Disasters

In the wake of Hurricane Maria, there is an opportunity for Puerto Rico to reconstruct its energy infrastructure to be more resilient and efficient. However, if short-term rebuilding is prioritized over long-term restructuring, this critical window will be missed.

Puerto Rico faced immense challenges even before the devastation from Hurricane Maria. Its economy is 15 percent smaller now than it was ten years ago, and the latest high frequency indicators from the (bankrupt) Government Development Bank indicate the economy was falling by about 2 percent a year going into September. About 10 percent of Puerto Rico’s population has left in the last ten years—and the pace of outmigration has picked up recently, with about 2 percent of the population leaving in recent years. Its pension system had been paying benefits by selling assets, and it basically has no more assets to sell. Its medical system was running off a grant from the Affordable Care Act, and that too is about to run out. Serious fiscal austerity was about to start. And now Puerto Rico appears on the edge of an acute humanitarian catastrophe. The electrical grid is down, and expected to remain down for some time. Without electricity, many critical services are hard to provide. Providing enough fuel access to run the secondary generators in all of the hospitals is a major challenge. The water utility needs electricity to run its pumps and waste water treatment facilities. Clean water is short in some places. Food too. And no doubt there are many other acute problems that need to be solved to keep the current humanitarian crisis from becoming a full-on catastrophe. Puerto Rico's future finances aren't the most pressing problem to address right now. But the discussion about how Maria will impact Puerto Rico’s economy and finances clearly has started, and I wanted to make four initial observations: There is no way Puerto Rico can pay its debts right now. And thankfully, Puerto Rico already had a framework (as a result of PROMESA) that provides Puerto Rico with protection from creditor litigation while it struggles to recover. Most of the major Puerto Rican public entities were effectively operating under Chapter 9 style bankruptcy protection (title III of PROMESA) before Maria. I would not be surprised if the water authority also seeks protection now. With the approval of the oversight board, Puerto Rico can zero out debt service for the next few years and divert all available cash to cover its critical short-term needs. And over time PROMESA’s court supervised restructuring process should allow Puerto Rico to reduce its legacy debts significantly; the bonds generally thought to have the best legal claim on Puerto Rico now trade at around fifty cents on the dollar. Puerto Rico’s humanitarian crisis is likely to quickly turn into a budget crisis. Sales tax collections will disappear for several months. Income tax collections will be way down. Tourism over the winter will fall, along with associated revenues. Even with the FEMA waiver of cost-sharing on emergency help, Puerto Rico looks to be facing a budget hole thanks to lost tax revenues. (A super technical point, but the mechanics of the sales tax pledge on the sales tax-backed [COFINA] bonds matter; the oversight board is seeking to adjust the COFINA pledge, which would help).*  Obviously, there is tremendous uncertainty right now, but I would bet the budget hole is larger than what can be covered by zeroing out projected debt service this year and next in the current fiscal plan (debt service is $400 million this year, $560 million next year, and around $700 million in FY 2020) and drawing on any budget reserve. Cutting the budget further in response to falling revenues would only add to the economic devastation. There should be a mix of emergency federal funds and/or the use of the PROMESA provisions that effectively allow the board to authorize debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing (the board can prioritize payments on new debt) to cover any immediate shortfall in tax revenues. Pulling forward future revenue to cover the current hole though will require further adjustments to the fiscal plan, as it obviously creates a fiscal shortfall later. I suspect the Oversight Board—which already has authorized the Governor to shift a billion dollars across agencies to meet emergency needs—understands this.  Federal reconstruction funds will help Puerto Rico to rebuild a portion of its public infrastructure. But that alone won’t be enough to assure long-term recovery. Puerto Rico will struggle I suspect to meet the requirement for a local match on new infrastructure investments to build long-term resilience (unless the requirement is waived).