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4 winners and 4 losers from Biden’s climate leader summit

Four years after President Donald Trump began to pull the US out of the landmark Paris climate agreement, President Joe Biden and his top officials are reengaging with world leaders and making aggressive commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Biden administration has an unequivocal message at the two-day Leaders Summit on Climate this week: America is back.
The biggest news out of the virtual event was the commitments various countries made to reduce their emissions. At the top, Biden <a href="https://www.vox.com/22397364/earth-day-us-climate-change-summit-biden-john-kerry-commitment-2030-zero-emissions">formally pledged</a> America would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent relative to 2005 levels by 2030 — the most ambitious target the US has set to date. Still, as <a href="https://www.vox.com/22397364/earth-day-us-climate-change-summit-biden-john-kerry-commitment-2030-zero-emissions">Vox’s Umair Irfan laid out</a>, some believe the goal is not big enough given the sheer scale of the current climate crisis and the pace of warming.
The message from Biden and US climate envoy John Kerry throughout the two days was that the US cannot do this alone. Historically, the US is the biggest emitter of carbon, and America is currently the second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, after China.
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<figcaption>President Joe Biden delivers remarks during day two of the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate at the East Room of the White House April 23, 2021, in Washington, DC.</figcaption>
<cite>Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images</cite></figure>
“America represents less than 15 percent of the world’s emissions,” Biden said Thursday. “No nation can solve this crisis on [their] own, as I know you all fully understand. All of us — and particularly those of us who represent the world’s largest economies — we have to step up.”
Targets announced by other nations were more modest. The big pledge from Chinese President Xi Jinping is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/climate/chinas-leader-xi-jinping-promises-to-strictly-limit-coal.html">to reduce coal consumption</a> between 2026 and 2030. But Xi’s announcement was short on specifics, and China’s overall targets — hitting peak carbon emissions by 2030 before getting to net-zero emissions by 2060 — remained unchanged.
Even if the pledges from the US and other countries were broadly encouraging, the real test of whether these countries will actually make good on them is yet to come. Many are putting economic growth first after a year of stagnation due to the Covid-19 pandemic; air pollution levels are <a href="https://time.com/5935138/chinas-environment-economic-recovery/">already soaring again</a> in China.
Biden and his climate team face another big deadline with the <a href="https://ukcop26.org/">United Nations Climate Change Conference</a>, or COP26, set for November in Glasgow.
For now, here are the winners and losers from the first big climate change summit of the Biden era.
After four years of climate policy languishing under Trump, Joe Biden was determined to send a message: Climate is the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/22/22396107/climate-biden-agenda-american-jobs-plan">centerpiece of his economic agenda</a>.
“When people talk about climate, I think jobs,” Biden said during his Thursday speech. “Within our climate response lies an extraordinary engine of job creation and economic opportunity ready to be fired up.”
A somewhat unlikely climate champion after years as a political moderate, Biden came into office with a number of big climate and clean energy goals. On his first day in office, he reentered the US into the Paris climate agreement and issued a flurry of <a href="https://www.vox.com/22251851/joe-biden-executive-orders-climate-change-conservation-30-by-2030">executive orders</a> to accelerate the transition off fossil fuels, protect biodiversity, and address environmental injustice.
To underscore America’s renewed commitment, Biden this week announced an ambitious new nationally determined contribution (NDC). Actually getting there will require a massive transformation of the US economy toward clean energy and a big investment in electric vehicles.
This very concept — rerouting the American economy to be powered by wind, solar, nuclear, and other renewables — is the big idea in Biden’s economic vision. He’s pledged 100 percent of America’s energy to be carbon-free by 2035, and his infrastructure and jobs plan calls for a clean electricity standard, tax credits to accelerate wind and solar development, and $174 billion to be put into electric vehicle infrastructure alone.
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<figcaption>The Deepwater Wind offshore wind farm at Block Island in Rhode Island on August 14, 2016.</figcaption>
<cite>Mark Harrington/Newsday RM via Getty Images</cite></figure>
But Biden also has a challenging road ahead in actually implementing this policy; he needs Congress to pass it. He can certainly direct his agencies to tighten vehicle emission standards and use the power of federal procurement to help get the US there, but passing his infrastructure plan is crucial for reaching the goals.
“That one package doesn’t make or break the 50 percent target,” Nathan Hultman, the director of the University of Maryland’s Center on Global Sustainability, told Vox. But “it’s certainly extraordinarily helpful. There’s no doubt.”
Negotiations are already underway on Biden’s infrastructure plan, and the next few months could determine exactly how bold the US goes on clean energy. But Biden’s pledge was a good start. —Ella Nilsen
It’s hard to imagine President Biden choosing to hold this summit or <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/22/22396107/climate-biden-agenda-american-jobs-plan">to center his economic agenda on climate change</a> without the persistent pressure of a wide range of climate activists — young and old, in the US and around the world. In the past few years, they have doggedly and persuasively demanded that world leaders increase their ambition and follow through on climate plans.
Biden’s climate summit and the new pledges are examples of the success of applying that pressure.
The breakout star of Biden’s climate summit is 19-year-old climate justice activist and organizer with Fridays for Future Xiye Bastida. In fiery <a href="https://twitter.com/xiyebastida/status/1385262464598695941?s=20">remarks</a> delivered during a session on climate solutions, Bastida, who relocated to New York from Mexico with her family at the age of 11 when they were displaced by drought and floods, demanded governments act decisively using the tools available to end the climate emergency.
When pushed to address Bastida’s concerns <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cewrM6HQeBY">at a press conference</a> following the summit, climate envoy Kerry said President Biden’s climate summit is a big step in the right direction. “Is it enough? No. But it’s the best we can do today.”
Bastida clearly had made an impression. Speaking at a White House press conference later on Thursday, Kerry described her impassioned plea as “profoundly meaningful” and “moving.”
“That’s where a lot of the younger generation is today, appropriately,” Kerry said. “Pretty upset at the adults — the alleged adults — who are not getting their act together to make happen what needs to happen.”
In the US, the Sunrise Movement is sure to <a href="https://www.sunrisemovement.org/theory-of-change/10-trillion-over-10-years/">continue to push the Biden administration to scale up its infrastructure plan</a>. And activists around the world will maintain pressure on world leaders in the buildup to COP26 in Glasgow. —Jariel Arvin
US climate envoy John Kerry is enormously optimistic about what’s happening in the private sector around clean energy.
Talking to reporters at a Thursday White House briefing, Kerry said that even if another Trump-like politician comes along with regressive climate policies, it won’t necessarily matter. His reasoning? The market is trending too much toward clean energy to go back.
“No politician, no matter how demagogic or how potent and capable they are, is going to be able to change what that market is doing, because it will have moved,” Kerry said, pointing in particular to the heavy demand for Tesla’s electric cars in the US. “It’ll have four years of entrenchment. And those jobs will be there.”
This is not the first time Kerry’s faith in markets has come up. In remarks to the Institute of International Finance, Kerry <a href="https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2021/03/26/stories/1063728561">said he believed</a> “no government is going to solve this problem” of climate change, adding, “Solutions are going to come from the private sector.”
