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This week we talk about Luigi Mangione, VAW attacks, and mass shootings.We also discuss stochastic violence, terrorism, and Cybertrucks.Recommended Book: Some Desperate Glory by Emily TeshTranscriptThe terms “Lone Wolf,” “Lone Wolf Actor,” and “Lone Wolf Killer” are interchangeably used in many countries—though most commonly and prominently in the United States—to describe someone who commits a mass-killing or other mass-casualty event, but who is not part of an organization like a terrorist group or other criminal network like a gang.The term is hotly contested in the scholarly world, as it’s applied loosely and inconsistently, and the definition varies somewhat by location, government, law enforcement entity investigating said killings, and the press reporting upon it. But in general, to be defined as a mass-casualty event or mass-killing, a collection of murders must occur in public—so it can’t be a person killing their family at home, for instance—it must involve at least four victims—so someone killing or injuring three strangers in a public place will typically not be categorized in this way—and it must not occur as part of another crime, like a robbery gone wrong, or as part of a larger conflict between two rival gangs.Within this context of mass-killings and mass-casualty attacks, a lone wolf is someone who acts solo, the term originating with the concept of a wolf that has been separated from, or perhaps outcast from its pack.Someone who kills a bunch of people at the instruction of a terrorist organization like ISIS, then, would not be considered a lone wolf, even if they committed the act without any direct aid from that group; though this definition is wobbly even in that regard, as someone who takes inspiration from a group like ISIS, committing a mass-killing to support that group’s cause, but not directly connected to the group, might be labeled a lone wolf, or not. And there’s no hard-set rule as to which definition is correct.This was a somewhat common issue back in the late-20th century, when many so-called lone wolf terrorists were committing acts of violence in support of anarchist ends, but the anarchist groups from which they derived their inspiration, and in some cases with which they collaborated, were leaderless by nature—so it couldn’t really be said that they were instructed to carry out these acts, they were just inspired by these fellow ideological travelers, and that made determining whether they acted on their own behest or not a tricky and perhaps impossible undertaking; a lot of it is semantics.Also confounding the simple categorization of such killers and attacks is the concept of stochastic terrorism, which is a type of violence that is almost always political or ideological in nature, as opposed to being revenge-driven or otherwise personal, and it’s generally incited by someone with a public persona—a politician or other leader—who creates an environment in which violence is more likely to occur, that violence seemingly random, but on average directed in a specific direction.So a politician who says something like “Man, people from the opposing party really believe some horrible stuff, I wouldn’t be surprised if something happened to them, considering how evil they are,” while at the same time stoking the flames of potential violence throughout the population by increasing animosity between political parties and maybe even religious groups, might be aiming to spark stochastic terror that would benefit them and their ambitions.By riling up their base in this way, by sowing the seeds for potential attacks against their perceived enemies, violence in their favor, aimed at those enemies, is more likely to happen, but in a way that’s deniable for them—just a random act of ideological murder that they can denounce, despite arguably having asymmetrically instigated it.Is stochastic terror an example of planting seeds for violence that makes the resultant killings something more like directed attacks, and therefore not lone wolf in nature, then? Or are all lone wolves arguably inspired by something they’ve learned or experienced or been told, and thus arguably stochastic in nature—no direct guidance or instruction, but still inspired by someone or something, somewhere along the way?What I’d like to talk about today are three instances of recent supposedly lone wolf attacks, and why some experts are predicting we’ll see more such attacks, especially but not exclusively in the US, in the coming years.—There were nearly 500 officially recognized mass-shootings in the US in 2024—and again, that means 4 or more people injured or killed in public, and not as part of another crime being committed.That’s down from previous years, the preceding four of which have each had more than 600 mass shootings, and on average a little less than 10 people are killed in these shootings—though that figure is nudged upward by the largest of these mass killings, like one in Las Vegas in 2017 that saw 60 people killed and more than 800 wounded, many in the resulting stampede, by a 64-year-old seemingly lone wolf gunman who fired on an open-air music festival from the 32nd floor window of a nearby hotel.Gun homicides in the US are rampant beyond mass-killings: there were about 21,000 murders committed with guns in the country in 2021, alone—and notably, self-inflicted gun deaths, suicides using these weapons, eclipse that number, tallying more than 26,000 that same year.That means more than 50 people are killed by guns in the US every single day, and about 4 out of every 5 murders are committed using guns in the country; which makes sense, as guns are very effective at what they’re meant to do, which is killing something, and there are a lot of guns in the US: about 120 of them per 100 people, as of 2018.And to be clear, that doesn’t mean everyone owns a gun: that average is driven sky-high by the gun-enthusiasts who tend to buy a lot of the things, though gun ownership has continued to increase in scope in recent years, as political and economic uncertainty, especially in areas where perception of crime levels, if not always actual elevated crime levels, increases, tends to drive more widespread gun sales.Given all of that, it’s maybe not a huge surprise that many apparent lone wolf attacks in the United States are committed using firearms; sometimes assault rifles, sometimes guns that have been augmented using bump-stocks or similar add-ons to make a normal gun into basically an assault rifle, and sometimes just using a pistol, which can be easily pocketed and carried around pretty much everywhere in this country.On December 4, 2024, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, which is part of the largest health insurance company in the United States, UnitedHealth Group, Brian Thompson, was gunned down in front of the Midtown Manhattan Hilton Hotel.The alleged killer, who was later identified by law enforcement officials as Luigi Mangione, was captured on nearby CCTV cameras, was wearing a hoodie and an expensive backpack while shooting Thompson, and used a pistol with a suppressor—a silencer—to shoot him multiple times, the bullet casings left behind inscribed with the words Delay, Deny, and Depose; terms that have been associated with the US health insurance industry for legal tactics they lean on in order to pocket more money, allegedly at the expense of their customers who have their claims denied or long-term delayed, in some cases leaving them without the care they require, and in some cases leaving them in crippling debt following a necessary medical procedure that the insurance company says they won’t pay for.The response to killings of any kind, even in a gun-happy country like the US, tends to be fairly grim and sad; the endless mutterings of “thoughts and prayers” by politicians and other public figures has become so common and toothless as to be near-satire at this point, but generally the tone is antagonistic toward whomever committed the killing, before then swinging toward calls for more security and policing if you’re on the political right, and more gun regulation if you’re on the political left. And that’s generally where we leave things until the next headlines-capturing shooting; and we typically, unfortunately, don’t have long to wait.Thompson’s murder, though, was almost immediately met with celebration across the political spectrum; working class folks, Democrats and Republicans and everyone in between and on the furthest political extremes basically muttering about how it serves him right, before realizing everyone else was muttering the same thing, and that led to outright enthusiasm, especially online, and even calls for more of the same across the social media landscape—many normal people doing the politician and ideologue thing by basically posting their hopes that someone will knock off other CEOs as well, seemingly aiming to spark more stochastic violence in their favored direction.The wealthy and especially the CEO class were horrified at this response, perhaps understandably, and there was pushback from mainstream journalistic and political entities across the board, with lots of tut-tutting and finger-wagging at anyone who dared celebrate what looked to be the cold-blooded murder of another human being.But the nature of American healthcare and especially health insurance being what it is—massively imperfect at least, and by some assessments borderline abusive or even outright evil—this was seen by many as just desserts for someone who himself had committed millions of dollars worth of fraud and gotten away with it, and who was running UnitedHealthcare in such a way that it denies more claims than any of its peers, which in turn has allowed itself to massively enrich itself and its shareholders at the expense