< Previous25ISSUES: Renewable EnergyChapter 2: The future of energyMeet the new ‘renewable superpowers’: nations that boss the materials used for wind and solarAn article from The ConversationBy Andrew Barron, Sêr Cymru Chair of Low Carbon Energy and Environment, Swansea UniversityImagine a world where every country has not only complied with the Paris climate agreement but has moved away from fossil fuels entirely. How would such a change affect global politics?The 20th century was dominated by coal, oil and natural gas, but a shift to zero-emission energy generation and transport means a new set of elements will become key. Solar energy, for instance, still primarily uses silicon technology, for which the major raw material is the rock quartzite. Lithium represents the key limiting resource for most batteries – while rare earth metals, in particular ‘lanthanides’ such as neodymium, are required for the magnets in wind turbine generators. Copper is the conductor of choice for wind power, being used in the generator windings, power cables, transformers and inverters.In considering this future it is necessary to understand who wins and loses by a switch from carbon to silicon, copper, lithium, and rare earth metals.The countries which dominate the production of fossil fuels will mostly be familiar:The list of countries that would become the new ‘renewables superpowers’ contains some familiar names, but also a few wild cards. The largest reserves of quartzite (for silicon production) are found in China, the US, and Russia – but also Brazil and Norway. The US and China are also major sources of copper, although their reserves are decreasing, which has pushed Chile, Peru, Congo and Indonesia to the fore.Chile also has, by far, the largest reserves of lithium, ahead of China, Argentina and Australia. Factoring in lower-grade ‘resources’ – which can’t yet be extracted – bumps Bolivia and the US onto the list. Finally, rare earth resources are greatest in China, Russia, Brazil – and Vietnam.Of all the fossil fuel producing countries, it is the US, China, Russia and Canada that could most easily transition to green energy resources. In fact it is ironic that the US, perhaps the country most politically resistant to change, might be the least affected as far as raw materials are concerned. But it is important to note that a completely new set of countries will also find their natural resources are in high demand.Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy, June 217Fossil fuels: largest reserves by countryOil (billion barrels) x1Gas (trillion cubic metres) x2Coal (billion tonnes) x3Venezuela 301Iraq 153Iran 158Canada 172Saudi 267Iran 34US 9Turkmenistan 18Qatar 24Russia 32US 252India 95Australia 145Russia 160China 24426ISSUES: Renewable EnergyChapter 2: The future of energyAn OPEC for renewables?The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a group of 14 nations that together contain almost half the world’s oil production and most of its reserves. It is possible that a related group could be created for the major producers of renewable energy raw materials, shifting power away from the Middle East and towards central Africa and, especially, South America.This is unlikely to happen peacefully. Control of oilfields was a driver behind many 20th-century conflicts and, going back further, European colonisation was driven by a desire for new sources of food, raw materials, minerals and – later – oil. The switch to renewable energy may cause something similar. As a new group of elements become valuable for turbines, solar panels or batteries, rich countries may ensure they have secure supplies through a new era of colonisation.China has already started what may be termed ‘economic colonisation’, setting up major trade agreements to ensure raw material supply. In the past decade it has made a massive investment in African mining, while more recent agreements with countries such as Peru and Chile have spread Beijing’s economic influence in South America.Or a new era of colonisation?Given this background, two versions of the future can be envisaged. The first possibility is the evolution of a new OPEC-style organisation with the power to control vital resources including silicon, copper, lithium, and lanthanides. The second possibility involves 21st-century colonisation of developing countries, creating super-economies. In both futures there is the possibility that rival nations could cut off access to vital renewable energy resources, just as major oil and gas producers have done in the past.On the positive side there is a significant difference between fossil fuels and the chemical elements needed for green energy. Oil and gas are consumable commodities. Once a natural gas power station is built, it must have a continuous supply of gas or it stops generating. Similarly, petrol-powered cars require a continued supply of crude oil to keep running.In contrast, once a wind farm is built, electricity generation is only dependent on the wind (which won’t stop blowing any time soon) and there is no continuous need for neodymium for the magnets or copper for the generator windings. In other words solar, wind, and wave power require a one-off purchase in order to ensure long-term secure energy generation.The shorter lifetime of cars and electronic devices means that there is an ongoing demand for lithium. Improved recycling processes would potentially overcome this continued need. Thus, once the infrastructure is in place, access to coal, oil or gas can be denied, but you can’t shut off the sun or wind. It is on this basis that the US Department of Defense sees green energy as key to national security.A country that creates green energy infrastructure, before political and economic control shifts to a new group of ‘world powers’, will ensure it is less susceptible to future influence or to being held hostage by a lithium or copper giant. But late adopters will find their strategy comes at a high price. Finally, it will be important for countries with resources not to sell themselves cheaply to the first bidder in the hope of making quick money – because, as the major oil producers will find out over the next decades, nothing lasts forever.18 February 2018The above information is reprinted with kind permission from The Conversation. © The Conversation Trust (UK) Limited 2019www.theconversation.comContentsChapter 1: What is censorship?What is freedom of speech? 