** And private businesses also need to decide to rebuild rather than relocate. I worry that the multinational companies that are the mainstay of Puerto Rico's pharmaceutical sector will migrate to other tax-favored jurisdictions: Ireland offers comparable tax advantages these days, and less hurricane risk.*** And I worry that many Puerto Ricans will decide that the time has come to migrate to Florida, to New York, or to a less traditional destination. That will further reduce Puerto Rico’s long-run economic potential. The provision of emergency help to Puerto Rico should not be controversial (even if the disaster relief fund has funds left over from Harvey and Irma, there will need to be another appropriation soon). There also needs to be a discussion of how the federal government’s current fiscal bargain with Puerto Rico needs to change. Right now low income Puerto Ricans with children are effectively disadvantaged by the tax system if they work in Puerto Rico rather than in Florida (or any of the 50 states), as Puerto Rican workers do not qualify for the earned income tax credit (EITC). And right now the Medicaid funding formula provides Puerto Rico with less support than it would get if it were a state, though care should be taken to assure that new Medicaid funds go to improving access to healthcare in Puerto Rico—not to bondholders.**** Addressing such discrepancies seems like low-hanging fruit and the budget cost is actually very modest (nothing at all compared to the cost of many tax changes now under discussion). Remember that Puerto Ricans can already access these federal funds if they migrate off island, but then their work won’t support the reconstruction of Puerto Rico. No doubt there are other ideas too—ideas that would go beyond providing low income Puerto Ricans equal access to federal funding and that would move toward providing special incentives to encourage investment and industry.***** But there should be no doubt that Puerto Rico needs help. Today. And over the next 10 years. * Sales tax funds traditionally have flowed into the COFINA trust fund before going into the budget—so sales tax funds only arrive in the budget after all the funds needed to make bond payments for the full year are set aside. That traditionally creates a hole in the budget from July to December. But, well, if sales tax receipts fall sharply, almost all of this year’s collections could go to the COFINA trust fund, with very little flowing into the budget until late in the year, if at all. (And to make this more complicated, the incremental sales tax revenue from the 2015 sales tax hike flows directly to the budget, this is only true for a portion of the sales tax proceeds—welcome to the wonderful world of securitization of general government revenues). ** The bond holders of the power company are offering to provide DIP financing to help PREPA meet the federal match, but only if some of their old bonds are also given priority. The second part may be a stumbling block; from afar, I would guess there might be less expensive ways to get DIP financing.  *** For corporate income tax purposes Puerto Rico is outside the United States, so the pharmaceutical industry can defer U.S. income tax on the “foreign” profit they earn on their Puerto Rican operations (which can be structured as controlled foreign corporations). **** Money is fungible, and there is an argument that the existing confirmed budget already covers essential medical care, so any new federal funds would be available for bond holders. I am no lawyer, but I would think creative legal drafting could limit the risk that new federal funds would be used for purposes other than raising access to medical care relative to the baseline in the current approved budget.  ***** Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal oped page, Dan Drezner, Vox, and others are all arguing for exempting Puerto Rico from the Jones Act—a completely reasonable proposal. But in my view the long-term impact of a Jones Act waiver would likely be fairly modest. The Jones Act unquestionably raises the cost of shipping goods from the U.S. to Puerto Rico, but it doesn't seem to raise the cost of shipping back to the U.S. (the ships have a lot of excess space on the return journey, as they sail back roughly 20 percent full: see this GAO report, page 17. The GAO report also offers a ton of institutional detail, including maps showing shipping routes to Puerto Rico). While permanently lifting the Jones Act would clearly provide a one-off increase to real income in Puerto Rico by lowering the cost of goods "imported" from the U.S., in my view, it isn't likely to be sufficient to overcome the disadvantages of geography or fundamentally change Puerto Rico’s economic trajectory.

