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In the beginning, there was just one, unnamed, muse. The blind bard Homer (a poet born around around 850BC) invoked her with the words “Sing, daughter of Zeus” in the first lines of his epic poem, the Odyssey.

Then there were said to be three: Melete (practice), Mneme (memory) and Aoede (song), perhaps embodying the basic creative process of early humanity. Eventually, nine muses were identified, covering every branch of the arts, in the ancient Greek poet Hesiod’s introduction to Theogony, his epic poem about mythical stories and characters (circa 730–700BC). Hesiod, formerly an illiterate shepherd, claimed that he was inspired to write the poem when a beautiful goddess whispered the story in his ear.

There were muses specifically for comedy, tragedy and even erotica. The oldest was Calliope, mother of the legendary musician Orpheus. Euterpe was the muse of music. Urania guided the scientists. Terpsichore taught dance.

The muses promised fame and fortune to artists who followed them, but are rarely mentioned by name in the prologues and prefaces of artworks today.

A timeline of the muses

Originally characterised as singing and dancing goddesses guarding a sacred spring, evidence for the muses is found in writing by some of the earliest known authors.

Hesiod and the Muse by Gustave Moreau (1891).
Musée d’Orsay

Yet, the muses existed long before reading and writing. It was only later that they were conscripted as the mascots of writers, with some ancient mosaics showing pens and parchment superimposed on their original images. Following their assimilation from the oral tradition into cheerleaders of literacy, the muses are seen waving pens and quills, scrolls and manuscripts in ancient artworks.

Written storytelling about the muses started in the matriarchal period of prehistory, shifting to patriarchy in approximately 3,000BC, in Ovid’s story of the god Apollo fashioning himself the first laurel wreath. This crown of leaves, which supposedly signified his genius, is seen in the myth of Daphne, who turned into a laurel tree to escape Apollo’s unwanted advances.

Written by Ovid in Metamorphoses, this picturesque tale may have been a metaphor for the switch from female to male authority. Legend has it that Apollo prevented his muse priestess from brewing, imbibing or smoking laurel leaves, which have a mild narcotic property.

It wasn’t just fanciful poets in the muse’s congregation – philosophers kept the faith too. In approximately 370BC, Socrates classed “possession” by the muses as a form of divine madness like drunkenness, eroticism or dreaming: “He who, having no touch of the muses’ madness in his soul, thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art – he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted.”

Clio, Euterpe and Thalia, by Eustache Le Sueur (1652–1655).
Louvre Museum

English poet and soldier Robert Graves (1895-1985) agreed, writing in 1948 that his:

‘Inspiration’ was the breathing-in by the poet of fumes from an intoxicating cauldron, the Awen of the cauldron of Cerridwen, containing probably a mash of barley, acorns, honey, bull’s blood and such sacred herbs as ivy, hellebore and laurel as at Delphi.

Changing times

These original practices of using drink or drugs to inspire art are still in use around the world today. The muses may hold a pen in one hand and a smoke, or steaming mug, in the other – herbal remedies continue to be efficacious for writer’s block.

In the Elizabethan period, when a poet’s relationship with the muses was perceived as directly proportionate to their success in romance, loving attention was paid to their invocation in rhythm and rhyme. But post-Enlightenment, it was no longer considered right for writers to invoke a supernatural mentor for literary endeavours. Modern men were influenced by reason and rationality, rather than a deity. Then it was more likely that a dead bard or scene from nature was deemed an appropriate source of inspiration.

The nine muses on a Roman sarcophagus (second century AD).
Louvre Museum, CC BY-SA

Though writing remained a ritualistic practice, and its mechanisms sometimes mystical, the desk no longer doubled as an altar at which the author worshipped.

Yet writers still often claim “the muse is with me” at moments when the words flow magically. Her voice can be heard in the modern Interval with Erato by Scott Cairns (2015), which name checks the ancient overseer of love poetry:

That’s what I like best about you, Erato sighed in bed, that’s why you’ve become one of my favourites and why you will always be so.