of its customers.There were many cries of “serves him right,” then, alongside some requests that other CEOs be next; many of these requests couched in memes and jokes, but also seemingly earnest.The nature of the alleged killer, who was eventually shown to be a good-looking young man of privilege who had maybe suffered under the auspices of the American healthcare system, due to chronic ailments and an insurance system that didn’t even serve someone like him, who grew up with substantial advantages, further fanned those flames, and as of the day I’m recording this he’s in custody, has pleaded not guilty, and is facing eleven state and four federal charges, including first-degree murder and a terrorism charge, the former of which could lead to the death penalty.Just shy of a month later, in the early morning hours of January 1, 2025, a new year’s celebration on the well-know and well-traversed, and on that night, incredibly crowded Bourbon Street in New Orleans was attacked by a man in a large pickup truck, who plowed the vehicle into a crowd of revelers, driving at high-speed across three blocks that were partitioned-off for the celebration.The driver was apparently trying to hit as many people as possible, and then, after crashing into a utility vehicle, he stepped out of the truck and started firing a gun into the crowd.Police fired back at him, but he was wearing body armor, and two of them were injured before they managed to kill him, recovering an assault rifle and a semi-automatic pistol from his body. They also found a pair of explosive devices in coolers he had planted around the area before the attack, and further investigation led to the discovery of more bomb-making materials where he was staying in New Orleans.At least 35 people were injured and 14 people were killed in the attack, alongside the killer, who was later identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar: an American-born Army veteran and Texas resident who had apparently been recently radicalized, possibly by online content posted by ISIS, and who had posted videos pledging his allegiance to the group mere hours before he drove into the crowd, an ISIS flag adorning the vehicle.More guns in this attack, then, but much of the damage was caused by the truck, and similar so-called “vehicle as a weapon,” or VAW attacks have been committed around the world in recent years, raising concerns especially in places where firearms are harder to come by, though also at large, open-air events where vehicles might cause more deaths and injuries in a short period of time than even an assault rifle, as seemed to be the case here.This attacker seemed to be self-radicalized, based on testimony from his friends and family, who were shocked at the change in his personality and expressed beliefs. The FBI has said they’re pretty confident he acted alone, though they’re looking into recent trips he took to Egypt and Canada, in case he met up with someone from ISIS or a similar group, while traveling.And apparently while he initially planned to kill his family—he’s had several divorces that led to financial problems, due to many child support payments that exceeded his means—he didn’t believe killing his family would have provoked enough of a response to spark a “war between the believers and the disbelievers.” Jabbar was brought up Muslim but left the faith for years, before apparently adopting a more intense and violent reinterpretation of it just recently, and that seemingly helped him justify and perhaps even inspired these acts.This has been called a lone wolf attack, then, but it was apparently heavily influenced by ISIS ideology, despite Jabbar possibly never having been in contact with anyone from that group.Just a handful of hours later, that same morning, at 8:49 January 1, 2025, a Tesla Cybertruck that was parked outside the front lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas exploded—its occupant apparently having died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head right before a bunch of fireworks and gas canisters placed in the trunk were detonated.That occupant was Matthew Alan Livelsberger, who was also American-born, and like Jabbar, had been in the US military, though Livelsberger was an active-duty Special Forces soldier from Colorado who was on leave at the time.The blast didn’t kill anyone, and while it hurt a few bystanders, no one was seriously injured. But the intention, according to two letters recovered from his phone by the FBI, was apparently to make a political statement related to alleged clandestine US military operations, and advanced technologies the US and China allegedly secretly possess; though he was also apparently in the midst of a serious mental health crisis, including significant PTSD episodes and what might have been paranoid delusions.The vehicle also contained an assault rifle and two pistols, though none of these weapons were used, as while Livelsberger was seemingly intent on escaping across the Mexican border following the attack, based on what he said in those aforementioned letters, he seemingly decided to kill himself instead—which may support the assertion that this was primarily, if not exclusively, a mental health crisis issue.Livelsberger also apparently had family issues, due in large part to his support of president-elect Trump and his family’s opposition to that support, and he was apparently suffering from untreated depression, that lack of treatment possibly the result of stigma toward such things within the military, which sometimes results in people not getting treatment that they might benefit from, because they worry doing so will see them sidelined by their superiors.A manifesto penned by Livelsberger that was sent to a retired Army Intelligence officer claims that he was being monitored by the military because of his knowledge of war crimes and those aforementioned military advanced technologies, and that he didn’t intend to self-harm, the divulgence of which has led to some conspiracy theories about this not having been a suicide.That said, this attack is being investigated as potential terrorism, and while it was initially being explored as part of a larger wave of such actions, since that attack in New Orleans happened just hours earlier, and both attackers used the same online car rental service to procure the vehicles they were driving, investigators have since indicated they don’t believe these attacks were connected.Interestingly, Livelsberger’s letters also criticized income inequality, though with a politically conservative bent, basically saying that the country had become too liberal and effeminate, and that Trump, Elon Musk, and Robert Kennedy Jr needed to take control and make the US more masculine so that it could compete against entities like China, Russia, and Iran.Experts on ideological violence and political fracturing have warned that we may see more lone wolf and lone wolf-esque violence in a more polarized society, in which people are less likely to consider those on the opposite side of the aisle to be people they disagree with, and more likely to think of them as bad or evil or even subhuman, which makes violence more thinkable.That’s not ideal, as these sorts of attacks are difficult to prevent, their solo nature meaning there’s no network to track and pluck apart, nothing to infiltrate and fewer easily accessible data points to aggregate and in which to recognize a pattern. Lone wolf attackers tend to cause less damage than groups can, then, but they’re often almost invisible, to the organizations that hope to stop them, anyway, right up till the moment they start killing and injury people.We’re also entering an era in which trust in authority has degraded substantially, new technologies have made the research, hardware procurement, and implementation of such attacks a lot more attainable to more people, which means folks suffering from different sorts of psychological or physical torments, or those who simply have strong opinions and a lot of perceived enemies, are more likely to be able to act on that confusion or those hatreds, in some cases at a moment’s notice, and in many cases without anyone beyond their immediate friends and family recognizing that something might be up.We may be entering a period of heightened threat, then, in the US especially, because of the number and wide distribution of highly effective weapons throughout the population, and because of the period of political polarization and animosity we seem to be wading through, but also throughout the rest of the world, to some degree at least, because of those same political and ideological factors, and because of how big and weapon-like vehicles have become, and how relatively easy it is to get one’s hands on information that allows for the construction of things like bombs and the technologies required to 3D-print and otherwise manufacture deadly implements of all shapes and sizes.Show Noteshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Mangionehttps://www.vox.com/politics/390438/luigi-mangione-healthcare-shooting-ghost-gunhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Brian_Thompsonhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shootinghttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_New_Orleans_truck_attackhttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c205ek63433ohttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/us/new-orleans-victims-truck-attack.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_International_Hotel_Las_Vegas_Tesla_Cybertruck_explosionhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/04/us/matthew-livelsberger-las-vegas-cybertruck.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/05/us/new-orleans-attack-travel.