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1619228348_4753_104007" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22465520,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Rok52FsSGEeow_i3yB9bjtfe_yE=/0x0:5849x3899/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wT4p8oMNydfUo-O9obfoyaetmck=/0x0:5849x3899/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4o5kFqhZgH69iN_eCXP3Lrjosr0=/0x0:5849x3899/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6SRwMM79H4BuMXZIK5p0GGZsXRY=/0x0:5849x3899/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WrjlrlCg5P-mJS0-b5W8TVBhjyA=/0x0:5849x3899/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/V6M4UzhevRGKVvOV9PxTVEXqVJM=/0x0:5849x3899/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4vLQvul03V6MTY5c1mbM9T1xGvg=/0x0:5849x3899/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QDuLlKlgVBqnAQ_-soq4h-1N6C0=/0x0:5849x3899/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cHJs0Nd6ZHz0ypc0xTSZ45qjK70=/0x0:5849x3899/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="President Biden And Vice President Harris Participate In Virtual Leaders Summit On Climate" data-upload-width="5849" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/--BkPaBZreURUyp-j0PxvarMVwk=/0x0:5849x3899/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KxdXoHH5O2LOcu_AAbJzAjs6ans=/0x0:5849x3899/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/nvX_NtgYi6fcC70c5_2kquQZPuU=/0x0:5849x3899/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/69_9dvrmnGjG7qvsT1695JWRgW4=/0x0:5849x3899/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LQPU5HodGsPHFXZd2p_le7X3zQ0=/0x0:5849x3899/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3kVrxwNyqbRpV8DkFtAchKuhXYk=/0x0:5849x3899/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HRI6wN9PsCjSZCEP57L_8vrehzc=/0x0:5849x3899/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/itMwOTJXYwf95kiffPx3Ly4K-NA=/0x0:5849x3899/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vFD5_Py6sS5Jo_gecA_RrBmNwS4=/0x0:5849x3899/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eaEjWO54uvBcIEB5rB2xNajFkyo=/0x0:5849x3899/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:5849x3899):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465520/1314032209.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and former Secretary of State John Kerry waits for the beginning of day two of the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate at the East Room of the White House April 23, 2021, in Washington, DC.</figcaption>
<cite>Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images</cite></figure>
Kerry has good reason to feel this way. The cost of renewable energy has fallen sharply over the past few years; it’s now cheaper than fossil fuels.
“The costs have plummeted quite rapidly, they’ve gone faster than expected,” Hultman told Vox. “You actually have a lot of choices that are clean, at the same cost, [or] sometimes lower costs than alternate, dirtier technologies.”
But Kerry’s faith in the private sector as the silver bullet is somewhat naive. The private sector is an important partner to meet ambitious climate goals, but it will also take serious investment across all levels of government to get there.
Having lived through the Trump years, members of the Biden administration seem very aware that progress can be short-lived. They want to get shovels in the ground on projects and build out physical infrastructure like 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, offshore wind turbines, and solar farms before another US leader tries to go in the opposite direction.
Furthermore, the market forces at play now happened in part due to government intervention. Investment and production tax credits in President Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill <a href="https://grist.org/energy/obamas-recovery-act-breathed-life-into-renewables-now-they-need-rescuing/">spurred tremendous development</a> in renewables. The low cost of solar panels didn’t happen in a vacuum. “It was driven, at every stage, by smart public policy,” Dave Roberts <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/20/18104206/solar-panels-cost-cheap-mit-clean-energy-policy">wrote for Vox</a> in 2015.
The private sector can be an important partner in combating climate change. But plenty of experts warn it needs strong signals from the highest levels of government, and it can’t be implicitly trusted to do the right thing. —EN
One message came out loud and clear from the summit: In a world committed to climate action, government support for coal power is rapidly waning.
In the United States, where the coal industry is being pushed out of the market by cheaper energy sources, there are <a href="https://coal.sierraclub.org/">191 plants</a> still operating. To hit Biden’s target of reducing greenhouse gas pollution by 50 percent, it’s likely that all of them will have to shutter before 2030. That is the conclusion of multiple studies on the paths to reach Biden’s goal, including from the environmental groups <a href="https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/documents/Recapturing%20U.S.%20Leadership%20on%20Climate.pdf">Environmental Defense Fund</a> and <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/resources/biden-administration-must-swiftly-commit-cutting-climate-pollution-least-50-percent-2030">Natural Resources Defense Council</a>, the research groups <a href="https://energyinnovation.org/resources/our-publications/">Energy Innovation</a> and <a href="https://eta.lbl.gov/publications/illustrative-strategies-united-states">Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory</a>, and the coalition <a href="https://www.americaspledgeonclimate.com/accelerating-americas-pledge-2/">America Is All In</a>.
According to Energy Innovation, “Without eliminating coal emissions by 2030, achieving US emission reductions in line with a 50 percent reduction is impossible.” Even the United Mine Workers, the major labor group representing coal miners, has acknowledged that reality <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-shift-united-mine-workers-so-important-n1264615">by embracing</a> Biden’s infrastructure package — and a transition to clean energy — in the days leading up to the summit.
His plan already asks Congress to pass a national clean energy standard that would raise utilities’ renewable targets and ratchet down their coal and gas dependency by a deadline of 2035. And his EPA is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/climate/michael-regan-epa.html">already working</a> to prepare new power plant regulations that take the place of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and the weak Trump rule that the courts <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/federal-court-strikes-major-trump-climate-rollback-75347444">struck down</a>.
But coal’s decline hasn’t been as swift in many other parts of the world, where renewable energy and natural gas have been slower to replace it. In major economies like China, India, Japan, and Indonesia, governments have continued to rely on coal — and finance the development of new plants overseas.
That’s why several new commitments to phase out coal consumption and financing at the summit are so notable. China’s President Xi reiterated his country’s goal to hit peak pollution sometime before 2030 but elaborated for the first time on a specific timeline for the coal industry. In China’s next five-year economic plan, from 2026 to 2030, it would “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/climate/chinas-leader-xi-jinping-promises-to-strictly-limit-coal.html">strictly limit</a>” the increase in its consumption of coal, he said. Another major announcement came from South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who said the country would cut off all <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/global-climate-summit-southkorea-idUSL4N2MF3R2">overseas financing</a> of coal.
None of this means coal will disappear overnight. But major world leaders signaling the demise of coal and coal financing is a clear sign the fuel is becoming a smaller fraction of the world’s energy mix. —Rebecca Leber
Even as economies slowed last year from the pandemic, tropical deforestation worldwide paced ahead — <a href="https://wri-indonesia.org/en/blog/primary-rainforest-destruction-increased-12-2019-2020">jumping 12 percent</a>, compared to 2019. And that number came with a big toll on the climate: carbon emissions equal to roughly double the annual tailpipe emissions of cars in the US, <a href="https://wri-indonesia.org/en/blog/primary-rainforest-destruction-increased-12-2019-2020">according to the World Resources Institute</a>. A large chunk of those emissions can be tied to Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Bolivia, which saw the highest rates of deforestation last year.
Enter a <a href="http://www.leafcoalition.org/">new coalition</a>, launched Thursday, that seeks to funnel at least $1 billion in payments to countries that show they’re preventing tropical deforestation and its associated emissions. The US, Britain, and Norway are driving the effort along with a number of major corporations, including Amazon, Nestlé, Unilever, and Salesforce, forming what the group called “one of the largest ever public-private efforts to help protect tropical forests.”
“Bringing together government and private-sector resources is a necessary step in supporting the large-scale efforts that must be mobilized to halt deforestation and begin to restore tropical and subtropical forests,” Kerry said in a statement when the group, known as the Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance Coalition (LEAF), was announced Thursday.
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<figcaption>Deforestation in Altamira, Para, in Brazil, on August 28, 2019.</figcaption>
<cite>Joao Laet/AFP via Getty Images</cite></figure>
