Tag: France

Arguments Without End: A Few Simple Examples

In the previous essay (“Is It Good to Be a Detached Observer?”), we just encountered Geyl’s phrase, “arguments without end.” Here we cover a few simple examples.

Language and the Mind

The twentieth century philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, tells us that his purpose is “to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.” Where the fly is, of course, ourselves. He then tells us, that perhaps the main reason is that one is unable to free oneself from bewitchment of the mind by “language games.”

In the song “Hotel California” by the Eagles, there’s the line, “‘We are all just prisoners here / Of our own device.’” In this context, “device” could be interpreted as a bad decision.

My Body and Myself

The American philosophy professor, Samuel Todes, in his book Body and World, analyzes the human body, not as a meat-machine, but more like the silent partner of a person navigating their life. You can get a sense of this from Gabriel Marcel, when he writes:

Is my body my body, for instance, in the same sense in which I would say that my dog belongs to me? The question, let us first of all notice, of how the dog originally came into my hands is quite irrelevant here. Perhaps I found it wandering wretchedly about the streets, perhaps I bought it in a shop; I can say it is mine if nobody else puts in a claim for it—though this is still quite a negative condition of ownership. For the dog to be really, not merely nominally, mine there must exist between us a more positive set of relations. He must live, either with me, or as I, and I alone, have decided he shall live—lodged, perhaps, with a servant or a farmer; whether or not I look after him personally, I must assume the responsibility for his being looked after. And this implies something reciprocal in our relations. It is only it the dog recognizes me, obeys me, expresses by his behaviour towards me some feeling which I can interpret as affection or, at the very least, as wholesome fear, that he is really mine; I would become a laughingstock if I persisted in calling an animal that completely ignored me, that took no notice of me at all, my dog. And the mockery to which I would be exposed in such an instance is very significant. It is linked to a very positive idea of how things must be between my dog and me, before I can really say, ‘This dog is mine’.

Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being, Vol. 1: Reflection & Mystery, Harper Torchbooks, 1965, page 117.

Marcel goes on to explain:

We should recall, at this point, what we said in an earlier lecture about the body; the latter is not merely an instrument, it presents us with a kind of reality which is quite different from the reality of any sort of apparatus, in so far as it, my body, is also my way of being in the world.

Marcel, page 257.

Marcel elaborates:

When I try to make clear to myself the nature of my bond with my body, it appears to me chiefly as something of which I have the use (as one has the use of a piano, a saw, or a razor); but all these uses are extensions of the initial use, which is simply the use of the body. I have real priority to my body when it is a question of active use, but none whatever when it is a question of knowledge. The use is only possible on the basis of a certain felt community. But the community is indivisible; I cannot validly say ‘I and my body.’ The difficulty arises from the fact that I think of my relation with my body on the analogy of my relation with my instruments—whereas in fact the latter presupposes the former.

Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary, Harper Torchbooks, 1965, page 14.

The connections between the trio of “me, myself and I” and the body is very elusive (as you may sense from your own introspection). This is another “argument without end.”

Psychology and National Moods

The great historian, George Rudé, in his book, Revolutionary Europe, 1783-1815, tries to give a believable and multifactorial explanation of the French Revolution. Based on Ernest Labrousse’s studies of the French economy during that period, Rudé gives a thoughtful and subtle analysis of how wages, prices and other factors correlated to unrest. Interestingly, he concludes on a note of French national mood:

But, of course, it needed more than economic hardship, social discontent, and the frustration of political and social ambitions to make a revolution. To give cohesion to the discontents and aspirations of widely varying social classes there had to be some unifying body of ideas, a common vocabulary, of hope and protest, something, in short, like a common “revolutionary psychology”. In the revolutions of our day, this ideological preparation has been the concern of political parties; but there were no such parties in eighteenth-century France.

George Rudé, Revolutionary Europe, 1783-1815, Wiley, 1964, page 74.

Rudé uses the phrase, “revolutionary psychology.” Apply this to our time and ask yourself, did a demagogue like Donald Trump create a revolutionary psychology, or did it cough up Trump? Notice that in the recent political tract, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank makes the point that people’s sense of grievance involves not only economics, but also other psychological factors, just as Rudé does with the French Revolution.

Wrestling with History: Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville, a brilliant French historian, wrote Democracy in America. This book is a supreme example of U.S.-watching.

Another book of his, Recollections, shows him wrestling with history itself. If we remember that Clio is the muse of history, then we might say that Recollections is the chronicle of de Tocqueville’s encounter with her.

The question of human history and what de Tocqueville called “the world’s destiny” are described as follows:

l wrote histories without taking part in public affairs, and politicians whose only concern was to control events without a thought of describing them. And I have invariably noticed that the former see gen­eral causes everywhere, whereas the latter, spend­ing their lives amid the disconnected events of each day, freely attribute everything to particular incidents and think that all the little strings their hands are busy pulling daily are those that control the world’s destiny. Probably both of them are mistaken.

For my part I hate all those absolute systems that make all the events of history depend on great first causes linked together by the chain of fate and thus succeed, so to speak, in banishing men from the history of the human race. Their boasted breadth seems to me narrow, and their mathematical exactness false. I believe, pace the writers who find these sublime theories to feed their vanity and lighten their labours, that many important historical facts can be explained only by accidental circumstances, while many others are inexplicable. Finally, that chance, or rather the concatenation of secondary causes, which we call by that name because we can’t sort them all out, is a very important element in all that we see taking place in the world’s theatre. But I am firmly convinced that chance can do nothing unless the ground has been prepared in advance. Antecedent facts, the nature of institutions, turns of mind and the state of mores are the materials from which chance composes those impromptu events that surprise and terrify us.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections, 1893, Anchor Books, page 78.

De Tocqueville warns us that the world’s destiny is always murky and what he calls a labyrinth and a whirlwind. He says:

Mentally I reviewed the history of our last sixty years and smiled bitterly to myself as I thought of the illusions cherished at the end of each phase of this long revolution; the theories feeding these illusions; our historians’ learned daydreams, and all the ingenious false systems by which men sought to explain a present still unclearly seen and to foresee the unseen future.

Recollections, page 83.

