Y ET ANOTHER crucial global market has gone from glut to shortage at breakneck speed. Last September in Europe it cost €119 ($139) to buy enough gas to heat the average home for a year and the continent’s gas-storage facilities were brimming. Today it costs €738 and stocks are scarce. Even America, which has an abundance of shale gas, has seen prices more than double—albeit from a much lower level—and could see further increases if its winter is a cold one. The shortage has many causes . A cold European spring and a hot Asian summer boosted energy demand. Rebounding industrial production has lifted the global appetite for liquefied natural gas ( LNG ). Russia has been piping less gas into European stockpiles. Hawks suspect it of trying to spook the market and ensure its new Nord Stream 2 pipeline is approved. But it has also faced disruptions, including a fire at a processing plant in Siberia. Gas has been plugging gaps in power production from other sources. The wind … [Read more...] about Natural-gas shortages threaten governments’ green goals
America is at last getting serious about countering China in Asia
A LMOST TEN years ago President Barack Obama visited Australia’s parliament to announce a pivot to Asia. “The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay,” he declared. This week the White House will echo with similar sentiments, as the leaders of the Quad countries—America, Australia, India and Japan—gather in person for the first time. There will be talk of a “free and open Indo-Pacific”, code for facing down an assertive China. The rhetoric will be familiar, but the reaction may not be: this time both friend and foe may actually believe it. The reason is AUKUS , an agreement announced last week for America and Britain to supply Australia with at least eight nuclear-powered submarines. The deal has caused waves because of its huge size and because it caused an unseemly row with France, which had a submarine contract of its own with Australia that has now been abandoned. This belies AUKUS ’s true significance , which is as a step towards a new balance … [Read more...] about America is at last getting serious about countering China in Asia
On the case of “12 Angry Men”
Reginald Rose and the Journey. By Phil Rosenzweig. Fordham University Press; 314 pages; $27.95 and £22.99 I N 1954 A young screenwriter received a summons for jury service in New York. For the rest of his life he would describe how he sat with his peers in a homicide case, helping argue the conviction down from manslaughter to assault. The accused had punched a loudmouth who had pulled a knife in a bar and, after being struck, fell and banged his head. Reginald Rose recalled that he left the court, sat down at his typewriter and wrote the screenplay for the landmark film “12 Angry Men”. But a bit of sleuthing reveals that he may not have served on the jury. Phil Rosenzweig, the author of this fascinating book about Rose’s masterpiece, searched in court records and found the most similar case. The names of all 12 jurors and both alternates are listed; Rose’s is not among them. Yet the crime was too obscure to be known beyond the courtroom. The best explanation, Mr … [Read more...] about On the case of “12 Angry Men”
A father and son take on the world in Richard Powers’s new novel
Bewilderment. By Richard Powers. W.W. Norton & Company; 288 pages; $27.95. William Heinemann; £18.99 A N ECOLOGICAL EPIC about deforestation, “The Overstory” brought Richard Powers a wider readership when it won a Pulitzer in 2019. His new novel, shortlisted for this year’s Booker prize, may make him even better known. It is a shorter, more intimate tale that still wrestles with the scientific themes that are his hallmark. The story is set in Wisconsin and narrated by Theo, a widowed astrobiologist. He is struggling to bring up his son, Robin, whose diagnosis of autism he resists, and whom the novel follows from the age of eight to ten. Robin’s mother, Alyssa, recently died in a car crash; he is disruptive at school. Distressed about global warming and the ruin of the natural world, he is consoled by playing a game in which he and his father imagine life on other planets. When the trouble at school escalates, the possibility arises of Robin taking part in a … [Read more...] about A father and son take on the world in Richard Powers’s new novel
A bold artist’s work is at once high-tech and primeval
O N THE AFTERNOON before this summer’s official opening of Luma Arles, an impressive new art centre in the south of France, a triangular pool in the corner of one of the ground-floor galleries began to overflow. Visitors were more amused than perturbed as the water seeped inexorably across the parquet floor. Even when the circular blue carpet in the centre of the room became sodden and dark, onlookers suspected it was part of the show. The gallery had been given over to Philippe Parreno, a French conceptual artist whose work challenges notions of what an art exhibition can be. Mr Parreno watched in silence as the water spread. Born in Oran, Algeria, and brought up in Grenoble, one of France’s most tech-savvy cities, Mr Parreno, now 57, first came to the notice of the art world in the early 1990s, just as the internet was taking off. Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Gallery in London, remembers a work he created in a summer garden in Villa Arson in Nice. It … [Read more...] about A bold artist’s work is at once high-tech and primeval