Under the project, countries, states, or provinces in tropical forest countries would receive money after proving they reduced deforestation or forest degradation. Each ton of avoided carbon emissions would yield a carbon credit worth at least $10 that companies could then buy to offset their own emissions (though, as the <a href="http://www.leafcoalition.org/img/pdf/LEAF%20Press%20Release.pdf">press release</a> states, corporate “contributions to the LEAF Coalition come in addition to, and not as a substitute for, internal emissions reductions”).
The initiative is similar to an existing and complicated effort, known as REDD+, that involves high-income countries paying lower-income nations for avoided emissions from deforestation. REDD+ has <a href="https://features.propublica.org/brazil-carbon-offsets/inconvenient-truth-carbon-credits-dont-work-deforestation-redd-acre-cambodia/">been criticized</a> for doing little to curb forest loss since it was set up more than a decade ago.
LEAF differs in that it involves private companies, but the effort could face similar challenges, such as in proving what’s called “additionality” — that deforestation would have occurred had it not been for a country’s efforts. Some environmental groups have also pointed out that $1 billion isn’t much and said the project won’t work unless Indigenous land rights are recognized and enforced.
“Rich countries and corporations are getting a bargain,” Savio Carvalho, global campaign lead for biodiversity at Greenpeace International, said in a statement. “One billion dollars is a drop in the bucket when governments are spending trillions to support sectors that are destroying nature and our climate.” —Benji Jones
In the days leading up to the summit, House Republicans halfheartedly and unsuccessfully tried to reverse the cemented narrative that their official climate platform is to deny scientific reality. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy published a video touting the Energy Innovation Agenda, a package of “dozens of bills and solutions” the GOP has to address climate change and infrastructure as a counterpoint to Biden’s agenda.
<div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Democrats say Republicans aren’t serious about climate change. That is simply not true.
Republican solutions will make American energy cleaner, more affordable, and more accessible to reduce emissions around the world. 
<a href="https://t.co/kQ4bR8EN8H">https://t.co/kQ4bR8EN8H</a> <a href="https://t.co/M1VoaAJ9II">pic.twitter.com/M1VoaAJ9II</a>
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) <a href="https://twitter.com/GOPLeader/status/1384141487391199232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 19, 2021</a></blockquote>
</div>
The campaign launched at a time when GOP lawmakers are realizing that climate denial and foot-dragging are poor politics, especially when it comes to appealing to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/climate/climate-change-republicans.html">younger conservative base</a> that wants to see a plan to combat the crisis.
But the Republican proposals only offer <a href="https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2021/04/22/stories/1063730659">piecemeal solutions</a>, like planting more trees, managing forests, and extending tax credits for technological innovation like carbon capture. And there’s more of the same in their broader messaging, like their continued opposition to the Paris climate agreement. The agenda introduced by McCarthy and 40 fellow Republicans just reiterates that fossil fuels remain the centerpiece in the GOP’s vision of the American economy, and no number of trees planted will offset that.
Republicans’ too-little-too-late push is a reminder to the global community of how unserious the party remains on climate change and that it intends to continue the isolationist policies of the Trump administration rather than broker international agreement.
Even members of the Republican Party who have urged their counterparts to take climate change seriously for years found the proposals lacking. As Bob Inglis, a former Republican Congress member who has devoted his work to advancing conservative climate solutions, told <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063730379">E&E News’s Nick Sobczyk</a>, “It’s true that Republicans are taking small steps and basically testing the waters with their base, and that’s the reality of what we’re dealing with, and I assume that world leaders would see that.” —RL
While the summit attendees sent a clear signal that coal is on the way out, they were far more lukewarm on another major contributor to climate change: natural gas. To hit the world’s 1.5 degree Celsius target, we’ll have to rein in methane, a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane">type of greenhouse gas</a> that is especially effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere and dangerous for global warming. While methane can come from a variety of sources, such as agriculture and landfills, environmentalists see regulating the oil and gas sector as the first place to start, by keeping the gas in the ground.
Yet the industry seemed to get a pass at the summit — most leaders sidestepped methane and natural gas entirely in their speeches and announcements. Surprisingly, it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who drew <a href="https://twitter.com/AkshatRathi/status/1385218668506845184">the most attention</a> to methane but <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/22/us/biden-earth-day-climate-summit">stopped short</a> of offering concrete commitments to halt plans to build natural gas pipelines. The less focus from world leaders on the oil and gas industry’s methane problems, the better, from the eyes of the industry, because it signals that there won’t be more regulation coming anytime soon.
In the US, addressing methane is critical to meet Biden’s goal of slashing greenhouse pollution by 2030, but Biden has only offered a few clues for how his administration plans to tackle it. The fact sheet from the White House on Biden’s target only gives methane a brief and vague mention, saying, “The United States will also reduce non-CO2 greenhouse gases, including methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and other potent short-lived climate pollutants.” The nonprofit Clean Air Task Force has urged the US to adopt a target of reducing oil and gas emissions to <a href="https://www.catf.us/resource/oil-gas-methane-mapping-the-path-to-a-65-reduction/">65 percent below</a> its 2012 levels by 2025.
Regulation in the US is still coming. Biden’s new EPA administrator Michael Regan promised the administration will roll out more aggressive policies to curb existing and new natural gas methane leaks than the Obama administration and plans to unveil its plans sometime by September.
But the overall silence at the summit still signals that the world is not yet ready to ditch natural gas as quickly as it plans to ditch coal. —RL
The 2015 Paris climate agreement has a topline goal of limiting the increase in global average temperatures this century to below 2 degrees Celsius, but it also has a secondary, more ambitious target of keeping warming below 1.5°C.
Back in 2018, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/10/9/17951924/climate-change-global-warming-un-ipcc-report-takeaways">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put out a major report</a> looking at just how hard it would be to meet the 1.5°C target. It found that every degree of warming matters, with higher temperatures extracting a higher human and economic toll. The report concluded that to reach this goal, the world has until 2030 to slash greenhouse gas emissions by half or more from present.
And 1.5°C is hardly a “safe” climate. The world has already warmed by at least 1°C on average, and the <a href="https://www.vox.com/21452781/zogg-fire-glass-wildfire-california-climate-change-hurricanes-attribution-2020-debate">effects have been devastating</a>. The longer the world waits to act to limit emissions, the harder it will get.
The new US climate target — a 50 to 52 percent cut in emissions relative to 2005 by 2030 — “looks like it is consistent” with the 1.5°C goal, according to a senior White House official on a <a href="https://www.state.gov/briefings-foreign-press-centers/preview-of-president-bidens-leaders-summit-on-climate/">call with reporters</a> on Wednesday. But according to <a href="https://climateactiontracker.org/publications/1o5C-consistent-benchmarks-for-us-2030-climate-target/">Climate Action Tracker</a>, a US commitment in line with this target would actually need a 57 to 63 percent cut.
Many other countries have also said they are using 1.5°C as their benchmark for their climate commitments. Rhetorically, it seems there is widespread support for being more ambitious. However, it’s clear there’s a cavernous rift between commitments and actions. Global greenhouse gas emissions have only grown since the 2018 IPCC report. While there was a lull in this growth last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, <a href="https://www.vox.com/22310154/covid-climate-change-emissions-cars-flights-us-china">emissions are poised to rebound</a> around the world, including in the US, as economies reopen.
So now the world has to make even more drastic cuts to greenhouse gases — and in less time. It’s easy to paint a target years into the future. It’s much harder to take aim today. And right now, that target is nowhere in our sights. —Umair Irfan
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/23/22397532/climate-change-summit-biden-xi-jinping-jair-bolsonaro-winners-losers">https://www.vox.com/2021/4/23/22397532/climate-change-summit-biden-xi-jinping-jair-bolsonaro-winners-losers</a>

