"Batteries are the New Oil, and China is Winning" Twitter's Algorithm Open to the Public? VP Harris Staff Turnover Helping to Kill her POTUS Plans? (The Five for 04/26/22)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
It’s Tuesday, so let’s dive into the news.
[one]
If Disney's “private city” in Orlando is dismantled…home owners in Orange County, FL could see property tax increases of 20-25%, according to one local outlet.
This much is true: the Reedy Creek Improvement District is an extension of Disney that shields the company from oversight others have. The theme park operator taxes itself and gives itself permission to build whatever, wherever so long as it follows building codes and other state and federal laws.
What Reedy Creek isn’t is a replacement for the counties it exists in. Disney still pays the same property taxes levied by the government and the school district that every other landowner pays. Orange County, for example, collected $40 million from the House of Mouse in 2021, Tax Collector Scott Randolph (D) said.
So, how does Reedy Creek operate its own fire and sewer departments? The special tax district status allows Disney to levy an additional tax on itself to pay for those services. The tax, amounting to $105 million per year, is illegal anywhere else in the county, along with the additional $58 million per year the company taxes itself to pay off Reedy Creek’s bond debt.
When the district is dismantled on June 1, 2023, Orange County will begin paying for those services and paying off the debt, without that special status in place.
However, according to NBC Orlando, Florida governor Ron Desantis is expected to sign additional legislation that would prevent property tax increases in Orange County by…maybe giving Disney some local control back?
[two]
The Russia/Ukraine was is driving up greenhouse gasses due to increased reliance on emergency coal…and the solution may be for the U.S. to ramp up natural gas exports.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
When Russia slowed gas deliveries to Europe last fall, the Continent had few alternatives but to ramp up coal power. As gas prices surged amid a global supply shortage, Asian countries, especially China, burned more coal. Increased emissions from Chinese power and heating generation last year offset all emissions reductions in the rest of the world between 2019 and 2021. The world’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—barely three weeks after the senators wrote to Ms. Granholm—will further constrain fossil-fuel supply.
The only way for the U.S. to make a significant dent in greenhouse-gas emissions, Mr. Rice says, is increasing liquefied natural gas exports. By his calculations, the U.S. could increase gas production 50% and LNG exports fourfold over the next decade based on existing natural-gas plays. Replacing coal power overseas with American LNG, he says, would “have the environmental impact of electrifying every vehicle in the United States, putting solar on every household in America, and adding 54,000 industrial-scale windmills—like that would be double the U.S.’s wind capacity—combined.”
Maybe we should start building cars to run on American-produced natural gas because…
[three]
Much of the conflicts of the last 120 years had to do with oil in some way or another.
But as vehicle production moves towards hybrids and EV’s (electronic vehicles, such as the Tesla), new conflicts over resources could be on the horizon.
Batteries are the new oil — and the U.S. is lagging behind Europe and China in the race to make them.
Why it matters: The historic shift to electric vehicles will give the U.S. a fresh chance to achieve energy independence, but it will require complex strategic moves that won't pay off for years.
The big picture: Most of today's advanced batteries — not only to power cars and consumer electronics but also to store clean energy — are sourced in Asia.
Demand for batteries will skyrocket over the coming decades. If the U.S. wants to control its own energy destiny, it'll need a secure, resilient supply chain for critical minerals and other components.
"If we don't do this, if we don’t as a country invest in our supply chain, it will go to the lowest-cost country, which is China," says Michael O’Kronley, CEO of Ascend Elements, a battery recycling company.
Further reliance on China isn’t the only issue with EV batteries, which could ravage poor areas of South America:
The environmental toll of electric car batteries begins before the product is even assembled, most notably in the mining of its active material, lithium. To extract lithium from the Earth, an immense amount of water is pumped down into salt flats, bringing mineral-rich saltwater to the surface. Lithium is filtered out of the mixture left behind after the water evaporates.
This water-intensiveness is problematic for several reasons, including its potential to contaminate the water supply. Further complicating the issue is the location of these mines, many of which are found in desert regions of Australia and China. More than half of the Earth’s lithium supply, however, is in the Lithium Triangle, spanning Andean Mountain sections of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. The area is one of the driest places on the globe and lithium mining consumes as much as 65% of the region’s water, according to the United Nations.
Whatever your opinions are on electric cars…the current version of EVs are not the bullet-proof solution to solve every fossil fuel issue.
[four]
Well, you probably opened this email for a hot-take on Elon Musk buying Twitter.
But it’s Tuesday, aka hard news day for The Five. (Culture & Commentary is on Fridays, so stay tuned).
Musk buying Twitter is practically the only story of the past 24 hours…but Popular Mechanics cut through the noise to highlight the most important change Musk has proposed:
Whether a March tweet or a Ted Talk, Musk has been clear that he thinks Twitter should open-source its algorithm. By opening up the algorithm that Twitter uses, those on the platform can see how Twitter decides to demote or promote material and potentially make suggestions on that code. Opening the code for viewing is not a major undertaking; in fact, much of Twitter’s code is already open source, but opening the code to show how Twitter engineers run the site is something that few social media platforms have done (Pixelfed and Okuna are fully open source) because they want to keep their internal processes private.
This could have a major ripple effect in the tech world, possibly forcing Facebook/Instagram and other companies to open up their code and let the public examine how the content algorithms work.
UPDATE: President Trump told CNBC he won’t be returning to Twitter if he’s un-banned, and will instead focus on his own platform, Truth Social.
[five]
Kamala Harris has been hit with a staggering 15 resignations from her staff, including the VP’s chief of staff.
The New York Post reports:
The departures happened amid a cascade of press reports describing a toxic environment among the VP’s staff, and Flournoy did not escape unscathed. According to a June 2021 Politico report, her efforts to protect Harris from criticism led to her dismissing or ignoring staff ideas, refusing to delegate responsibility, unnecessarily prolonging decisions, and blaming those under her for negative outcomes.
“People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment,” one unnamed source told the outlet. “It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s—.”
Others pointed the finger at Harris herself, claiming similar work environments existed when she was a senator from California and the Golden State’s attorney general.
Given President Biden’s age and perceived cognitive issues (shaking hands with thin air certainly didn’t help public perception), it’s entirely possible the 46th POTUS doesn’t run for a second term.
Normally, this would make the sitting VP the favorite as a replacement, but just Harris actually trails Michelle Obama (who has never run for elected office, and hasn’t announced plans to) in early polls.
If the VP ever wants a shot at being POTUS, stories like this certainly don’t help her already trailing chances.
Until the next one,
-sth