Inventories play a crucial role in oil and gas commodity markets by smoothing out short term dislocations and sudden changes in demand. The historically high inventory levels lingering from the after effects of a global market share war that has been raging since 2014 helped mute potential shortages from emerging in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. The hurricane initially knocked out roughly four million barrels a day (b/d) of U.S. refining capacity, pipelines, and over a million b/d in U.S. domestic oil production, including offshore output as well as 300,000 to 500,000 b/d from south Texas onshore fields inhibited by flooding for several days. Oil and gas infrastructure requires electricity, workforce availability and safety conditions to operate. While some of the shuttered oil and gas facilities are now coming back on line, the broad physical toll of Harvey’s severe weather event warrants revisiting of the policies surrounding both commercial and strategic inventory management. Just over half of all U.S. refining capacity is located on the U.S. Gulf coast, which is seasonally prone to hurricanes. A reevaluation of inventory policy is particularly important given the United States’ newfound role as a major exporter of oil and gas. In preparation for the storm, close to fourteen refineries fully shut down production around the Houston area. The geographic range of the shutdowns ranged from Corpus Christi, where five refineries were shut down, to Beaumont and Port Arthur, where three refineries went offline. This included Motiva’s 603,000 b/d Port Arthur facility, which is the nation’s largest refinery. As of September 7, the U.S. Department of Energy [PDF] reported that six refineries in the Gulf coast were still shut down and five were just in the process of restarting. At least two ExxonMobil refineries suffered structural damage during the hurricane. U.S. national security can be enhanced by embracing the country’s emerging export role. The Donald J. Trump administration is looking to leverage the opportunity created by U.S. oil and gas exports to assert global energy “dominance.” But for U.S. industry and the United States to benefit to the fullest from its status as a major global oil power, it needs to shore up its bonafides as a secure and reliable supplier. That means forging a stronger link between private and public management of inventories needed to keep oil and gas flowing even in the face of natural disasters and other kinds of supply emergencies. My research with co-authors Colin Carter and Daniel Scheitrum shows that there has been a significant substitution effect between private commercial crude oil inventories and public inventories over the past two decades in the United States. We also found that inventory patterns are changing rapidly as the shale revolution and related export flows have altered oil, gas, and refined products pipeline flows around the United States in ways that are changing the calculus between public and private oil stockpiling activities. For example, reversed pipelines to bring U.S. domestic production down to Gulf coast refiners have meant that access to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) for mid-continent refineries is now limited, propelling local refineries to carry higher working inventory. California’s pipeline access to SPR releases is similarly inhibited and has been under study at the federal level. California’s refiners have not increased inventory holdings to sufficiently cover for occasional accidental supply outages, leading to billions of dollars in burdensome fuel premiums being paid by the public. The brief Harvey-related cut off of the Colonial Pipeline, a main artery to bring gasoline to the northern United States from the Gulf coast, turned out to be less severe than similar problems during Hurricane Rita and Katrina partly due to its brevity and availability of local buffer commercial inventories but also given changing trade flows. Earlier this summer, Colonial Pipeline was experiencing lower than usual shipments to the U.S. Northeast as rising oil demand from Mexico and Latin America pulled more U.S. Gulf coast gasoline and diesel exports southward. In other words, a significant portion of the U.S. Gulf coast refining disruption affected U.S. refined product export volumes, which had been averaging 532,000 b/d for gasoline and 1.1 million b/d for diesel in July. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the General Accounting Office (GAO) have been studying how best to upgrade current SPR infrastructure given changes in the U.S. oil industry and the fact that some of the SPR’s current surface equipment is approaching its technical end of life, raising the chances of equipment failures. Among the questions being asked are: what is the appropriate size for the SPR over time as U.S. oil import levels shrink and also what kinds of upgrades are needed to maintain the system’s broader regional effectiveness. What will help the Trump administration in its current efforts to rethink SPR policy will be the fact that industry now has a greater incentive to ensure that its global image as a secure and reliable supplier is not damaged by poor logistics planning. In other words, policy makers may now have a unique opportunity to reshape the public-private partnership role in inventory