Innholdsfortegnelse for 02/01/2019 i Newsweek International

HAVING LED THE INTERNATIONAL Renewable Energy Agency over the past eight years with a privileged-insider view of the energy transition, I have become convinced that a new geopolitical reality is taking shape. The result will be a map of energy geopolitics that will look fundamentally different from the one that has dominated the past 100 years. Whereas coal powered industrialization in the 19th century and oil drove nations’ making of alliances in the 20th, a quiet revolution of renew-ables will transform the politics of the 21st century. The untold story of renewables is that they’re transforming the global energy system at a speed no one predicted. In recent years, technological advances and falling costs have made renewables genuinely competitive commercially. Price trends suggest that by 2020, the average cost of…

ONE OF THE THORNIEST PROBLEMS that humankind faces in the coming decades is how to feed a global population that is expected to grow by 3.6 billion people by century’s end. To keep up with demand, food production will have to double by 2050, according to the United Nations. That’s going to be a tall order. The worst effects of climate change on agriculture have yet to kick in, and arable land is getting scarcer. Already more than 800 million people go hungry each day. That’s the backdrop for a new breakthrough in agriculture science that could eventually lead to big productivity boosts for food crops. Scientists recently managed to produce a tobacco plant that is 40 percent more productive than current strains. If they could extend such results to…

IN TWEET MODE AND AT HIS “MAKE AMERICA great again” rallies, the president has spent the better part of the past 18 months attacking the “WITCH HUNT” against him. Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, has run a tight-lipped operation. Other than the 33 people and three companies he has charged so far, almost no one, least of all the American public, knows what to expect as his investigation churns toward its presumed final target, an increasingly rattled President Donald Trump. University of Arizona constitutional law professor and author Andrew Coan’s new book, Prosecuting the President (Oxford University Press), provides historical context for Mueller’s operation. Because government policy states that no sitting president can be indicted before he is impeached, Coan explains that the special prosecutor’s relationship…

ON A GRAY, RAIN-SOAKED DAY IN DECEMBER, British Prime Minister Theresa May pulled up to the entrance of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office in Berlin. The embattled May was on a tour of European capitals in a desperate bid to win further concessions for her Brexit deal after putting off a parliamentary vote on the proposal to avoid a certain defeat. As Merkel stood outside on a red carpet waiting to greet the British leader, an official tried to open the door to May’s black Mercedes, only to find she was locked inside. After several unsuccessful tries, the official finally got it open. Some pundits saw symbolism in May’s awkward arrival, interpreting it as yet another sign of her political and personal struggle to implement Britain’s 2016 decision to leave…

TWENTY YEARS AGO, LESS THAN a third of Americans favored legalizing marijuana. Now, 62 percent do, according to a Pew Research Center poll last fall, including nearly three-quarters of millennials. Ten states allow recreational use of weed, and 33 permit doctors tt o prescribe it for chronic pain, anxiety and other ills. A growing marijuana legalization industry, which includes many for-profit companies, is heavily promoting the drug. But what do we know about its health effects? Not enough, says author Alex Berenson. That fact occurred to him during a conversation with his wife, a forensic psychologist who works with the criminally ill. She mentioned that many of the people she saw were either high on cannabis when they committed their crime or habitual users. A former reporter at The New…

COVERING IMMIGRATION FOR GETTY Images over three administrations, I have seen law enforcement become more militarized than ever before. But the men and women who patrol the border are enforcing the law and following a mandate that is determined by their superiors. I could never have known that the photographs of the crying girl at the border would have such impact, both in the United States and worldwide. Obviously, the priorities of the Obama and Trump administrations are different, but the agents on the ground enforcing those changes are the same. There are some 20,000 of them, so they have a wide spectrum of opinions, especially when it comes to President Donald Trump’s original vision of a wall (it has been evolving lately). I think one thing is certain, though:…

ALFONSO CUARóN’S SEMI-AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL film Roma was so personal to the director that no one, not even his producer, Gabriela Rodríguez, was allowed to read the full script. “I had it because I registered it for copyright,” she tells Newsweek, “but he asked us not to read it, and I respected that.” The film, shot in luscious black and white, recently won Golden Globes for best foreign film and best director. It could also result in a third Oscar for Cuarón, who won two for the 2013 film Gravity (the first Mexican director to do so). That film starred Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, but Roma’s lead has no Hollywood clout: Yalitza Aparicio is a preschool teacher and a first-time actor of Mixtec heritage. Her character, Cleo, is based on Cuarón’s…