vox 4 winners and 4 losers from Biden’s climate leader summit

Four years after President Donald Trump began to pull the US out of the landmark Paris climate agreement, President Joe Biden and his top officials are reengaging with world leaders and making aggressive commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions. T…

Ben Rhodes is worried about Joe Biden’s climate change and China policies

Since leaving government at the end of the Obama administration, former Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has spent the last four years calling for Democrats to put climate change at the center of US foreign policy.
He and his colleagues at National Security Action, a now-closed progressive foreign policy group filled with former Obama officials, said doing so was imperative because it was the world’s biggest long-term threat.
Now some of those same colleagues are in the Biden administration, which just convened a successful two-day international climate summit during which nearly all 40 nations made important <a href="https://www.vox.com/22397364/earth-day-us-climate-change-summit-biden-john-kerry-commitment-2030-zero-emissions">commitments</a> to reduce emissions, among other things.
Which means Rhodes’s wish came true. Or did it?
I called up Rhodes to see how he’s feeling now that a Democratic administration has finally put climate change at the “center” of US foreign policy, as explicitly stated by Biden’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/22/us/biden-earth-day-climate-summit">director of national intelligence, Avril Haines</a>.
But what Rhodes told me came as a surprise.
He’s not convinced yet that climate change is actually the central pillar of Biden’s foreign policy. It’s certainly a top priority, sure, but from Rhodes’s perspective, China is also taking up a lot of space in Biden’s foreign policy. So are democracy promotion and human rights.
Rhodes worries Biden may have to make some unpalatable trade-offs on climate change issues if he wants to make progress on those other priorities. Simply put, Rhodes believes Biden has many tough choices ahead, with traps awaiting him beyond the 100-day mark.
“If you’re a progressive who cares about both climate change and human rights in China, it’s a very difficult call as to which one you’re going to care about more. I don’t think we know how the Biden administration is going to answer that question,” he said.
It’s an important concern. Biden is only a few months into his presidency, and for now he has the wiggle room to push on his priorities. But eventually others (read: China) will push back and could force Biden into an uncomfortable situation.
It’s worth noting that Biden’s team rejects any suggestions that they would make any concessions to China solely for progress on climate change. “That’s not going to happen,” <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/27/22252649/john-kerry-climate-change-china">John Kerry</a>, the special envoy for climate change, told reporters in January.
Yet Rhodes, who worked to sell the Iran nuclear deal to skeptics in Washington and now co-hosts the <a href="https://crooked.com/podcast-series/pod-save-the-world/">Pod Save the World</a> podcast, firmly believes the hardest part — executing climate change policies while trying not to compromise on other priorities — is yet to come.
Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.
<h4>Alex Ward</h4>
When you were in the Obama administration, you worked with a lot of people who are currently in government. And you worked alongside some of those people, like National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, to define foreign policy priorities for the next Democratic president while you all were out of power at National Security Action.
Help me understand why you settled on tackling climate change not only as a key pillar of a progressive foreign policy but also a key tenet of any administration’s national security strategy.
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<figcaption>Ben Rhodes, all the way on the left, during a September 24, 2014, meeting alongside President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry in New York City.</figcaption>
<cite>Anthony Behar/Getty Images</cite></figure>
<h4>Ben Rhodes</h4>
In order to get to something like the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22175698/climate-change-treaty-trump-china-eu-uk-paris-agreement-biden">Paris climate accord</a>, you had to make the US government do things that it wasn’t designed to do on foreign policy. Two things stand out to me.
First, every bilateral or multilateral relationship increasingly became about climate change. If you were meeting with the leader of China or Brazil or South Korea, suddenly among the top three issues was a climate issue. For China, that’s obviously their overall emissions reduction plan; for Brazil, it’s the Amazon; for South Korea, it’s their financing of coal plants.
To deal with all that, you need an infrastructure in the US government to support everybody from the president of the United States all the way down to embassies. That’s the only way you’re going to prioritize climate change like we’ve prioritized terrorism or other vital US interests. That structure didn’t exist at the beginning of the Obama years; it was an ad hoc arrangement.
Second, similarly, was how to set up an interagency process to handle the climate. You had to make it a separate entity because you needed anyone from a global <a href="https://www.state.gov/biographies/john-kerry/">special envoy</a> to agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy around the table. Leading up to the 2015 Paris agreement, we set up an interagency process that was originally chaired by John Podesta and then was chaired by Brian Deese [who’s now the director of the National Economic Council in the White House].
This matters because it brings the international and domestic together, which you need when promoting clean energy and other things America is working on abroad.
<h4>Alex Ward</h4>
This sounds like “If you build it, they will come.” By building a federal government infrastructure, you begin to get the tools and processes in place to deal with climate change long term, somewhat independent of who sits in the White House.
<h4>Ben Rhodes</h4>
There’s also the resource question. How much money is the intelligence community putting into climate reporting? How much money is the Defense Department putting into transitioning their energy sources and scenario planning, contingency planning, around climate effects?
If climate is going to be an organizing principle of American foreign policy and America’s role in the world for the next 30 years — as I’m sure Jake Sullivan and Brian believe — what kind of government do you need to build to do that?
We built a post-9/11 government to fight terrorism. That’s had huge ramifications for all manner of national security agencies. In a way, you have to do something similar for climate change, even though it’s obviously a different challenge.
I think people shouldn’t lose sight of how big of a shift it is in terms of what kind of people you’re hiring, where you’re spending money, how you’re organizing yourself, how embassies are prepared for their relationships. It’s a huge thing to make this a real centerpiece and focal point of American foreign policy.
<h4>Alex Ward</h4>
With the climate summit, it feels like the work you, Jake, and others now in the administration did over the last four years paid off. Climate change, as you hoped for, is the centerpiece of US foreign policy, at least during the Biden years.
<h4>Ben Rhodes</h4>
Well, I’ll be totally honest with you, Alex, there are three main elements they’re proposing of a post-post-9/11 foreign policy, if you will.
The first is China, where everything has a China dimension and you’re kind of in a Cold War structure. Another is democracy, pushing back on the authoritarian trend. And the other is climate. I don’t know that they made a choice — I think they’re kind of doing all three of those things.
I couldn’t tell you whether climate or China is how they’re organizing themselves. I think they’re probably considering both, but it’s a little too early to say climate is the organizing principle for their foreign policy. To some extent, democracy is, too, but we’ll obviously have to see what comes out of their process.
<h4>Alex Ward</h4>
This is interesting, because to make all three “organizing principles” is to invite a ton of tension. Not that there’s a zero-sum problem, but I think it’s fair to say to make progress on one of these fronts, you probably have to sacrifice gains in another.
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<figcaption>A pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong holds a black umbrella on March 1.</figcaption>
<cite>Geovien So/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</cite></figure>
<h4>Ben Rhodes</h4>
Looking back on the Obama years, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/49862757">Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement</a> was happening right when we were getting the Chinese to be more ambitious on climate ahead of Paris. Whether you think about it or not, there must be a trade-off there — you know, prioritizing democracy might mean making it harder to deal with China on climate change.
