What struck me in their report is how unhappy the Middle East is. The only Middle Eastern country in the top twenty is Kuwait (for the first time in this cycle). Kuwait has oil wealth and is a compact country with lots of social interaction. The high score may reflect Kuwait’s lively labor movement. That sort of movement isn’t allowed in the other Gulf States. The United Arab Emirates came in at 22, and Saudi Arabia at 28.

These countries are all very wealthy and their people are very social and connected to clans and other group identities, including religious congregations.

But everyone else in the Middle East is way down the list.

As usual, Gallup found that the very happiest countries were Scandinavian lands shaped by social democratic policies. It turns out that a government safety net of the sort the Republican Party wants to get rid of actually is key to making people happy.

Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden take the top four spots. Israel, which also has a Labor socialist founding framework, is fifth. The Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Luxembourg fill out the top nine.

The Gallup researchers believe that a few major considerations affect well-being or happiness. They note, “Social interactions of all kinds … add to happiness, in addition to their effects flowing through increases in social support and reductions in loneliness.” My brief experience of being in Australia suggests to me that they are indeed very social and likely not very lonely on the whole. Positive emotions also equate to well-being and are much more important in determining it than negative emotions. The positive emotions include joy, gratitude, serenity, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and altruism, among others.

Benevolence, doing good to others, also adds to well-being. Interestingly, the Gallup researchers find that benevolence increased in COVID and its aftermath across the board.

They also factor in GDP per capita, that is, how poor or wealthy people are.

Gallup Video: “2024 World Happiness Report; Gallup CEO Jon Clifton”

Bahrain comes in at 62, which shows that oil wealth isn’t everything. It is deeply divided between a Sunni elite and a Shiite majority population, and that sectarian tension likely explains why it isn’t as happy as Kuwait. Kuwait is between a sixth and a third Shiite and also has a Sunni elite, but the Shiites are relatively well treated and the Emir depends on them to offset the power of Sunni fundamentalists. So it isn’t just sectarian difference that affects happiness but the way in which the rulers deal with it.

Libya, which is more or less a failed state after the people rose up to overthrow dictator Moammar Gaddafi, nevertheless comes in at 66. There is some oil wealth when the militias allow its export, and despite the east-west political divide, people are able to live full lives in cities like Benghazi and Tripoli. Maybe the overhang of getting rid of a hated dictator is still a source of happiness for them.

Algeria, a dictatorship and oil state, is 85. The petroleum wealth is not as great as in the Gulf by any means, and is monopolized by the country’s elite.

Iraq, an oil state, is 92. Like Bahrain, it suffers from ethnic and sectarian divides. It is something of a failed state after the American overthrow of its government.

Iran, another oil state, is 100. Its petroleum sales are interfered with by the US except with regard to China, so its income is much more limited than other Gulf oil states. The government is dictatorial and young people seem impatient with its attempt to regiment their lives, as witnessed in the recent anti-veiling protests.

The State of Palestine is 103, which is actually not bad given that they are deeply unhappy with being occupied by Israel. This ranking certainly plummeted after the current Israeli total war on Gaza began.

Morocco is 107. It is relatively poor, in fact poorer than some countries that rank themselves much lower on the happiness scale.

Tunisia is one of the wealthier countries in Africa and much better off than Morocco, but it comes in at 115. In the past few years all the democratic gains made during and after the Arab Spring have been reversed by horrid dictator Qais Saied. People seem to be pretty unhappy at now living in a seedy police state.

Jordan is both poor and undemocratic, and is ranked 125.

Egypt is desperately poor and its government since 2014 has been a military junta in business suits that brooks not the slightest dissent. It is 127. The hopes of the Arab Spring are now ashes.

Yemen is 133. One of the poorest countries in the world, it suffered from being attacked by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates from 2015 until 2021. So it is war torn and poverty-stricken.

Lebanon ranks almost at the bottom at 142. Its economy is better than Yemen’s but its government is hopelessly corrupt and its negligence caused the country’s major port to be blown up, plunging the country into economic crisis. It is wracked by sectarianism. If hope is a major positive emotion that leads to feelings of happiness, it is in short supply there.

Some countries are too much of a basket case to be included, like Syria, where I expect people are pretty miserable after the civil war. Likewise Sudan, which is now in civil strife and where hundreds of thousands may starve.

Poverty, dictatorship, disappointment in political setbacks, and sectarianism all seem to play a part in making the Middle East miserable. The role of the United States in supporting the dictatorships in Egypt and elsewhere, or in supporting wars, has been sinister and certainly has added significantly to the misery. For no group in the region is this more true than for the Palestinians.

No substantial damage to a modern wind turbine by an earthquake has been recorded since 1986.