He continues:

Shall we reach, as other prophets as vain perhaps as their predecessors assure us, a more complete and profound social transformation than our fathers ever foresaw or desired, and which we ourselves cannot yet conceive; or may we not simply end up in that intermittent anarchy which is well known to be the chronic incurable disease of old peoples? I cannot tell, and do not know when this long voyage will end; I am tired of mistaking deceptive mists for the bank. And I often wonder whether that solid land we have sought for so long actually exists, and whether it is not our fate the rove the seas forever!

Recollections, pages 83-84.

And yet, with all that profound uncertainty, he offers a very sweeping interpretation of French history from the French Revolution (1789) to the French Revolution of 1848. The famous painting by Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple), commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, falls in between.

Despite de Tocqueville’s warnings about the slipperiness of historical judgement, he arrives at an extremely precise interpretation of his own:

Seen as a whole from a distance, our history from 1789 to 1830 appears to be forty-one years of deadly struggle between the Ancien Régime with its traditions, memories, hopes and men (i.e. the aristocrats), and the new France led by the middle class. 1830 would seem to have ended the first period of our revolutions, or rather, of our revolution, for it was always one and the same, through its various fortunes and passions, whose beginning our fathers saw and whose end we shall in all probability not see. All that remained of the Ancien Régime was destroyed forever. In 1830 the triumph of the middle class was decisive and so complete that the narrow limits of the bourgeoisie encompassed all political powers, franchises, prerogatives, indeed the whole government, to the exclusion, in law, of all beneath it and, in fact, of all that had once been above it. Thus the bourgeoisie became not only the sole director of society, but also, one might say, its cultivator. It settled into every office, prodigiously increased the number of offices, and made a habit of living off the public Treasury almost as much as from its own industry.

Recollections, page 5.

Reviewing the first sentence from the quote above, one can see a deep characterization of an era, with the conclusion “in 1830 the triumph of the middle class was decisive…” Notice the profound paradox that on one hand de Tocqueville spoke of the elusiveness of history despite providing the definite description of this period. Contrast “seen as a whole from a distance” with one of the themes of his recollections, that it is not given to us to understand history.

Why Is the World So Nightmarish?

The phrase, “La Belle Époque” (French: “The Beautiful Era”) refers to the atmosphere in Europe and especially France, the high point of which lasted from 1900 to 1914, with the outbreak of World War I. The whole era was characterized by the phrase, “la douceur de la vie” (French: “the sweetness of life”). People of the time would say that if you weren’t alive then, they could not communicate how charming life was at the time.

The sinking of the Titanic in April, 1912 is the symbolic catastrophe that heralded the end of the era. Anyone who watched Downton Abbey would perhaps remember the opening scene, which depicts the newspaper announcing it with a screaming headline.

The great masterpiece, Journey to the End of the Night (French: Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1932), describes the whole world around World War I as a nightmarish battlefield of previously unseen scope. Céline’s protagonist, Ferdinand, travels the world, from battles in Europe to Africa, then to New York and Detroit’s Ford assembly line before returning to France, finding that the nightmare is global and inescapable.

Céline died within 24 hours of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway is famous for the quote from The Sun Also Rises (set in the 1920s), “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.”

The question is how could we ever explain complete evaporation of the sweetness of life and transformation into such a nightmare, culminating into the world of today.

Lastly, think of the point made in Sebastian Haffner’s The Meaning of Hitler, how Hitler fit into this nightmarization of the world. Haffner writes:

It is impossible for a serious historian to maintain that without Hitler world history in the twentieth century would have taken the course it has taken. It is by no means certain that without Hitler a second world war would even have taken place; it is quite certain that if it had taken place it would have taken a different course — possibly even with different alliances, fronts and outcomes. Today’s world, whether we like it or not, is the work of Hitler. Without Hitler there would have been no partition of Germany and Europe; without Hitler there would be no Americans and no Russians in Berlin; without Hitler there would be no Israel; without Hitler there would be no de-colonization, at least not such a rapid one; there would be no Asian, Arab or Black African emancipation, and no diminution of European preeminence. Or, more accurately, there would be none of this without Hitler’s mistakes. He certainly did not want any of it.

(The Meaning of Hitler, Harvard University Press, 1979, page 100)

No-one has yet captured how the nightmarish feeling of 2025 is itself downstream from the preceding era.

China: Deep History

Winston Churchill says somewhere (if we paraphrase) that the further back you are able to look, the more secure your ability to analyze the present and the future. Without these ‘historical smarts’, your sense of direction is very feeble. Let us use the novel, Lost Illusions, by Honoré de Balzac as a back door into historical smarts.

This novel was originally published in three parts between 1837 and 1843 and is set mostly in the 1820s, primarily in provincial France. It is unique because it starts with technology and commerce.

At the time when this story begins, the Stanhope press and inking-rollers were not yet in use in small provincial printing-offices. Angoulême, although its paper-making industry kept it in contact with Parisian printing, was still using those wooden presses from which the now obsolete metaphor ‘making the presses groan’ originated. Printing there was so much behind the times that the pressmen still used leather balls spread with ink to dab on the characters. The bed of the press holding the letter-filled ‘forme’ to which the paper is applied was still made of stone and so justified its name ‘marble’. The ravenous machines of our times have so completely superseded this mechanism — to which, despite its imperfections, we owe the fine books produced by the Elzevirs, the Plantins, the Aldi and the Didots — that it is necessary to mention this antiquated equipment which Jérôme-Nicolas Séchard held in superstitious affection; it has its part to play in this great and trivial story.

Not only do we get this conceptual framework about printing technology, but later on in the novel, Balzac gives us a further insight into paper-making and textiles, including a long discussion of China.

In England, where four-fifths of the population use cotton to the exclusion of linen, they make nothing but cotton paper. The cotton paper is very soft and easily creased to begin with, and it has a further defect: it is so soluble that if you seep a book made of cotton paper in water for fifteen minutes, it turns to a pulp, while an old book left in water for a couple of hours is not spoilt. You could dry the old book, and the pages, though yellow and faded, would still be legible, the work would not be destroyed.

“There is a time coming when legislation will equalize our fortunes, and we shall all be poor together; we shall want our linen and our books to be cheap, just as people are beginning to prefer small pictures because they have not wall space enough for large ones. Well, the shirts and the books will not last, that is all; it is the same on all sides, solidity is drying out. So this problem is one of the first importance for literature, science, and politics.