management, taking into account the rising importance of the United States’ new role as a global energy exporter. A 2014 National Petroleum Council study entitled Enhancing Emergency Preparedness for Natural Disasters highlighted the importance of coordination between government and private sector leadership in emergency fuel preparedness and implementation. An important lesson from Hurricane Harvey may be that the U.S. emergency preparedness system, including the SPR, needs more flexibility, regional diversity, and enhanced private sector participation. As the Trump administration looks to consider how privatization could best be applied to emergency fuel management, it can look to Europe’s paradigm of combining coordinated mandated requirements for minimum private sector holdings of refined product stocks with more limited public holdings of crude oil for insights on how the SPR system could be reformed to meet the changing U.S. energy outlook. The European system allows for a more interactive coordination between private industry holdings and public policy. There is no question that a more flexible system that combines refiner products stocks and federal government crude oil stores would be beneficial, especially if U.S. import levels decline as expected. The Trump administration could also investigate whether any shale producers around the country could serve as flexible suppliers during a long term national emergency, perhaps through a public tender pre-payment system to purchase incremental local production for emergency release through a funding system for incremental drilling and well completions. Flexibility and public private partnership should be important elements to improving the SPR system. The current Congressional authorization targets up to one billion barrels to be held in the SPR, a level which may now seem arbitrary in light of changing market dynamics. The Trump administration has proposed selling off 270 million barrels of the reserve's current 687.7 million barrels over the next decade as part of a budget plan. The ultimate size of emergency stocks must represent enough to replace U.S. oil imports for 90 days in order to meet its obligations—together with U.S. allies such as Europe, Canada, Japan, and South Korea—under the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) coordinated emergency response measures for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) membership. There is currently much uncertainty about what level U.S. imports will average in ten years. In light of recent experiences from natural disasters, which can range from hurricanes to flooding events to wildfires, geographic distribution of national emergency stockpiles needs to be given higher consideration in any revamp of the future U.S. preparedness system. Upgrades to the existing public-private emergency preparedness partnership should also consider how to protect the United States’ oil and gas export role to avoid losses in market share during outages. By thoughtfully rejiggering the existing system, the Trump administration might be able to save the tax-payer money, protect U.S. export market share, and wind up with a better, more reliable emergency response.

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Theresa Lou, Gabriella Meltzer, Ayumi Teraoka, and Gabriel Walker look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. Sri Lanka reeling from massive flooding and mudslides. Sri Lanka is currently experiencing its heaviest rains in twenty-five years, leading to flooding and landslides that have devastated twenty-one out of the country’s twenty-five districts. The death toll as of today has reached nearly seventy people, over 300,000 have been displaced from their homes, and 220 families are still reported missing beneath the mud, which in some places reaches up to thirty feet. The Sri Lankan army is working tirelessly to relocate communities to roughly 600 temporary shelters across the country housed in schools and temples, as well as to provide food and clean water. More rains are expected to come with the approach of the cyclical monsoon season from May through September in the south, followed by one in the north from December through February. On Thursday, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera commented that there will be an urgent, long-term need for water purification tablets, water pumps, and drinking water following the disaster. 2. Tsai Ing-wen assumes presidency of the Republic of China. On Friday, Tsai, a former law professor who is the leader of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was inaugurated as the first woman and second DPP member to serve as president of the island. In her inauguration address (transcript, recording), Tsai made it clear that addressing economic challenges—like youth unemployment and a risk of falling behind in regional integration—would be the first task of her presidency. She also advocated recalibrating cross-Strait relations with a recognition that both Taiwan and mainland China are in very different positions than they were twenty-five years ago. It takes two to tango, though, and it’s not clear Beijing is on board. Tsai and the DPP-controlled legislature have a difficult task ahead, and failure to deliver on campaign promises may lead to disillusionment, particularly among youth. Despite