1Isn’t freedom of speech just saying whatever you want? 2The top ten things you need to know about freedom of expression laws 3The new blasphemies on campus 4What you need to know about the new free speech pledge for universities 5Internet censorship: making the hidden visible 6Which countries censor the internet today? 8The technology of censorship 10The rise of social media censorship 11Chapter 2: Freedom of the pressUK among the worst in western Europe for press freedom12Press freedom: getting darker14A free press is fundamental to a mature society – but the press is not infallible 16How deadly has 2018 been for journalists? 17Global crackdown on fake news raises censorship concerns 18Fake news has always existed, but quality journalism has a history of survival 20New initiative to help children identify fake news welcome addition to on-going digital resilience debate 21Older children are getting wise to fake news 22How to spot fake news 23Chapter 3: Censorship and usWhy we age rate films 24Ghosts, liberated women and Morgan Freeman: the films banned for odd reasons 26Why does China’s Xi hate Winnie the Pooh? 27Mary Whitehouse was right: why, even in the streaming age, we need the watershed more than ever 28Snowflakes and trigger warnings: Shakespearean violence has always upset people30Should books ever be banned? 31How censorship through the decades cracked down on literary sex, drugs... and poo poo head 32What do protests about Harry Potter books teach us? 34The state of artistic freedom 36Key facts40Glossary41Assignments42Index43Acknowledgements 4424ISSUES: The Censorship DebateChapter 3: Censorship and usCensorship and usChapter3Why we age-rate filmsWhy do we do it?All films shown in the UK need an age rating by law.What are the ratings?The BBFC rate films before they are released in cinemas. These days there are five certificates for cinema films• U• PG• 12A• 15• 18In theory, anyone can see a U or a PG, although you and your parents and teachers are encouraged to think carefully about whether a PG film will be suitable for you if you are younger than eight years old.With 12A films you must be 12 or older to go and see them, unless you have an adult with you. The accompanying adult must take responsibility for the younger child watching the film (and the BBFC recommends they read the ratings info for the film to help them decide whether it is likely to be suitable).Anyone wanting to release a film, video or DVD for showing in cinemas or watching at home has to make sure that their film has a BBFC age rating symbol. It’s against the law to try and sell videos and DVDs without this. Films that you see at the cinema also have to display the right rating.When was the BBFC started?The BBFC was created by the film industry in 1912, long before anyone had even heard of Harry Potter or Pixar. It wanted to make sure that all of its films, (videos and DVDs had not been invented then), were checked on behalf of the whole country. Cinemas needed a licence to show films because film stock burns very easily and there was a big fire risk.Local councils, who were, and still are, in charge of cinemas up and down the country, grew to accept the BBFC’s decisions. Even today, for films shown in cinemas, councils have the power to ignore any decision made by the BBFC and can give them their own age ratings. For example, in 1993, the comedy film Mrs. Doubtfire was given a 12 classification by the BBFC. Some councils disagreed with our decision and gave the film a PG.An important change came with the arrival of video in the early 1980s. In 1984, a new law was passed, The Video Recordings Act, which put the BBFC in charge of classifying all videos for home use. The law asks Compliance Officers to make sure that works are classified for appropriate audiences and make sure that they show nothing that might be harmful to people, especially young children.What does all this mean exactly?Well, for example, very scary or gory horror films that might upset younger children are unlikely to be found at U, PG or 12A/12. As for harmful material, the BBFC has to note any dangerous or criminal activities on a video or DVD, such as scenes that show, in detail, how to hurt people or themselves and or scenes in which children are encouraged to do dangerous things, or take part in activities which could hurt them or those around them. Scenes like this may also be cut from the video before it’s released to the public – though this is very rare.The Compliance Officers at the BBFC also have to be aware of other laws, such as those which protect animals. It is against the law in this country to show films or videos in which an animal has been treated cruelly during the production. The owners of any film showing such a scene are asked to remove it (cut it out) before a certificate is given and the film is allowed to be released.Filmmakers have always been allowed to get advice from the BBFC about the age rating their film will probably get. Sometimes they