Ouarzazate, Morocco, on the edge of the Sahara, is the site of the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant, which has a capacity of 580 megawatts, the equivalent of a small nuclear plant. The massive 6.8 earthquake that shook Marrakech, Ouarzazate, and the Atlas Mountain region on September 8, killing nearly 3,000 people, did only minor damage to the solar complex and so the lights stayed on.

The Moroccan Ministry of Energy “clarified that the damage was confined to certain equipment at the Noor plant, emphasizing that these issues were swiftly repaired, and confirmed that all energy installations are operating normally.”

Moreover, donated portable solar power stations along with 400-watt solar panels helped keep essential services such as hospitals and clinics in operation in the Atlas Mountain villages hit by the quake. The Red Cross is encouraging such donations, seeing solar panels and power stations as much safer than trying to cook with portable natural gas cannisters.

Morocco gets about 38% of its electricity from renewables, and hopes get the percentage to 52% by 2030. It is probably the Middle Eastern country that has so far done the most to adopt wind and solar. It is considered on track in its energy transformation to do its part in keeping global warming to under 1.5C, which is necessary to avoid the risk of the planet’s climate systems going chaotic.

Morocco has few fossil fuels of its own and must import them at a relatively high cost. However, planners do continue to depend on coal and natural gas and some of the earlier green momentum has been lost.

There have been delays with some planned major solar farms, but the government hopes these will come on line by 2025.

There are also plans to produce green, i.e., low-carbon hydrogen.

Because of its abundant sunshine, Morocco is an obvious site for producing solar power, and its wind resources are also extensive. There is even now a plan to bring renewable energy generated in Morocco to the UK by underwater cable, at a cost of $21 billion.

A powerful earthquake that hit close to the medieval city of Marrakech in Morocco on Sept. 8, 2023, has killed thousands and injured many more. It has also put at risk buildings and monuments of major historic importance, among them the minaret of the Kutubiyya mosque, a 12th-century structure that is an icon of the city.

The Medina, the medieval walled portion of the city, is now littered with rubble. The cultural significance of the Medina extends far beyond the antiques and trinkets sold to tourists.

It is the location of numerous artisan workshops that make the ceramic tiles, carved plaster and intricate woodwork that decorate the city. Many of these workshops have maintained traditional methods for centuries, transmitting skill sets down through the generations.

Part of Morocco’s bid for Marrakech’s UNESCO status was based on these craft traditions being “intangible cultural heritage,” which the U.N. describes as knowledge or skills that are passed down orally rather than in written form.

I’ve been working in Marrakech since 2014, living there on and off as I completed research on a book about the development of Marrakech as a medieval metropolis. Although my work focused on the 12th century, the more I learned about the city, the more I realized that most of the urban fabric and architectural sites I was looking at were thanks to the conservation efforts of local workshops.

The UNESCO designation was a historical acknowledgment of the traditions of poor and rural communities that can often get left out of larger conversations about art history. It is precisely these communities that have maintained Marrakech’s architectural heritage for generations, but the earthquake has destroyed the workshops and residences of many in the Medina.

These poor and rural communities are at their most vulnerable just when their skills will be needed the most to help rebuild the city after this disaster.

Oral origins

Marrakech was founded in 1070 by the Almoravid dynasty, which derived from a tribe that was part of a larger non-Arab confederation of peoples now referred to as Berbers.

It was one of the first major cities in the wider Islamic west, known as the Maghrib – now comprising Morocco, Algeria and parts of Tunisia – to be founded by a group indigenous to the region.

The majority of the community spoke a dialect of Tamazight, an Afro-Asiatic language distinct from Arabic. It was primarily an oral language, meaning that knowledge was more commonly handed down via poetic stories rather than written texts.

Some Arabic sources described the Almoravids as “unsophisticated” and “illiterate,” yet the evidence of their architectural and artistic heritage suggests otherwise. In Marrakech, they built an elegantly proportioned dome known as the Qubba al-Barudiyyin and commissioned the elaborate wooden minbar (pulpit) that now sits in the Badiʿ Palace Museum.

They were followed by the Almohad dynasty, another largely indigenous group, that faced similar accusations in historical accounts despite building the Kutubiyya minaret, Marrakech’s signature monument.

Site of independence movements

The city’s origins as a Berber capital contributed to making Marrakech the epicenter of contemporary Moroccan national identity, rooted in a pride and independence centuries old. Whereas other North African cities had roots in Arab or Roman tradition, Marrakech could claim to be distinctly Moroccan.

In the face of Ottoman expansion in the 16th century, the kingdom of Morocco, based out of Marrakech, was the sole region of the Arabic-speaking world to maintain their autonomy from Turkish control.

