitable that oil, natural gas and coal producers will either go out of business or transition to renewable firms. One company, the Danish Oil and Gas Company, has already made the switch. Once specializing in offshore oil production in the North Sea, it has now been renamed Orsted AS and become the world's largest developer of offshore wind energy,” according to a June 8, 2021, story in the Wall Street Journal. The story says it is one of “a handful of once-small energy companies that have grown after pivoting from fossil fuels to renewables, including Spain’s Iberdrola SA, Italy’s Enel SA and America’s NextEra Energy Inc.” Helping oil companies transition their capital assets from fossil fuels to renewables is a challenge that could reap huge climate rewards.


The U.S. west is exporting scarce water overseas via alfalfa

Even while the U.S. west plunges deeper into its 20-year period of drought, U.S. farmers are exporting scarce water supplies to China, Japan and Saudi Arabia through shipments of alfalfa. Alfalfa is the largest agricultural user of water in California. According to a June 6, 2021, story in Grist, as much as 17% of the U.S. alfalfa crop is shipped around the world. In addition, a Saudi Arabian firm called Almarai has purchased 1,700 acres of land in the Palo Verde Valley to secure a supply of alfalfa for its dairy cows. “Soon after,” Grift reports, “Saudi Arabia began phasing out domestic alfalfa production to preserve its water supplies, which were dwindling after years of overuse for agriculture … But the company is far from alone. Foreign corporations are increasingly purchasing land in the U.S.; in the Southwest, thanks to longstanding laws on water rights, these purchases often come with unlimited access to the valuable water underneath the soil.”


Himalayas predicted to lose two-thirds of ice by 2100

While the American west continues to struggle with a multi-decade period of drought that began in 1999, Asia’s Himalayan mountains are predicted to “lose up to two-thirds of its ice by 2100, causing water and food shortages for over two billion people in the downstream river basins of South and East Asia, according to a new report by the United Nations Development Program.

 
 

 
 

The Future of Work / The Economy

“The investment business is all about great judgement, and you cannot have that unless you have a diversity of experiences and backgrounds and cultures. At Carlyle, we’ve studied this. We can see diversity drives better results. Among our portfolio companies, those with diverse boards grow 12% faster than those without.”  
Kewsong Lee, CEO, The Carlyle Group


Ransomware negotiators seek reductions in ransoms

Although you don’t want to think it will happen to you, companies that are attacked by ransomware can access negotiators experienced in responding to such attacks and seeking a reduction in the ransom. A June 1, 2021, story in Fortune, reports that the hackers are “bad guys trying to be business people … As long as you pretend with them that this is just a normal business transaction, it goes better.”


Fortune 500 survey identifies diversity leaders

On June 3, 2021, CEO Daily reported on an exercise to obtain diversity data from the Fortune 500. 256 companies on the 500 list responded. The companies were asked to provide diversity data along 14 key metrics, “including things like percentage of minorities on boards, percentage of employees who are women or Black, Hispanic or Asian, etc.” Here are the top five from the top 20 list. You can find the entire list here.

1. Microsoft (No.15 on the 500 list)

2. Centene (No.24 on the 500)

3. Target (No.30 on the 500)

4. Gap (No.221 on the 500)

5. Biogen (No.228 on the 500)

 
 

 
 

Covid-19

WHO creates new naming convention for Covid variants

We hear it all the time on the news, the U.K. variant, the South African variant, and most recently the Delta variant. To avoid the stigmatization of regions associated with these names, the World Health Organization (WHO) has come up with a new naming system based on Greek letters, with the sequence matching the order of discovery. According to a story in The Guardian on May 31, 2021, U.K is now the Alpha variant, South Africa is the Beta variant, and the India variant is now the Delta variant.

 
 

 
 

The Nett Light-Side

Gray whale swam halfway around the world to Namibia

An endangered western gray whale normally found in the North Pacific off Alaska or Russia has been found off the coast of Namibia in Southern Africa. According to PHYS.ORG, in a June 9, 2021, story, the species has never been seen off that coast before and only about 200 of the species remain.


Magic tricks that fool humans didn’t fool birds

According to the June 2, 2021, issue of Science Alert, a series of magic tricks that fooled humans didn’t fool a group of Eurasian jays. “A series of tests involving both birds and people showed that the jays were less easily fooled than people by sleight of hand techniques that involved expected motion rather than actual motion – a sign that they don't anticipate actions such as grabbing in the same way that we do.” The trick involved a worm that either was or wasn’t passed from hand-to-hand. The jays were trained to peck at the hand holding the food and did better than humans on two of three different techniques.


Surfer almost high-fives great white shark

This short video in Adventure Journal is a good briefing on white sharks in California coastal waters and contains footage of a surfer going for a wave oblivious to a shark that he nearly touches as he paddles forward.


Surfing big waves on snow skis

Surfing 30-to-50-foot waves like Mavericks near Half Moon Bay is a world-class challenge even for the best surfers. It wasn’t enough for one guy. He decided to do it on snow skis. Check out the video in this January 18, 2021, story in Adventure Journal.


Big Picture Photo Competition

I can’t help it. Wildlife photos intrigue me. Maybe because I want to have taken them. Here’s yet another compilation of photos, these from the 2021 Big Picture Competition.

 
 

 
 

Nettleton Strategies - Helping You Navigate the Big Reset

This is a challenging time for all of us, in a way we have never experienced before. If you would like help navigating your way forward, contact us to learn how we can help!


Carl Nettleton is an award-winning writeracclaimed speaker, facilitator, and a subject-matter expert regarding water, climate, sustainability, the ocean, and binational U.S. Mexico border affairs. Founded in 2007, Nettleton Strategies is a trusted source of analysis and advice on issues at the forefront of public policy, business and the environment.

 
 

 
 
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Nettleton Strategies

P.O. Box 22971
San Diego, Ca 92192-2971
U.S.A.
+1 858-353-5489
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