For the most part, the muses are missed off the agenda by both the microscope-gazers and the navel-gazers, these days. However, Plato did insist in his dialogue Phaedrus (370BC) that most people are eu amousoi (εὖ ἄμουσοι) an ancient Greek expression that means “happily without the muses”.

Contemporary theories of creativity do not often mention divine inspiration. We no longer like the idea that the best stories are given to a few fated writers by God, that great plots and characters are bestowed on favoured authors by goddesses. But the answer to that common question all writers are asked – “where do you get your ideas from?” – still seems more mystic, less mathematic and as much supernatural as subconscious.

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In 1770, Barnard Gratz of Philadelphia wrote to a friend complaining about a recent speech by King George III. Gratz, an American patriot, wrote that the speech “was such narishkeit” that it was “not worth the postage.”

Narishkeit is Yiddish for “nonsense.”

Gratz was one of hundreds of Jews who joined the American Revolution as soldiers and leaders: Gershom Seixas led his synagogue out of New York when the British invaded and led what was probably the first Jewish prayer group in Connecticut. Solomon Bush earned the rank of lieutenant colonel in the American army; at the time, no Jew in Europe could serve as a military officer. At the battle of Beaufort, one of the patriot militias was nicknamed “the Jew Company” because 28 of its 40 members were Jewish.

Yet belief persists that the American Revolution was somehow a Christian event – and that the country it created is therefore a Christian nation. This is a position usually defended with vague statements about what the Founding Fathers wanted. The general idea is that back in the day, everyone was Christian and so, of course, the founding was Christian. Yet neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution refer to a “Christian nation” or a church. They don’t even mention Jesus Christ.

Gershom Mendes Seixas, painted around 1784.
Secret Egypt/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

But as a historian, I didn’t want to get caught up in these kinds of arguments. I wanted to know something about the people who actually did the fighting in the war.

What I discovered is that when it came to fighting Britain, there were plenty of Jewish patriots signing up. America’s revolutionaries were not a uniform bunch of Christian white guys. The Revolution was a religiously diverse place, from Jews and religious skeptics to Catholics and Christian dissenters. And that matters for how the U.S. defines itself and its freedom today.

Jews join the cause

When the war started in 1775, the roughly 2,500 Jews in the Colonies did not have religious freedom. British law allowed them to practice, but they were classified as “residents” rather than subjects. They could live there, but they had no say in the laws under which they lived. For the most part, only property-owning Protestant men could elect or be elected to their legislature. Jews were simply not considered people the way Protestant Christians were.

So when the break with Britain arrived, American Jews flocked to the standard of liberty. Here at last was a chance to become citizens.

Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., built in the 1760s.
S.d.touro/Wikimedia Commons

Under British rule, anyone who exercised political authority had to take an oath affirming their Christian faith. The pro-independence groups and militias that sprung up amid the war had no such rules. Mordecai Sheftall, who lived in Georgia, was one of the few people there who had pledged to resist the Coercive Acts: Britain’s efforts to blockade Boston and place Massachusetts under military rule after the Boston Tea Party. When the war broke out, Sheftall became chairman of Georgia’s de facto government, in defiance of British rule.

Jewish residents took up arms for independence, too. A South Carolina writer praised American Jews fighting for liberty, saying they were “as staunch as any other citizens of this state.” One signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, believed “the Jews in all the states” were patriots. So did royalist Gov. James Wright of Georgia. When the British seized Savannah, Wright banned Jews from the province, calling them “violent rebels and persecutors of the King’s loyal subjects.”

When the war ended, Philadelphia hosted a parade and all the clergy of the city were invited, including Jewish leaders. There was even a kosher table set out for them after the celebration.

