Could Solar Be Europe’s Top Power Source In 5 Years?

Could Solar Be Europe’s Top Power Source In 5 Years?

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/30/2020 – 05:00

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Solar power could be Europe’s biggest energy source in terms of installed capacity by 2025 if the European Union (EU) stays on track for its net-zero targets, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on SolarPower Europe’s Solar Power Summit on Tuesday.

“Our numbers show that if Europe is keen and able to follow a net-zero goal, within five years of time solar will be the number one electricity capacity in Europe, overtaking everybody,” IEA’s Executive Director Fatih Birol said on the summit, as carried by Recharge.

The numbers Birol was referring to will be published in IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2020 on October 13.

“Clean energy must be at the heart of the global economic recovery. Solar was essential in offering resilience during the pandemic and with the help of the #EUGreenDeal, Europe will lead the world in providing solar and renewable technologies,” Birol said today.

According to SolarPower Europe, last year was the strongest year of solar capacity growth in the EU since 2010, with 16.7 gigawatts (GW) of installations added in the region – a 104-percent surge compared to the 8.2 GW capacity that the EU added in 2018. Spain was Europe’s largest solar market in 2019 in terms of capacity additions with 4.7 GW, followed by Germany with 4 GW, the Netherlands with 2.5 GW, France with 1.1 GW, and Poland, which nearly quadrupled its installed capacities to 784 MW.

After the pandemic hit energy markets this year, SolarPower Europe, alongside other industry organizations representing renewable energy, are calling for renewable energy to become the pillar of the economic recovery in Europe, especially in light of the EU’s goal to become carbon neutral by 2050

Most recently, the European Commission laid out plans to increase the EU’s 2030 renewable energy target from the current 32 percent up to 38–40 percent. 

Solar has seen the largest cost reductions of any renewable technology, major efficiency gains and new innovations, such as floating solar and Agri-PV. This makes it a strategic technology that not only contributes to the objectives of the European Green Deal but creates jobs and development opportunities across all of Europe,” Walburga Hemetsberger, CEO of SolarPower Europe, said, commenting on the planned new targets and the possibility of a more robust industrial strategy for advanced solar technologies. 

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Brickbat: The Regulator Is the Enemy of the Good

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The new coronavirus has claimed the lives of some 7,000 nursing home residents in New Jersey. Those nursing homes now have access to coronavirus tests that provide results in minutes, which administrators say could help them keep the disease out of their facilities by allowing them to test people before they have any interaction with patients. But the state Department of Health won’t allow them to use the tests, saying it has concerns about their accuracy. The department says it is currently evaluating the tests and will issue guidance on their use eventually.

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Brickbat: The Regulator Is the Enemy of the Good

covidtesting_1161x653

The new coronavirus has claimed the lives of some 7,000 nursing home residents in New Jersey. Those nursing homes now have access to coronavirus tests that provide results in minutes, which administrators say could help them keep the disease out of their facilities by allowing them to test people before they have any interaction with patients. But the state Department of Health won’t allow them to use the tests, saying it has concerns about their accuracy. The department says it is currently evaluating the tests and will issue guidance on their use eventually.

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Vatican Fires Senior Official As London Property Investments Bleed Millions Of Euros In Losses

Vatican Fires Senior Official As London Property Investments Bleed Millions Of Euros In Losses

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/30/2020 – 04:15

When market conditions worsen, it’s always interesting to see who gets caught with their pants down. During the financial crisis, Bernie Madoff’s JPM-abetted Ponzi scheme made headlines as the largest financial fraud in history, with prosecutors estimating the size of the fraud at $64.8 billion (of course, as whistleblower Harry Markopolos claimed, more than half of that money never really existed, but rather included fictional profits reported by Madoff.

The London property market was already showing signs of weakness as early as 2019, before the coronavirus hammered the city’s economy, leaving its commercial areas virtually deserted. The reverberations have been felt across the city’s super-luxury market, which, as it happens, is just where one senior Vatican clergyman-bureaucrat decided to invest hundreds of millions of euros of the Catholic Church’s money, apparently hoping to make a quick profit for the church.

But vague allegations that Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, the second-in-command of the Vatican’s powerful Secretariat of State, may have tried to strike some kind of shady deal have allowed the Vatican to fire Becciu and scapegoat him for the investment scheme. The 72-year-old cardinal resigned Monday at the Pope’s request, and has pledged to defend himself and clear his name.

