HOT AIR BALLOON FLIGHT

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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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October 24, 2021

On Today's Show

On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET:

First, Fareed gives his take on the current global energy crisis, the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1970s.

What's happening is simple, Fareed says: The world has stopped investing in fossil fuels, but we don't yet have enough renewable-energy sources to replace them. Thanks to smaller-scale disruptions, suffered against that backdrop, a crisis has unfolded.

Which shows that if a green-energy transition is to happen, we need a plan to manage it. In the near term, Fareed argues, the best option is to replace coal with relatively clean natural gas. "The goal must be to power the world with renewables," Fareed says. "In the meantime, we still need to cut emissions today while keeping energy flowing. If not, we will face more energy shocks, which could easily develop into a backlash against green policies. And then the Democrat in the White House, Joe Biden, will begin to look a lot like his predecessor, Jimmy Carter."
 
After that: Would the US and China really go to war over Taiwan? Tensions have been ratcheting up for weeks, and on Thursday President Joe Biden affirmed that if Beijing attacks, the US will respond. Fareed discusses the danger level—and the best path forward—with Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass and Stanford fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro.
 
Fareed also asks Haass, who worked with and for the late Gen. Colin Powell, about Powell's illustrious career, his imprint on US foreign policy, and his infamous UN speech on Iraq.
 
With US–China tensions rising and with the latter reportedly testing a hypersonic missile (which Beijing denies), some say we're witnessing a near-replay of the Cold War. Fareed talks with veteran New York Times correspondent David Sanger about the validity of that comparison.
 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will soon leave office after a career that has towered over European politics. Journalist and author Kati Marton's new book, "The Chancellor," details Merkel's journey; Fareed asks Marton about Merkel the person and what legacy she'll leave.
 
With the Taliban now in power, just how bad is the situation in Afghanistan? Fareed asks Afghan women's-rights activist Mahbouba Seraj.
 
Finally: It's "Striketober" in the US, according to commentators who've noted headline-making strikes and the high rate at which Americans are quitting their jobs. Fareed examines whether the balance of power has tipped toward labor.

A Changing Tide in Europe's East?

In recent years, Europe's post-Soviet east has been home to populist movements and, as The Economist writes, "[c]orruption, autocracy, [and] overbearing government," to boot. But the tide seems to be turning, the magazine suggests: Slovakia elected an anti-corruption campaigner as President in 2019, Austria's right-wing Chancellor recently stepped down amid a scandal, and the party of Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš was overtaken by center-right opponents in a recent election.  
 
On top of that, the magazine sees opportunity in an unfolding dispute: Poland has irked the European Union with a court ruling that declared the country doesn't need to follow EU laws if they contradict Poland's own. The EU is "sitting on" apportionments of Covid-19-relief funding it must approve to both Poland and Hungary, and The Economist sees this as a key lever Brussels seems willing to use to prompt change.

Gap of Sorrow

The Americas form a contiguous land mass (interrupted by the Panama Canal), but you can't drive a car from one end to the other. "When engineers in the 1930s built the Panamericana, the highway from Argentina to Alaska," Nicola Abé writes for Der Spiegel, they skipped a roughly 62-mile stretch between Colombia and Panama, where the jungle terrain was too unforgiving. Known as the Darién Gap, it has now become a place of violence, death, and heartbreak for migrants seeking to escape their circumstances. 
 
Focusing on Venezuelans and Haitians trying to reach the US, Abé writes that some attempt to cross the Darién Gap on foot—and find themselves endangered not only by violent rivers and wild pumas, but by armed gangs of thieves and rapists. Not everyone makes it to the other side, and their attempts reflect the desperation pushing them to migrate in the first place.

'Who Gets to Escape the Taliban'

At The New Yorker, contributor and PBS NewsHour special correspondent Jane Ferguson delivers a firsthand account of Afghans' attempts to reach Kabul's airport as US and NATO forces prepared to withdraw. "The chaos gave individual soldiers, aid workers, and journalists the power to decide which Afghans would be saved," Ferguson writes, recounting the frenzy at the gates.
 
"What became apparent ... is that there was no American strategy for leaving Afghanistan—none that considered the future of the Afghans left behind," Ferguson concludes. "President Biden asserted to the press for months, at times angrily, that Kabul was not Saigon. Based on what I witnessed, he was right. It was worse."

The Next Steps in Vaccination

Though the World Health Organization has argued against offering Covid-19 vaccine boosters, given still-low vaccination rates in developing countries, calls to move ahead have continued. US health officials have authorized more boosters for at-risk groups, and the Financial Times editorial board warns that after Britain took an early lead in vaccination, its collective antibodies are waning sooner than other countries' and that the government must deliver boosters faster.
 
On the science of boosters and how much they help, not everyone agrees. At The Atlantic, Katherine J. Wu writes comfortingly that although Covid-19 antibody levels may fall within a person's bloodstream, there's reason to believe the antibodies the body does produce, if Covid-19 is encountered, will be more effective.
 
As the threat of new, future variants lingers, scientists are eyeing ways update vaccines quickly, in the event that something more dangerous than Delta arrives. Emily Waltz writes for Nature that Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca are running "dress rehearsals" based on already-known variants and and have tinkered with ways to roll out clinical trials speedily.