<h4>Alex Ward</h4>
This is something I ask progressives about often. They consider climate change the existential national security threat of our times. If that’s the case, then you’re probably going to have to make concessions on China’s aggressive behavior or crackdown on democracy. Similar problems arise for other nations we want to take climate change seriously.
None of that is good, but at some point you have to prioritize because you can’t have it all. It seems to me that this is an obvious tension and one that’s going to be problematic for this administration or any other that follows a similar playbook.
<h4>Ben Rhodes</h4>
I think you’re right. And look, nobody in government would want to say that out loud. Having been in government, it’s inevitable that you will face some very uncomfortable decisions between, say, getting the Chinese [government] to stop investing in dirty infrastructure and placing sanctions on China over the mistreatment of Uyghur Muslims and labeling it a genocide.
If you’re a progressive who cares about both climate change and human rights in China, it’s a very difficult call as to which one you’re going to care about more. I don’t think we know how the Biden administration is going to answer that question. But over the course of the next year or two, it will probably become evident, though I couldn’t predict in which direction they’ll go.
In some ways, the US-China relationship is big enough and complex enough. The analogy might be the Soviet Union, where we confront them on a whole bunch of issues, but we still sit down and make arms control agreements together. That’s the ideal, but I have to think that at some point there will be trade-offs made.
<h4>Alex Ward</h4>
That seems like a tough, and some would say bad, spot for any administration to be in.
<h4>Ben Rhodes</h4>
It’s going to be difficult.
On the one hand, you could argue that the Chinese have to act on climate and environmental issues for their own sake. They have huge environmental problems of their own.
The problem with that is as China becomes a superpower, we need Beijing to do stuff not just within China but outside of China. They could fix the air quality in their cities while they still build dirty infrastructure along the Belt Road. So I don’t think just appealing to China’s self-interest is going to be sufficient on these climate issues.
That suggests that if you are really provoking the Chinese on really important issues like Hong Kong, Tibet, Taiwan, and Xinjiang, I just have to think that makes it harder to reach big, multilateral agreements on climate change.
So, yeah, I’m watching the trade-off space of the Biden team over the next year and a half up through the midterm election. They seem pretty wedded to kind of drawing a firm line with the Chinese. I’m speculating, but the US may just be testing how much they can get on climate from Beijing while still being a hardass on everything else.
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1619230937_9895_118262" data-cdata='{"asset_id":20055786,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/K9gStENbbaviwCYx9VJ3Q8C_BII=/0x0:3453x2271/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hcFY_LLPcxvoNNnCFpeu-BwgtcE=/0x0:3453x2271/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/n_pOua6BCffmicoDjclhiu6gZfU=/0x0:3453x2271/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Ld7FW-tJJyzZCJ7bjerihkALfCo=/0x0:3453x2271/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/89n-5X6-RnGxS07c9kEVRxvW2bI=/0x0:3453x2271/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wAiHqtgc_vrMd_lc31PLrXmd5_o=/0x0:3453x2271/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xEJLqZjm2nQSJY-0HEZ14T9Z7tE=/0x0:3453x2271/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1ay5FrGrqDEme1o6b-EarbGBR4I=/0x0:3453x2271/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oxxIAq_baUhvNTKwoFhy1wHsvws=/0x0:3453x2271/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="3453" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/F1l7yXaXuWdx9X6q-k03MXiCRFo=/0x0:3453x2271/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/a4TdSHOUWD8hgwWHQPEnC1B7xZg=/0x0:3453x2271/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Km5lXZ_ltikkn0JNdikWC-G59xg=/0x0:3453x2271/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RUk-RskasIAAyc-0n0e8QtT3e0s=/0x0:3453x2271/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/OOPQkxiqtDPvEuyTP8g5iD_PgA4=/0x0:3453x2271/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hG9p4KRpQhztsSYg2utQ8AQvZrQ=/0x0:3453x2271/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aW_TKnY0GrfSPrFhlZeJUgR9z5s=/0x0:3453x2271/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RRK_tE0782XcxgAVBAMR9qlVUDI=/0x0:3453x2271/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/c0tC0phq-6XWCaXN3tYW8mtr6ZY=/0x0:3453x2271/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6c-4WzrKpDgy2bc35PTSrCG_wss=/0x0:3453x2271/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3453x2271):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20055786/490009832.jpg.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Vice President Joe Biden toasts with Chinese President Xi Jinping on September 25, 2015.</figcaption>
<cite>Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images</cite></figure>
<h4>Alex Ward</h4>
I’m glad you mentioned the midterm elections because there’s a political side to all this. If Biden’s three priorities are climate change, China, and democracy, then that causes headaches because they’re long-term issues. It’s hard to show voters — the few who care about foreign policy, anyway — real-time progress being made on those fronts.
Sure, there’s the coronavirus pandemic response the administration can point to. That’s apart from these challenges. But in the long run, it’s hard to see how this administration can politically boast about progress. It’s hard to show success but easier to demonstrate failure.
<h4>Ben Rhodes</h4>
It probably doesn’t lend itself to obvious agreements you can trumpet. Climate change, though, is pretty measurable in the sense that you can look at commitments and if emissions are dropping, etc.
With China, you can invest more in technologies to compete with China, that's good. Though the danger of engaging in long-term competition is that you’re fueling the fires by sending a lot more weapons to Taiwan or sparking attacks on Asian Americans. Ratcheting up too much can have unintended consequences.
They’re going to have to be skilled in how they lay out what success looks like three, five, 10 years on regarding climate change and other challenges. They need to show they’re hitting targets and people feel a sense of progress, even if the problem feels unsolvable.
<h4>Alex Ward</h4>
That requires disciplined focus. This administration is just working on so much stuff — <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-04-22/bidens-everything-doctrine">everything, really</a>. It’s already hard to show progress on a few items, let alone a lot of them.
<h4>Ben Rhodes</h4>
Absolutely. If these three items are your real focus, then you need to deprioritize other things.
Like, if you guys really want to deal with China and climate change, you can’t spend the same amount of bandwidth on issues like Iran in the way this country has done over the last five years. Iran is a medium-size country, and it just makes no sense that it’s occupying so much of our time. They need to clear the decks a little bit.
<h4>Alex Ward</h4>
I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask if there’s anything the Biden team is doing that you wish you had done during the Obama years.
<h4>Ben Rhodes</h4>
We could have done more of the structural work inside the US government to embed climate into how the State Department and the Defense Department and the intelligence community operate. We did some of that, and I’m thrilled that the Biden team is being really ambitious in the space.
We could’ve done more on China. We were getting pushed in the South China Sea and couldn’t pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. The TPP would have been a very useful strategic framework for dealing with China right now, by the way. They could use it, but this administration isn’t going to try and revive it for political reasons — both parties don’t like it.
We could’ve done more on democracy. For me, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/3/3/22309123/house-democrats-pass-voting-rights-bill-hr1">HR 1 voting rights bill</a> is a foreign policy bill. There are a lot of countries that need HR 1. Thinking of democracy as something that is on a continuum from the US domestic political circumstance to the circumstances in other countries, that’s an area where, if I could go back to like Obama’s reelection in 2012, we should’ve done more on.
Correction, 6:20 pm: A photo caption in an earlier version of this story mis-titled Chinese President Xi Jinping.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22399646/climate-summit-china-ben-rhodes-biden-foreign-policy">https://www.vox.com/22399646/climate-summit-china-ben-rhodes-biden-foreign-policy</a>