Although the French and the Spanish would compete for colonial rule of the country, the Moroccan independence movements of the 20th century were largely based out of Marrakech. The city was so prone to revolt that the French administration moved the colonial capital further north to Rabat.

Even the word “Morocco” is derived from an etymological transmutation of “Marrakech.”

A hidden history

And yet, recovering the city’s significant past is an exercise in reading between the lines.

The oral traditions of the city’s founders were rarely faithfully transcribed. Written sources are often scattered and unpublished, and those that do exist are often written by outsiders or visitors to the city.

The Ottomans were excellent record-keepers, enabling scholars to explore extensive centralized archives on every part of the Arabic world – except Morocco, whose archives remain dispersed and underfunded. Historians have had to work obliquely to uncover concrete details, relying on archaeological and anthropological research to supplement oral traditions.

Integral to these efforts was the role of craft traditions in and around Marrakech. Craft was a key point of France’s colonial efforts in Marrakech, where they established “artisan schools” in the Medina to ostensibly document and preserve their methods. In doing so, the French Protectorate – which ruled the country from 1912 to 1956 – created a kind of living nostalgia within the Medina, conflating the people who actually lived there with the city’s medieval past.

This effectively created a form of economic and social segregation in which craftsmen and their families were siloed into the old town, while the wealthier expatriates and tourists occupied the Ville Nouvelle outside the medieval walls.

Preserving the past through craft

At the same time, these craft traditions are also what made it possible to preserve and restore many of the sites in and around Marrakech that now draw thousands of tourists each year.

The Qasba Mosque, the city’s “second” major mosque after the Kutubiyya and originally built between 1185 and 1189, underwent successive restorations in both the 17th and 21st centuries after political instability led to their decline. In both cases, local artisans were employed to renovate the mosque’s stucco walls and the mosaic tile work known as zellij.

The 11th-century Almoravid pulpit required a team of Moroccan craftsmen to successfully restore the minbar’s intricate marquetry.

Artisans have also been important ambassadors for Morocco’s place in the larger canon of Islamic art, building a courtyard as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2011 renovation of their Islamic galleries using 14th-century techniques and materials.

With the Marrakech Medina partially destroyed, many of these artisans and workshops will face tough choices regarding their future. Gentrification over the last decade has priced many residents out of their ancestral homes, and many of these workshops operate on thin margins – too thin to both pay for damages and retain control over their property.

Rebuilding intangible heritage

Parts of the city walls cracked in the earthquake, and an 18th-century mosque in the main square lost its minaret. The historic 12th-century site of Tinmal, not far from Marrakech and nestled in the Atlas Mountains, has also collapsed.

The human toll of the earthquake is still being tallied, and the material damage is likely to be extensive. Nothing can replace the loss of life. Yet the history and resilience of a place are instrumental in any recovery.

It will be the role of Marrakech’s intangible heritage – its artists and artisans – to rebuild after this disaster. In the midst of narratives about caliphs and sultans, philosophers and poets, it can be easy to forget that the people who built these places often went unnamed in the historical texts.

But these artists will need support to maintain Marrakech’s history, to preserve the past for future historians to discover.

Abbey Stockstill, Assistant Professor of Art History, Southern Methodist University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Waging Nonviolence) – On June 27, Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old French boy of North African descent was murdered by a white police officer in a Parisian suburb. Since then, anger has erupted almost everywhere in the country, especially in poor neighborhoods. Young people are taking to the streets to protest against police violence and state racism. Their anger is eruptive. 

Recently, I helped organize support and solidarity for another uprising in France: Soulèvements de la terre, or Earth’s uprising. This movement, created in 2021, is fighting against large and useless infrastructure (like highways, giant tunnels under the Alps, etc.), transnational corporations and other sources of pollution and environmental destruction. At one recent action against a giant water-reservoir designed to support industrial farming, two protesters ended up in comas — the result of explosions from police grenades banned in most European countries, but not France. 

Since then, several spokespersons and coordinators of Soulèvements de la terre have been arrested and interrogated by the counter-terrorism service. A couple of weeks ago, the government decided to outlaw the group. Now, anyone claiming to be a member of the movement is committing a criminal offense. 

The near simultaneous occurrence of these two uprisings is more than a coincidence. It begs the question: Are these not actually two sides of the same coin, two moments in one larger uprising? 

As an activist trained in nonviolent direct action, I’m obviously partly unsettled by the eruptive protests following Nahel’s murder. Burning public libraries, crashing a car into a mayor’s house and trying to set it on fire, looting shops, and destroying buses and tramways doesn’t belong to the action repertoire I follow. If someone would mention these as potential tactics for a protest I would organize, I would vehemently counter-argue or simply not take part in such a protest. I feel more comfortable pushing through police lines to block a coal mine or disrupt a meeting of executives from the fossil fuel industry.

