Affirmative Action Put To The Test
Two cases about affirmative action will go to the US Supreme Court, both of them about university admissions. Students for Fair Admissions have presented the cases and the defendants are at Harvard, a private school, and the University of Carolina, a state school. The last case on affirmative action was Fisher v University of Texas in 2016. In that case the defendant was Abigail Fisher and in a 3-4 ruling, affirmative action was confirmed. Since then, the members of the court have changed; three conservative judges were appointed by former President Donald Trump.
The leader of Students for Fair Admissions, Edward Blum, said “it is our hope that the justices will end the use of race as an admissions factor … an individual’s race should not be used to help or harm them in their life’s endeavors”.
There are two prior cases in the last decade similar to this one. Now the case is being made that Asian-American students have to meet higher standards than other races in order to enter elite schools. Diversity is maintained mainly by the effects of affirmative action. Some academics defend the importance of this measure since it allows for a reduction in inequity in higher education.
The pandemic has worsened the situation for higher education establishments since enrollment of new students has plummeted and the ones less affected are the elite schools. The verdict is expected for next year. According to Harvard President, Lawrence Bacow “considering race as one factor among many in admissions … strengthens the learning environment for all” and since 1978, the Supreme Court has agreed with this view allowing for race to be included in the admission process. Harvard has posted on its website that its freshman class is roughly 25% Asian American, 16% Black and 13% Hispanic and if “race-conscious admissions” were to be left out of the equation, the latter two races would see a decrease of about half.
Sources: The Guardian, Boston Global
What does the future hold for EV's?
General Motors announced a future investment of around $6.6 billion that will be allocated to the construction of a new battery cell plant for EVs. The money will also be used to augment electric pickup-truck production until 2024. Last Tuesday, the car manufacturer stated that they want to have produced 1 million electric vehicles by 2025. What really caught the eye of the media was their goal to not only catch up with, but also surpass Tesla as the top EV seller based in the United States.
GM’s 25 thousand cars sold last year stand against Tesla’s 936,172 cars sold globally as a starting point. Besides, Tesla is expected to increase its production capacity in the U.S. One of the investments is a joint venture with LG; this will allow for a new battery plant and will cost $2.6 billion. The other $4 billion will transform an existing assembly plant in Detroit and they will upgrade two assembly plants in Michigan to allow for EV production for an additional $510 million. By 2030 their plans are to have 50% of EV production capacity throughout all their assembly plants.
EV supply chain depends on battery cells, a lot of companies have felt the downsides of having to rely on suppliers. Automakers are seeking to have more control over their production overall and GM is not the exception. President Joe Biden said that its administration has been putting incentives in place in order to allow for “an historic American manufacturing comeback”.
In European countries, the sale of electric vehicles has outnumbered that of diesel cars in December last year. According to experts, having a strong demand in Europe should not distract the car industry from working on their supply side. They depend on China for batteries and their raw materials. Since Volkswagen’s 2015 scandal, diesel car sales have been going down in Europe. Despite this, the manufacturer has been able to increase its EV sales around the world selling 452,000 globally.
Sources: CNBC, Business Standard
NETFLIX Is Having a Hard Time
Last Monday, Neflix’s stock closed at $387.15. This last hit followed the one on Friday, the steepest drop for the company since 2012. The streaming company’s business has benefitted greatly from having a majority of the world in lockdown but these new numbers are making the progress made during the pandemic look like it never happened. If we go back at the early stages of the pandemic, in April 2020, Netflix was trading at the same price as now. Netflix received 36 million new subscribers in 2020 and 18.2 million the following year.
Netflix’s new subscribers are not looking good. On their fourth-quarter earnings report, the company announced that it expects to add 2.5 million subscribers and not a number near the 6.93 million expected according to analysts. However, the biggest factor affecting Netflix’s performance could be the increase in competitors. In the last two years, most media companies have been adapting and making great efforts in order to enter the streaming sector. Since traditional media corporations have been suffering from cancellations, and increasingly so each year, they have decided to make changes towards what is popular and in demand.
Netflix is still the leader of its industry, so much so that, when its shares dropped the same happened with other streaming companies such as Roku, Discovery and Disney. Some experts predict a slower growth phase for Netflix, even with more than 200 million subscribers; this disappoints some that expected the company to continue performing the same way.
Additionally, the results presented by Netflix have started the discussion, are streaming services able to be much more profitable than traditional cable TV? Streaming is more competitive and harder to sustain successfully over time than cable. The businesses face competition and have to keep providing value to convince their subscribers to not opt out next month.
Climate Change Vs Food Production
According to a new study, farmers will need to adapt since the regions where coffee and avocados grow will change drastically due to climate change. The good news is that some regions will reduce in size but other suitable regions will appear in different locations. The study also analyzed cashew production but among the three, coffee is the most affected by temperatures changes. According to the report, there will be a reduction of 50% of the regions able to produce the main coffee variety Arabica by 2050. Countries like Argentina and China will become more apt, while others like Brazil and Colombia see a reduction of more than 60% of their suitable for production regions. This does not mean a lack of coffee in the future, only that producers will have to change locations and adapt to such changes.
For Cashews on the other hand, more areas will become suitable, the study predicts a 17% increase in land. This number is the result of losing suitable land while regaining it in more quantity somewhere else. Peru and Mexico, two of the biggest avocado producers in the world will see a different reality in a few decades. The first one will lose around 50% of their suitable land and the latter will see an increase over 80%.
We need more research due to the impact of this news. There are factors such as pests that make it harder to estimate accurately, how these crops will behave in the future. The effects of losing varieties of crops will be felt greatly at a local level. Therefore, local farmers will have to resort to newer methods that keep the soil ready and healthy to allow for some temperature variation. According to Charles Brummer, director of the plant breeding center at the University of California, this process takes a long time which may not be enough to result in an increase of flexibility for the farmers around the globe. Lastly, the quality of the produce as well as their nutritional content must be assessed in order to plan correctly for a balanced source of crops.
Sources; BBC, National Geographic