this, Tsai’s election—concurrent with the first non-Kuomintang (Taiwan’s other major party) majority in the legislature—is a reminder that Taiwanese democracy has matured and consolidated since the transition from Kuomintang dictatorship in the late 1980s. 3. Trafficking of Vietnamese women expands across Asia. The patterns of movement for women and girls trafficked from Vietnam to other parts of Asia are shifting. According to the Pacific Links Foundation, which works on counter-trafficking in the Asia-Pacific region, the majority of victims end up in China as brides, factory laborers, or prostitutes. Other destinations, including Cambodia and Malaysia, have also become increasingly common. Chinese demand for Vietnamese brides is largely attributed to skewed gender ratios that persist as a result of the one-child policy and historical preferences for sons. New concerns have also emerged that greater economic integration between ASEAN nations will lead not only to money and goods circulating more freely, but also to traffickers operating more easily. Trafficking patterns within Vietnam itself are also changing; historically many women and girls were taken from northern provinces near the Chinese border, but now trafficking appears to be originating in sites across the country. The use of violence and drugging by abduction networks has also increased. 4. Public distrust mounts as Tokyo governor’s scandals grow. Controversies continued this week surrounding the Tokyo Metropolitan Governor Yoichi Masuzoe’s alleged use of public funds for personal items—ranging from using an official vehicle almost every weekend for family trips to purchasing oil paintings online. The manner in which Masuzoe dealt with these allegations only exacerbated the situation: he first admitted the use of 450,000 yen ($4,000) for hotel stays and use of high-end restaurants last week, and then further admitted to using political funds for paintings and other “research materials” to the tune of more than 9 million yen ($82,000) this week. Masuzoe has also spent 213 million yen ($1.9 million) on overseas trips in his two years in office, more than double that spent by one of his predecessors, Shintaro Ishihara. Senior officials from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which backed Masuzoe in the 2014 gubernatorial election, expressed criticism as they prepare for the upcoming national election this summer. Despite a total of 4,600 angry telephone calls and emails, including some demanding his resignation, Masuzoe insists on staying in office and regaining “trust through my work.” Masuzoe announced today that his expense reports will henceforth be scrutinized by third-party lawyers. Yet given the fact that Masuzoe’s predecessor, Naoki Inose, quickly resigned over allegations of election fundraising irregularities, it will likely take more than third-party involvement to regain public trust if Masuzoe wishes to stay in office. 5. North Korea losing faith in its sole ally. Recent interviews of North Koreans hint that the Hermit Kingdom may be increasingly paranoid about China, the North’s most important patron. Forged on the fronts of the Korean War, the relationship between North Korea and China has traditionally been referred to as close as “lips and teeth.” But relations have deteriorated. Pyongyang’s brazen behavior—such as the nuclear test in January and repeated missile launches—have reduced Beijing’s tolerance, evidenced by China’s support for the adoption of the strongest-ever sanctions against North Korea in UN Security Council Resolution 2270. President Xi Jinping’s unprecedented decision to visit South Korea twice before having first visited North Korea exemplifies Xi’s displeasure toward Kim Jong-un. And the feeling seems mutual. Kim is reportedly wary that China will “trade away [North Korea’s] interests” for other strategic benefits. Though strained ties between the two countries is almost certainly bad news for North Korea, which depends heavily on China for food and fuel, it offers a unique window of opportunity for further U.S.-China cooperation on addressing the North Korean issue. Bonus: Red is the color of love. Some traditional Chinese marriage practices date back thousands of years—and others are just being invented. This week, groom Li Yunpeng and bride Chen Xuanchi commemorated their wedding night by hand-copying the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) constitution. Their hard work was about more than romance, however: it was a studious effort to follow the nationwide “Copy the CPC Constitution for 100 days” campaign that is encouraging party members to transcribe the more than 15,000-character document and post pictures of their results online. A broad national education campaign focusing on the study of the CPC constitution launched in February targets party members with “wavering confidence in communism and socialism with Chinese characteristics” and “those who advocate Western values, violate Party rules, work inefficiently or behave unethically.” Though it is unclear whether Li and Chen actually finished copying the document, it is unlikely anyone will doubt the couple’s revolutionary fervor and work ethic after seeing their wedding photos. And luckily they should still have the first ninety-nine days of their married life to finish the grueling task.