“One day, in my office, there was a hot discussion going on about the material that the Chinese use for making paper. Their paper is far better than ours, because the raw material is better; and a good deal was said about this thin, light Chinese paper, for if it is light and thin, the texture is close, there are no transparent spots in it. In Paris there are learned men among the printers’ readers; Fourier and Pierre Leroux are Lachevardiere’s readers at this moment; and the Comte de Saint-Simon, who happened to be correcting proofs for us, came in in the middle of the discussion. He told us at once that, according to Kempfer and du Halde, the Broussonetia furnishes the substance of the Chinese paper; it is a vegetable substance (like linen or cotton for that matter). Another reader maintained that Chinese paper was principally made of an animal substance, to wit, the silk that is abundant there. They made a bet about it in my presence. The Messieurs Didot are printers to the Institute, so naturally they referred the question to that learned body. M. Marcel, who used to be superintendent of the Royal Printing Establishment, was umpire, and he sent the two readers to M. l’Abbe Grozier, Librarian at the Arsenal. By the Abbe’s decision they both lost their wages. The paper was not made of silk nor yet from the Broussonetia; the pulp proved to be the triturated fibre of some kind of bamboo. The Abbe Grozier had a Chinese book, an iconographical and technological work, with a great many pictures in it, illustrating all the different processes of paper-making, and he showed us a picture of the workshop with the bamboo stalks lying in a heap in the corner; it was extremely well drawn.

“Lucien told me that your father, with the intuition of a man of talent, had a glimmering of a notion of some way of replacing linen rags with an exceedingly common vegetable product, not previously manufactured, but taken direct from the soil, as the Chinese use vegetable fibre at first hand. I have classified the guesses made by those who came before me, and have begun to study the question. The bamboo is a kind of reed; naturally I began to think of the reeds that grow here in France.

“Labor is very cheap in China, where a workman earns three halfpence a day, and this cheapness of labor enables the Chinese to manipulate each sheet of paper separately. They take it out of the mould, and press it between heated tablets of white porcelain, that is the secret of the surface and consistence, the lightness and satin smoothness of the best paper in the world. Well, here in Europe the work must be done by machinery; machinery must take the place of cheap Chinese labor. If we could but succeed in making a cheap paper of as good a quality, the weight and thickness of printed books would be reduced by more than one-half. A set of Voltaire, printed on our woven paper and bound, weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds; it would only weigh fifty if we used Chinese paper. That surely would be a triumph…

In 2025, we are to some extent, back to China, going from the proto-industrial world to our industrial and even digital world.

To educate oneself on all of this, you should look at the supreme scholarly achievement of the 20th century, namely Professor Joseph Needham’s masterpiece, Science and Civilisation in China.

Economics-Watching: Kuwait’s Banking Sector Posts Solid Credit Growth in October

[from NBK Group’s Economic Research Department, 21 November, 2024]

Kuwait: Solid credit growth in October driven by household credit. Domestic credit increased by a solid 0.4% in October, driving up YTD growth to 2.9% (3.2% y/y). The recovery in household credit continued, with growth in October at a solid 0.5%, resulting in a YTD increase of 2.4%. While y/y growth in household credit remains a limited 2.3%, annualized growth over the past four months is a stronger 4.7%. Business credit inched up by 0.2% in October, pushing YTD growth to 3.6% (2.9% y/y). Industry and trade drove business credit growth in October while construction and trade are the fastest growing YTD at 17% and 8%, respectively. In contrast, the oil/gas sector continued its downtrend, deepening the YTD decrease to 13%. Excluding the oil/gas sector, growth in business credit would increase to a relatively good 5% YTD. Looking ahead, the last couple of months of the year (especially December) are usually the weakest for business credit, likely due to increased repayments and write-offs, but it will not be surprising if the recovery in household credit is generally sustained, especially given the commencement of the interest rate-cutting cycle. Meanwhile, driven by a plunge in the volatile public-institution deposits, resident deposits decreased in October, resulting in YTD growth of 2.4% (4.2% y/y). Private-sector deposits inched up in October driving up YTD growth to 4.5% compared with 10% for government deposits while public-institution deposits are a big drag (-14%). Within private-sector KD deposits, CASA showed further signs of stabilization as there was no decrease for the third straight month while the YTD drawdown is a limited 1%.

Chart 1: Kuwait credit growth

(% y/y)

Source: Central Bank of Kuwait (CBK)
Chart 2: UK inflation

(%)

Source: Haver

Egypt: IMF concludes mission for fourth review, sees external risks. The IMF concluded its visit to Egypt after spending close to 2 weeks, holding several in-person meetings with the Egyptian authorities, private sector, and other stakeholders. The IMF released a statement mentioning that the current ongoing geopolitical tensions in the region in addition to an increasing number of refugees have affected the external sector (Suez Canal receipts down by 70%) and put severe pressure on the fiscal front. The Fund acknowledged the Central Bank of Egypt’s commitment to unify the exchange rate, maintain the flexible exchange rate regime, and keep inflation on a firm downward trend over the medium term by substantially tightening monetary policy. It also highlighted that continued policy discipline was also a key to containing fiscal risks, especially those related to the energy sector. The Fund, as always, re-iterated the need for promoting the private sector mainly through an enhanced tax system and accelerating divestment plans of the state firms. Finally, it also said that the discussions would continue over the coming days to finalize the agreement on the remaining policies and reform plans. However, the release did not provide any clear hints about the conclusion on the government’s earlier request to push the timeline of some of the subsidy moves.

Oman: IMF completes article IV with a strong outlook for the economy in 2025. Oman’s economy continued to expand with growth reaching 1.9% in the first half of 2024 (versus 1.2% in 2023), despite being weighed down by OPEC+ mandated oil production cuts as non-oil GDP grew a stronger 3.8% y/y in H1 (versus 1.8% in 2023). The fiscal and current account balances remain in a comfortable situation evident by a decline in public sector debt and the recent rating upgrade to investment grade. The Fund expects Oman’s economic growth to see a strong rebound in 2025, supported by higher oil production. It also believes that fiscal and current account balances will remain in surplus but at lower levels. Key risks to the outlook stem from oil price volatility and intensifying geopolitical tensions. The IMF also mentioned that further efforts are needed to raise nonhydrocarbon revenues through more tax policy measures and the phasing out of untargeted subsidies which should help in freeing up resources to finance growth under the government’s diversification agenda.