‘Second-status’ Christians

Nor were Jews the only marginalized group to join the cause. Roman Catholics also signed up. Like Jews, Catholics were barred under the British from serving in public office. As a Catholic, Charles Carroll could not have served in the royal government of Maryland, but he went on to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Charles Carroll, painted in the 1760s by Joshua Reynolds.
Yale Center for British Art via Wikimedia Commons

The Baptists of Virginia were also held in second-class status. The Colony’s state church did not recognize the Baptists, and they had to pay fines for preaching and even for holding Baptist weddings without state sanction. Virginia Baptists promised their support to the Revolution only if Virginia would offer them religious freedom. The Virginia Legislature complained but suspended its state church to build whatever support it could find. Virginia Baptists joined the fight in droves.

Baptists, Catholics and Jews were not put off by any of the Revolution’s radical deists: a mostly unorganized group of religious thinkers who believed in God and reason, but not revelation or miracles. Their ranks included military officer Ethan Allen of Vermont, who later wrote a book denying the divinity of the Bible. The Revolution did not ask its members how they prayed.

The urge for liberty spread beyond questions of religious differences. Although George Washington did not originally want to enlist Black men in the army, he realized the Revolution was doomed without them, and thousands of Black Americans joined the cause in the hope that liberty would mean the end of slavery. Women such as Deborah Sampson wore men’s clothing to take up arms against the British. The revolutionaries even had a Muslim ally in the form of Hyder Ali and his armies. The Muslim ruler of the kingdom of Mysore, in southern India, Ali fought with France against Britain in the 1780s, and American revolutionaries named a ship after him.

Retired Marine Corps Col. Jonathan de Sola Mendes commemorates members of Shearith Israel, the congregation led by Gershom Seixas, who served in the American Revolution.
Akiva123/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Here from the start

In recent years, violence and anger have risen against minority groups, including Jewish and Muslim Americans. Part of the false rhetoric about these groups has been that they are “new”: that they appeared after America was created and are not really part of the American experiment. In fact, they were here from the beginning. They also fought for the Revolution. Their patriotism is as old as anyone else’s.

Not only were the people who founded the nation not all Christian, but after independence was secured, religious freedom actually increased.

States with synagogues all lost the Christian requirement for public office by 1792. Virginia created full religious freedom in 1786. And Washington wrote, “It is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest offices that are known in the United States.”

Calls for a Christian nation are historically false. They are not a reversion to something old; they are something new. Religious diversity in America, and the freedom of different religions to be full Americans? That’s old. As old as the Revolution. Läs mer…

Some 79 countries around the world continue to enforce blasphemy laws. And in places such as Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, violation of these measures can result in a death penalty.

While the U.S. is not among those countries, it also has a long history of blasphemy laws. Many of the U.S. colonies established blasphemy laws, which became state laws. The U.S. Supreme Court did not rule that blasphemy was a form of protected speech until 1952. Even then, it has not always been protected.

As a scholar of religious and political rhetoric, I believe the history of U.S. blasphemy laws reflects a complex fight for the freedom of religion and speech.

Early US blasphemy laws

U.S. colonies often developed legal protections for Christians to practice their religion. These safeguards often did not extend to non-Christians.

Maryland’s Toleration Act of 1649, for example, was the first Colonial act to refer to the “free exercise” of religion and was designed to protect Christians from religious persecution from state officials. It did not, however, extend that “free exercise” of religion to non-Christians, instead declaring that anyone who blasphemes against God by cursing him or denying the existence of Jesus can be punished by death or the forfeiture of their lands to the state.

In 1811, the U.S. witnessed one of its most infamous blasphemy trials, People v. Ruggles, at the New York Supreme Court. New York resident John Ruggles received a three-month prison sentence and a US$500 fine — about $12,000 in today’s money — for stating in public that “Jesus Christ was a bastard, and his mother must be a whore.”

Chief Justice James Kent argued that people have freedom of religious opinion, but opinions that were malicious toward the majority stance of Christianity were an abuse of that right. He claimed similar attacks on other religions, such as Islam and Buddhism, would not be punishable by law, because “we are a Christian people” whose country does not draw on the doctrines of “those imposters.”

