The World in 2021: five stories to watch out for | The Economist

in 2020 one story has consumed everything but in 2021 the world will start looking to life beyond the pandemic [Music] so behind the headlines what are the other moments you should be watching out for in the year ahead [Music] from the launch of an asteroid smashing spaceship to the event that could help the world turn a corner on climate change here are five stories set to shape the post-covered world in 2021 democracy will be especially tested there will be an abundance of elections many postponed from 2020 by the pandemic and in fragile democracies autocratic leaders will use the excuse of covert 19 to crack down on opposition such as in uganda which is due to hold its presidential election in january maria is a 25 year old activist who is campaigning for the opposition candidate bobby wine but ugandan authorities have banned rallies because of covert 19. they're not implementing covet guidelines with people that who live day-to-day lives they're only implementing these guidelines with opposition politicians that is all so it is just an excuse at a recent rally police arrested bobby wine accusing him of flouting covert 19 restrictions when they were arresting bobby wine what they did was to first block all the vehicles that were around and only his vehicle was allowed to go in front what are they doing now they paper sprayed all his bodyguards those the personal bodyguards not the ones the electoral commission gave gave to us they paper sprayed them and they were beaten protests broke out almost a thousand people were arrested and 45 were killed crackdowns on opposition politicians are not just happening in uganda since the pandemic started democracy and human rights have deteriorated in 80 countries according to freedom house a think tank the largest number are in africa this is certainly a problem in in africa because there are many countries there that have made a partial transition towards democracy and respect for human rights but because it's fairly recent and the institutions that protect it are are not particularly strong there's always the danger of backsliding uganda's president yawari masevani has been in power for almost 35 years in 2017 he changed the country's constitution to allow him to serve a sixth term the pandemic has made it easier to block opposition and dissent all we want is our freedom back all we want is to change power and so that power comes back to the people and the institutions that must protect the people that is all we want maria can't even campaign on social media government rules brought in in 2020 require many internet users to register with a regulator before they can publish anything online across the world 91 countries have experienced new or increased restrictions on the news media as a result of the pandemic i think there's a real danger that democracy will continue to retreat in 2021 i'm hoping that eventually we'll be able to get widespread vaccines out there and that will make it easier for people to to gather together and to organize which is what you need to be able to do if you're going to resist tyranny we must campaign so that we win this election we are ready to fight for our victory it is either bullet or a ballot [Music] 2021 will be a tipping point for electric cars as more manufacturers roll out their electric range suddenly there's 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 electric 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 the american market the real profits there are to be made on pickups um so tesla have come out with their own version of the pickup the cyber truck the electric hummer is trying to tap into that market it's that 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 brackets 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 a rapid period of time so you have to take your hat off to elon musk for doing that tesla's success convinced established car makers that there was a market for electric cars the car companies 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 really 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 in november all eyes will be on glasgow scotland as world leaders meet for the un's climate change summit known as cop 26 it was originally scheduled for 2020 but postponed due to the pandemic if it had gone ahead as planned cop 26 would have marked five years since the paris agreement built into the paris agreement was this ratchet mechanism that basically 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 that 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 and the battle to save our planet by getting climate under control [Music] 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 eliminating their missions should give confidence to the rest of the countries that they can also amp up their target so all of that put together means that 2021 could really mark a turning point in international climate negotiations [Music] in 2021 the eagerly awaited next installment 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 [Music] the slapstick comedy detective chinatown 3 will help china's box office to take 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 [Music] 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 um china becoming the biggest box office and it feels like a milestone simply because it sort of shakes that hollywood dominance of them china's cinema industry has been growing for a number of years but in 2021 projections show america's box office revenues stagnating as china's continued 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 what year was going to happen the trend is there in america film fans are shunning the cinema in favor of video on demand but in china both online streaming and cinema attendance are on the rise the key element of it is the is the young audience um who go to the cinema regularly um you know going out with friends to go to the cinema 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 theaters 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 um nowadays something like 65 to 75 of the cinema slate in china is actually uh local content and the budgets of those films that have risen quite a lot in recent years despite this big american films still do very well in china the eighth installment of the fast and 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 [Music] well there's a lot of self-censorship no question china will not always tell you and 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 that can be a problem tilda swinton's marvel character in doctor strange the ancient one possibility 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 own blockbusters anytime soon it's very hard for china given the stories they tell given their emphasis on the domestic market given the issue of dubbing and subtitling for them to do very well overseas while a lot of those um 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 a u.s or a western audience while much of next year will be focused on protecting the world from dangers on earth some scientists will be focusing on how to defend the planet from threats in outer space in july 2021 nasa will launch the world's first trial in planetary defense basically we're 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 really 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 tell your bank'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 more rare 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 really makes sense to take a step to do something about it nasa's double asteroid redirection test or 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 really 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 didimas which is orbited by a smaller asteroid demorphis 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 defense knowing where everything is is really a crucial foundation for planetary defenses finding all the asteroids tracking them and then being ready to do something about them in order 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 i'm tom standage editor of the economist annual the world in 2021 click on the link opposite for more analysis of the year ahead thank you for watching and don't forget to subscribe to our channel you

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Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020

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