The documents show Cardinal Becciu oversaw a development that involved buying three apartments on 7-9 Cadogan Square for a total of £19.25m and spending £1.25m on redecoration and building reforms, including £39,000 on fireplaces, £52,000 on flooring and £7,000 on wallpaper, a document outlining the refurbishments shows. The Secretariat also purchased 25 Cadogan Square as well as apartments located on 28-29 Hans Place and 130 Pavilion Road. The acquisitions amounted to £95.75m. That total was partly funded with mortgages from the now defunct Swiss bank BSI, and Rothschild, according to details of the loan agreements seen by the FT.

But that’s not all: Vatican investigators are examining another property deal purportedly organized by Becciu where the Holy See invested millions in a commercial property project in Chelsea. The massive €350 million investment has reportedly led to huge losses. In response, the Vatican has arrested the London-based businessman who acted as a middle man in the deal.

The revelations of additional high-end London property acquisitions decided by the 72-year-old Italian clergyman come as Vatican magistrates are investigating a separate €350m investment in a large building in Chelsea called 60 Sloane Avenue, which Cardinal Becciu also oversaw when it was made in 2014. The Holy See has said the Sloane Avenue deal caused large losses. A London-based businessman, Gianluigi Torzi, was charged and arrested by the Vatican authorities with “extortion, embezzlement, aggravated fraud and self laundering” for payments made to him for his role as a middleman in the purchase. The Italian, who was released from custody, denies wrong doing.

The investment was made through four Jersey-incorporated companies, which isn’t terribly uncommon during large property deals.

The development plan was managed by a British company called Sloane and Cadogan, with an aim of selling the refurbished apartments on at a profit. The properties were purchased by the Secretariat of State through four Jersey-incorporated companies named Charybdis, Princeps, Civitas and Valerina, according to corporate filings. Sloane and Cadogan, which is not suspected of any wrongdoing, declined to comment.

The hints at some kind of a potential kickback scheme emerged in 2017, when some of Cardinal Becciu’s subordinated tried to get a second management company involved with the project, though the initial management company pushed back.

In 2017, three years after the initial investment, two Vatican officials reporting to Cardinal Becciu — Alberto Perlasca and Fabrizio Tirabassi — informed Sloane and Cadogan that a different investment company based in Switzerland called Valeur was to be given part of the fees charged to manage and develop the properties, according to correspondence seen by the FT. Both Mr Perlasca and Mr Tirabassi have been suspended by the Vatican authorities as part of the continuing investigation into the 60 Sloane Avenue investment. That investment was separate and not linked to the Cadogan Square developments.

When reached by the FT, the Cardinal reportedly claimed that these types of property deals were an accepted practice at the Vatican, and that he did nothing wrong. Sometimes, things don’t work out. That’s life.

One would think the Catholic Church would show a little understanding. In summary: while this hardly rates as a juicy scandal by Vatican standards (the church was once roped into a Mafia money laundering scheme back in the 20th century made famous in “The Godfather: Part III”), it’s interesting to see the Church scapegoat such a powerful official over a wayward investment. One can’t help but wonder if there might be other motives afoot.

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Denmark Nears Pre-COVID Normality: No Masks Or Distancing In Schools, Just Common Sense

Denmark Nears Pre-COVID Normality: No Masks Or Distancing In Schools, Just Common Sense

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/30/2020 – 03:30

Authored by Patrick Henningsen via 21st Century Wire,

One of the more diabolical aspects of the protracted COVID ‘crisis’ in countries like the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, is the intellectually dishonest claim that Coronavirus in their countries is somehow different from the Coronavirus in other western countries. 

It’s like there are two parallel universes now. While the Anglosphere continues to ramp-up its emergency ‘pandemic’ measures and mandatory mask and quarantine policies, their Scandinavian counterparts like Sweden, Norway or Denmark have already returned to life as normal; no masks on public transport (although Norway just introduced a new rule today advising masks on crowded carriages), no obsessive social distancing rules, no snap lockdowns, and certainly no draconian laws and threats of £10,000 fines made by government leaders, or holding the country hostage until a wonder vaccine arrives in the spring. The contrast couldn’t be more extreme.

Why has normality not returned to the US and UK?