But my preferences don’t matter at all here, for several reasons.

First, alliances are not built upon tactical discussions. Debates and disputes over tactics tend to steal the whole conversation when we’re strategically lost. There’s always plenty of time later to agree to disagree. Alliances emerge from something else: a shared experience (or a shared anger); a set of demands that can be articulated in a way that makes them stronger; a common horizon; or a shared political project.

As for the second, and most important, reason why arguing over tactics is a bad idea: Just like Soulèvements de la terre, the ongoing uprising is about habitability and land.

French activist Fatima Ouassak explains that people living in poor neighborhoods are “landless.” People who originally migrated from Africa to France are, according to her, “deprived of land.” Henceforth, what is at stake when they organize is to claim the right to land. Interestingly enough, the French language offers only one word for both land and Earth: “terre.” The Earth’s Uprising would as well be the Land’s Uprising. 

At a protest to support the Soulèvements de la terre, feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonial activist Françoise Verges explained that the system that the Earth’s uprising is fighting against (a vision of nature as a bottomless pit of resources one can indefinitely extract) started in the colonies, under the slavery-plantation system. Indeed, the “system” change that we’ve been demanding for many years is, first and foremost, about achieving full decolonization. Those facing, on a day-to-day basis, state racism and police brutality are therefore on the frontline of this fight.

The fact that I feel unsettled when I see people burn a library or a public transport infrastructure is as much a disagreement over tactics as it is a manifestation of my own background: I had the privilege to be trained in nonviolent direct action. I was taught how to channel my anger into a strategic plan, whose horizon shall remain the famous Gandhian “constructive program.” I feel privileged to experience the current state of the world without erupting and bursting out in rage — and to instead think about strategies, alliances and campaign goals. 

This is precisely why the current manifestation of anger shouldn’t be dismissed as illegitimate, or as something not smart or disciplined enough for a good campaign. After all, the climate movement is currently debating whether or not we should “blow up pipelines.” We would therefore be hypocrites to criticize those setting fire to the very French institutions oppressing them.

Ultimately, we are not facing two consecutive uprisings, but rather one, two-sided uprising. One side is about the habitability of the Earth, the other is about the habitability of France for Black, Indigenous and people of color. With this understanding comes quite a few strategic consequences. 

For starters, we should demand full amnesty for anyone who has recently been (or will be) arrested, whether they were taking part in the popular neighborhood uprising or in a protest organized by the Soulèvements de la terre. This is key: Since this is about dismantling the existing colonial matrix of power, we won’t return to an appeased situation without breaking with the cycle of violence. It has to begin where the cycle of violence has started: police brutality and repression. 

Yes, there’s a lot of anger and rage, and some of it is expressed in ways that are, to say the least, challenging. This is precisely why the cycle of violence has to stop — and it won’t stop in a sustainable and fair way unless the state does its part. It would be unfair and short-sighted to put the responsibility of breaking with the current cycle of violence on those who are protesting, expressing their anger and desire to not be victims of state racism any more.

People are rising up to defend a habitable world — some from the countryside, on the frontline of the extraction of natural resources, and others in dense urban areas, on the frontline of the extraction of the lives of oppressed and colonized people. 

We should then try and seek inspiration from movements that have tried to connect similar dynamics. One obvious example is the Breathe Act, developed by the Movement for Black Lives. This visionary bill aims to defund the police, develop community-owned ways of ensuring safety, and promote environmental and climate justice. In the words of one of its creators, Gina Clayton Johnson, “We know the solution has to be as big as the 400-year-old problem itself.” 

This visionary proposal combines the necessity of dismantling the institutions that are making the world inhabitable and the vision of what needs to be done in order to restore the conditions for justice. In other words, it seeks to preserve the habitability of the world. This could be a way for the French left to finally address the issue of structural racism and break with its color-blindness. Opening eyes to the reasons behind this side of the ongoing uprising is a first step toward supporting the fight for a habitable world for everyone.

Nicolas Haeringer is working at 350.org, where he coordinates partners engagement and works on global mobilizations. Based in France, he’s been involved in the global and climate justice movements for the last 20 years and has written on strategies for social transformation for two decades.

Morocco has a large fertiliser industry with huge production capacity and international reach. It is one of the world’s top four fertiliser exporters following Russia, China and Canada.

Fertilisers tend to divide into three main categories; nitrogen fertilisers, phosphorus fertilisers, potassium fertilisers. In 2020 the fertiliser market size was about US$190 billion.

Morocco has distinct advantage in the production of phosphorus fertilisers. It possesses over 70% of the world’s phosphate rock reserves, from which the phosphorus used in fertilisers is derived. And this makes Morocco a gatekeeper of global food supply chains because all food crops require the element phosphorus to grow. Indeed, so does all plant life. Unlike other finite resources, such as fossil fuels, there is no alternative to phosphorus.