send in the film before it is finished, and Compliance Managers watch it without special effects, music or other details. The Compliance Managers can give a good idea of the rating the film will probably get based on our guidelines. If the filmmakers decide the likely rating is too high, they may decide to change the film, eg by removing scenes or changing the special effects, so they are more likely to get the lower rating they want. This is called a ‘cut for category’ and is the most common sort of cut made to films in the UK.Now, as well as classifying films released in UK cinemas and on DVD and Blu-ray, the BBFC provide age-ratings for Video On Demand platforms.The above information is reprinted with kind permission from The British Board of Film Classification. © 2019 the British Board of Film Classificationwww.bbfc.co.uk25ISSUES: The Censorship DebateChapter 3: Censorship and usSource: BBFCBritish Board of Film Classi cation Age RatingsA U lm should be suitable for audiences aged four years and over,although it is impossible to predict what might upset any particularchild. U lms should be set within a positive framework and should o erreassuring counterbalances to any violence, threat or horror.A PG lm should not unsettle a child aged around eight or older.Unaccompanied children of any age may watch, but parentsare advised to consider whether the content may upset youngeror more sensitive children.No one younger than 15 may see a 15 lm in a cinema.No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a 15 rated video work.No one younger than 18 may see an 18 lm in a cinema.No one younger than 18 may rent or buy an 18 rated video work.Films classi ed 12A and video works classi ed 12 contain material that is not generallysuitable for children aged under 12.No one younger than 12 may see a 12A lm in a cinema unless accompanied by an adult.Adults planning to take a child under 12 to view a 12A lm should consider whether the lm is suitable for that child.To help them decide, we recommend that they check the ratings info for that lm in advance.No one younger than 12 may rent or buy a 12 rated video work.26ISSUES: The Censorship DebateChapter 3: Censorship and usWonder Woman is the latest blockbuster to fall foul of the censors. From Borat to Sex and the City 2, here are some of the more peculiar film bansBy Ben ChildThe ‘glory’ days of the British censor – when grey-faced men would take a pair of scissors to every 1980’s horror flick, from Maniac to The Evil Dead, while the tabloids screamed ‘video nasty’ in the background – are thankfully gone. These days it takes something truly horrific – a Human Centipede 2 or a Hate Crime – to ruffle the feathers of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). Not to worry, for the grand tradition of banning movies remains firmly extant in other corners of the world. This week Lebanon refused to grant the comic book-action flick Wonder Woman a theatrical release on the grounds that its star is from Israel, at a time when the two countries are at war. While the merits of the ban have been hotly debated online, what is clear is that it’s not the only film to fall foul of the censors in recent years. Here are some of the more unlikely of those film bans:The Uzbek thriller banned for not starring Morgan FreemanIf you’ve been to the cinema much over the past decade or so, you might be under the impression that Morgan Freeman is in every film. If a Hollywood producer is looking for a senior alpha male, primed to deliver lines of grandiloquent yet pithy wisdom at just the right moment, Freeman is most definitely their man. But just because it seems as if the Shawshank Redemption star is ubiquitous on the big screen, that doesn’t mean it’s OK to pretend he’s in your film when he’s not – as the Uzbekistan production studio Timur Film discovered in February. Posters for the action thriller Daydi (Rogue) featured a hooded Freeman between two local actors. Unfortunately, this was the Hollywood star’s one and only contribution to the movie, as he does not appear in a single frame of the film. Daydi was duly banned by Uzbekistan’s film licensing body, which we like to imagine being staffed almost entirely by outraged fans of Driving Miss Daisy.When Borat was banned for upsetting KazakhstanSacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 comedy depicts its dubious hero’s homeland as a place where racists and criminals are on every run-down street corner, but (in Borat’s own words) the ‘prostitutes are the cleanest in the region’. Not surprisingly, authorities in Kazakhstan did not take too kindly to its rendering, and prohibited the movie from release in cinemas. Borat was also banned by Russia and every Arab country except Lebanon, with a censor at Dubai’s ministry of information labelling the comedy ‘vile, gross and extremely ridiculous’, adding that if all the offensive scenes were cut out, only 30 minutes would remain. Attitudes towards the movie in Kazakhstan do appear to have shifted, however: Borat was a huge hit when released on DVD in 2007, and in 2012 the nation’s foreign minister, Yerzhan Kazykhanov, thanked the films makers for helping to increase tourism to the country. ‘With the release of this film, the number of visas issued by Kazakhstan grew tenfold,’ he said.Sex and the City 2 banned in the UAE for showing liberated womenThere are many honest cinema goers who wish Sex and the City 2 had been outlawed worldwide. But the decision by United Arab Emirates censors to ban the critically reviled comedy sequel, in which Carrie Bradshaw and her New York gal pals head to Abu Dhabi on holiday, still makes uncomfortable reading. Officials were unhappy at scenes referencing homosexuality and