Perhaps the worst aspect of the new hypochondriac culture being aggressively promoted in the US and UK is how the state bureaucrats and schools are now targeting children and young adults with a relentless regime of restrictive and nonsensical health and safety policies. One of the main drivers of the school chaos in the UK has been the teachers/public service unions, who have seized on the crisis in order to leverage political power and carve out a platform in the national spotlight. Union officials repeated the fallacious claim that schools were no longer safe unless a whole new raft of new rules, regulations and government assurances were put into place. The list of issues and concerns keeps growing by the day and is now threatening to bring normal education to a grinding halt.

As a result of this over-the-top fear-based approach to risk mitigation, the lives of students and their families across the UK have been unnecessarily disrupted. In just the first few weeks of school, many thousands of students have already been removed from school and sent home and placed under under 14 day house arrest-quarantine order by school administrators – all because another student in school or a teacher had tested PCR positive for COVID.

Many schools are also ordering all primary, secondary and high school students to remain under house arrest at home over their half-term break, supposedly to “stop the spread of the virus.”

British authorities have even gone so as to demand that university students remain on campus over the Christmas break in order “stop the spread of COVID to their families back home.”

All of this is taking place at a time where hospitalisations and deaths due to COVID have dropped to near zero in the UK. In other words: the ‘pandemic’, if it ever was one, is now over.

GRAPH: Since May, hospitalisations in the UK have plummeted, as have deaths attributed to COVID19.

Still, neither school or government health officials will readily admit the fact that young people at statistically at near zero risk of any complications due to COVID. Likewise, nearly all teachers fall well below the well-established elderly age-bracket risk zone. In addition to this, UK officials still refuse to acknowledge that the PCR test is not only unreliable as a diagnostic tool for COVID, it also cannot rightly identify whether a positive PCR test is indeed a ‘case’ or even an ‘infection.’  This means that the entire mass-testing effort championed by governments is fatally flawed at source. This is not up for debate, it is a scientific reality.

By contrast, from the very beginning of the crisis, Sweden never closed its schools and only required its university-aged students to temporarily migrate to remote teaching online. The results for Sweden have been impressive – minimal or no interruption for millions of students nationwide during such a crucial stage in their formative educational years.

Unfortunately, the opposite path has been pursued in the US and UK, and the results have been catastrophic.

IMAGE: ‘Normal life’ – a scene from Amagertorv Strøget in Copenhagen, Denmark (Source: Wikicommons)

Unlike in the UK, the Danish Teachers Union did not take to the media to try and hold government and schools hostage by threatening to strike if the State could not guarantee all schools were”safe” for teachers. Instead, there were sane and measured discussions, and genuine cooperation between the government and the teachers’ unions. Interestingly, both parties allowed the schools to be the final authority on how to conduct the business of managing schools and education.

During a recent discussion with CBC, Dorte Lange, VP of the Danish Teachers Union described the type of practical, common sense approach which appears to have escaped the educational brain trust in Britain and US – realising that it’s “very much is up to the schools to see what’s the best way forward for us with our kids.”

While some social distancing measures were put into place early on when schools were opened in April and May, most of the major precautionary measures have since been lifted because Danish educators and administrators rightly recognised that you cannot carry on with mass-panic and an open-ended state of emergency; the masks, the endless quarantines and the bizarre social distancing – without jeopardising, and eventually ruining their students’ education experience.

Again, the fundamental question still remains: if it’s the same virus everywhere, then why have Scandinavian countries taken a completely different approach?

Putting aside the very real possibility that all of this is part of a massive state and corporate power grab in the UK, US, Australia and elsewhere, there is another fundamentally democratic issue at play here. The marked difference in policy demonstrates how the social contract between citizens and government is still alive and healthy in Scandinavia. In other words: their governments still desire a mutual arrangement with the people.

Has this same social contract been abandoned in the UK, US and Australia?

CBC reports from Denmark…

Ålholm headmaster Soren Vith said getting close to students comes with risk, but he wants the school experience to be as normal as possible. (Lily Martin/CBC)

Every seat in Jens Rodgaard’s Grade 5 class is full — there is no physical distance at all. 

When a student raises their hand with a question, Rodgaard is by their side in an instant and leans in to help.

“You have to be around them and help them, help them with spelling, help them make choices, and for proper teaching we can’t do that with the distance,” Rodgaard said.

Students must sanitize their hands every time they enter the school and the grades aren’t supposed to mingle with each other. But there isn’t a mask in sight.