In 2021, the global phosphorus fertiliser market amounted to about US$59 billion. In Morocco, the sector’s 2020 revenues amounted to US$5.94 billion. Office Chérifien des Phosphates, the producer owned by the Moroccan state, accounted for about 20% of the kingdom’s export revenues. It is also the country’s largest employer, providing jobs for 21,000 people.

Morocco plans to produce an additional 8.2 million tonnes of phosphorus fertiliser by 2026. Currently production is at about 12 million tonnes.

The state company recently announced that it would increase its fertiliser production for the year by 10%. This would put an additional 1.2 million tonnes on the global market by the end of the year. This will significantly help markets.

But, as I argue in a new report, Morocco faces new challenges. Its production of fertiliser is threatened by increasingly daunting environmental and economic challenges. They include the COVID pandemic and the severe supply chain disruptions that have followed.

The timing to address these is crucial.

Russia is currently the world’s largest fertiliser exporter – 15.1% of total exported fertilisers. And fertiliser represents one of the greatest vulnerabilities for both Europe and Africa. For instance, the EU27 (all of the 27 member state of the European Union) as a whole depends on Russia for 30% of its fertiliser supply. Russia’s advantageous position is amplified by its status as the world’s second-largest natural gas producer. Gas is a main component of all phosphorus fertilisers as well as nitrogen fertilisers.

Because of this, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has serious implications for global food security. Both in terms of supply, and also because fertiliser can be used a economic weapon or tool.

Morocco could therefore become central to the global fertiliser market and a gatekeeper of the world’s food supply that could offset the attempt to use fertiliser as a weapon.

The journey

Morocco started to mine phosphorous in 1921. During the 1980s and 1990s it began to produce its own fertiliser. Office Chérifien des Phosphates built the world’s largest fertiliser production hub in Jorf Lasfar on Morocco’s Atlantic coast.

Before the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, the company had over 350 clients on five continents. About 54% of phosphate fertilisers bought in Africa come from Morocco. Moroccan fertilisers also account for major domestic market shares in India (50%), Brazil (40%) and Europe (41%). India and Brazil have reached out to Morocco to fill additional supply gaps.

Morocco’s economy has reaped the benefits of the transformation into an international fertiliser exporting giant. And in sub-Saharan Africa in particular, the combination of joint venture partnerships in local fertiliser production and direct outreach to farmers has resulted in a remarkable boost to African agricultural yields.

It’s also expanded Morocco’s soft power influence across the continent. For instance, Morocco supplies over 90% of Nigeria’s annual fertiliser demand.

But, how well Morocco manages challenges to the industry will affect both its own economic development and the stability of food supplies across the world.

The challenges

Water and energy constraints

Phosphate extraction and fertiliser production uses a lot of energy and water. Morocco’s phosphate and fertiliser industry consumes about 7% of its annual energy output and 1% of its water.

But Morocco is among the countries suffering the most from water scarcity. This is due to a dry climate, high water demand, climate change and reservoir contamination and siltation.

Morocco is trying to address this through a National Water Plan 2020-2050. It envisages building new dams and desalination plants and expanding irrigation networks, among other measures, to sustain agriculture and ecosystems. It’s estimated to cost about US$40 billion.

Natural gas costs

Nitrogen is the other basic fertiliser element that plants need. Diammonium phosphate, the most popular type of phosphorus fertiliser worldwide (and which Morocco makes along with monoammonium), is composed of 46% phosphorus and 18% nitrogen. Natural gas accounts for at least 80% of the variable cost of nitrogen fertiliser.

This means the price of natural gas massively affects production costs. But Morocco has scant natural gas resources. And natural gas prices have been soaring.

How well Morocco manages the food-water-energy nexus will affect both its own economic development and the stability of food supplies across the world.

Some answers

The key is to expand its renewable energy sector. Morocco holds considerable solar and wind resources. Fertiliser manufacturing could become powered by renewable energy, and renewable energy could be used within the fertiliser itself.

In 2020, the state’s fertiliser company covered 89% of its energy needs by co-generation (producing two or more forms of energy from a single fuel source) and renewable energy sources. Its aim is to eventually cover 100% of its energy needs in this way.

Renewable energy could also be used within the fertiliser itself. Instead of importing ammonia derived from natural gas, Morocco could produce its own using hydrogen produced from its domestic renewable energy resources.

According to the state company, 31% of its water needs are met with “unconventional” water resources, including treated wastewater and desalinated seawater.

Morocco’s growing reliance on desalination plants to satisfy industrial, agricultural and residential needs will require sizeable new investments in power generation from renewable energy sources. Desalination plants require 10 times the amount of energy to produce the same volume of water as conventional surface water treatment.