UK: Inflation rises more than forecast, reinforcing BoE’s caution on rate cuts. UK CPI inflation increased to 2.3% y/y in October from 1.7% the previous month, slightly above the market and the Bank of England’s forecast of 2.2%. On a monthly basis too, inflation rose to 0.6%, a seven-month high, from September’s no change. The steep rise was mainly driven by an almost 10% rise in the household energy price cap effective from October. Core inflation also accelerated to 3.3% y/y (0.4% m/m) from 3.2% (0.1% m/m). While goods prices continued to fall (-0.3% y/y), service prices rose at a faster rate of 5% from 4.9%. Recently, the Bank of England had cautioned about inflation quickening next year (projecting a peak rate of 2.8% in Q3 2025), citing the impact of higher insurance contributions and rising minimum wages as outlined in the latest government budget. Therefore, with inflation rising above forecast, the bank will likely slow the pace of monetary easing after delivering two interest rate cuts of 25 bps earlier, with markets now seeing only two additional cuts by the end of 2025.

Eurozone: ECB warns of fiscal and growth risks in its latest Financial Stability Review [archived PDF]. In its most recent Financial Stability Review (November) [archived PDF], the European Central Bank warned that elevated debt and fiscal deficit levels and anemic long-term growth could expose sovereign debt vulnerabilities in the region, stoking concerns of a repeat of the 2011 sovereign debt crisis. Maturing debt being rolled over at much higher borrowing rates raising debt service costs poses risks to countries with little fiscal space and leaves certain governments exposed to market fluctuations. The bank also emphasized the risks of high equity valuations, low liquidity and a greater concentration of exposure among non-banks. Moreover, it sees current geopolitical uncertainties and the possibility of more trade tensions as heightening risks. The Eurozone’s current government debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 88%, but the underlying data suggest a much more precarious situation with Greece, Italy, and France’s ratios at 164%, 137% and 112%. Recently, concerns about France’s high fiscal deficit (around 5.9% of GDP) and elevated debt levels saw yields on the country’s bonds rise steeply, widening the spread gap with German bonds to the highest level in over a decade.

Stock marketsIndexDaily Change (%)YTD Change (%)
Regional
Abu Dhabi (ADI)9,405-0.23-1.80
Bahrain (ASI)2,043-0.373.62
Dubai (DFMGI)4,7610.6117.26
Egypt (EGX 30)30,588-0.33 23.18
GCC (S&P GCC 40)7090.09-0.52
Kuwait (All Share)7,353-0.087.86
KSA (TASI)11,868-0.07-0.83
Oman (MSM 30)4,6090.002.10
Qatar (QE Index)10,4380.12-3.62
International
CSI 3003,9860.2216.17
DAX19,005-0.2913.45
DJIA43,4080.3215.17
Eurostoxx 504,730-0.454.60
FTSE 1008,085-0.174.55
Nikkei 22538,352-0.1614.61
S&P 5005,9170.0024.05
3m interbank rates%Daily Change (bps)YTD Change (bps)
Bahrain5.86-1.29-66.34
Kuwait3.940.00-37.50
Qatar6.000.00-25.00
UAE4.433.81-89.96
Saudi5.50-4.75-73.14
SOFR4.52-0.09-81.13
Bond yields%Daily Change (bps)YTD Change (bps)
Regional
Abu Dhabi 20274.665.0033.9
Oman 20275.496.0033.0
Qatar 20264.686.0016.1
Kuwait 20274.693.0035.0
Saudi 20284.961.0043.9
International 10-year
US Treasury4.411.7755.3
German Bund2.340.3531.2
UK Gilt4.472.6093.0
Japanese Gov’t Bond1.071.045.4
Exchange ratesRateDaily Change (%)YTD Change (%)
KWD per USD0.310.04-0.05
KWD per EUR0.32-0.46-1.98
USD per EUR1.05-0.49-4.47
JPY per USD155.430.5010.19
USD per GBP1.27-0.25-0.62
EGP per USD49.670.3461.00
Commodities$/unitDaily Change (%)YTD Change (%)
Brent crude72.81-0.68-5.49
KEC73.780.74-7.26
WTI68.87-0.75-3.88
Gold2,648.20.8028.40

Disclaimer: While every care has been taken in preparing this publication, National Bank of Kuwait accepts no liability whatsoever for any direct or consequential losses arising from its use. Daily Economic Update is distributed on a complimentary and discretionary basis to NBK clients and associates. This report and previous issues can be found in the “News & Insight / Economic Reports” section of the National Bank of Kuwait’s web site. Please visit their web site, nbk.com, for other bank publications.

Education and Spontaneous Learning

We give you examples of being receptive to the world around you and learning to see and hear as a form of education:

There is a show on PBS called Stories from the Stage. People come forward to a microphone on a stage and tell personal stories from their past, stories that they consider important, informative, educational (in the widest sense), and usable by the listener. One of the early “people at the mic” on stage is a teenage girl who says something, in a plaintive sorrowful voice, like: “I have been waiting far too long…to wait for someone…to see me.”

This perplexed girl is unwittingly raising the question of a deep human hunger: the hunger for “personhood.” At a young age, this primordial hunger expresses itself as somebody befriending me (i.e., the speaker needs a real friend) so that the befriended person comes into clearer focus to themselves, achieving personhood.

Very intelligent philosophers like Emmanuel Levinas of France have spent their entire lives trying to understand the connections between countenances (how a person “wears a face”), personhood, interactive life, etc.

In his book, The Face of the Other (the girl wants somebody to notice her and her face and like her and “smile upon her”) Levinas has a deep analysis of all these human yearnings and self-definitional journeys and quests:

“The Face of the Other” is an evocative phrase used by Emmanuel Levinas, an important twentieth-century philosopher.

  • “Other” (sometimes capitalized, sometimes not) usually translates the French word autrui, which means “the other person” or “someone else” (other than oneself). It is thus the personal other, the other person, whoever it is, that each of us encounters directly, or experiences the traces of, every day. Of course, we encounter a multiplicity of others, but Levinas more often uses the singular “other” to emphasize that we encounter others one at a time, face to face.
  • By “face,” Levinas means the human face (or in French, visage), but not thought of or experienced as a physical or aesthetic object. Rather, the first, usual, unreflective encounter with the face is the living presence of another person.