This is what Phase 2 of school reopening looked like at Ålholm public school in Copenhagen, Denmark, this week, a month into the second semester.

“Right now we are trying to make things as normal as possible, [to] not scare any kids,” said Rodgaard, who has taught at Ålholm for 28 years.

The school’s goal is to make the experience of education as normal as possible during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Other schools have more rules in place. At this stage, Denmark is allowing each school to come up with its own COVID-19 safety plans.

Right now, the country’s strategy of containing the coronavirus seems to be working. Countries around the world, including Canada, have looked at the Danish model in designing their own school plans…

Continue this report at CBC…

*  *  *

Now, after six months of pandemia, it’s now clearer than ever how COVID has simply revealed a steady drift towards fascism in parts of the West – a trend previously obscured by endless cycles of media and political rhetoric and platitudes about democracy, and convoluted by constant fearmongering about a non-existent Russian threat to something vaguely referred to as ‘our way of life.’ It’s time for the high-minded guardians of democracy in the ‘free’ West to take a long hard look in the mirror.

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Romanian Village Elects Mayor Who Died From Covid Complications Days Before The Election

Romanian Village Elects Mayor Who Died From Covid Complications Days Before The Election

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/30/2020 – 02:45

You just can’t keep a good man down. 

Villagers in Deveselu, South Romania like their mayor so much, they elected him for a third term – despite the fact that he died from Covid-19 complications 10 days before the country’s elections.

Mayor Ion Aliman was reelected in a “landslide” for the village after his death came too close to the election for officials to remove his name from the ballot. He would have been 57 years old on the day of the election. The village is home to about 3,000 people, according to AP

Hundreds of villagers went to the polls to vote for Aliman, who won 1,057 of the 1,600 votes that were cast in the village. After the election results came out, villagers visited his grave to pay their respects. 

Romanian villagers with Mayor Ion Aliman

“This is your victory” some villagers said, surrounding his grave. “We will make you proud, we know that from somewhere up there you are watching.”

Aliman was a member of the country’s left leaning Social Democrat Party who, despite the good local news, lost the Mayoral run in the country’s capital, Bucharest. 

About 19 million voters cast ballots across Romania to elect local officials. The Social Democrat Party is expected to regain power in early December when the country has its Parliamentary vote. 

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Azerbaijani-Armenian War: Turkish F-16s Enter The Game. Armenia Threatens To Use Iskander Missiles

Azerbaijani-Armenian War: Turkish F-16s Enter The Game. Armenia Threatens To Use Iskander Missiles

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/30/2020 – 02:00

Submitted by South Front,

The Armenian-Azerbaijani war continues raging in the South Caucasus.

As of September 29, the Azerbaijani advance in the Nagorno-Karabakh region struck the Armenian defense and Azerbaijani forces were not able to achieve any military breakthroughs. Armenian troops withdrew from several positions in the Talish area and east of Fuzuli.

The Azerbaijani military has been successfully employing combat drones and artillery to destroy positions and military equipment of Armenia, but Azerbaijani mechanized infantry was unable to develop its momentum any further.

While both sides claim that they eliminated multiple enemy fighters and made notable gains, the real situation on the ground remains more or less stable with minor gains achieved by Azerbaijani troops. Armenian sources say that 370 Azerbaijani troops were killed and over 1,000 injured. The number of killed Armenian fighters, according to Azerbaijani sources, is over 1,000. Armenian sources also note the notable role of Turkey in the developing conflict.

Armenian President Armen Sarkissian said that Turkey has been assisting Azerbaijan in its war against the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic with advisers, mercenaries and even F-16 fighter jets. He added that the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is still possible through dialogue. However, the President emphasized that the Armenian nation cannot allow a return to the past.

“105 years ago, the Ottoman Empire carried out the genocide of the Armenians. In no case can we allow this genocide to be repeated,” Sarkissian said.

Armenia threatens to use Iskander short-range ballistic missile systems obtained from Russia against Azerbaijani targets if Turkish F-16 warplanes are employed on the battlefield.

Meanwhile, Armenian Ambassador to Russia Vardan Toganyan said that members of Turkish-backed Syrian militant groups have been already participating in the conflict. He said that recently about 4,000 Turkish-backed militants were deployed to Azerbaijan. In turn, the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan said that “people who have arrived from Syria and other countries of the Middle East” are fighting on the side of Armenia. Earlier, pro-Turkish sources claimed that Armenia was transporting fighters from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Thus, the sides are not only claiming that they are gaining an upper hand in the war, but also accuse each other of using foreign mercenaries and terrorists.