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/04/us/new-orleans-attack-shamsud-din-jabbar-isis.htmlhttps://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1257&context=nulr_online&preview_mode=1&z=1519320539https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorismhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attackhttps://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/lone-wolf-terrorism-americahttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1088767917736797 This is a public episode. 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This week we talk about Yoon, martial law, and impeachment.We also discuss the PPP, chaebol, and dictators.Recommended Book: Starter Villain by John ScalziTranscriptIn the wake of WWII, Korea—which was previously held by the recently-defeated Japanese Empire—was split into two countries, the north backed by the Soviet Union and the south backed by the United States and its allies.North Korea had a guerrilla fighter and staunch Soviet-style communism activist, Kim Il Sung, placed at the head of its new government, while South Korea was to be led by a longtime local politician named Syngman Rhee, who had run the country earlier, from 1919 until 1925, at which point he was impeached, and then again in 1947-1948, as head of the country’s post-war provisional government.Rhee was a hardcore Korean independence activist during a period when the Japanese were clamping down on their mainland holdings and doing away with anyone who caused trouble or sparked anti-colonial protests, so he spent some time in exile, in China, returned to the US, where he was educated, for a bit, and then the US military returned him to Korea to run that provisional government once the dust had settled and the Japanese had been ousted from the area.Rhee was an ideal representative in the region by American standards, in some ways, as he was vehemently anti-communist, even to the point of killing and supporting the killing of something like 100,000 communist sympathizers during an uprising on South Korea’s Jeju Island. He was president when North Korea invaded, sparking the Korean War, and then refused to sign the armistice that would have formally ended the conflict in 1953, because he believed the only solution to the conflict between these nations was a military one, and he held out hope that the South would someday conquer the North and unify Korea as a nation, once more.Rhee then won reelection in 1956, and changed the country’s constitution to allow him to remain in office, getting rid of the two-term limit—which was not a popular move, but it worked, and he was able to run uncontested in 1960, because his opponent died of cancer in the lead-up to the election—though his opposition protested the results, claiming a rigged voting process, and this led to a huge movement by students in the country, which became known as the April Revolution; students were shot by police while protesting during this period, and that ultimately led to Rhee stepping down that same year, 1960.So Rhee was a western-educated, christian conservative who was vehemently anti-communist, though also living in a part of the world in which an aggressive communist dictatorship recently invaded, and was threatening to do so again—so it could be argued his paranoia was more justified than in other parts of the world that had similar frenzied moments and governments during the cold war, though of course the violence against innocent citizens was impossible to justify even for him and his government; his authoritarian rule was brought to an end following that shooting of student protestors, and that left a power vacuum in the country, and South Korea saw 13 months of infighting and instability before a General named Park Chung Hee launched a coup that put him in charge.Park positioned himself as president, and he did pretty well in terms of economic growth and overall national development—at this point the South was way behind the North in pretty much every regard—but he was also an out-and-out dictator who ruled with an iron fist, and in 1972 he put an entirely new constitution into effect that allowed him to keep running for president every six years, in perpetuity, no term limits, and which gave the president, so himself, basically unlimited, unchecked powers.The presence of a seemingly pretty capable, newly empowered dictator helped South Korea’s economy, manufacturing base, and infrastructure develop at an even more rapid pace than before, though his nearly 18-year presidency was also defined by the oppression he was able to leverage against anyone who said anything he didn’t like, who challenged him in any way, and who spoke out of turn against the things he wanted to do, or the constitution that allowed him to do all those things.In 1979, he was assassinated, and there’s still a lot of speculation as to the why of the killing—the assassin was in Park’s orbit, and was seemingly doing okay as part of that all-powerful government entity—but alongside speculation that it might have been planned by the US, in order to keep South Korea from developing a nuclear weapon, that it might have been the result of political jealousy, and that if might have been just an impulsive act by someone who was done being pushed around by a bully, it’s also possible that the perpetrator was a democracy activist who wanted to get a successful and long-ruling dictator out of the way.Whatever the actual catalyst was, the outcome was more political upheaval, which by the end of the year, we’re still in 1979, led to yet another military coup.This new coup leader was General Chun Doo-hwan, and he implemented martial law across the whole of the country by mid-year, as he ascended to the role of president, and he cracked down on democracy movements that erupted across the country pretty violently.Chun held onto power for nearly 8 years, ruling as a dictator, like his predecessor, until 1987, when a student democracy activist was tortured to death by his security forces.This torture was revealed to the country by a group of pro-democracy catholic priests in June of that year, and that sparked what became known as the June Democratic Struggle, which led to the June 29 Declaration, which was an announcement by the head of the ruling party—so the head of the party the dictatorial president belonged to, the Democratic Justice Party—that the next presidential vote would allow for the direct election of the president.That party leader, Roh Tae-woo, very narrowly won the election, and his term lasted from 1988 until 1993; and during his tenure, the country entered the UN, that was in 1991, and his presidency is generally considered to be a pivotal moment for the country, as while he was technically from the same party as the previous ruler, a dictator, he distanced himself and his administration from his precursor during the election, and he abided by that previously enforced two-term limit.By 1996, things had changed a lot in the country, the government fully recalibrating toward democratic values, and those previous rulers—the dictator Chun and his ally-turned-democratic reformer, Roh—were convicted for their corruption during the Chun administration, and for their mass-killings of pro-democracy protestors during that period, as well. Both were pardoned by the new president, but both were also quite old, so this was seen as a somewhat expedient political maneuver without a lot of downsides, as neither was really involved in politics or capable of causing much damage at that point in their lives.In the years since, especially since the turn of the century, South Korea has become one of the world’s most successful economies, but also a flourishing example of democratic values; there are still some remnants of those previous setups, including the government’s tight ties with the so-called chaebol, or “rich family” companies, which were business entities propped up by government support, which were often given monopoly rights that other businesses didn’t enjoy, as part of a government effort to pull the country out of agrarianism back in the mid-20th century; companies like Hyundai, Samsung, and LG thus enjoy outsized economic power, to this day, alongside a whole lot of political influence in the country, as a result of this setup, which is a holdover from those earlier, dictatorial times.But South Korea has generally erred toward rule of law since the late-1990s, even to the point of punishing their most powerful elected leaders, like President Park, who was accused of corruption, bribery, and influence-peddling, by removing her from office, then sentencing her to 24 years in jail.What I’d like to talk about today, though, is a recent seeming abuse of power at a pretty staggering level in South Korean governance, and the consequences of that abuse for the country and for the abuser.