vox Ben Rhodes is worried about Joe Biden’s climate change and China policies

Since leaving government at the end of the Obama administration, former Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has spent the last four years calling for Democrats to put climate change at the center of US foreign policy. He and his colleagues at…

The rape allegations against Philip Roth’s biographer are a damning condemnation of publishing

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pV99GLTXfxw1WeS4wqny9jLjRfI=/0x0:3053x1598/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22464805/50396467.jpg" /></div>
Blake Bailey, the author of a much-discussed new biography of Philip Roth, has been accused of sexual assault and grooming in a series of articles <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/books/philip-roth-blake-bailey.html">by the New York Times</a> and <a href="https://www.nola.com/news/education/article_3d2e096e-a233-11eb-bdec-33c1e8f7cc42.html">the Times-Picayune</a>. On Sunday, Bailey was dropped by his literary agency, the Story Factory, and on Wednesday, Bailey’s publisher W.W. Norton announced that it would cease to print or promote Bailey’s biography.
The allegations against Bailey have swept across the literary world. In part, that’s because Bailey’s biography of Roth, himself an especially complicated figure in the post-#MeToo era, was so successful. The book led to <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fmagazine%2F2021%2F03%2F29%2Fthe-secrets-philip-roth-didnt-keep&referrer=vox.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fculture%2F22398138%2Fblake-bailey-philip-roth-biography-rape-sexual-assault-accusations-allegations-grooming" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_query_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29/the-secrets-philip-roth-didnt-keep","referrer":"vox.com","sref":"https://www.vox.com/culture/22398138/blake-bailey-philip-roth-biography-rape-sexual-assault-accusations-allegations-grooming","xcust":"___vx__p_22162179__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>profiles in major magazines</a> and landed on the New York Times bestseller list, a rare feat for a literary biography.
And in part, that’s because the story of the allegations against Bailey involves so many major publishing figures, culminating in an accusation of a rape occurring in the home of one of the New York Times’s on-staff book critics. The story being told about Blake Bailey right now is one of publishing’s institutional power being put to the service of powerful men.
When Bailey’s Roth biography came out on April 6, it was greeted with unusual acclaim. In the New York Times, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/books/review/philip-roth-the-biography-blake-bailey.html">Cynthia Ozick described it as “Dostoyevskian</a>”; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/philip-roth-blake-bailey-review/2021/04/05/2a0d285e-93c6-11eb-bb49-5cb2a95f4cec_story.html">the Washington Post declared it “a triumph.”</a> We might explain that reception through Bailey’s subject: Few living authors command the attitude of mythic reverence enjoyed by mid-20th-century white men of letters, and of those white men, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/5/23/17385304/philip-roth-legacy-books-novels-explained">Roth is the undisputed king</a>.
Moreover, Roth had happily cooperated with Bailey on this biography before his death in 2018. Roth even hand-selected Bailey after parting with his previous biographer, whom Roth fired in 2009 over concerns that he wouldn’t have enough control over the final outcome of the book. (Bailey was nominated for a Pulitzer in 2009 for his biography of John Cheever.) So Bailey’s biography of Roth was, in a way, Roth’s final project: his legacy, enshrined just as he had asked it should be at last, by a biographer who was celebrated in his own right.
The only false note in this otherwise harmonious arrival was <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/161640/philip-roths-revenge-fantasy-review-blake-bailey">an early review in the New Republic by Laura Marsh</a>. Roth, Marsh noted, had a history of vicious misogyny and abuses of power toward women in his lifetime. A brief and non-exhaustive list might note that Roth pursued his female college students for sex; pushed his wife to evict her 18-year-old daughter, over whose weight he obsessed; made advances on his stepdaughter’s friend, and then, after she refused him, made a point of insulting the girl every time she dropped by the house.
There is a long-running debate in literary circles about whether the misogyny in Roth’s books reflects his own; if his male characters’ disdain toward women is intended to be aspirational and cool, or whether the misogyny of his characters is meant to be read satirically, as yet another damning detail of their smallness and viciousness. But by this point, few dispute the idea that Roth was, in general, pretty terrible to a lot of the real women he interacted with.
Part of Bailey’s project appears to be rescuing Roth from the charges of misogyny against him. And Marsh notes that when Bailey defends Roth, he does so very much on Roth’s own terms, which is to say badly.
Bailey takes the time to note, “like an adoring wingman,” that Roth’s much-despised first wife had a “withered and discolored” vagina that made Roth “frightened” to go down on her. Other women he treats as threats menacing Roth’s artistic project. “Women in this book are forever screeching, berating, flying into a rage, and storming off,” Marsh writes, “as if their emotions exist solely for the purpose of sapping a man’s creative energies.” And Roth’s insistence on repeatedly insulting that poor teenage friend of his stepdaughter who turned him down, Bailey ascribes to an “impulse to mock a certain kind of bourgeois piety.”
“In Bailey, Roth found a biographer who is exceptionally attuned to his grievances and rarely challenges his moral accounting,” Marsh concludes. “Yet the result is not a final winning of the argument, as Roth might have hoped. … This sympathetic biography makes him a spiteful obsessive.”
Marsh’s review helped develop a counternarrative of Bailey’s Roth biography. Instead of being a literary examination of one of the titans of American letters, she suggested, it was a piece of apologia for one man’s hatred of women. And the foreshadowing of that review would pay off just a few weeks later, when the first accusations against Bailey became public.
On April 16, in a now-deleted comment <a href="http://www.edrants.com/blake-bailey-casual-misogynist-and-eager-rube/">on a blog post criticizing Bailey’s Roth biography</a>, one of Bailey’s former students left a comment accusing him of attempting to “groom her” for sex when she was in eighth grade. (In a bizarre twist, the blog in question belongs to Ed Champion, a publishing figure with <a href="https://www.bkmag.com/2015/06/10/hes-out-the-exile-of-ed-champion/">his own checkered history when it comes to women</a>.) And on April 20, <a href="https://www.nola.com/news/education/article_3d2e096e-a233-11eb-bdec-33c1e8f7cc42.html">the New Orleans paper the Times-Picayune published an article</a> that included a number of Bailey’s former students coming forward with similar stories. Three of Bailey’s former students describe having sexual encounters with him as adults, and one alleges rape.
Bailey taught eighth-grade English at New Orleans’s Lusher Charter School in the 1990s. (At the time he taught there, it was Lusher Magnet School.) There, multiple students claim he singled out specific students as his “special girls,” with whom he established a rapport that included frequent jokes about how developed their bodies were, when they would lose their virginities, and how they were mature enough to read the book Lolita in the eighth grade.
In the Times-Picayune article, former students describe reuniting with Bailey in their late teens and early 20s, only to have him forcibly initiate sex with them and then inform them that he has “wanted” them since they were in eighth grade. One woman, Eve Peyton, describes her encounter with Bailey as a rape, and says that he held her down while she repeatedly tried to push him away, only stopping when she informed him she was not on birth control.
On April 22, <a href="https://www.nola.com/news/education/article_6f42e110-a3bc-11eb-affa-27a3b58b8c95.html">the Times-Picayune published another article on Bailey’s past</a>, in which a fourth former student said Bailey aggressively initiated sex with her. This woman says that when she later confronted Bailey about the experience, he insisted that he had waited until after she had reached the age of consent, which is 17 in Louisiana.
All of the women who spoke to the Times-Picayune say they viewed their encounters with Bailey as fundamentally unbalanced because of their student-teacher relationship.
“Bailey … systematically groomed 12- and 13-year-olds,” said the now-deleted blog comment. “We cannot deny that he waited until we were no longer his students to cajole, coerce and rape us, and we also cannot deny the deep and lasting betrayal of trust that his actions ignited.”
In a statement from his lawyer to the Times-Picayune, Bailey has denied ever acting inappropriately toward a student or forcing himself on a woman. (Bailey did not reply to a request for comment from Vox.)
In an email to Peyton, Bailey wrote, “For what it’s worth, you weren’t in 8th grade when the night in question occurred.”
The Sunday before the Times-Picayune article, Bailey’s literary agency, the Story Factory, dropped him. On Wednesday, his publisher, W.W. Norton, issued a statement saying that it planned to stop the 10,000-copy second printing of the biography it had already ordered, and that it would no longer be participating in advertising or media outreach for the book.
“These allegations are serious,” said Norton’s statement. “In light of them, we have decided to pause the shipping and promotion of Philip Roth: A Biography pending any further information that may emerge.”
On Thursday, the story took a new turn. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/books/philip-roth-blake-bailey.html">The New York Times published an article detailing an explosive new rape allegation against Bailey</a> at the home of one of the paper’s own book critics — and evidence suggesting that Norton knew of that allegation several years ago.
Publishing executive Valentina Rice told the New York Times that she met Bailey in 2015 at the home of New York Times book critic Dwight Garner, where both Rice and Bailey were staying for the night. (Rice is a frequent houseguest of Garner’s; Garner says he has no relationship with Bailey outside of having contracted him to write a few book reviews and that this was the only time he invited Bailey to his house.) Rice says after everyone had retired for the evening, Bailey entered the guest room where she was sleeping and raped her.
Rice says that she decided against reporting the incident to the police at the time, and the Times article is unclear as to when Garner learned about it. But in 2018, in part spurred by the Me Too movement, Rice did decide to let Norton know about the story, “in the interests of protecting other women.” So she sent a pseudonymous email to Norton president Julia A. Reidhead making her allegations known. In the email, Rice said she was happy to cooperate as Norton attempted to confirm the allegation, but asked that, although she thought it was likely Bailey would be able to figure out who she was, Norton commit to keeping her anonymous.
Rice says she received no response from Reidhead. Instead, a week later, she received an email from Bailey, who said Norton had forwarded him her note. (Norton did not respond to a request for comment from Vox.)
“I can assure you I have never had non-consensual sex of any kind, with anybody, ever, and if it comes to a point I shall vigorously defend my reputation and livelihood,” said the email.
There is a kind of exhausting sameness to the allegations against Bailey, and so the response from the publishing world has been a muted of course.
Of course the guy who defended the misogyny of one of American literature’s most infamous misogynists has been accused of violence against women. Of course the guy who’s accused of grooming his 12-year-old students allegedly plied them with Lolita, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/3/6/21158138/my-dark-vanessa-excavation-controversy-lolita">just like the last one</a>. Of course he felt comfortable allegedly attacking a woman in the home of one of the most powerful men in publishing, whom by all accounts he barely knew. Of course his publisher knew about the accusations and just went along with the book deal anyway until the story went public. Of course the whole thing first went public in the still-read blog of a notorious misogynist.
Publishing is an industry that, like so many other American institutions, has tended to save its institutional power for famous white men. It is an industry that, for decades, uncritically treated the misogyny of Philip Roth’s characters as something aspirational, to be emulated, and the misogyny of Roth himself as an unfortunate or even comical footnote in the career of a great man, if it’s even mentioned at all. And so of course it exerted itself to try to save Roth’s legacy. And of course an alleged predator was comfortable operating within its environs.
Of course. All of it is horrible. And, horribly, none of it is shocking.
<hr class="p-entry-hr" />
Update, April 23: This article has been updated to include an accusation from a fourth former student of Bailey’s and to note that New Orleans’s Lusher Charter School was called Lusher Magnet School when Bailey taught there.
A previous version of this story said the Story Factory parted ways with Bailey in the wake of the Times-Picayune story. In fact, their relationship ended before the Times-Picayune story came out.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22398138/blake-bailey-philip-roth-biography-rape-sexual-assault-accusations-allegations-grooming">https://www.vox.com/culture/22398138/blake-bailey-philip-roth-biography-rape-sexual-assault-accusations-allegations-grooming</a>

vox The rape allegations against Philip Roth’s biographer are a damning condemnation of publishing