Thus, when we come “face to face” with another person, the experience is a social and ethical one (rather than intellectual, aesthetic, or merely physical). “Living presence,” for Levinas, would imply that the other person (as someone genuinely other than myself) is exposed to me—that is, is vulnerably present—and expresses him or herself simply by being there as an undeniable reality that I cannot reduce to images or ideas in my head.

This impossibility of capturing the other conceptually or otherwise reveals the other’s “infinity” (i.e., irreducibility to a finite [bounded] entity over which I can have power).

The other person is, of course, exposed and expressive in other ways than through the literal face (e.g., through speech, gesture, action, and bodily presence generally), but the face is the most exposed, most vulnerable, and most expressive aspect of the other’s presence.

Thus, a student could be channel surfing on TV, observe this young girl saying these things on Stories from the Stage, and expand one’s understanding of this entire set of hungers and self-identity efforts and go (say) from the moment of TV watching to reading Levinas.

This is a simple example from the current world of TV where a certain particular “cri de coeur” (French: “cry from the heart”) of a girl you don’t know at all could deepen and widen your understanding by following the thread to Levinas and other profound people. The girl’s plaint where she’s “waiting for someone to see me” becomes much deeper and can be understood on a larger canvas which is exactly what we want.

Many experiences from daily life, from walking around, from moments on TV, from tiny incidents, can be pathways to higher understanding and learning if you can see and hear “with the third eye and the third ear.” (Theodore Reik talks about “listening with the third ear.”)

Education is a kind of “applied awareness.”

Movies and Chemistry: Keeping the Enchantment of Education

Several movies give you an “enchanting” back door or window into chemistry so that you can “beat” the tediousness of regular education and come into the field and its topics via these movies:

I.

The Man in the White Suit is a 1951 British comedy classic with Alec Guinness as a genius research chemist. He fiddles with his flasks and polymer and textile chemistry experiments until he invents a fabric that shows no wear and tear “forever.” This would seem like a great boon to humanity in its clothing needs but the chemist (“Sidney Stratton”) finds that both labor and management reject his discovery violently as it threatens jobs and profits. Textile or fabric polymer chemistry is at the heart of the plot.

Cry Terror! is a taut 1958 crime thriller movie with James Mason and Rod Steiger. The plot involves the terrorist threat of exploding a domestic airliner with a hidden RDX cache (a TNT successor) unless the demanded payment is made.

RDX was used by both sides in World War II. The U.S. produced about 15,000 long tons per month during WWII and Germany about 7,000 long tons per month. RDX had the major advantages of possessing greater explosive force than TNT, used in World War I and requiring no additional raw materials for its manufacture.

Semtex is a general-purpose plastic explosive containing RDX and PETN. It is used in commercial blasting, demolition, and in certain military applications.

A Semtex bomb was used in the Pan Am Flight 103 (known also as the Lockerbie) bombing in 1988. A belt laden with 700 g (1.5 lb) of RDX explosives tucked under the dress of the assassin was used in the assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

The 1993 Bombay bombings used RDX placed into several vehicles as bombs. RDX was the main component used for the 2006 Mumbai train bombings and the Jaipur bombings in 2008. It also is believed to be the explosive used in the 2010 Moscow Metro bombings.

Traces of RDX were found on pieces of wreckage from 1999 Russian apartment bombings and 2004 Russian aircraft bombings. Further reports on the bombs used in the 1999 apartment bombings indicated that while RDX was not a part of the main charge, each bomb contained plastic explosive used as a booster charge.

Ahmed Ressam, the al-Qaeda Millennium Bomber, used a small quantity of RDX as one of the components in the bomb that he prepared to detonate in Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve 1999-2000; the bomb could have produced a blast forty times greater than that of a devastating car bomb.

In July 2012, the Kenyan government arrested two Iranian nationals and charged them with illegal possession of 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of RDX. According to the Kenyan Police, the Iranians planned to use the RDX for “attacks on Israeli, U.S., UK and Saudi Arabian targets.”

RDX was used in the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri on February 14, 2005.

In the 2019 Pulwama attack in India, 250 kg of high-grade RDX was used by Jaish-e-Mohammed. The attack resulted in the deaths of 44 Central Reserve Police Force personnel as well as the attacker.

Semtex was developed and manufactured in Czechoslovakia, originally under the name B 1 and then under the “Semtex” designation since 1964, labeled as SEMTEX 1A, since 1967 as SEMTEX H, and since 1987 as SEMTEX 10. Originally developed for Czechoslovak military use and export, Semtex eventually became popular with paramilitary groups and rebels or terrorists because prior to 2000 it was extremely difficult to detect, as in the case of Pan Am Flight 103.

The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing more than 300, injuring more than 1,000, and spreading fear across the country. The bombings, together with the Invasion of Dagestan, triggered the Second Chechen War. The handling of the crisis by Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months.

The blasts hit Buynaksk on 4 September and in Moscow on 9 and 13 September. On 13 September, Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov made an announcement in the Duma about receiving a report that another bombing had just happened in the city of Volgodonsk. A bombing did indeed happen in Volgodonsk, but only three days later, on 16 September. Chechen militants were blamed for the bombings, but denied responsibility, along with Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov.

A suspicious device resembling those used in the bombings was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September. On 23 September, Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the inhabitants of Ryazan and ordered the air bombing of Grozny, which marked the beginning of the Second Chechen War. Three FSB agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police, with the devices containing a sugar-like substance resembling RDX.

II.

The movie Khartoum (1966) has General Charles Gordon traveling to Sudan in 1884 to quell the “mad mullah” the Mahdi. (Osama bin Laden of his day).
At the train station where General Gordon starts his trip, there’s a railway ad sign that promotes the use of “Wright’s Coal Tar Soap.”

This gives us a sign of the rise of the modern chemical industry.

III.

Think of “Sherlock Holmes” in terms of all the movies and TV series or the original stories and books:

Holmes has to explain to Watson how he survived the assassination attempt on him by Moriarty, “the Napoleon of Crime” who threw him off the Reichenbach Falls. Holmes explains that he faked Moriarty out and clung to a bush or something and was (obviously) not killed.

Holmes tells Watson what he does when he returns to civilization and travels and studies for some three years:

“I then passed through Persia, looking in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, the results of which I communicated to the Foreign Office. Returning to France, I spent some months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpellier, in the south of France.”

The context implies the year 1894.