—In March of 2022, Yoon Suk Yeol, a conservative candidate of the People Power Party, who was hoping to oust the incumbent Democratic Party from office, won the narrowest victory in South Korea history.In his previous role as the chief of the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office, Yoon was partly responsible for convicting former President Park for her abuses of power, and his public disagreements with President Moon, who appointed him as Prosecutor General of the country in 2019, led to his popularity in conservative circles, in turn leading to his ascension as a candidate in 2021.Yoon ran on a conservative platform that’s become familiar in elections around the world in recent decades; basically deregulation paired with culture-war issues, like doing away with government support for gender equality and other often politically liberal efforts of that nature.He won the election by less than a percentage point, and his tenure is office has not been favorably reviewed by democratic watchdogs, which have noted various sorts of corruption and democratic backsliding under his watch, and economic and policy analysts consider his administration to have been a somewhat ineffectual one.Yoon’s tenure, like his candidacy, was also plagued by gaffes and seeming missteps.He tried to raise the country’s maximum weekly working hours from 52 to 69, though he pulled back on this idea after a huge wave of backlash from young people.He was also criticized for having just three women in his government, and two among his vice-ministerial level officials. He added two more after those criticisms, but one of them quit about a month after being appointed, following her attempt to implement massively unpopular school system revisions—and the entire government’s approval rating collapsed around this time, due to that proposed revision, which was criticized as being half-baked and nonsensical, but it was also partly the result of her ascension to the government in the first place, as she had a record of drunk driving and academic plagiarism; the president brought in a woman to placate the masses, basically, despite that woman being just a really, really bad choice for the position, which by some estimates further demonstrated his disdain for and ignorance about the whole conversation about women in government.Yoon also tried to create an agency that would provide more oversight of the country’s police force, but this led to protests by police, who saw it as an attempt to take control of law enforcement and use it against the president’s enemies; the president’s office then worsened matters threatened to punish protesting officers.By 2024, leading into the country’s parliamentary elections, Yoon’s government was incredibly unpopular with just about everyone, because of those and other decisions and statements and gaffes. Even his wife has been under investigation for accepting bribes and having undo influence on who takes positions of power, alongside comments she’s made about seeking revenge against people who say not nice things about her, including journalists.The opposition swept that 2024 parliamentary election, which had the practical impact of making Yoon’s government something of a lame duck, unable to get anything done, because his party only controlled 36% of the National Assembly. He then boycotted the inaugural session of this new National Assembly, seemingly because he didn’t like the outcome, becoming the first President to do so since democracy returned to the country in 1988.All of which leads us to what happened on December 3, 2024.Late that night, President Yoon declared martial law, which would give him, as president, wartime powers to do all sorts of dictator-like things.He said he declared martial law to unfreeze a frozen government that was paralyzed by his opposition: Assemblymembers had stymied a lot of his efforts to pass laws favored by his party and constituents, and had tallied a large number of impeachment efforts against people in his administration, while he, in turn, used more vetos than any other democratically elected president in the country’s history—so the executive and legislative branches were at a standoff, and this was freezing the government, so he says he declared martial law to basically get things done.The opposition, in contrast, says his move was unconstitutional, and that he tried to launch a coup.That latter claim seems to be backed by the fact that Yoon accused his political competition of collaborating with North Korean communists and engaging in anti-state activities, which he said were intended to destroy the country—this seems to be based, again, on the fact that they didn’t approve the stuff he wanted to get approved.As part of this martial law declaration, he also declared a prohibition on all political activities and all gatherings of the National Assembly and local representatives, and he suspended the freedom of the press.He apparently also ordered the arrest of many of his political opponents, alongside some people within his own party who might oppose him and his seeming power-grab.Both parties, his own included, opposed this proclamation, and there were some dramatic standoffs following his announcement at 10:30pm local time, as protestors took to the streets and legislators gathered at the National Assembly Proceeding Hall, where they do their job, because members of the military were ordered to stop them; there are videos of these soldiers standing in the way of these politicians, trying to keep them from entering the building where they could vote to do away with the martial law declaration, and in some cases pointing assault rifles at them. The legislators didn’t backing down, and in a few cases wrestled with the soldiers while thousands of citizens protested behind them against the military action.Eventually, the Assembly members made it inside and voted to lift martial law; this happened at 4:30am that morning. And over the next few days they began impeachment proceedings against the president, saying they would keep doing so until he resigned.A bunch of people resigned from Yoon’s administration following his seeming attempt at a coup and, and on December 7, a few days later, he issued a public apology, saying that he wouldn’t try to do that again, though on the 12th he backtracked and defended his declaration of martial law, saying that he had to protect the country from these anti-state forces, accusing his opponents, once more, of being on North Korea’s side.On December 14, Yoon was impeached and booted from office, following another, failed vote; his party sticking with him for a while, though seemingly distancing themselves from him, following his doubling-down on the “my political opponents are communists” stance.The leader of his party the PPP, stepped down shortly after that successful vote, having changed his vote from being against impeachment to supporting it, saying basically that there was no other way to remove Yoon from office, and Yoon’s Supreme Councilmembers all stepped down, as well.South Korea’s Constitutional Court will now have to decide, within the next six months, whether Yoon will be formally and permanently removed from office, or if he’ll be reinstated.In the two previous instances of a president being impeached, the court has taken 2 and 3 months to make their decision, and they reinstated one president, while allowing the impeachment to stand for the other.If Yoon is removed by the court, the country will have to elect a new leader within two months, and in the interim, the country’s Prime Minister, the number 2 person in the government, is serving as president; Yoon has been stripped of his powers.Yoon has a broad swathe of immunity against criminal charges due to his position as president, but that doesn’t apply to rebellion or treason, which could apply in this case.He’s been banned from leaving the country, but there’s a good chance if he tries, he won’t be stopped, due to a potential conflict between state security forces and presidential security forces—it would be a bad look to have them fight and maybe kill each other.Yoon’s presence was requested by prosecutors over the weekend, but he didn’t show up to be questioned, and there’s a chance that if this happens again, him deciding not to show up and ignoring these requests, he’ll be arrested—though that same issue with presidential security fighting with police forces applies here, too, so it’s an open question what will happen if he just ignores the whole process and keeps claiming he did nothing wrong.A preliminary court hearing date has been set for December 27, and though the court only has six of its total nine members at the moment, it has said it’s fine to move forward with an incomplete court, though the government has said they’ll likely be able to get another three judges approved by the end of December.So things are complicated in South Korea right now, the former president disempowered, but seemingly refusing to participate in the proceedings that will help a new government form, if his dismissal is upheld by the court, that is, and that means the interim government is even more of a lame duck than he was, at a moment in which the world is very dynamic, both in the sense of geopolitics and North Korea becoming more active and antagonistic, and in the sense that economics and tech and everything else is roiling and evolving pretty rapidly right now; a new paradigm seems to be emerging in a lot of different spaces, and South Korea is in a terrible spot to make any moves in any direction, based on that—and that seems likely to remain the case for at least a few more months, but possibly longer than that, too, depending on how the court case plays out, and how the potential next-step election turns out, following that court case.Show Noteshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law_crisishttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/03/world/asia/south-korea-martial-law.htmlhttps://www.yahoo.com/news/heres-whats-going-south-korea-213322966.htmlhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/03/martial-law-south-korea-explained/https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-protesters-photo-gallery-yoon-b17f96063a2635ebc87f35ed9ab5ac5bhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/14/world/asia/south-korea-president-impeached-martial-law.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/12/04/world/asia/south-korea-impeachment-vote-president-yoon.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/world/asia/south-korea-protest-feliz-navidad.