Blake Bailey, the author of a much-discussed new biography of Philip Roth, has been accused of sexual assault and grooming in a series of articles by the New York Times and the Times-Picayune. On Sunday, Bailey was dropped by his literary agency, th…

Netflix’s Shadow and Bone is a muddled, joyless checklist of fantasy tropes

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EpD2bMnk9a_zs3tXqnmE-nFUDWQ=/0x258:3600x2143/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22463672/ShadowandBone_Season1_00_00_40_00R.jpg" /></div>
The new Netflix series Shadow and Bone, which lumbers into the world on April 23, draws instant comparisons to the giant upon whose shoulders it stands. One of the streaming network’s more anticipated recent releases, it’s an adaptation of the <a href="https://grishaverse.com/extras/">Grishaverse</a>, a bestselling young adult fantasy series of novels by Leigh Bardugo based loosely on Tsarist Russia. But inevitably, what most viewers will be reminded of as they watch the eight-episode first season is <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2021/4/16/22382797/game-of-thrones-10th-anniversary-iron-anniversary-premiere-spinoffs">Game of Thrones</a>.
It’s unsurprising that the end of Game of Thrones left a void in the fantasy landscape that many networks, including Netflix, have been vying to fill. Thanks to a run of successful original series like <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/8/1/21347272/umbrella-academy-season-2-review">The Umbrella Academy</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/12/20/21028252/witcher-netflix-review-cavill">The Witcher</a>, Netflix has increasingly embraced fantasy audiences, showing a willingness to back high-budget series adaptations like <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/8/30/20827743/dark-crystal-age-of-resistance-review-netflix">The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance</a> and its popular update of Nickelodeon’s fairy fantasy Fate: The Winx Saga — which the network recently announced is its <a href="https://ew.com/movies/outside-the-wire-fate-the-winx-saga-most-watched-netflix-movies-tv-shows/">most-watched series of 2021</a> so far.
Out of all of these titles, Shadow and Bone feels the most like a would-be Game of Thrones successor. A typical Chosen One narrative, the story centers on a teenage orphan named Alina, who works as a mapmaker on the front lines for a perpetually war-torn country called Ravka. In the heat of battle, she discovers unexpectedly that she belongs to the Grisha — a group of humans with supernatural powers.
Alina’s long-dormant ability allows her to transmit powerful rays of sunlight, making her a vital and unique weapon. In fact, her emergent power reveals her to be a fabled saint known as the “Sun Summoner,” the only person capable of offering safe passage through the Fold, a pitch-black, monster-filled sea of fog that has split Ravka into two halves. Suddenly, Alina is the key to bringing peace to the nation — so naturally, it puts a giant target on her head.
Superficially, Shadow and Bone offers a lot to satisfy former Game of Thrones fans. It’s high fantasy, set in a totally different fictional world, like Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings. It’s got a large and diverse ensemble cast, spread out over the world’s fictional topography — from barren battlefields to opulent cities modeled after places like Amsterdam, Vladivostok, and Moscow. It’s got high-budget graphics and action sequences. And it’s got plenty of sex, with an array of teens flirting and scheming their way across the realm.
But beyond the superficial, Shadow and Bone fails to deliver any of the charm and emotional engagement of a Game of Thrones (when that show was at its best), or even a Winx Saga (which is objectively terrible, but in an enjoyably ridiculous way). Again and again, Shadow and Bone forces unearned story beats and melodrama. Its character-building is lackluster; its worldbuilding is mostly incoherent, and its script careens from one-liner to one-liner without much substance in between — all while the weak writing torpedos the efforts of its talented cast.
A frenetic, demanding action score accompanies nearly every minute of every episode, as if allowing us a moment’s silence might reveal that most of what’s happening onscreen is actually uneventful. Shadow and Bone’s opulent settings and production design work against it, because the story isn’t rich enough to fill it. And Alina herself is glaringly one-note, with actor <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9438171/">Jessie Mei Li</a> delivering constant wide-eyed shock but little else.
It’s not entirely clear how an adaptation of such a beloved book series could have fallen so flat. On the one hand, Bardugo’s original Shadow and Bone trilogy was written in the heyday of hormonal teen fantasy. Throughout the ’00s, Harry Potter had birthed countless urban teen fantasies characterized by complex worldbuilding, from the Percy Jackson series (2005) to the Mortal Instruments series (2007). To that ongoing trend, Twilight (2005) further spawned a generation of fantasies known for heady teen romance — series like Hush (2009) and The Raven Cycle (2012). Then The Hunger Games (2008) gave rise to a trend in fantasies with dark political, dystopian, and sci-fi elements like Cinder (2012) and the Divergent trilogy (2011–2013). All of those trends make their mark on the Grishaverse — particularly its first novel, Shadow and Bone, which sometimes feels like it’s running through a checklist of tropes, including a turbulent political landscape and a transparently loud teen love triangle. But those elements, which might have gripped teens reading that first novel, feel clumsy and obsequious here; they won’t hold everyone’s interests.
On the other hand, showrunner Eric Heisserer has gone out of his way to deepen the Netflix adaptation by incorporating elements from other books in the Grishaverse that gave the world more depth and introduced more interesting characters. Instead of actually giving the first season more complexity and scope, however, these additional elements are mostly logistically and tonally confusing.
In an attempt to figure out what works and what doesn’t about the TV series — and why it deprived us of at least a half-season of kinky evil 500-year-age-gap antler sex — I sat down to chat with my colleague, Vox book critic Constance Grady, who’s not only watched the show, but read the entire Grishaverse and knows what’s up.
<h4>Minor spoilers follow for the first season of Netflix’s Shadow and Bone and the source books.</h4>
Aja Romano: Constance, I read part of the first book but never made it much further. I thought I had enough grounding to follow the series. But when I watched Shadow and Bone, I had a really hard time following the geopolitical conflicts and orienting myself geographically. I still don’t understand basic plot questions like, “Why was the Fold created to begin with?” Were these stakes clearer to you as you watched?
Constance Grady: Eh … loosely?
I did have enough of an understanding of Bardugo’s worldbuilding to more or less follow what this show was doing — but that also left me distracted by everything Heisserer was changing up, and all the ways those changes were going to hamstring the mythology of future, potentially better installments in this series.
Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone is by far the weakest book in her Grishaverse. It’s very much a first book, and a derivative one as well. (You’re absolutely right, Aja, that this book is following the “YA fantasy in 2012 playbook” to a fault, with The Hunger Games probably serving as its most obvious antecedent.) It is mediocre and formulaic; it’s the work of someone who is still figuring out how to figure out how to write a book.
And then she gets it! If you read the full Grishaverse, you get to watch Bardugo level up with every single book. Each volume in the central trilogy sees the characters grow richer and more complex, the sentences more sparkling, and the plots more elaborate and nail-biting. And by the time Bardugo reaches the Shadow and Bone trilogy’s companion duology, Six of Crows and King of Scars, she has become a genuinely accomplished writer.
It is rare to see an author grow so rapidly from book to book, and in some ways watching Bardugo develop as a writer is even more fun than watching Alina develop as the Sun Summoner. There’s good stuff ahead here!
But very little of that future good stuff is visible in Heisserer’s Shadow and Bone, despite Heisserer’s decision to import the cast of Six of Crows into the action of the central trilogy. (If you’re wondering why the smuggling crew and the shipwrecked lovers all felt like they were from completely different stories than the one Alina is in, it’s because they are in fact from completely different stories.) Instead, it seems to have had the opposite effect: Bringing the richer and more complicated characters that Bardugo developed later into this early apprentice work has resulted only in flattening everyone out.
One of the things it felt like Bardugo learned from writing the Shadow and Bone trilogy is that her characters are at their most interesting after they are morally compromised. Alina becomes much more compelling after her spotless hands are muddied and the girl who refused to kill a helpless animal to save the world has become a distant and nostalgic memory. So as I read the final book in the trilogy, I found myself wishing that the whole thing had started halfway through the second installment, Siege and Storm, and that the first had been seeded in as flashbacks.