On the evening of September 28, the Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic confirmed that 84 of its troops were killed in the recent escalation. The Armenian side also claimed that its forces had shot down an Azerbaijani aircraft. However, this claim was denied by the Azerbaijani military. Baku continues insisting that all Armenian claims about the Azerbaijani casualties in the war are fake news.

On September 29, the Armenian side continued reporting about Azerbaijani helicopters being shot down, and declaring that they repelled Azerbaijani attacks. Nonetheless, the scale and intensity of the strikes by the Azerbaijani side did not demonstrate any decrease. On top of this, the Armenian Defense Ministry said that a Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter jet shot down an Armenian Su-25 warplane. The F-16 fighter jet allegedly took off from the Ganja Airbase in Azerbaijan and was providing air cover to combat UAVs, which were striking targets in Armenia’s Vardenis, Mec Marik and Sotk. Azerbaijan and Turkey denied Armenian claims that a Turkish F-16 shot down the Su-25.

So far, no side has achieved a strategic advantage in the ongoing conflict. However, the Azerbaijani military, which receives extensive support from Turkey, is expected to have better chances in the prolonged conflict with Armenia, if Erevan does not receive direct military support from Russia.

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Dramatic Video Shows Armenia Score Direct Hit On Azerbaijani Drone

Dramatic Video Shows Armenia Score Direct Hit On Azerbaijani Drone

Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/30/2020 – 01:00

Now in the third day of full war in the disputed Karabakh region, Armenian forces have managed to shoot down an Azerbaijani drone that was flying over their positions, all of which was captured in widely circulating video. 

The moment the missile struck is clear in the video given the powerful explosion and fireball that ripped through the skies over the battlefield. It underscores that both sides are increasingly deploying high-grade sophisticated weaponry in the mountainous battle zone

The self-proclaimed breakaway republic of Nagarno-Karabakh, which is officially within Azerbaijan’s borders but which has been governed by ethnic Armenians since 1994, saw fighting explode over the weekend. 

BBC reports there’s already been nearly 100 military deaths among local Armenian military forces, and many dozens of civilians killed or wounded on either side by shelling, while Azeri military casualties have not been produced. 

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev condemned Armenian forces’ shelling, which he said killed 10 Azeri civilians since Sunday. Al Jazeera reports that Yerevan has shot back with similar accusations of targeting civilians:

Armenia’s defense ministry said an Armenian civilian bus in Vardenis – an Armenian border town far from Nagorno-Karabakh – caught fire after being hit by an Azeri drone, but no one appeared to be hurt. It said it was making further checks.

Armenia’s Ministry of Defense later on Tuesday said its forces took out another drone, marking at least two successful enemy drone downings.

Since the start of the escalation in fighting on Sunday, tank and infantry units have been observed engaged in ground warfare. 

Frontline fighting has only intensified since, with a full troop mobilization declared by Armenia, and additional heavy weaponry pouring into the border region.

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Tuesday’s Debate Demonstrated That Donald Trump Wants This Election To Become a Chaotic Mess

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Near the very end of Tuesday’s mostly unwatchable debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, there was actually a single important moment that could have ramifications on and beyond Election Day.

By now, it’s no secret that the outcome of this year’s presidential election might not be known on November 3. Due to the abnormally high number of mail-in and absentee ballots that are expected to be cast this year—and compounded by the fact that several states, including some important swing states, are not allowed to start counting those ballots before Election Day—there will likely be a large number of completely legitimate votes that won’t be counted in the hours immediately after polls close. If the election is close, how the two top candidates act in the immediate aftermath of an uncalled contest will be crucial to securing the legitimacy of the election.

With that in mind, debate moderator Chris Wallace asked both candidates on Tuesday night if they would urge their “supporters to stay calm during this extended period, not to engage in any civil unrest” and pledge that neither would declare victory until the results were final.

Trump immediately rejected the premise.

“I am urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully,” he said, before spiraling off into a tangent about how some of his supporters were “thrown out” of polling places in Philadelphia earlier today. “You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia,” Trump said.