highly displeased by a sequence in which one of the main characters is shown kissing in public, according to local reports. The most galling scene, however, appears to have been one in which the four ladies are rescued by Muslim women – who take off their burqas to reveal stylish western clothes underneath.Ghostbusters banned in China for promoting superstitionNo one can say Sony didn’t do its best to secure a Chinese release for the all-female remake of the classic 80’s comedy last year. Executives even proposed renaming the movie Super Power Dare-to-Die Team in order to try and avoid upsetting local censors. But it would be hard to come away from watching Ghostbusters without being at least partly aware that the movie is about... well, ghosts. And ghosts are a taboo subject in the world’s most populous nation, due to communist views on the supernatural: official Chinese censorship guidance prohibit films that ‘promote cults or superstition’. A source told the Hollywood Reporter in July Ghosts, liberated women and Morgan Freeman: the films banned for odd reasons27ISSUES: The Censorship DebateChapter 3: Censorship and uslast year that Paul Feig’s film would not be getting a release, but refused to confirm this was due to the movie’s spooky subject matter.That time the Philippines banned every Claire Danes movieWoe betide the Hollywood star who slags off shooting conditions in a foreign country during a routine magazine interview, then discovers that, thanks to the internet, it isn’t just Americans who can access Vogue’s website. This is what happened to the Homeland star, who described the Philippines capital, Manila, as ‘a ghastly and weird city’ during the promotion for her 1999 drug mule drama Brokedown Palace, then compounded the issue by telling Premiere the metropolis ‘smelled of cockroaches, with rats all over, [had] no sewerage system,’ and was populated by people with ‘no arms, no legs, no eyes’. Then-president Joseph Estrada, himself a former movie star, called for Danes to be banned from the country, and Manila’s city council banned every film starring the Romeo + Juliet actor from screening in cinemas there. Danes later issued an apology, saying that ‘because of the subject matter of our film Brokedown Palace, the cast was exposed to the darker and more impoverished places of Manila’. But local politicians were unimpressed and refused to lift the ban – which as far as we can tell, remains in place.When North Korea banned 2012 for failing to stick to the scriptRoland Emmerich’s apocalyptic 2009 disaster flick features a global geological catastrophe that almost wipes out the human race. This did not go down well with the leadership of the rogue nation, for whom the year 2012 has significance, not for being the date on which the Mayans predicted the end of the world, but for supposedly marking the beginning of North Korea’s rise to the status of global superpower. This prediction was based on 2012 being the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-Sung, founder of the nation, and North Koreans who illegally purchased DVDs from China were punished with up to five years in prison for watching a movie that dared to suggest history might turn out differently. The irony is that 2012, with its depiction of American cities such as Los Angeles sinking into the Pacific, would probably have proven quite cheery viewing for the North Korean high command.2 June 2017The above information is reprinted with kind permission from The Guardian. © 2019 Guardian News and Media Limitedwww.theguardian.comWhy does China’s Xi hate Winnie the Pooh? By Cindy YuWhy is Winnie the Pooh like Ai Weiwei? Both have landed in political hot water with the Chinese government. The artist Ai has a long history of running into trouble with the Chinese authorities. In fact, earlier this week, Ai’s Beijing studio was demolished for reasons unknown (though perhaps you can take a guess). And Pooh’s become an equally worthy dissident, all because he bears an unfortunate resemblance to President Xi Jinping. Judging by his waistline, President Xi is obviously settling in to his cushy job with too much tea and honey. And he’s feeling sensitive about it. So much so that Disney’s upcoming film about Pooh bear, Christopher Robin, has been banned in China.How did the world’s most successful authoritarian regime get so touchy about a cartoon bear? It all started in 2013, when Xi met Obama. The picture that came out of the meeting shows the two men walking side-by-side – one of the better diplomatic pictures to have come out of world leader meetings, you might think. That was until someone, rather astutely, posted the pic next to a picture of Pooh walking with the rather taller, thinner Tigger. The resemblance was – and is – quite amusing, but I’m not sure Beijing is known for its humour.Censors quickly took down the image. And just as any common sense could have told you, this repression made the easygoing tongue-in-cheek comparison into an irresistible big red button. Cue Chinese ‘netizens’ conducting experiments on social media to see if their Pooh will be deleted. Some of them were, some of them weren’t. But even if the censorship wasn’t a blanket ban, the harm had been done. A.A. Milne’s loveable bear had now been turned into a fully-fledged symbol of sarcastic resistance in the meme age.Perhaps President Xi and his gaggle of censors can learn from Milne. As Christopher Robin says to Pooh: ‘you’re braver than you believe’. As leader of the world’s rising power, it’s time Xi learned to brush off these small trivial acts of rebellion.8 August 2018The above information is reprinted with kind permission from The Spectator. © 2019 The Spectatorwww.spectator.co.ukNext >