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/12/14/world/asia/skorea-yoon-timeline.htmlhttps://apnews.com/article/south-korea-martial-law-yoon-impeach-6432768aafc8b55be26215667e3c19d0https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreas-yoon-faces-second-impeachment-vote-over-martial-law-bid-2024-12-14/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/14/south-korea-president-yoon-suk-yeol-downfall-analysishttps://www.wsj.com/world/asia/south-korea-president-yoon-suk-yeol-impeached-49b0779chttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/14/south-korea-yoon-impeachment-vote/https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1054103.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoon_Suk_Yeolhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/world/asia/south-korea-first-lady-dior.htmlhttps://www.economist.com/europe/2024/12/12/why-romania-cancelled-a-pro-russian-presidential-candidatehttps://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20241215050041https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2pl4edk13ohttps://www.cnn.com/2024/12/14/world/video/south-korea-yoon-second-impeachment-watson-cnntm-digvidhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/15/south-korea-president-yoon-suk-yeol-reportedly-defies-summons-in-martial-law-inquiryhttps://apnews.com/article/south-korea-yoon-martial-law-investigation-constitutional-court-8ec38d61f0ea5c48b3bd1f683b5e9c8dhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngman_Rheehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Koreahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Park_Chung_Heehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_of_December_Twelfthhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol This is a public episode. 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This week we talk about coups, the Arab Spring, and Bashar al-Assad.We also discuss militias, Al Qaeda, and Iran.Recommended Book: The Algebraist by Iain M. BanksTranscriptIn the early 2010s, a series of uprisings against unpopular, authoritarian governments spread across the Middle East—a wave of action that became known as the Arab Spring.Tunisia was where it started, a man setting himself on fire in protest against the nation’s brazenly corrupt government and all that he’d suffered under that government, and the spreading of this final gesture on social media, which was burgeoning at the time, amplified by the still relatively newfound availability and popularity of smartphones, the mobile internet, and the common capacity to share images and videos of things as they happen to folks around the world via social media, led to a bunch of protests and riots and uprisings in Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, and Algeria, initially, before then spreading to other, mostly Arab majority, mostly authoritarian-led nations.The impact of this cascade of unrest in this region was immediately felt; within just two years, by early 2012, those ruling Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen had been toppled, there were attempts to topple the Bahraini and Syrian governments, there were massive protests in Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Algeria, and Sudan, and relatively minor protests, which were still meaningful because of the potential punishments for folks who rocked the boat in these countries, smaller protests erupted in Djibouti, Western Sahara, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Mauritania.Several rulers and their ruling parties committed to stepping down soon, or to not run for reelection—some of them actually stuck with that commitment, though others rode out this period of tumult and then quietly backtracked.Some nations saw long-lasting periods of unrest following this eruption; Jordan had trouble keeping a government in office for years, for instance, while Yemen overthrew its government in 2012 and 2015, and that spun-out into a civil war between the official government and the Iran-backed Houthis, which continues today, gumming up the Red Sea and significantly disrupting global shipping as a consequence.What I’d like to talk about today, though, is another seriously disruptive sequence of events that have shaped the region, and a lot of things globally, as well, since the first sparks of what became the Arab Spring—namely, the Syrian Civil war—and some movement we’ve seen in this conflict over the past week that could result in a dramatically new state of affairs across the region.—In 1963, inspired by their brethren’s successful coup in nearby Iraq, the military wing of the Arab nationalist Ba’ath party of Syria launched a coup against the country’s post-colonial democratic government, installing in its stead a totalitarian party-run government.One of the leaders of this coup, Hafez al-Assad, became the country’s president in 1971, which basically meant he was the all-powerful leader of a military dictatorship, and he used those powers to even further consolidate his influence over the mechanisms of state, which meant he also had the ability to name his own successor.He initially planned to install his brother as leader when he stepped down or died, but that brother attempted to overthrow him when he was ill in 1983 and 1984, so when he got better, he exiled said brother and chose his eldest son, Bassel al-Assad, instead.Bassel died in a car accident in 1994, though, so Hafez was left with his third choice, Bashar al-Assad, which wasn’t a popular choice, in part because it was considered not ideal for him to choose a family member, rather than someone else from the leading party, but also because Bashar had no political experience at the time, so this was straight-up nepotism: the only reason he was selected was that he was family.In mid-2000, Hafez died, and Bashar stepped into the role of president. The next few years were tumultuous for the new leader, who faced heightened calls for more transparency in the government, and a return to democracy, or some form of it at least, in Syria.This, added to Bashar’s lack of influence with his fellow party members, led to a wave of retirements and purgings amongst the government and military higher-ups—those veteran politicians and generals replaced by loyalists with less experience and credibility.He then made a series of economic decisions that were really good for the Assad family and their allies, but really bad for pretty much everyone else in the country, which made him and his government even less popular with much of the Syrian population, even amongst those who formerly supported his ascension and ambitions.All of this pushback from the people nudged Bashar al-Assad into implementing an increasingly stern police state, which pitted various ethnic and religious groups against each other in order to keep them from unifying against the government, and which used terror and repression to slap down or kill anyone who stood up to the abuse.When the Arab Spring, which I mentioned in the intro, rippled across the Arab world beginning in 2011, protestors in Syria were treated horribly by the Assad government—the crackdown incredibly violent and punitive, even compared to that of other repressive, totalitarian governments in the region.This led to more pushback from Syrian citizens, who began to demand, with increasing intensity, that the Assad-run government step down, and that the Ba’athists running the dictatorship be replaced by democratically elected officials.This didn’t go over well with Assad, who launched a campaign of even more brutal, violent crackdowns, mass arrests, and the torture and execution of people who spoke out on this subject—leading to thousands of confirmed deaths, and tens of thousands of people wounded by government forces.This response didn’t go over super well with the people, and these protests and the pushback against them spiraled into a full-on civil uprising later in 2011, a bunch of people leaving the Syrian military to join the rebels, and the country breaking up into pieces, each chunk of land controlled by a different militia, some of these militias working well together, unifying against the government, while others also fought other militias—a remnant of the military government’s efforts to keep their potential opposition fighting each other, rather than them.This conflict was officially declared a civil war by the UN in mid-2012, and the UN and other such organizations have been fretting and speaking out about the human rights violations and other atrocities committed during this conflict ever since, though little has been done by external forces, practically, to end it—instead it’s become one of many proxy conflicts, various sides supported, mostly with weapons and other resources, though sometimes with training, and in rare instances with actual soldiers on the ground, by the US, Turkey, Russia, Iran, the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Britain, France, Israel, and the Netherlands.This conflict has demanded the country’s full attention for more than a decade, then, and it’s had influence even beyond Syria’s borders, as groups like the Islamic State, or ISIS has been able to grow and flourish within Syria, due to all the chaos and lack of stability, refugees from Syria have flooded across borders, fleeing the violence and causing all sorts of unintended disruptions in neighboring and even some further-afield countries where, in some cases, millions of these refugees have had to be taken care of, which in turn has influenced immigration-related politics even as far away as the European Union. Also due to that lack of internal control, crime has flourished in Syria, including drug-related crime. And that’s lets to a huge production and distribution network for an illegal, almost everywhere, amphetamine called Captagon, which is addictive, and the pills often contain dangerous filler chemicals that are cheaper to produce.This has increased drug crime throughout the region, and the Syrian government derives a substantial amount of revenue from these illicit activities—it’s responsible for