To sustain operations and expand green ammonia production, Morocco will have to strike a careful balance between its fertiliser exports, its drive to expand its high-value agricultural exports and the provision of drinking water to its population.

Using its large solar energy resources to power green hydrogen and green ammonia production, along with desalination, Morocco could escape the vicious cycle of the upward spiralling of prices in the food-energy-water nexus.

Michaël Tanchum, Associate Senior Policy Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations and Professor , Universidad de Navarra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“”Here in the Kingdom of Morocco, Masdar, in partnership with the National Office of Electricity and Drinking Water, has implemented a landmark solar home systems project to provide power to nearly 20,000 homes in more than 1,000 rural towns across Morocco.”

In the global south, people outside big cities are often underserved regarding electricity, and these projects have the double benefit of providing clean electricity and of further electrifying the countryside. Electricity can be important not only to the ease of life in villages but also to agricultural productivity.

Al Jaber added, “We also want to develop the Noor Midelt solar power plant, which has a total installed capacity of 800 MW.”

That is nearly a gigawatt, the name plate capacity of a small nuclear plant. With energy storage such as battery or molten salt or pumped hydro, a facility like that could actually come close to the name plate capacity.

Nour Mdelt will only be the newest addition to Morocco’s already impressive solar arrays. Morocco has the largest solar concentrating plant in the world, the Noor Ouarzazate. It powers a million homes on the edge of the Sahara, and has a molten salt battery that goes on generating electricity for hours after the sun sets.

Morocco is the Middle Eastern country that has made the most strides toward renewable energy, through a combination of need and foresight. The North African kingdom does not have much in the way of fossil fuels itself, and so must import its energy. Plus, most Middle Eastern governments provide energy subsidies to consumers as part of the bargain governments make with the people, to take care of them if they avoid too much politics. Between paying for the imported coal, oil and methane gas and then subsidizing their cost for consumers, the government faced big bills every year. So over a decade ago, Rabat decided to try to get two gigawatts each of solar, wind and new hydro, in which by now it has largely succeeded.

Aida Alami at the BBC writes that Morocco reached 37% renewable electricity by 2020. She adds, “the country has come a long way. Morocco has since pledged to increase the renewables in its electricity mix to 52% by 2030, made up of 20% solar, 20% wind and 12% hydro.”

The new Noor Midelt solar park is a hybrid project with concentrated solar and photovoltaic solar. It is expected to be commissioned in 2022. Mixing the two forms of solar energy has been shown to reduce costs, and such plants produce electricity more cheaply than natural gas. The Noor Midelt plant will go on working for five hours after sunset.

I would just like to point out that the US only gets 20% of its electricity from renewables, and that the lion’s share of that is hydroelectricity, so Morocco is way ahead of the United States in the proportion of solar and wind in its electricity grid.

Today I want to make some remarks about Morocco, which has one of the most ambitious green energy programs in the region, but which is still dominated by dirty fossil fuels. It faces severe climate challenges, and some parts saw temperatures of 120 degrees F (49C) this summer, sparking massive forest fires.

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TV Africa Uganda: “MOROCCO’S CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS CONTINUE”

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Morocco borders both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and with a population of about 38 million is the 40th largest of the 194 countries in the world. It is in global terms desperately poor, with a nominal GDP of $120 billion or so, and its per capita GDP ranks at 148 in the world.

Despite its poverty, Morocco is a lovely country, rich in history and architectural glory, and a center for Sufism or mystical Islam. Some 40 percent of the work force is still employed in agriculture. The modern sector of tourism and industry accounts for 2/3s of the economy but for only 1/3 of the work force.

Morocco has almost no hydrocarbons of its own, but imports them to produce about 63 percent of its electricity. That is down from 91 percent in 2005. Morocco says it wants 50% of its electricity to come from low-carbon sources by 2030, in only ten years.

The government made a push in the past decade for more wind and solar energy, and has built big new facilities for wind and solar, including the famed concentrated solar plant at Ouarzazate on the edge of the Sahara. It has gotten the percentage of its electricity coming from renewables up to 37% (it wanted 42% by the end of last year but missed that goal).

Moroccans are doing the right thing, and are light years ahead of almost everyone else in the Middle East and Africa. Plus because of the character of their economy they only produce about 2 tons a year of carbon dioxide per person, well below the world average. For the average American it is more like 15 tons.

Still, they continue to use a lot of dirty coal and natural gas (the latter making them vulnerable to boycotts and pressure by their rival Algeria).

Morocco is extremely vulnerable to the worst effects of the climate disaster. Some 60% of its farming consists of raising cereals, an artifact of its past as a French colony (France is grain hungry). All of this cereal farming is water-intensive, and in Morocco it depends on rainfall. So write Ismail Ouraich and Wallace E. Tyner.