Fair enough. But in this case, it doesn’t look as devious as the president is trying to make it sound. City commissioners in Philadelphia have denied that anyone was unfairly tossed from election offices processing mail-in ballots, according to the local CBS affiliate.

Later in the same answer, Trump accused Democrats of cheating because of reports that “they found ballots in a wastepaper basket three days ago…and they all had the name ‘Trump’ on them.”

Again, there’s a bit of truth here. The FBI and the Pennsylvania State Police are investigating an incident in which nine ballots were apparently discarded in a Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, election office. At this point, it remains unclear whether those ballots were discarded for legitimate reasons. But Trump and his supporters have seized on the fact that at least seven of the votes were cast for the incumbent president as proof of malfeasance.

All of that only makes it more important for Trump, Biden, and everyone else to keep their shit together for the next six or eight or 10 weeks. But Trump’s ultimate goal is not allowing law enforcement to determine the truth about whether those nine ballots were legitimately discarded. He’d much rather use the incident as a wedge to raise questions about the legitimacy of the entire election.

As Wallace dutifully pointed out, there were more than 31 million mail-in votes cast in the 2018 election—more than a quarter of all votes. As Biden pointed out, there are five states where elections are now conducted almost entirely by mail—and he could have pointed out that at least one of those vote-by-mail systems, in Colorado, was implemented by a Republican. No matter how many times Trump tries to claim otherwise, it is simply not true that more mail-in voting will disadvantage Republicans.

Biden’s response to the same question from Wallace was exactly what you’d hope to hear from a national leader. “Yes,” he said, he would wait to declare victory until the race was certified. “No one has established at all that there is fraud related to mail-in ballots,” he added. “I will accept [the outcome].”

But it matters that Trump won’t say he trusts the process, and it matters that he won’t tell his supporters to wait for the results to be counted. It matters that he seems willing to turn everything into a conspiracy directed against him.

“This is not going to end well,” Trump said at the very end of his tirade.

It might turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Trump and Biden Spar Over Which One Is the True Threat to America’s Suburbs

reason-trumpbiden

America’s tranquil suburbs were regrettably dragged into tonight’s presidential debate. President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden sparred fiercely, and occasionally coherently, over which one of their candidacies posed the greatest risk to these tidy communities.

“If [Biden] ever got to run this country and they ran it the way he would want to run it, our suburbs would be gone,” said Trump, winding up a rant about recent violence in Democrat-controlled cities like Chicago and Portland.

Trump was basically repeating an accusation he’s levied before: that Biden wants to “abolish the suburbs” through a soft-on-crime approach and intrusive federal housing policies.

In particular, Trump has singled out a campaign proposal of Biden’s to require jurisdictions receiving federal housing and transportation grants to implement policies intended to make housing more affordable and inclusive. Under Biden’s proposal, that could include everything from allowing the construction of apartment buildings in low-density neighborhoods to banning landlords from asking about potential tenants’ criminal history.

That proposal is a more muscular version of an Obama-era fair housing regulation that the Trump administration gutted this summer over the alleged threat it posed to suburban communities’ single-family zoning policies.

Biden responded by accusing Trump, a New York City native, of being ignorant of suburbs as they exist today, and of making racially coded attacks. Trump wouldn’t know a “suburb unless [he] took a wrong turn,” said Biden. “This is not 1950. All these dog whistles and racism don’t work anymore.”

The former vice president went on to insist that today, “suburbs are by and large integrated.”

Interestingly, Trump and his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, have also seized on the argument that suburbs are more integrated today than in the past to defend single-family zoning. If suburbs are racially inclusive already, then their zoning policies clearly aren’t excluding people because of their race, the argument goes.

Biden went on to argue that the COVID-19 pandemic, floods, and fires pose a much greater risk to the lives and livelihoods of suburban residents, with the implication being that the president’s failure on climate change and COVID-19 made him the real anti-suburbs candidate.

The intensity of the exchange is odd when one considers what little control the federal government exercises over the quality and character of suburban life.

While the federal government can pull some strings when it comes to funding and regulation, suburban communities’ zoning codes and approaches to law enforcement hinge more on who gets elected to city hall than who occupies the White House.

On the debate stage tonight, suburbs existed as more of a political and cultural football both candidates wanted to defend than as a policy issue they were eager to sink their teeth into.

Those who do have strong opinions about preserving the suburbs (or their own sanity) would have been better off skipping tonight’s debate and boning up on who is running for office closer to home.

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