Everything from there on out was just so much more fun to read! Even the endlessly blah love story between Alina and Mal gets more interesting when it’s about two damaged people yearning to return to a lost childhood purity together, instead of two photogenic teens getting excited about being basically the only two people they have ever met.
So imagine my delight to see that starting in the middle of the story is in fact more or less what Bardugo does with Six of Crows. She learned her lesson with the main trilogy, and she begins the companion duology with her heroes already thoroughly and fascinatingly damaged, offering us glimpses of their innocent pasts only briefly, in nightmares.
But by dragging those damaged characters into Shadow and Bone, Heisserer has effectively made the opposite move. He’s shown us these intriguingly corrupt people in their state of boring innocence, and he’s thrown in so many of them that there’s no room even to establish the character traits that will inevitably corrupt them. And as a result, the whole story just feels crowded and impoverished and incoherent.
All of which means that none of the mythology ever truly makes a lick of sense: there simply isn’t room to explain it all. But here at Vox Dot Com (explain the news), we go into the weeds in even fictional politics, so let’s take a whack at this.
The Fold was created accidentally, centuries in the past. The infamous Black Heretic was trying to save other Grisha from political persecution, so he used dark magic to try to turn the king’s army to his own purposes. However, he could not control his power and instead turned the king’s army into monsters, with the Fold coming into being as a byproduct of his sin.
In Bardugo’s book, we learn all this in passing. But Heisserer gives the Fold’s origin the full flashback episode treatment, while somehow still leaving it all murky and confusing. (Side note: I did not care for Heisserer’s choice to give the Black Heretic a flashback girlfriend and then immediately fridge her.) Call me old-fashioned, but I just think you should not have to read five pretty lengthy books to understand the lore on a Netflix show! I also think the lore on a fantasy show should feel fun and magical, and not like someone dutifully checking off the rules by rote, which is the tone Shadow and Bone has.
And not only is the lore opaque and joyless on the show, it’s also been slightly tweaked from Bardugo’s version. I don’t want to get too spoilery here, but Heisserer has made multiple changes to the mythology, apparently in an attempt to streamline it a bit, and they end up undermining a lot of significant character beats.
The resulting losses might, incidentally, include the kinky evil 500-year-age-gap antler sex you’ve requested, Aja. Bardugo, an obliging author, is ready to go there in Siege and Storm with the help of a little magic, telepathy, and PTSD — but Heisserer’s mythology changes mean that if he chooses to take on the same plotline in a hypothetical season two, he’s going to have to find a different device to get him there. And while I’m sure he could put together a substitute for Bardugo’s magical MacGuffin given the time and the inclination, nothing he did in this season inclines me to think he would do so with any flair or elegance.
Would you be interested in even watching a second season if it came, Aja? Or has this first season killed your interest in the Grishaverse?
Aja: Ah, Constance, I think that all depends on whether it can find its way into a more playful, more buoyant storyline — and frankly one that’s less annoyingly transparent about its romantic entanglements. The romance in Shadow and Bone is rampant and omnipresent, but it’s just as poorly handled as all the other plot elements.
It’s also bafflingly, rampantly heterosexual. There’s a throwaway line from one minor character about another minor character that establishes, out of nowhere, that queer women exist in this universe — but that’s it! Even though half the characters are involved in sex work and/or are being sex-trafficked (a murky theme the show leaves in the background) Netflix’s Shadow and Bone is notably repressive, in contrast to the books. Most of the main characters practice chastity or nobly resist temptation, in between flowery love declarations and wholesome flirting. The only character allowed to be joyfully sexual is the show’s only queer character so far, Jesper (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3315947/">Kit Young</a>) — but he only gets to have sex when it’s part of a manipulative strategy, with a boy he never sees again.
Do you know if we get to meet that stablehand again? Jesper and his troupe of plucky smugglers may be the closest thing I get to a queer polycule, so I might tune back in if you can promise more of them. Which leads me to ask: Knowing what you know about the overall direction of the books and the character growth ahead, what, if anything, do you want more of from future seasons, should Netflix make more?
Constance: The stablehand is a mystery to me. He is a Netflix original character, and while Bardugo did give Jesper a central love interest, that character didn’t appear on the Netflix series at all. Presumably, that’s because Heisserer was treating this plotline as a prequel to the duology, and Jesper and his true love don’t meet until Six of Crows, or even do so much as kiss until King of Scars. (Nina and Matthias don’t kiss until then either, which becomes a plot point, but that doesn’t mean that cut-off almost-kiss Heisserer gave them in the season finale feels any less awkward.)
However, if you’re looking for a lack of repression with Kaz’s gang of outlaws, then you are out of luck. Kaz and Inej are both deeply traumatized by their dark pasts, which is something Bardugo explores with a fair amount of nuance and grace, but it also means they find it difficult to touch other people when they are not beating them up. (This leads to a little “ah, is this the moment their hands will finally touch?” steaminess, which is all to the good if you like a slow-burn romance.) But that relationship also appears to be on ice in this first season, I can only assume in order to avoid cannibalizing the development that comes with Six of Crows. This is what I mean about dragging these characters back to a much less interesting point in their lives.
I do agree that Alina is stuck in a pretty clunky and hormonal love triangle, but I’d actually argue that’s part of the pleasure of both book and TV series. There’s a lizard brain satisfaction to the simplicity of the good boy/bad boy archetypes, and sure, you can find more stylish executions of the trope pretty easily (I’ll throw out a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uprooted_(novel)">Naomi Novik rec</a> here), but there is still something to be said for just watching a handsome man who is tortured by his own evilness gaze broodingly out of a TV screen while a cloak billows in slow motion around him.
Like: This execution of the love triangle is not good, per se, but it’s still a fun experience! And while Ben Barnes, who plays said handsome tortured evil guy, can’t do anything about the flatness of the character as written, he does bring a nice silkiness to his line readings that adds some flair to this whole enterprise.
And flair is, on the whole, badly needed here. Shadow and Bone’s whole vibe as it stands is very “Netflix gives you the CW giving you Game of Thrones, but more boring.” So if Shadow and Bone gets a second season, I’d like to see it take a cue from what it actually looked like when the CW tried to do Game of Thrones, which was The 100.
The 100 had <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/3/25/11302564/lesbian-deaths-television-trope">its fair share of problems</a> and then some, but in its earliest and strongest seasons, it was able to ground its outré plotlines in specific, detailed character work. It consistently delivered on worst-case scenarios, and those scenarios always came from a place of well-established character conflicts that let the whole enterprise feel small-scale and intimate, even when the problems were things like “should we gas every inhabitant of this mountain to death?”
Shadow and Bone could use some intimacy! Its conflicts as currently written are way too big and too abstract; its characters are too generic and undefined. It needs to be more specific about who these people are and what they want.
That’s something Bardugo learned to do as she went along. I’d love to see Heisserer and company do the same.
Shadow and Bone season one is streaming on Netflix.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22396113/shadow-and-bone-netflix-review-books-grishaverse">https://www.vox.com/culture/22396113/shadow-and-bone-netflix-review-books-grishaverse</a>

vox Netflix’s Shadow and Bone is a muddled, joyless checklist of fantasy tropes

The new Netflix series Shadow and Bone, which lumbers into the world on April 23, draws instant comparisons to the giant upon whose shoulders it stands. One of the streaming network’s more anticipated recent releases, it’s an adaptation of the Grish…