Daniel P. Aldrich is professor of political science and public policy and co-director of Northeastern University’s Security and Resilience Studies Program. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011, many believed that Japan would use the incident to rethink its energy plans, particularly nuclear energy policies. For more than four decades Japan has sought to create one of the world’s most advanced commercial nuclear industries, complete with fuel recycling and mixed oxide fuel use. Yet, since retaking power in 2012, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) remains strongly committed to nuclear power after the nuclear meltdowns. Why has Japan stayed the course while other nations have abandoned nuclear power? The LDP’s energy policy released in June last year called for nuclear power to supply about 20 percent of Japan’s electricity by 2030, and Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Motoo Hayashi confirmed that Japan will continue with its closed fuel cycle policy based on reprocessing. Prior to Fukushima, about 30 percent of Japan’s electricity was generated by nuclear power, and Japan’s 2010 Basic Energy Plan called for nuclear power’s share to increase to 50 percent by 2030. To accomplish this modernization, Japan pursued a closed nuclear fuel cycle, including fast breeder reactors (FBRs), mixed oxide fuel (MOX), and spent fuel reprocessing. It also created large subsidies for rural communities willing to host the plants. Today, except for the downsizing of the relative share of nuclear in Japan’s overall energy mix, little has changed in government thinking about Japan’s nuclear program since the 3/11 disaster. Japan’s policy continuity in the field of nuclear energy stands in contrast to other countries. For example, Germany and Switzerland both decided to phase out nuclear power after Fukushima, despite having relatively high dependence on nuclear energy. Well before Fukushima, France dropped its Superphenix FBR program, and the United States stopped fast reactor and fuel reprocessing development efforts due to technical challenges, high costs, and concerns about safety. Despite suffering the second worst commercial nuclear accident in history, only behind Chernobyl, Tokyo policymakers are working hard to keep Japan’s nuclear sector on track. Three factors keep the Japanese administration intent on restarting nuclear power: a media which fails to function as a watchdog, strong pressure from the nuclear industry and the business community, and a lack of sustained opposition from civil society and elected officials. Where media organizations in Europe covered nuclear accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima and pushed their decision makers to think through potential accidents at home, Japanese news agencies rarely questioned their country’s ability to prevent accidents. Instead, leading newspapers beginning in the 1950s advocated for nuclear power and ran op-eds written by pro-nuclear officials as news stories. Post-Fukushima, only anti-nuclear groups such as the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (CNIC) and occasional op-eds in the Asahi and Yomiuri Shimbun pushed Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government to explain Fukushima’s failure. Furthermore, the media did not question the government on the slow release of critical information about radioactive contamination in the days and weeks after 3/11. For example, only after foreign media called the Fukushima disaster a fuel meltdown did Japanese newspapers acknowledge a fuel meltdown at Fukushima. Few in Japan’s media saw their role as countering the state’s longstanding position on nuclear safety. Next, Japan’s businesses see the restart of nuclear power plants as critical to their competitiveness and to Japan’s economic success. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun regularly published polls where companies threatened to relocate overseas if cheap and uninterrupted power was not guaranteed. Keidanren, the Japan Business Federation, has openly argued that “...the process for restarting nuclear power plants must thus be accelerated to the maximum extent possible…” and that the “...establishment of a [closed] nuclear fuel cycle is essential.” Abe’s cabinet has similarly supported nuclear power because of claims that it is stable and cost effective. In contrast, German businesses did little to push back against the government’s Energiewende (energy transition) away from nuclear power, and U.S. businesses have kept a low profile on the issue of energy. Finally, the public has yet again voted the LDP into office despite public opinion polls consistently showing that the Japanese public opposes continued use of nuclear power. The LDP handily won in national elections to gain control of both Houses of the Japanese Diet. Shinzo Abe’s party remains a staunch advocate of civilian nuclear power, pushing for reactor restarts and closed fuel cycle development. His government’s coalition partner, Komeito, contrary to campaign pledges to seek “zero nuclear power,” dampened its rhetoric once back in office, and in subsequent elections, voters have not punished the LDP or the Komeito for their energy policy stance. The most visible critics of the government’s nuclear power policies came from outside established political parties.  Retired former prime ministers such as Junichiro Koizumi and Morihiro Hosokawa have tried to rally anti-nuclear sentiment, but have not been able to move the debate on energy.  Moreover, opposition parties have failed to weaken the LDP’s grip on power regardless of their stance on nuclear power. The only political party that has regularly and openly criticized Japan’s nuclear power program – the Japanese Communist Party –has little chance of winning general elections. Residents of municipalities close to nuclear power plants have filed class action lawsuits to move the needle on the nuclear issue, but the response of Japan’s courts has been mixed. The Otsu District Court, for example, shut down Takahama reactors 3 and 4 in early March 2016 citing insufficient information on the government’s safety precautions in the wake of the Fukushima meltdowns. This follows the earlier Fukui Court injunction in April 2015 that briefly prevented Kansai Electric Power Company from restarting the units, arguing that the new safety regulations were inadequate. Not all courts have been sympathetic to antinuclear activists, however.  