Daniel Yergin podcast; Six webinars; Five film fests
Happy Friday.
Three items in this update:
Dan Yergin talks The New Map
Six webinars!
Juice film fest tally
The New Map and a "cartographic combatant"
Daniel Yergin readily agreed to be on this week's Power Hungry Podcast and I'm glad he did. His new book, The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations is a sprawling look at the global energy sector and how it has been roiled by the shale revolution, climate politics, and shifting geopolitics. The New Map covers a lot of ground and has several excellent maps. For me, the most interesting parts were about China-Russia relations and the South China Sea.
Yergin, who won the Pulitzer Prize several years ago for his book, The Prize, points out that natural gas has made Russia and China into major trading partners. China invested in Russia's massive Yamal LNG project and the new Power of Siberia pipeline will send Russian gas to China for the next three decades.
Yergin also underscores the importance of the South China Sea and how it could become the site of an international conflict. He includes a map drawn in 1936 by "a singular cartographic combatant" named Bai Meichu and explains that his map is "at the heart of today's struggle over the South China Sea." Meichu drew the "Nine-Dash Map" which China is using to claim a large stretch of ocean, a claim that is contested by Brunei, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines. During the podcast, Yergin explains:
China imports 75% of its oil and a large part of that passes through those waters...this is the most dangerous point where the US Navy and the Chinese navy could collide and there have been several near misses there. And the big worry, the big concern, the big fear, is that there sometime may not be a near miss, and what happens if there is some kind of collision or some kind of action that involves us and Chinese navies in that region? And given that the relationship between the US and China is becoming much more confrontational, how do you resolve it?
Please give the Yergin episode a listen and subscribe to the Power Hungry Podcast.
Six presentations this week and the "trifurcated donut"
The Zoom economy is real and in full swing. This week, I gave virtual presentations to six groups, including three university classes (University of Colorado, Southern Methodist University, and University of Oklahoma), the Heavy Duty Manufacturers Association, The Energy Council, and a private company. It was fun and exhausting.
In most of those presentations, I showed one of my favorites slides: the "trifurcated donut." Amid all the discussions in the US about the Green New Deal and decarbonizing the electric grid, it's easy to forget the big picture. Yes, climate change is a concern, but so is energy poverty. Three billion people in the world today are still living in places where per-capital electricity use is less than what's used by an average American refrigerator.
Juice festival count at five
As I mentioned last week, we continue getting positive responses to Juice: How Electricity Explains the World. The film, which was directed by my colleague Tyson Culver, will be featured at the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, starting October 6.
That makes five festivals that have included Juice. The others are: Circle Cinema, Breckinridge, Lebanon, and Twin Cities. It's hard to believe, but it has been about 14 months since we premiered the film. It has had good traction even though it still isn't available in Europe, Asia, or Australia. We have had several dozen inquiries on Twitter and by email about getting the film in foreign countries. Alas, our distributor, Gravitas Ventures, says it won't be available in foreign markets until December, at the earliest. In any case, we are eager to get the film into as many markets as possible. If you have watched it and haven't rated it on Amazon, iTunes, or the other platforms, please give it as many stars as you can.
Okay. That's it. Have a great weekend.
What can you do?
1. Subscribe to the Power Hungry Podcast.
2. Rent or buy Juice on iTunes or Amazon Prime.
3. Buy my new book, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations.
4. Follow me and Juice on Twitter.
5. Forward this note to your friends/family/colleagues so I can add them to the email list.
Thanks!