The Business Times

David Fickling

Residential buildings being built in Beijing, China, which has driven the global cement market for three decades, and still accounts for nearly half of output. But the boom is now well and truly over.
THE BOTTOM LINE

Cement is hitting a wall. There’s no coming back

Prices are at their lowest in a decade, and factories are saddled with more than twice the capacity they need

While power generation from coal is in terminal decline, it still produces almost as much power as renewables do.
THE BOTTOM LINE

Hot metals are exposing the fossil fuel fantasy

The year’s fossil fuel output boom is now piling up in inventories, sending prices slumping

Floodwaters submerging vehicles in Hat Yai, southern Thailand, in late November. At least 34 people died, and thousands more were displaced.

New megacities lie in the path of devastating floods

The monsoon belt from South-east Asia to West Africa is where catastrophic rainfall is set to increase most dramatically

McNuggetisation – the moment America hit in the 1980s, when meat ceased to be aspirational, and became sort of cheap and trashy instead – is on its way to China.
THE BOTTOM LINE

‘McNuggetisation’ is coming for the Chinese diet

The story of the modern Chinese diet is one of scarcity, boom and bust

In domestic refrigerators, HFCs have almost been eliminated in favour of isobutane. Those in supermarkets and convenience stores are shifting to ammonia and carbon dioxide.

BBQ gas is helping to cool a warming planet

Propane, ammonia and carbon dioxide are rapidly displacing the hydrofluorocarbons in refrigerators and air-cons – and reducing greenhouse damage

Judging by current trends, the vast majority of matcha in the future is going to end up in soft-serve ice-cream, chiffon cakes, mochi and macarons. It would be a waste if Japan tried to chase that low-end business, when the opportunities at the top of the market are so much more alluring.

The matcha craze needs more champagne

Why Japan should up its game to protect its cultural capital. Its tea certainly counts as such

Rare-earth concentrate at Lynas Corp's Perth premises. With funding from the Japanese government, the company started mining rare earths in Australia, processing them in Malaysia and then distributing these minerals, bypassing China.

You can fix rare earths for the price of one White House ballroom

The amount of government spending needed to bullet-proof most of the world’s supplies of these elements is tiny

The joke with mooncakes is that the packaging is often far more prized than the pastry itself, whose sickly-sweet richness tends to get mixed reviews.

Luxury mooncakes won’t go away – nor will plastic waste

The irrepressible popularity of such gifts is a sign of how ungovernable consumer tastes can be

For the oil-rich US, a collapse in domestic production is an embarrassment, but hardly an emergency.

The China ‘put’ in oil markets will reshape the world

The biggest importer has been stockpiling hydrocarbons, despite the fact that its own consumption already appears to be peaking

A warming planet is bringing heavier downpours, along with more volatile cycles of dry and wet spells, which can further destabilise the fragile equilibrium that holds the piles of waste rock together.

A trillion-tonne threat hangs over critical minerals

Managing a growing mountain of waste rock is one of the biggest obstacles to getting our hands on precious ore

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