There is clear evidence that Mr. Holmes was deeply involved in the research of coal-tar derivatives as early as 1889 when the events of the Copper Beeches matter were transpiring.

We are told that on an evening in 1889, Mr. Holmes was seated in 221B Baker Street at the deal table loaded with retorts and test tubes. He was settling down to one of those all-night chemical researches in which he frequently indulged.

The research work was interrupted by a message of distress from Violet Hunter. Watson found that there was a train the next morning, and Holmes tells Watson:

“That will do very nicely. Then perhaps I had better postpone my analysis of the acetones as we may need to be at our best in the morning.”

It is clear that Holmes was engaged in coal-tar research long before his visit to Montpellier in the south of France.

The quotation from the Copper Beeches story refers to acetones, not to coal-tar derivatives.

“In the fractional distillation of coal-tar, the distillate separates into five distinct groups or layers, depending upon the stage of the process and the amount of heat applied. Category-one of the five includes benzene, toluene, xylenes and cumenes.

Acetones [dimethelketone-CH3COCH3] may be derived from the oxidation of cumene. And cumene [isopropylbenzene-C6H5C(CH3)2] is derived by distillation from the coal-tar naphtha fractions.”

Cumenes are derived from coal-tar, and acetones are derived from cumenes. Thus, a study of the acetones is, necessarily, research into coal-tar derivatives.

The rise of chemical engineering and organic chemistry are at the heart of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Thus we can “climb” into chemistry via these books and movies and keep a feeling of enchantment as a kind of educational “shoehorn.”

India and the Russia-Ukraine War: The Paradox of Military Dependence, Traditional Loyalty and Strategic Autonomy

[from India in Transition, published by the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) of the University of Pennsylvania, by Arndt Michael]

India, long-established as the world’s most populous democracy, has been quite instrumental over the years in assisting various countries dealing with democratic struggles. This support has included a blend of bilateral and multilateral initiatives, and especially economic development projects. Yet, India’s recent attitude toward the Russian attack on Ukraine and its concomitant behavior in the United Nations Security Council (as a non-permanent member) seems to contradict its support of democracy. By abstaining, rather than explicitly voting in favor of UN resolutions condemning Russian aggression at the beginning of the war, India angered several UN member-countries.

In order to substantiate its abstention from voting, India felt compelled to issue a so-called “Explanation of Vote” (EoV). In it, India asked for a “return to the path of diplomacy” and an immediate cessation of “violence and hostilities.” Crucially, India stated in the EoV that “the contemporary global order has been built on the UN Charter, international law, and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states…all member states need to honor these principles in finding a constructive way forward. Dialogue is the only answer to settling differences and disputes, however daunting that may appear at this moment.” 

While these statements and the call for dialogue are in accordance with India’s professed stance toward the relevance and objectives enshrined in the UN Charter, the discrepancy between rhetoric and practice is still conspicuous. At first glance, a “good” relationship with Russia seems to be more significant than the expectations of the world-community as represented in the United Nations. And, more importantly, by abstaining, India seemingly violated one of its central foreign and strategic policies: to always strive for strategic autonomy.

However, from a strategic perspective, India is precisely replicating what it did when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. For India, its own national security is at stake, as well as its current and future geostrategic influence in Asia and the world. The military dependence that currently exists between India and Russia is nothing short of gigantic and has created a dangerous conundrum. Since the “Indo–Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation” was signed in 1971, defense agreements and long-term supply contracts have been in place. And while India and Russia have shared a strategic relationship since October 2000, this was upgraded in December 2020 to a “Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership.” 

Although there was a marked reduction of Russian imports in past years, official data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reveal that between 1996-2015, the Russian proportion of Indian military imports was almost 70 percent, and between 2016-20 it still hovered around 49 percent. In fact, 70 percent of all Indian military equipment currently in use has been directly produced in Russia, was manufactured with the majority of parts coming from Russia, or licensed by Russia. In 2020, this included the majority of Indian tanks, the only aircraft carrier (the INS Vikramaditya, a heavily modified Kiev-class aircraft carrier) with all of its combat aircraft MiG-29s, six frigates, four destroyers and the only nuclear-powered submarine. Additionally, eight out of fourteen Indian Navy submarines belong to the Russian Kilo-class. The Indian Air Force flies Sukhoi Su-30MKIs and Mil Mi-17s, which, respectively, constitute the largest share of the combat aircraft and utility helicopters, in addition to Russian tanker planes. India also just recently purchased the S-400 missile system.

Even though India has begun to reorient itself militarily toward other countries—the U.S., Israel, France and Italy—and has substituted foreign imports by slowly developing its own capabilities, a large number of new Indo-Russian projects are in the conceptual or implementation stages. In December 2021, in the frame of the so-called “2+2 Dialogue” (foreign and defense ministers), India and Russia began a new phase in their military–technological cooperation. Incidentally, India has used this very format for furthering cooperation in strategic, security and intelligence issues with four of its key strategic partners: Australia, the U.S., Japan and the newly added Russia. Russia and India agreed upon a further deepening of mutual military relations for ten years (until 2031). What is new is that next to the traditional purchase of Russian weapons systems, many common research projects and the development of new weapons systems—with their production taking place equally in both countries—have been agreed upon. This production includes new frigates, helicopters, submarines, cruise missiles and even Kalashnikovs. 

The depth of this mutual engagement, and especially India’s dependence, highlights a huge dilemma that might not only have drastic strategic consequences, but also long-lasting regional repercussions. The worldwide sanctions issued against Russia aim at the Russian economy and military. When it comes to the procurement of such crucial components as microchips or airline parts, Russia is soon expected to face shortages, essentially crippling its capacity to repair, construct, or have spare parts available (let alone construct new equipment). Unless other countries, such as China, circumvent international sanctions and step-in, the expected Russian inability to take care of its own military will have a spill-over effect. Russia is unlikely to be able to fulfill its contractual obligations toward India, and the lack of spare parts also has the potential to cripple India’s own military with regards to the Russian weapons equipment. The procurement agreements and common projects are, hence, all in jeopardy and India, now more than ever, depends on Russian goodwill. 

