The Trump administration is proposing the formation of a committee on climate security to evaluate climate science evidence and determine if it poses a national security threat, according to a White House memo originally obtained and reported by the Washington Post on Wednesday.
What to watch: William Happer, a Princeton physicist and well-known denier of mainstream climate science findings, will reportedly participate in the panel. He argued in a 2015 Senate testimony that more carbon dioxide is beneficial to the planet, a view that directly contradicts thousands of scientific studies. Happer is a National Security Council senior director and currently serves as Trump's deputy assistant for emerging technologies.
With Venezuela's political and humanitarian catastrophe back on the international radar, the crisis in Nicaragua continues to fester, largely unnoticed.
Why it matters: In December, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights accused the Nicaraguan government of committing crimes against humanity when it crushed protests demanding the ouster of President Daniel Ortega. In absolute terms, the repression's 2018 death toll — at least 300 — is comparable to that of Venezuela, but relative to Nicaragua's much smaller population, it ranks as one of the worst human rights crises Latin America has seen in decades.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk yesterday said the electric carmaker's full self-driving feature will be completed by the end of 2019. Don't count on it.
Why? Musk has made bold predictions before, telling Fortune in 2015 that Tesla cars would drive themselves within two years. So it's prudent to take his latest prediction, during a podcast interview with money management firm and Tesla investor ARK Invest, with a grain of salt.
BlackRock and KKR are in "advanced talks" to invest between $4 billion and $5 billion into the pipeline infrastructure of state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., per the FT.
Why it matters: While ADNOC is responsible for around 3% of the global oil supply, this deal reflects how the UAE is seeking to diversify its assets for a post-oil future. "ADNOC has started a major transformation drive in the past two years to make it more competitive and commercially focused like other state-owned peers, selling and listing stakes in parts of its business," Reuters' Diptendu Lahiri writes.
Tesla is set to replace its general counsel with its current vice president of legal, Jonathan Chang, per the Wall Street Journal. Dane Butswinkas, a longtime Washington trial lawyer who worked as Tesla's general counsel for two months, will be returning to law firm Williams & Connolly.
What to watch: Tesla's former CFO Deepak Ahuja left the company last month, following a string of more than 50 executive departures last year.
Democrats' efforts to craft climate and energy policy heading into the 2020 elections are very fluid, creating space for new ideas and the risk of chaos that leaves them lacking a clear agenda.
Why it matters: Political windows for big emissions policies open rarely, and the early efforts to craft an agenda follow major scientific findings on the dangers of unchecked warming.
Battery technology is notorious for being slow to advance, with improvements in chemistry not coming nearly as fast as in other aspects of computing. One startup's solution: Use the power of software to get more from the batteries we have.
Why it matters: Battery life is tremendously important to consumers, and ensuring battery safety is also high on the list of needs for those who make phones. Just ask Samsung, which had to recall its entire Galaxy Note 7 line after a small number of the millions of early devices ignited.
Senate Democrats running for president are touting their support for the Green New Deal in early primary states, but are casting it as more of a call to arms than a policy platform.
Why it matters: Recent appearances suggest that the announced candidates are seeking to signal aggressive postures on global warming while simultaneously preventing themselves from getting politically tethered to specific aspects of the sweeping climate and jobs resolution.
