1. Democracy Under Threat
In 2020, a story consumed everything, but in 2021 the world will begin to look at life beyond the pandemic. So, behind the headlines, what other moments you should take care of next year? From the launch of a spacecraft tearing asteroids to the event that could help the world take a turn in the face of climate change. Here are five stories prepared to shape the post-Covid world. In 2021, democracy will be particularly proven. There will be many elections that have postponed since 2020 by the pandemic. And in fragile democracies, autocratic leaders will use Covid-19's excuse to suppress opposition as in Uganda, which is due to hold their presidential elections in January. Maria is 25-year-old activist campaigning for opposition candidate Bobbi Wine But Ugandan authorities banned demonstrations due to Covid-19. They do not implement Covid's guidelines with people who live daily life. They only implement these guidelines with opposition politicians, which is only an excuse during a recent protest, police arrested Bobbi Wine accusing him of mockery of Covid-19 restrictions. When Bobbi Wine was arrested, what they did was first block all the vehicles that were around and did allow his vehicle to be in front, they sprinkled pepper all his bodyguards were personal bodyguards, not the ones that the Election Commission gave us. They sprinkled with pepper and beat. Protests erupted nearly 1,000 people were arrested and 45 died.
Dams against opposition politicians not only happen in Uganda Since the pandemic began democracy and human rights have deteriorated in 80 countries according to Freedom House, the largest number are in Africa. This is certainly a problem in Africa because there are many countries there that have made a partial transition to democracy and respect for human rights, but because it is quite recent and the institutions that protect it are not particularly strong, there is always a risk of going back, Yoweri Museveni has been in the power for nearly 35 years. In 2017, the country's constitution changed to enable it to fulfil the sixth mandate. The pandemic facilitated the blockade of opposition and dissent. All we want is to regain our freedom. All we want is to change power and that power is returned to the people and institutions that have to protect the population. That's all we want Maria not even be able to campaign on social media. Government rules introduced in 2020 require many Internet users to register with a regulator before they can publish anything online worldwide, 91 countries have experienced new media restrictions as a result of the pandemic. I think there is a real danger that democracy will continue to decline in 2021. I hope that at the end of the day we can get widespread vaccines, which will allow people to come together and organize what they need to do to resist tyranny. We must campaign for us to win this election. We are ready to fight for our victory. It's a bullet or a ballot.
2. The Electric revolution revs up
2021 will be a tipping point for electric cars as more manufacturers roll out their electric range. Suddenly, there is going to be a huge array of electric vehicles for people to choose from. In the autumn the gas-guzzling SUV brand of General Motors, Hummer will start production on all-electrics cars and at the end of the year, Elon Musk’s Tesla will launch its futuristic-looking Cyber truck So I present you the Cyber truck. The Cyber truck may not be to everyone’s taste. I think that’s significant because of the American market the real profits there are to be made on pick-ups. So Tesla has come out with their own version of the pick-up Cyber truck The electric Hummer is trying to tap into that market, it’s America’s biggest and most profitable market Investment in the electric revolution has surged Over 250 firms are currently manufacturing electric vehicles and 47 battery factories are under construction Tesla, the market leader has seen its share price surge.
It’s now so valuable, it’s been added to the S&P 500 America’s main stock market index putting it in the same bracket as companies like Apple and Microsoft Tesla is a remarkable story no car company has gone from nothing to where Tesla is in such a rapid time. So you have to take your hat off to Elon Musk for doing that Tesla’s success convinced established carmakers that there was a market for electric cars. The car company that has made the biggest bet on the future is Volkswagen which has invested huge sums But all car companies are introducing electric models. Every week you hear about a new plan to electrify an old model or bring out a new model from various car companies. So it is picking up the pace although all car sales dropped in 2020. In 2021 they are expected to pick up again and sales of battery-powered vehicles are projected to grow rapidly over the next decade 2021 is just the start if more governments commit to future bans on the sale of petrol and diesel cars the growth in the electric-vehicle sector could accelerate even more.
3. A Chance to Turn a Corner on Climate Change
In November, all eyes will be on Glasgow, Scotland as world leaders meet for the UN’s climate-change summit Known as COP26, it was originally scheduled for 2020 but postponed due to the pandemic. If it had gone ahead as planned COP26 would have marked five years since the Paris agreement Built into the Paris agreement was this ratchet mechanism that said governments need to every five years, increase the promises to cut emissions. The Paris agreement set a target of limiting global warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures but experts predict the pledges governments made in 2015 would not be enough to achieve this target.
So this
ratchet mechanism, the purpose of COP26 is really to get closer to this target
of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius and what’s needed for that are bigger, better
promises to cut national emissions. It looks likely that 2021 will be the
boldest year ever for tackling climate change So the EU has said that it will
reach net-zero emissions by 2050 Climate change is caused by us so in other
words, it’s up to us to make a turnaround They have an expansive package of
policies that they will be expanding on and agreeing on in 2021 for how they
head towards that goal. The surprise announcement really of this year came in September
when Xi Jinping announced that China would be heading towards carbon neutrality
by 2060. The details of how China does this are still unclear and are
anticipated at some point in 2021.