Next to military dependence, there are other concomitant effects in the economic and political sphere that influence Indian voting behavior. The worldwide sanctions have already led to dramatic increases in oil and gas prices, with India relying on imports of up to 80 percent. India will, therefore, have to pay much more for such crucial imports. Military imports from other countries aimed at substituting Russian equipment will also be much more expensive. All of this deals the Indian economy another blow—an economy that has been especially hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. And politically, Indian hegemony in South Asia has been markedly under pressure, in no small part because of the China–Pakistan axis. In the eyes of India, this axis poses a serious threat to an already highly volatile Indo–Pakistan relationship. In addition, the Indo–China relationship reached a new low in May 2020 when Chinese infrastructure projects along the Himalayan borderlands led to fighting and the killing of soldiers. In addition, the Chinese claims to the South China Sea are categorically disputed by India. Chinese overtures toward Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and especially Pakistan in the frame of the Road Initiative are also regarded with growing discontent, as India claims that China is following a policy of encircling India.

In its 75th year of independence, India is following a classic realpolitik in trying not to alienate Russia while pledging rhetorical support for Ukraine. The contradictory consequence is that Russia has now offered more discounted oil, gas, and investments, while at the same time, the UK has suggested its military relationship with India could be upgraded—and has offered weapons made in the UK. For the Indian political establishment, India cannot forgo Russian support, militarily or as a producer of cheap oil and gas. Going forward, India’s military will need to protect its national security and project Indian influence and power well beyond its borders.

Arndt Michael is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, University of Freiburg (Germany), author of the multi-award-winning book India’s Foreign Policy and Regional Multilateralism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and co-editor of Indien Verstehen (Understanding India, Springer, 2016). His articles have been published in Asian Security, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Harvard Asia Quarterly, India Quarterly and India Review.

World-Watching: China Globalization Conference

[from the Center for China and Globalization]

The Center for China and Globalization is proud to announce the full program of their upcoming 8th edition of CCG annual China and Globalization Forum 2022 to be held in online-offline hybrid format in Beijing. Everyone is cordially invited to join the events open to public virtually. All sessions open to public will be broadcast live. You will be able to access the sessions on Zoom:

Tuesday, June 21st

09:00-10:00—Forum Special Online Program I: Advancing the 2030 Agenda in Uncertain Times: Sustainability and the Quest for China–U.S. Cooperation – Fireside Chat with Sec. Henry M. Paulson, Jr. and Mr. WANG Shi (王石)

10:30-12:30—Ambassadors’ Roundtable: Global Recovery in Post-Pandemic Times: Trends, Challenges, and Responses

14:00-16:00—China–Europe Roundtable: China–Europe Economic Cooperation: Moving Forward with the Global Quest for Sustainability

17:30-18:30—Forum Special Online Program II: History at a Turning Point: Pandemic, Ukraine, and the Changing Relations between China, Europe, and the United States–Dialogue with Historian Niall Ferguson

20:00-21:30—Forum Special Online Program III: Realigning the U.S.–China Trade and Economic Relationship: Inflation, Tariffs, and the Way Forward – China–U.S. Think Tank Dialogue

Zoom:
Webinar ID: 894 5641 9097
Passcode: 566991

Once you’re admitted into the Zoom meeting, your camera and audio will remain off. Simultaneous interpretation of both English and Chinese languages will be available by selecting the language pane.

Agenda

Monday, June 20th

09:00-10:00—Forum Special Online Program I: Advancing the 2030 Agenda in Uncertain Times: Sustainability and the Quest for China–U.S. Cooperation – Fireside Chat with Sec. Henry M. Paulson, Jr. and Mr. WANG Shi (王石)

Host

WANG Huiyao (王辉耀), CCG President, Vice Chairman of China Association for International Economic Cooperation (CAFIEC)

Speakers

Henry M. Paulson, Jr., former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Founder and Chairman of the Paulson Institute
WANG Shi (王石), CCG Senior Vice President, Founder and Honorary Chairman of China Vanke Co., Ltd., Founder of C-Team

This program will also be livestreamed on the web via the Baidu links and social media platforms below:

English language
Chinese language

Social Media
Youtube
Twitter
Facebook

10:30-12:30—Ambassadors’ Roundtable: Global Recovery in Post-Pandemic Times: Trends, Challenges, and Responses

Chair

WANG Huiyao (王辉耀), CCG President, Vice Chairman of China Association for International Economic Cooperation (CAFIEC)

Opening remarks

LONG Yongtu, CCG Chairman; former Vice Minister of Commerce
LIN Songtian, President of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, former Chinese Ambassador to South Africa
Siddharth Chatterjee, UN Resident Coordinator, United Nations in China

Participants

(in alphabetic order by country): 
Rahamtalla M. Osman, Permanent Representative of African Union to China
Graham Fletcher, Ambassador of Australia to China 
Paulo Estivallet de Mesquita, Ambassador of Brazil to China 
Nicolas Chapuis, Ambassador of European Union to China 
Laurent Bili, Ambassador of France to China 
Djauhari Oratmangun, Ambassador of Indonesia to China 
Luca Ferrari, Ambassador of Italy to China 
Raja Dato Nushirwan Zainal Abidin, Ambassador of Malaysia to China 
Clare Fearnley, Ambassador of New Zealand to China 
Signe Brudeset, Ambassador of Norway to China 
Moin ul Haque, Ambassador of Pakistan to China 
Luis Quesada, Ambassador of Peru to China 
José Augusto Duarte, Ambassador of Portugal to China 
James Kimonyo, Ambassador of Rwanda to China 
Alenka Suhadolnik, Ambassador of Slovenia to China 
Siyabonga Cwele, Ambassador of South Africa to China 
Bernardino Regazzoni, Ambassador of Switzerland to China 
Arthayudh Srisamoot, Ambassador of Thailand to China 
Ali Obaid Al Dhaheri, Ambassador of UAE to China

14:00-16:00—China–Europe Roundtable: China–Europe Economic Cooperation: Moving Forward with the Global Quest for Sustainability