about 80% of global Captagon production, as of early 2024.All of which brings us to late-2024.By this point, Syria had been broken up into about seven or eight pieces, each controlled by some militia group or government, while other portions—which make up a substantial volume of the country’s total landmass—are considered to be up in the air, no dominant factions able to claim them.Al-Assad’s government has received a fair bit of support, both in terms of resources, and in terms of boots on the ground, from Iran and Russia, over the years, especially in the mid-20-teens. And due in large part to that assistance, his forces were able to retake most of the opposition’s strongholds by late 2018.There was a significant ceasefire at the tail-end of 2019, which lasted until March of 2020. This ceasefire stemmed from a successful operation launched by the Syrian government and its allies, especially Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah, against the main opposition and some of their allies—basically a group of different rebel factions that were working together against Assad, and this included groups backed by the Turkish government.On March 5, 2020, Turkish President Erdogan and Russian President Putin, which were backing opposite sides of this portion of the Syrian civil war, agreed on a ceasefire that began the following day, which among other things included a safety corridor along a major highway, separating the groups from each other, that corridor patrolled by soldiers from Turkey and Russia.This served to end most frontline fighting, as these groups didn’t want to start fighting these much larger, more powerful nations—Russia and Turkey—while trying to strike their enemies, though there were still smaller scuffles and attacks, when either side could hurt their opponent without being caught.In November of 2024, though, a coalition of anti-Assad militias launched a new offensive against the Syrian government’s forces, which was ostensibly sparked by heavily shelling by those forces against civilians in rural areas outside Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city.On the 29th of November, those forces captured most of Aleppo, and then plowed their way through previously government-held towns and cities at a fairly rapid clip, capturing another regional capitol, Hama on December 5, and securing Damascus, the capitol of the country, on December 8.This ended the 13-year civil war that’s plagued Syria since all the way back in 2011; Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, according to Russian and Iranian officials, and he resigned before he hopped on that flight; Russian state media is saying that Assad and his family have been granted asylum by the Russian government.This is a rapidly developing story, and we’ll know more over the next few weeks, as the dust settles, but right now it looks like the Syrian government has been toppled by rebel forces led by a man named Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a 42-year-old child of Syrian exiles who was born in Saudi Arabia, and who spent the early 2000s fighting against US occupation forces in Iraq as part of Al Qaeda.He apparently spent a few years in an Iraqi prison, then led an Al Qaeda affiliate group, which evolved into its own thing when he broke ties with Al Qaeda’s leadership.This new group that he formed, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, tried to differentiate itself from groups like Al Qaeda by saying they didn’t want to play a role in the global jihad, they just wanted to reform the government in Syria. As part of that pivot, they started governing and building infrastructure across the chunk of Syria they claimed, even to the point of collecting taxes and providing civilians with identity cards; though throughout this period they were also known for ruling with an iron fist, and for being hardcore authoritarians, dedicated to implementing a hard-line version of Islamist ideological law.In the midst of their blitz-like capture of Syria, though, representatives from this group have said they’ll implement a religiously tolerant representative government, and they won’t tell women in the country how to dress.Following the capture of Damascus, Syria’s Prime Minister said that he would remain in the country, and that he was ready to work with whomever takes the reins as things settle down, happy to make the transition a smooth and peaceful one, essentially, whatever that might mean in practice.The US military has taken this opportunity to strike dozens of Islamic State facilities and leaders across the country, marking one of the biggest such actions in recent months, and military leaders have said they would continue to strike terrorist groups on Syrian soil—probably as part of an effort to keep the new Syrian government, whatever its composition, from working with IS and its allies.Russia has requested a closed-door meeting with the United Nations Security Council to discuss Syria’s collapse, and it’s been reported that they failed to come to Assad’s aid because they’re too tied up in Ukraine, and they weren’t able to move forces from North Africa rapidly enough to do much good; though there’s a chance they’ll still shift whatever chess pieces they can to the area in order to influence the composition of the new government, as it’s forming.Iran has said they welcome whatever type of government the Syrian people decide to establish, though it’s likely they’ll try to nudge that formation in their favor, as Syria has long been an ally and client state of theirs, and they are no doubt keen to maintain that reality as much as possible, and bare-minimum to avoid the establishment of an enemy along their border.And Israel has entered what’s supposed to be a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights because this zone is on the Syrian border; they’ve also captured a buffer zone within Syria itself. They’ve launched airstrikes on suspected chemical weapon sites in Syria, to prevent them from falling into extremist hands, they’ve said, and Israeli leaders said they want to keep any issues in their neighbor from impacting Israeli citizens. And Iraq’s government has announced that they’re doing the same along their shared border with Syria, so the whole region is bulwarking their potential weak points, just in case something goes wrong and violence spreads, rather than being tamped down by all this change.Israel’s prime minister, and other higher ups in the government, have also claimed responsibility for Assad’s toppling, saying it was their efforts against Iran and its proxy forces, like Hezbollah, that set the stage for the rebels to do what they did—as otherwise these forces would have been too strong and too united for it to work.Notably, the now-in-charge rebel group has been a longtime enemy of Iran and Hezbollah, so while there’s still a lot of uncertainty surrounding all of this, Israel’s government is no doubt generally happy with how things have progressed, so far, as this could mean Syria is no longer a reliable corridor for them, especially for the purposes of getting weapons to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, along Israel’s northern border.That said, this same group isn’t exactly a fan of Israel, and is backed by Turkey, which has been highly critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon.So it’s an incredibly tumultuous moment in Syria, right now, and in this region, as a whole, because the conflict in Syria has been super impactful on everyone thereabouts, to varying degrees, and this ending to this long-lasting civil war could lead to some positive outcomes, like Syrian refugees who have been scattered across neighboring countries being able to return home without facing the threat of violence, and the release of political prisoners from infamous facilities, some of which have already been emptied by the rebels—but especially in the short-term there’s a lot of uncertainty, and it’ll likely be a while before that uncertainty solidifies into something more knowable and predictable, as at the moment, much of the country is still controlled by various militia groups backed by different international actors, including Kurdish-led forces backed by the US, and forces allied with Turkey in the north.So this change of official governance may shuffle the deck, but rather than stabilizing things, it could result in a new conflict catalyzed by the power vacuum left by the Assad government and its allies, if rebel forces—many of which have been labeled terrorists by governments around the world, which is another wrinkle in all this—if they fail to rally behind one group or individual, and instead start fighting each other for the opportunity to become the country’s new dominant force.Show Noteshttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/world/middleeast/syria-hts-jolani.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/briefing/syria-civil-war-assad.htmlhttps://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/assads-rule-collapses-in-syria-raising-concerns-of-a-vacuum-95568f13https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/world/middleeast/syria-rebels-hts-who-what.htmlhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/12/07/syria-rebels-biden-intelligence-islamists/https://apnews.com/article/turkey-syria-insurgents-explainer-kurds-ypg-refugees-f60dc859c7843569124282ea750f1477https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-lebanon-news-7-december-2024-53419e23991cfc14a7857c82f49eb26fhttps://apnews.com/article/syria-assad-sweida-daraa-homs-hts-qatar-816e538565d1ae47e016b5765b044d31https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/world/middleeast/syria-damascus-eyewitness-assad.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/article/syria-civil-war-rebels.