In early April 2016, the Fukuoka High Court rejected a lawsuit that would have suspended operation of the Sendai plants, and the Fukui court later lifted its own injunction. These mixed rulings from the regional courts reveal how divided Japan remains on the nuclear issue. Strong and rising support for Prime Minister Abe suggests little incentive for the current government to revisit Japan’s energy choices. This summer’s elections may yet again prove that voters continue to prioritize other issues, especially the economy, over nuclear energy at the ballot box. The government may have cooled some opposition by creating a new nuclear regulator, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), which has carried out thorough restart inspections and has exercised discretion over the licensing of reactors. Meanwhile, cleanup and decontamination of Fukushima continues. Restoring Japan’s nuclear power capacity will take several years, perhaps even decades, giving the government and civil society time to debate and explore other energy policy options. Regular polls since the disaster show that the majority of Japanese oppose nuclear restarts and sympathetic court rulings indicate that some judges are siding with the populace. The Japanese government and media should explore the public’s anti-nuclear sentiment more fully as it considers its nuclear future. The environmental and social costs of the Fukushima meltdowns, an event which displaced tens of thousands from towns like Futaba and Tomioka and affected the livelihoods and mental health of many more, suggest the need for altering Japan’s basic energy approach. Looking solely at the management of Japan’s nuclear reactors, continued attention to public concerns is needed. In towns and villages that host nuclear reactors, residents’ opposition might decrease if they were given an actual voice during the restart processes, rather than merely a pro forma chance to write down their concerns. Additionally, the government must consider a more practical fuel cycle policy if it is to ease concerns within Japan as well as abroad. This would involve pausing attempts at reprocessing and speeding up the deployment of dry cask storage for spent nuclear fuel, either at reactor sites or in consolidated facilities, to reduce proliferation and terrorism risks. Traumatic events like Fukushima provide policy makers with the chance to reexamine fundamentally choices made far in the past, and we can only hope that Japan’s policymakers will take full advantage of this moment.

Over the past month, there has been a lot of “China drama.” The volatility in the Chinese stock market, the yuan devaluation, and now the Tianjin warehouse explosion have all raised China chatter to a new level of anxiety. Some of the anxiety is understandable. These events have real consequences—above all for the Chinese people. At the urging of the Chinese government, tens of millions of Chinese moved to stake their fortunes not on real estate but on the stock market—the most unfortunate used their real estate as leverage to invest in the market and are now desperate for some good news. The Tianjin warehouse explosion has thus far left 121 Chinese dead, more than seven hundred injured, and over fifty still missing. Globally, the yuan devaluation has triggered a rate rethink by central bankers in Europe and the United States, and the stock market slide has contributed to steep drops in Asian and U.S. markets. Events such as these in any country would garner international attention. In the case of China, however, the noise around such events is amplified by the absence of three mitigating factors: Transparency. A lack of transparency in China compounds the challenge of understanding what is going on. What, for example, is behind China’s devaluation of the yuan? Is it part of Beijing’s bid to push forward on its economic reforms by making the currency more responsive to the market? Is it an effort to persuade the International Monetary Fund that the yuan should become part of its basket of currencies before Beijing has to wait another five years for its currency to be considered? Is it an effort to prop up China’s ever-declining export numbers? Or is it a confluence of all three? Context. While the human toll inflicted by the Tianjin warehouse explosion was devastating, no one should be surprised by the disaster itself or the political aftermath. The pattern of Chinese behavior—including the corrupt environmental impact assessment system that allowed for the placement of the factory so close to people’s residences, the lack of knowledge of what precisely the warehouse stored, the generosity of the Chinese people trying to help those affected, and the attention paid by the Chinese government to assigning blame and shutting down information transmission and popular commentary via the Internet—is one that repeats itself frequently. Perspective. Drama surrounding China is also heightened by the tendency of outside observers to lose a bit of perspective. The media, as well as China analysts—and those who play them on TV— are rewarded for bold statements and predictions. I looked back at what people were saying about the Chinese stock market at the end of 2014 and early 2015 when the market was surging. At that time, unsurprisingly, there was a lot of triumphalism punctuated by a few dark warnings. The Economist, for example, produced a piece, “Super-bull on the rampage,” that focused 95 percent of its attention on all the excitement the stock market was generating, with only five percent at the end mentioning some of the potential weaknesses underpinning the rise in the market. Kudos to Gwynn Guilford at Quartz, however, who pretty much called it all back in 2014, seeking out commentators who underscored the dangers in the stock market’s reliance on leverage, shadow finance, and government public relations. Dramatic events will always prompt breathless speculation and commentary, but real understanding should begin by paying attention to real experts. In the case of the Chinese economy, reading studies by China economists and analysts—for example Nick Lardy, Barry Naughton, Patrick Chovanec, Dan Rosen, Fraser Howie, George Magnus, Michael Pettis, and Victor Shih—would be a good place to start. They represent a wide range of views and, if brought together for a discussion, would be hard-pressed to arrive at a consensus; but anyone taking the time to read or listen to a constellation of them will inevitably become smarter about the Chinese economy. The other much needed commodity is humility.  One of my favorite discussions of the Chinese currency devaluation is David Dollar’s interview in the Nikkei Asian Review. He argues that the devaluation is a “move toward a more market-oriented system but not a blatant effort to push up exports.” But, he then continues on to say, “If I’m wrong….”  This ability to acknowledge what we don’t know with regard to China is at least as valuable as sharing what we do know—and certainly worth more than pontificating about that which we only think we know.