As the climate emergency unfolds, because of our burning of fossil fuels, putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, Morocco is going to become drier. Rainfall will decrease, according to climate models, by something like 15% to 30%, and there is a possibility that it could be halved (!!!). Some regions of Morocco will be hit by droughts more than others, and cereal-growing productivity will take a substantial hit.

The IPCC noted, “A reduction in rainfall over northern Africa is very likely by the end of the 21st century. The annual and seasonal drying/warming signal over the northern African region (including North of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia) is a consistent feature in the global (Giorgi and Lionello, 2008; Barkhordarian et al., 2013) and the regional (Lionello and Giorgi, 2007; Gao and Giorgi, 2008; Paeth et al., 2009; Patricola and Cook, 2010) climate change projections for the 21st century . . .”

Not only will there be less rainfall, but “Reduced snowpack in the Atlas Mountains from a combination of warming and reduced precipitation, combined with more rapid springtime melting is expected to reduce supplies of seasonal meltwater for lowland areas of Morocco (García-Ruiz et al., 2011).”

Not good.

So Morocco is doing what it can as a poor country to green its electricity. It has done nearly twice as well at putting in wind and solar as the United States, proportionally. But it is also especially vulnerable to the effects of global heating. Its population is still growing, and its ability to produce food is going to decline over the coming 80 years because of a significant decrease in rainfall. Some parts of Morocco are also already very hot, and a big increase in average temperature will make it hard to work outside.

Other parts of the Middle East are doing far less on climate and face even bigger catastrophes. Michael Wintour at the Guardian wonders whether the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca will even be possible in the summer at the end of this century.

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Bonus Video:

Noor, the Saharan solar tower – SOLUTIONS

I have a big problem with the index, though. One of its criteria is technological innovation in the area of green energy. These are the bases for the rankings:

• Carbon emissions: Total emissions as well as the degree of change in emissions in transportation, industry, and agriculture

• Energy transition: The contribution and growth rate of renewable energy sources

• Green society: A range of indicators covering net forestation, development of green buildings, recycling, and consumption of animal products

• Clean innovation: The relative number of green patents, investment in cross-border clean energy, investment in food technology

• Climate policy: Policy commitment toward climate targets, carbon finance programs, sustainable agriculture, and the use of covid stimulus for a green recovery

I object to the “clean innovation” criterion. Obviously Morocco won’t file for as many patents as advanced industrial countries.

A lot of these criteria give countries like the United States a pass. The US has no offshore wind, almost no utility scale solar, and isn’t making full use of its massive onshore Midwest wind corridor. We put out over 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide a year most years, the second worst offender in the world. We’ve been AWOL for four years from the Paris Climate Accord. The United States should be dead last on any green futures index, but here it comes in 40 of 76 countries ranked. Maybe we have some great patents in the area of green energy. It isn’t enough, so far.

Yes, I’m calling the MIT Green Futures Index Orientalist.

President Biden wants to implement an ambitious green energy program, and we’re all rooting for him, but so far it is mostly a hope and a prayer.

Morocco comes in 26 in the Tech Review index. Here’s a poor country that in 13 years has gone from having almost no renewables to having them provide 37 percent of its electricity. It is aiming for 52 percent by 2030, which is admittedly less ambitious than its performance so far warrants. It only puts out on the order of 61 million metric tons of CO2 every year. (Given it only has 11% of the population of the US, that would be like 671 million metric tons in US terms; in other words, a small fraction of our emissions).

I just don’t think the United States is in the same league as Morocco when it comes to its dedication to a green energy future.

Morocco’s Noor Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, on the edge of the Sahara, powers the equivalent of 2 million homes (the country has 7.7 million households).

Safaa Kasraoui writes at Moroccan World News,

“During the inauguration of Nestle’s solar project in El Jadida on Tuesday, [Morocco’s Minister of Energy Aziz] Rabbah said that the installed capacity of renewable energy sources in Morocco amounts to 3,950 megawatts. The number represents about 37% of the total installed electric power or 20% of the country’s electricity demand.”

The country is putting nearly $6 billion into more renewable projects.

The MIT report did acknowledge all this in a sidebar:

“Over a decade ago, the King of Morocco began a national debate about the future of energy, resulting in a fundamental policy redesign and a goal that renewables would produce 42% of the country’s power by 2020—a target that has now been raised to 52% by 2030. In addition to developing strong wind and solar sectors, says Said Mouline, CEO of the Morocco Agency for Energy Efficiency (AMEE), Morocco has also successfully driven down cost. “At less than $0.03 per kilowatt hour, renewables are now our cheapest way to produce electricity.”