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/08/world/syria-war-damascushttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%27ath_Partyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_Syrian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tathttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez_al-Assadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_revolutionhttps://www.cfr.org/article/syrias-civil-warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenethyllinehttps://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/07/border-traffic-how-syria-uses-captagon-to-gain-leverage-over-saudi-arabia?lang=enhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_Syria_offensive_(December_2019_%E2%80%93_March_2020)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Syrian_opposition_offensiveshttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8j99447gj1ohttps://apnews.com/article/syria-assad-rebels-war-israel-a8ecceee72a66f4d7e6168d6a21b8dc9https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/09/world/syria-assad-rebelshttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/world/middleeast/israel-assad-syria.htmlhttps://apnews.com/article/iran-mideast-proxy-forces-syria-analysis-c853bf613a6d6af7f6aa99b2e60984f8https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/briefing/irans-very-bad-year.htmlhttps://apnews.com/article/syria-hts-assad-aleppo-fighting-2be43ee530b7932b123a0f26b158ac22https://apnews.com/article/syria-insurgents-aleppo-iran-russia-turkey-abff93e4f415ebfd827d49b1a90818e8https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/world/middleeast/syria-rebels-hama-homs.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring 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This week we talk about emissions, carbon credits, and climate reparations.We also discuss Baku, COP meetings, and petrostates.Recommended Book: The Struggle for Taiwan by Sulmaan Wasif KhanTranscriptIn 2016, a group of 195 nations signed the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, usually just called the Paris Agreement, which was negotiated the previous year, and which, among other things, formalized the idea of attempting to keep the global average temperature from increasing by 1.5 C, which is about 2.7 F, above pre-industrial levels.The really bad stuff, climate-wise, was expected to happen at around 2 degrees C above that pre-industrial level, so the 1.5 degrees cutoff made sense as sort of a breakwater meant to protect humanity and the natural world from the most devastating consequences of human-amplified climate change.This has served decently well as a call-to-arms for renewable energy projects and other efforts meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and many nations have actually made really solid strides in that direction since this agreement was formalized, dramatically truncating their emissions in a variety of ways, while also laying the groundwork for long-term reductions by installing a whole lot of solar and wind, reviving old and building new nuclear power facilities, reinforcing and expanding their grids, including adding all sorts of large-scale battery storage, and figuring out ways to reduce energy consumption, which has allowed for the shut-down of coal and oil plants.Shorter-term solutions, like replacing more polluting and emitting sources of energy, like coal, with gas, have also put a big dent in overall global emissions, especially for entities like the US and Europe; this isn’t ideal as a permanent measure, because there are still a lot of emissions associated with gas, especially its transport, because of leakage, and gas itself, in the atmosphere, has really significant greenhouse properties, but in the short-term this has proven to be one of the most impactful solutions for some nations and large corporations, and it’s increasingly being seen as a transitionary measure, even by those who oppose the use of any fossil fuels long-term.Things have been going decently well, then, even if progress is still far short of where it needs to be for most countries to meet their Paris Agreement commitments, and far slower than many people who are watching this space, and analyzing whether we’ll be able to avoid triggering those much-worse climate outcomes, would prefer.One issue we’re running into, now, is that those original commitments were a little fuzzy, as the phrase “preindustrial period” could mean many different periods, even if it’s commonly assumed to be something like 1850 to 1900, in the lead-up to humanity’s full-on exploitation of fossil fuels and the emergence of what we might call the modern era—society empowered by things like coal and oil and gas, alongside the full deployment of electrical grids.Throughout this period, though, from the mid-19th century to today, the climate has experienced huge swings year to year, and decade to decade. The evidence showing that we humans are throwing natural systems way off their equilibrium are very clear at this point, and it isn’t a question of whether we’re changing the climate—it’s more a question of how much, how quickly, and compared to what; what baseline are we actually using, because even during that commonly used 1850 to 1900 span of time, the climate fluctuated a fair bit, so it’s possible to pick and choose baseline numbers from a range of them depending on what sort of picture you want to paint.Research from the World Meteorological Organization in 2022 found that, as of that year, we were probably already something like 1.15 degrees C above preindustrial levels, but that it was hard to tell because La Niña, a weather phenomenon that arises periodically, alongside its opposite, El Niño, had been cooling things down and dampening the earth-warming impacts of human civilization for about three years.They estimated, taking La Niña’s impact into consideration, that the world would probably bypass that breakwater 1.5 degrees C milestone sometime in the next four years—though this bypassing might be temporary, as global temperatures would increase for a few years because of the emergence of El Niño.Adding to the complexity of this calculation is that aforementioned variability in the climate, region to region, and globally. The WMO estimated that through 2027, the world is likely to fluctuate between 1.1 and 1.8 degrees C above preindustrial levels—and that at that higher range, El Niño might tip things into the especially dangerous 2 degree C territory the Paris Agreement was supposed to help us avoid.By late-2024, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the world had stepped past the 1.5 degrees threshold into unfamiliar climactic terrain.Three of the five leading research groups that keep tabs on this matter have said that in addition to 2024 being the warmest year on record, it will also be the first year we’ve ever surpassed that 1.5 degree level.Notably, simply popping up above 1.5 degrees doesn’t suggest we’re now permanently living in that long worried about climate nightmarish world: there are significant, normal fluctuations in this kind of thing, alongside those associated with the El Niño/La Niña patterns; there are a lot of variables acting upon our climate, in other words, in addition to the human variables that are pushing those averages and fluctuating ranges up, over time.The concern here, though, even if we drop back down below 1.5 degrees C for a while is that this temperature band opens up a whole new spectrum of weather-related consequences, ranging from substantial, persistent, crop-killing, barely survivable heat and drought in some parts of the world, to things like larger, more frequent, and more difficult to predict storm systems, like the ones we’ve already seen in abundance this and last year, but bigger and wilder and in more areas that don’t typically see such storms.What I’d like to talk about today is what happened at a recent climate-policy focused meeting, COP29, and the international response to that meeting.—The United Nations Conference of the Parties of the UN Climate Change Conference, or COP meetings, are held every year in a different host country, and they’re meant to serve as a formal space where governments can present their goals and boast of their climate-related accomplishments. They also serve as a platform for negotiations related to things like emissions standards and goal-setting, like that aforementioned 1.5 degrees C temperature level we’ve been trying to avoid hitting.The most recent of these meetings, COP29, was held in Baku, the capitol of Azerbaijan, in mid- to late-November of 2024. And that location was pretty controversial from the get-go because Azerbaijan is a petro-state: its authoritarian government basically funded and sustained by the sale of oil and gas, all of which flows through a state-owned, corruption-laden, local elite-profiting energy company.This isn’t the first time a full-on petro-state has hosted a COP meeting, as COP28 was held in Dubai, in the UAE, which was also controversial.But this one was seen as a step even further toward what might read as the appropriation or capture of the COP meetings for the benefit of fossil fuel entities, as the meeting was partly hosted by so-called official partners, which were fossil fuel business interests directly owned by the country’s president, while others weren’t directly owned, but were connected to his family’s other businesses, all of them thus linked to both authoritarian corruption, and the wealth associated with fossil fuel focused economics.As a result, there were allegations that this whole meeting was premised on providing a notorious source of greenhouse gas emissions, which has every reason to try to keep those emitting products available for as long as possible, a venue for greenwashing their efforts, while also giving them the power