This is a guest post by Emily Mangan, an intern for the Council on Foreign Relations Energy and Environment Program. She studies environmental policy at Skidmore College. After resuming from recess, the Nigerian Senate pledged to increase the country’s oil revenue by reducing oil theft. Doing so would greatly increase Nigeria’s total oil exports and reduce oil spills that cause severe environmental damage in the Niger Delta. Every day, oil companies in Nigeria lose between 300,000 and 400,000 barrels of oil to illegal theft. Theft accounts for roughly 15 percent of Nigeria’s 2.4 million barrels per day produced. Oil theft, or “bunkering,” occurs throughout the Niger Delta, where pipelines crisscross the region. Oil export revenue accounts for 70 percent of Nigeria’s total government revenue and 95 percent of the country’s export income. A loss of 300,000 barrels a day costs the government roughly $1.7 billion a month. In comparison, only 5,000 to 10,000 barrels are stolen per day in Mexico, which produces a comparable amount of oil. Despite efforts by the Nigerian government to curtail bunkering by increasing security, theft and pipeline vandalism continues. What is bunkering? The term bunkering encompasses all acts involving oil theft, including diversion and smuggling of oil and unauthorized loading of ships. One common process requires tapping into an oil pipeline and transporting the oil elsewhere to be sold internationally or refined locally. In order to access the oil, a small group of welders will puncture a pipeline at night, establishing a tapping point from which the group can operate. What damage does it cause? Oil spills and explosions are a regular occurrence in the Niger Delta. Pipeline vandalism from bunkering leaves pipes especially vulnerable to leaks, spills, and major accidents. Royal Dutch Shell PLC claims that 70 percent of all oil spills over the last five years were the result of sabotage to their facilities. In 2011, the United Nations Environment Program found in Ogoniland, located in Rivers State, oil pollution had devastated mangroves, contaminated soil and groundwater, destroyed the fish habitat, and posed a serious threat to public health. The study concludes that it could take up to thirty years to restore Ogoniland. But oil theft in the Niger Delta continues, and restoration is not likely to happen anytime soon. The degradation to the environment has reduced land arable for farming and has devastated fishing communities. Two thirds of the Nigerian population does not have access to clean drinking water and many have reported oil in drinking water sources. Roughly a quarter of stolen crude oil is sold locally. Illegal artisanal refineries located in the Delta “cook” the crude into separate petroleum products. The end product yields 2 percent petrol, 2 percent kerosene, and 41 percent diesel. The remaining 55 percent of crude goes to waste, most of which is dumped into the nearby water or into a shallow pit. Why has it persisted? Last year, the Nigerian Navy destroyed 260 illegal refineries by burning the site and, in some cases, pouring out the stolen oil into the creeks, exacerbating environmental damage. Despite the military’s efforts, other refineries pop up elsewhere because it is such a lucrative business. Each refining camp costs only about $4,700 to set up and can make $7,800 a month in profit. The cost of construction is typically no more than 7 percent of annual profits. Until theft is reigned in, the Nigerian economy will suffer the loss of revenue from thousands of barrels of oil every day. Perhaps more importantly and too often overlooked, the Nigerian people will continue to cope with the consequences of their destroyed environment.