Chair

Andy Mok, CCG Senior Fellow

Participants

(in alphabetic order)
Joseph Cash, Policy Analyst, China–Britain Business Council (CBBC)
CUI Hongjian, CCG Non-Resident Senior Fellow and Director of the Department of European Studies at the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS)
Vivian Ding, CCG Senior Council Member, Founder and CEO of WeBrand Global
FENG Zhongping, Director of Institute of European Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)
Allan Gabor, President of Merck China
Archil Kalandia, Ambassador of Georgia to China
LENG Yan, CCG Senior Council Member; Executive Vice President of Daimler Greater China
LIU Chang, Vice President of Knorr-Bremse Asia Pacific
Steven Lynch, Managing Director, BritCham China
Dario Mihelin, Ambassador of Croatia to China
Leena-Kaisa Mikkola, Ambassador of Finland to China
MIN Hao, CCG Senior Council Member; Founder, Chairman, and CEO of the Nanjing Easthouse Electric Ltd.
SUN Yongfu, CCG Senior Fellow; former Director-General of MOFCOM Department of European Affairs
Joerg Wuttke, President of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China
ZHOU Yanli, CCG Advisor; Former Vice Chairman of China Insurance Regulatory Commission
Helen Zhu, CCG Senior Council Member; Vice President of Sanofi China

This program will also be livestreamed on the web via the Baidu links and social media platforms below:

English language
Chinese language

Social Media
Youtube
Twitter
Facebook

17:30-18:30—Forum Special Online Program II: History at a Turning Point: Pandemic, Ukraine, and the Changing Relations between China, Europe, and the United States–Dialogue with Historian Niall Ferguson

Speakers

Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
WANG Huiyao (王辉耀), CCG President, Vice Chairman of China Association for International Economic Cooperation (CAFIEC)

20:00-21:30—Forum Special Online Program III: Realigning the U.S.–China Trade and Economic Relationship: Inflation, Tariffs, and the Way Forward – China–U.S. Think Tank Dialogue

Moderator

WANG Huiyao (王辉耀), CCG President, Vice Chairman of China Association for International Economic Cooperation (CAFIEC)

Speakers

(in alphabetic order)
Craig Allen, President, US-China Business Council (USCBC)
Wendy Cutler, Vice President, Asia Society Policy Institute; former Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative
JIN Xu, President, China Association of International Trade (CAIT)
Adam Posen, President, Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
Jeremie Waterman, President of China Center and Vice President, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
YI Xiaozhun, former Deputy Director-General of World Trade Organization, former Vice Commerce Minister

Tuesday, June 21st

09:30-12:30—China Globalization 30 Roundtable Experts Roundtable: China and Globalization in the 21st Century (Chinese language livestream, not available on Zoom)

Chair

Mabel Miao, CCG Secretary-General

Discussants

(in alphabetic order)
CHEN Zhiwu, Director of Asia Global Institute, Professor of Business School, Hong Kong University
DA Wei, Professor and Director of Center for International Security and Strategy, Tsinghua University
DONG Guanpeng, Vice President of China Public Relations Association, Dean of School of Government and Public Affairs, Communication University of China
GE Jianxiong, Director of Institute of Chinese Historical Geography, Fudan University
GU Xuewu, Director of Center for Globalization, University of Bonn
HU Biliang, Executive Director of the Belt and Road Institute and the Institute of Emerging Markets, Beijing Normal University
LI Xiangyang, Director of Institute of Asia-Pacific and Global Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)
LIU Guoen, Dean of Institute for Global Health and Development, BOYA Distinguished Professor, Peking University
LIU Junhong, Director of Globalization Center, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR)
SU Hao, Director of Center for Strategy and Peace Studies, China Foreign Affairs University
XIE Tao, Dean of School of International Relations and Diplomacy, Beijing Foreign Studies University
XUE Lan, Dean of Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University
WANG Huiyao (王辉耀), President of Center for China and Globalization; Dean of Development Research Institute, Southwest University of Finance and Economics
WANG Ning, Zhiyuan Chair Professor, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Foreign Member of the European Academy of Sciences
WANG Yiwei, Professor of School of International Relations, Renmin University of China
WANG Yong, Director of Center for International Political and Economic Studies, Peking University
WU Xinbo, Dean of Institute of International Studies, Director of Center for American Studies, Fudan University
WU Zhicheng, Vice President of the Institute of International Strategic Studies, Party School of the Central Committee of CPC (National Academy of Administration)
YANG Xuedong, Senior Professor of Political Science, Tsinghua University
ZHANG Shuhua, Director of Institute of Political Science, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)
ZHANG Xudong, Professor of Comparative Literature & East Asian Studies, NYU
ZHANG Yunling, Member of Presidium of Academic Divisions of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)

This session will also be livestreamed on the web accessible via this Baidu link (Chinese language only, no simultaneous interpretation).

World-Watching: Global Energy Tracker

[from the Council on Foreign Relations]

by Benn Steil and Benjamin Della Rocca

The Global Energy Tracker allows you to gauge trends in energy use across the globe through time.

The charts on the tracker page compile data on energy-consumption trends in seventy-nine countries going back to 1990. Each chart shows how much energy a given country consumes from nine different sources.

The charts display each country’s consumption data for each energy source by the amount of exajoules consumed, by exajoules consumed per capita, and as a share of that country’s total energy consumption. (Exajoules are a measure of energy; one exajoule is roughly equivalent to California’s annual electricity use.)

As the legend indicates, five energy sources covered by the tracker—coal, oil, natural gas, biofuels, and other (unclassified)—emit high levels of carbon dioxide. Four others—solar, wind, nuclear, and hydroelectric—are low-carbon emitters.

Together, the charts reveal significant trends in global energy usage. They show, for example, that high-carbon energy sources—especially oil—are the world’s dominant source of power. On average, 83 percent of tracker countries’ energy comes from high-carbon sources, and 37 percent specifically from oil.

Low-carbon sources, however, are on the rise, particularly in developed countries. Since 2010, the United States’ low-carbon consumption share climbed from 12 to 16 percent, the United Kingdom’s from 10 to 19 percent, and Germany’s from 14 to 19 percent. China, the world’s largest energy consumer, saw its low-carbon share rise from 9 to 15 percent. Rapid cost declines for low-carbon sources such as wind and solar, beneficiaries of technological innovation, explain much of the change. Still, low-carbon power’s share has actually declined in some rich countries, such as Japan—where it has fallen from 18 to 11 percent.

Some tracker countries rely highly on low-carbon energy. Twenty-five percent of Canada’s energy and 29 percent of Brazil’s, for example, comes from hydroelectric—compared with 9 percent for tracker countries on average. France derives over a third of its energy from nuclear. Other countries remain heavy users of higher-carbon sources. China derives 56 percent of its power from coal—although that figure is down from 70 percent a decade ago.

View the Global Energy Tracker.