to moderate discussions related to global emissions targets and other climate change-oriented issues; a major conflict of interest, basically.The Azerbaijani president, leading up to the meeting, countered that critiques of his country’s government and human rights record and prominence as a fossil fuel exporter were all part of a smear campaign, and that these unwarranted, preemptive criticisms wouldn’t stop those running COP29 from achieving their goal of helping the world “cope with the negative impacts of climate change.”That statement, too, was criticized, as it implies fossil fuel are more interested in pushing the world to adapt to a climate change and its impacts, rather than attempting to halt the emissions that are causing said climate change; many such companies seem keen to keep pumping oil and burning coal and gas forever, in other words, and their efforts in this regard thus tend to orient around figuring out what the new, warmer, more chaotic world looks like, rather than entertaining the idea of changing their business model in any substantial way.So leading up to this meeting, expectations were low, and by some estimates and according to some analysis, those low expectations were met.Article 6 of the Paris Agreement was a big topic of discussion, for instance, as this article outlines how countries can cooperate with each other to reach their climate targets—and this collaboration is predicated on a carbon credit system.So if County A reduces their emissions by more than the targets set by this group, they can sell the gap, the amount of carbon equivalents not emitted into the atmosphere, to Country B, which failed to reach its targets, but which can bring its emissions into accord by acquiring those credits, which according to such a system count as emissions reductions.This same general concept applies to companies, like airlines and even fossil fuel producing energy companies, as well.But while the agreement reached at COP29 does establish a UN-backed carbon credit trading body, which has been heralded as a key step on the way toward concluding Article 6 negotiations that could open up a bunch of new finance for smaller and poorer countries in particular—as they could sell their carbon credits to their wealthier, more emitting fellow COP members—despite that progress, the scaffolding that exists now is generally considered to be leaky and rife with abuse potential, as the UN body doesn’t really have the teeth to enforce anything or do much checking into claims made by governments and corporations. A lot of this system is basically on the honor system, and that means just like the stated goals presented by governments and corporations as to when they’re be net-zero and when they’ll reach the even further-off goal of zero emissions, these claims are often worth little or nothing because there’s no mechanism for punishing entities that fail to live up to their boasts and ambitions.A company or government could say they plan to hit net-zero by 2035, then, but if they don’t do anything that would allow them to hit that goal in that lead-up to that year, they get to keep claiming to be part of the solution, without having to do any of the work to actually achieve anything. This grants them the veil of sustainability, and without any real consequence.Also notable here is that this meeting’s progress on Article 6, establishing that UN body, was pushed through using a questionable procedural move that disallowed negotiation, despite this same proposal having been dismissed after negotiation at previous COP meetings.So while it’s arguably good to see progress of any kind on these matters, that this component of Article 6 was voted down previously, but then forced through using what amounts to a technicality early on at COP29 is being side-eyed by a lot of COP watchers who worry about these meetings being coopted by forces that are keen to see this carbon system formalized not because it will help the world reduce emissions, but because it will create a new asset class worth hundreds of billions of dollars, which many of them hope to profit from.It’s worth noting, too, that all of the carbon credit markets that have been tried, so far, have either collapsed or served as mechanisms for greenwashing emitting activities; less than 16% of carbon credits issued up till this point represent actual, provable emissions reductions, and most of them are basically just dressed-up money grabs. This new move, despite representing progress of a sort, isn’t being seen as substantial enough to change the current carbon credit paradigm, as those issues have not been addressed, yet.All that said, the big news out of COP29 was a deal that requires wealthier nations make a big payout to poorer nations in the form of climate finance; so paying for renewable energy infrastructure, paying for flood walls, things like that, so that poorer countries can leap-frog the fossil fuel era, and so they can deal with and survive the consequences of climate change, which is something they bear a lot less responsibility for than wealthier, far more emitting countries.Those on the receiving end, representing the nations that will receive payments via this plan, were aiming for a minimum of $500 billion, payable in full by 2035, and they were pushing for a lot more than that: something like $1.3 trillion.The final sum was lower than the minimum target, though, weighing in at just $300 billion; which isn’t great in contrast to those hoped-for figures, though on the upside, it is three-times what was promised as part of a previously negotiated deal from 2009.Representatives from poorer nations have expressed their discontentment with this agreement, saying that the sum is paltry compared to the challenges they face in trying to shift to renewables while also scrambling to defend against increasingly dangerous temperatures and weather patterns.They’ve also criticized the meeting’s leadership for basically gaveling this version of the agreement through before it could be commented upon by those on the receiving end of these payouts.Summing up the consequences of this meeting, then, a lot of money matters were discussed, which is important, and more money was promised to poorer nations by wealthy nations than at earlier meetings, which is also generally considered to be vital to this transition, and to overall fairness within this context—since again, these nations have contributed very little to the issue of climate change, compared to wealthier nations, and they bear a disproportionate amount of the negative consequences of climate change, as well.There are serious concerns that some of these things were passed without the usual level of democratic consideration, and that some of the money talk, especially related to carbon credits, could represent basically a cash-grab by entities that aren’t super-interested in actually changing the status quo, but are very interested in making potentially tens or hundreds of billions of dollars from what amounts to a fabricated asset class that they can spin-up out of nothing.There’s a chance that some of this, even the stuff that’s sparking the most concern at the moment, and which seems to be a cynical appropriation of this group and this whole process, could actually lead to more substantial agreements at future COP meetings.COP30 will be based in Brazil, and Brazil’s current leadership at least has shown itself to be decently concerned with actual climate issues, as opposed to just the money associated with them. And previous meetings have tended to build upon the agreements of their precursors—so the establishment of a UN body for carbon credits could clear the way for an actually empowered, punishment-capable institution that holds companies and countries to their word on things, rather than simply serving as a symbolic institution that watches over a made-up asset class, which seems to be the case, currently. That asset class could become less prone to abuse and manipulation, and could help with this energy transition as it’s ostensibly meant to; but that’ll be determined in large part by what happens at the next couple meetings.However this policymaking plays out, we’ve stepped into a world in which 1.5 C is no longer a far off concern, but a lived reality, at least periodically, and that could nudge things more in the direction of practical outcomes, rather than aspirations and fuzzy goals from this and similar bodies; though the consequences of this and the last few COP meetings have arguably led to luke-warm progress in that direction, at best.Show Noteshttps://www.wsj.com/articles/u-n-negotiators-take-key-step-to-global-carbon-deal-1e23433ehttps://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/article-64-mechanismhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Azerbaijanhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conferencehttps://www.semafor.com/article/11/24/2024/the-cop29-deal-is-even-more-disappointing-than-it-lookshttps://apnews.com/article/united-nations-climate-talks-baku-azerbaijan-finance-8ab629945660ee97d58cdbef10136f35https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/24/cop29s-new-carbon-market-rules-offer-hope-after-scandal-and-deadlockhttps://www.businessgreen.com/blog-post/4382153/cop29-baku-breakthrough-disappoints-trigger-fresh-wave-climate-financehttps://news.mit.edu/2023/explained-climate-benchmark-rising-temperatures-0827https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/18/climate-crisis-world-temperature-targethttps://grist.org/economics/how-the-world-gave-up-on-1-5-degrees-overshoot/https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/11/27/global-warming-fight-paris-agreement-future/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement This is a public episode. 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