In America, Donald Trump has undermined global efforts to tackle global warming. We are going to put our coal miners back to work. In 2021 this could all change. What is our mandate? I believe it’s this The battle to save our planet by getting climate under control Joe Biden is going to mark a real U-turn in particular American foreign climate policy Biden has promised to put America back into the Paris agreement pretty much as soon as he enters the Oval Office and as such, America will once again be influencing global climate politics. America is the world’s second-biggest emitter Joe Biden has promised to make the country carbon-neutral by 2050.
His greatest challenge, however, is getting these ambitious pledges through
Congress. There is a lot of ease in making these long-term promises. It’s a lot
harder to back those up with the real policies at home that are going to
achieve them But having the European Union, the United States, China all headed
towards some kind of mid-century target, 2050, 2060 of eliminating their
emissions should give confidence to the rest of the countries that they can
also amp up their targets. So all of that put together means that 2021 could
mark a turning point in international climate negotiations.
4. Battle of the Box Offices
In 2021, the eagerly awaited next instalment in the James Bond franchise will be released as shown in this slick trailer. Why would I betray you? We all have our secrets But its release could be eclipsed at the box office by a movie most people in the West may never even have heard of the slapstick comedy, “Detective Chinatown 3” will help China’s box office to make more money than America’s to become the biggest in the world. For a century, Hollywood has ruled the movie world now it’s China’s turn Hollywood was the first kind of global, truly global film industry which exported worldwide and it has held that dominance for a long time. Now with China becoming the biggest box office, It feels like a milestone simply because it sort of shakes that Hollywood dominance a little China’s cinema industry has been growing for several years.
But in 2021, projections show America’s
box-office revenue stagnating as China’s continue to rise China’s building more
screens particularly in third-tier and fourth-tier cities. So it was something
that was going to happen it was just a question of what year it was going to
happen. The trend is there In America, film fans are shunning the cinema in
favour of video-on-demand But in China, both online streaming and cinema
attendance are on the rise A key element of it is, is the young audience who go
to the cinema regularly you know, going out with friends to go to the cinema is
something, still something of an event, an experience China’s rise to the top
of the box office has been helped by the pandemic Hollywood delayed productions
and movie theatres have been closed.
Yet in China, cinemas are now back up to almost 75% capacity and production of new films is steaming ahead. They are not too reliant on foreign productions in a way that they were perhaps previously nowadays, something like 65-75% of the cinema slate in China is local content And the budgets of those films have risen quite a lot in recent years despite this, big American films still do very well in China. The eighth instalment of “The Fast & Furious” series took nearly twice as much in China as it did in North America But Hollywood’s reliance on Chinese ticket sales has started a worrying trend Well, there’s a lot of self-censorships, no question China will not always tell you it normally will not tell you what you have to do to get the film into the China market.
They will let you decide and
you end up self-censoring more than China might censor you so that can be a
problem Tilda Swinton‘s Marvel character in “Doctor Strange”, the Ancient One
was changed from a Tibetan to a Celt in part, it was thought, to placate China
But despite the soft power, China may wield on Hollywood films it’s unlikely
it’ll succeed in exporting its blockbusters any time soon It’s very hard for
China, given the stories they tell given their emphasis on a domestic market
given the issue of dubbing and subtitling for them to do very well overseas
While a lot of those local films from the Chinese industry are very culturally
specific I think we might well see Western studios taking on titles that
performed well in China and remaking them for the US or a Western audience.
5. Defending the planet
While much of next year will be focused on protecting the world from dangers on Earth some scientists will be focusing on defending the planet from threats in outer space. In July 2021, NASA will launch the world’s first trial in planetary defence. We are purposely slamming a spacecraft into an asteroid to move it a little bit and this is the sort of thing that you might want to do if an asteroid was on a course to hit the Earth. This might sound like the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster but the threat of an asteroid hitting Earth is real A tiny asteroid streaking across southern Russia. Just seven years ago, an undetected meteor exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk injuring at least 1,200 people. I think the Chelyabinsk impact brought a lot of visibility to the fact that this is something that happens to the Earth all of the time.
If something like that
happens over a large city you can get this sort of unfortunate devastation.
Something that’s Chelyabinsk’s size happens every few decades to maybe 100
years or so As you go up to something that’s a bit bigger sort of 160 meters
that’s rarer, but the amount of damage that it would cost could potentially
wipe out a large region perhaps a small country if it was over one of those.
This is a rare event, but the consequences are so big and devastating that it
makes sense to take a step to do something about it NASA’s Double Asteroid
Redirection Test or The DART will practice defending Earth by altering the course
of an asteroid using what’s known as kinetic-impactor technology. This asteroid
is not a threat to the Earth it’s not going to hit the Earth in the foreseeable
future. But we do know that Earth is hit by asteroids all the time and so we
want to take this first step to develop the technology to do something about
that if we needed to in the future. The target is the asteroid Didymos which is
orbited by a smaller asteroid Dimorphos. The DART spacecraft will hit the
moonlet adjusting its path and shortening its orbit by several minutes. The
impact will happen in 2022 when the asteroid is close enough to Earth for
scientists to be able to study the change in momentum using powerful
telescopes.
The DART mission is just one part
of a wider, worldwide effort in planetary defences. Knowing where everything is
a crucial foundation for planetary defences. Finding all the asteroids,
tracking them and then being ready to do something about them to take that next
step and turn what was science fiction into a reality of being able to do
something about asteroids The probability of a giant asteroid hitting. Earth is
extremely small but if 2020 has shown anything it’s that it pays to be prepared
for the unexpected.
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