Coal was once considered the cheapest fuel for electricity, at $0.05 per kilowatt hour. If Morocco can get electricity from wind and solar for about half that, it is way ahead of the game.

The MIT Tech Review report also admits that Morocco has eliminated fossil fuel subsidies, something that the United States has definitely not done. They have put in 40,000 solar-powered water irrigation pumps on farms, retiring those powered by natural gas. They are trying to convert their steel plants to electric arc technology powered by solar panels.

They quote Mr. Mouline again,

“Mouline envisions Morocco becoming a regional climate advocate within Africa. “Today in Africa we have 600 million people who don’t have electricity, and we have the tools and capabilities to help leverage renewables to bridge that gap.” AMEE created a capacity-building center in Marrakesh to train Africans from other countries in areas like renewable electrification and sustainable pumping for agriculture.”

Morocco’s role here is huge, since getting developing economies to go green now will prevent a further wave of carbon dioxide emissions as they industrialize.

Morocco now has a factory to produce its own wind turbine blades, with 60% of them to be exported to Europe. It is also looking into green hydrogen as a storage mechanism, jointly with European partners, the report says.

I really think Morocco deserves to be much higher on this list. And the US deserves to be number 76.

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Bonus Video:

KiAfrica: The BIGGEST Concentrated Solar Plant in the World is in Africa I Morocco

Although there have been a few tiny terrorist groups among Muslims, it is completely unfair to blame 1.8 billion Muslims in the world for them, much less the 1% of Americans who are Muslim. Europe in the 1930s and 1940s gave us a powerful set of Fascist movements that killed millions, including over 400,000 Americans. We don’t typically see a European from one of the old Axis states and say, oh, you must hate America. Muslim governments, including those in Iraq and Egypt, have been the most effective foes of fringe extremism, and the US has designated numerous non-NATO allies among Muslim-majority countries.

Trump cynically threw out all these considerations when he demonized Muslims, contributing to a stark rise in hate crimes against them, including a string of mosque-burnings throughout the United States and hundreds of other attacks on Muslim religious sites, some of them done explicitly by Trump supporters.

So, having bad-mouthed Muslim Americans, having accused them of being too dangerous even to live in their own country, having accused them of hating their own country, who does Trump turn to in his “Operation Warp Speed,” his quest to find a vaccine for the novel coronavirus by the end of 2020?

A prominent Muslim American.

Monçef Slaoui (pronounced Munsif Slawi) was born in the city of Agadir on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. I’ve been to Agadir and liked it a lot. Agadir Beach is Blue Flag quality (something to remember for after Dr. Slaoui’s efforts bear fruit and we can travel again).

He is, like many people in that area, of Amazigh (“Berber”) heritage, so that Arabic is his second language and French his third and English his fourth. He earned a a PhD in Molecular Biology from the Free University of Brussels and did post-doctoral work at Harvard Medical School and the Tufts University School of Medicine. He is listed as an author on over 100 scientific papers. He worked for 30 years at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and for a decade he headed up its worldwide Research and Development department. He also served for two years as chair of
GSK Vaccines, notes Yahia Hatim at Morocco World News.

Slaoui has also taught at Hamid Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, a country about which Trump at one point said some pretty harsh things before retracting.

Slaoui helped get the first cervical cancer vaccine to market, so has serious chops in this field.

In short, Slaoui is a foremost figure in his field. You have to wish him well in the, on the face of it, unrealistic task he has been given.

Vaccines for viruses are hit and miss. There still isn’t one for HIV Aids or Epstein-Barr. Usually a new vaccine takes at least 4 years to develop, and that is where scientists are successful. But, on the other hand, a pandemic concentrates the mind and the world’s governments and Big Pharma are going to put billions into finding a coronavirus vaccine, and clinical trial protocols are likely to be relaxed somewhat, so there is hope. Because life won’t return to any semblance of normality until there is a vaccine.

So here’s a final irony. One runner-up for Slaoui’s new position at the top of the Operation Warp Speed task force was Elias Zerhouni, a Muslim-American originally from Algeria. He is a former director of the National Institutes of Health and was made by the Obama administration a world health envoy for the US before heading up worldwide Research and Development for the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi.

That is, Trump turned not just to one Muslim-American for potential salvation but two.

A third candidate was former Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson. At a time of an alarming rise in hate crimes against Muslims and Jews, Americans should remember that our country is a team, and we need all the good players to win against the pandemic. Some of the best players in the health field are Muslims and Jews, whom we should embrace with love and gratitude for what they do for their country.

So no, Islam doesn’t “hate us,” Mr. Trump. Take it back.

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Bonus Video:

Trump Announces Team To Lead COVID-19 Vaccine Effort | MSNBC