Several years later, in 1824, a member of a debating society was convicted of blasphemy by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court after saying during a debate: “The Holy Scriptures were a mere fable, that they were a contradiction, and that although they contained a number of good things, yet they contained a great many lies.” In this case — Updegraph v. Commonwealth — the court argued that it was a “vulgarly shocking and insulting” statement that reflected “the highest offence” against public morals and was a disturbance to “public peace.”

By the end of the 19th century, a prominent free thought movement that rejected religion as a guide for reason had begun to emerge. Movement leaders embraced the public critiquing of Christianity and challenged laws that favored Christians, such as blasphemy laws and mandatory Bible readings in public schools.

Unsurprisingly, as historian Leigh Eric Schmidt has noted, speakers and writers in the movement regularly faced threats of blasphemy charges.

By this time, however, even in cases where freethinkers were convicted of blasphemy, judges appeared to offer leniency.

In 1887, C.B. Reynolds, an ex-preacher who became a prominent free thought speaker, was convicted of blasphemy in New Jersey after he publicly doubted the existence of God. He faced a $200 fine and up to a year in prison. The judge, however, only fined Reynolds $25, plus court costs.

While it is unclear why Reynolds was offered leniency, historian Leonard Levy suggests that it may have been to avoid making Reynolds a martyr of the free thought movement by imprisoning him.

Protecting blaspheme as free speech

Growing calls for religious equality and freedom of speech increasingly swayed blasphemy cases in the 1900s.

In 1917, for example, Michael X. Mockus, who had previously been convicted of blasphemy in Connecticut for his free thought lectures, was acquitted in a similar case in Illinois.

While expressing dislike for blasphemy, Judge Perry L. Persons argued that the court’s job is not to determine which religion is right. He said “the Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Mahammedan, the Jew, the Freethinker, the Atheist” must “all stand equal before the law.”

Then, in 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson after New York rescinded the license for the film “The Miracle.” The film was deemed sacrilegious because of its supposed mockery of the Catholic faith.

The high court ruled that states could not ban sacrilegious films. That would be a violation of the separation of church and state, it ruled, and an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of religion and speech.

Even after the Supreme Court decision, Americans continued to occasionally face blasphemy charges. But courts shot the charges down.

In 1968, when Irving West, a 20-year-old veteran, told a policeman to “Get your goddam hands off me” after getting in a fight, he was charged with disorderly conduct and violating Maryland’s blasphemy law. When West appealed, a circuit court judge ruled the law was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.

Despite these rulings, in 1977, Pennsylvania enacted a blasphemy statute banning businesses from having blasphemous names after a local businessman tried to name his gun store “The God Damn Gun Shop.” It was not until 2010 that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court deemed this statute unconstitutional.

The decision followed a case in which the owner of a film production company sued the state after his request to register his company under the name “I Choose Hell Productions, LLC” was denied on the grounds that it was blasphemous. Citing the 1952 Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson case, the judge ruled that the statute was a violation of First Amendment rights.

A sign of democratic freedom

As historian David Sehat highlights in his book “The Myth of American Religious Freedom”, since America was founded there have been strong disagreements over what religious freedom should look like. Blasphemy laws have been a key part of this clash.

Historically, many Americans have viewed the laws as justifiable. Some believed Christianity deserved special protection and reverence. Others, including some Founding Fathers such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, have viewed the same laws as unconstitutional restrictions of free speech and religious expression.

There has recently been growing attention to the rise of Christian nationalism, the belief that the United States is or should be a Christian nation. Amid this rise, there have been attacks on free speech, such as the increase in book bans and restrictions on public protests. I believe it’s important that we, as Americans, learn from this history of the fight for the freedom of religion and speech. Läs mer…

The 2024 hurricane season has been especially disastrous, and the casualties and widespread damage from flooding and high winds in towns like Cedar Key, Florida, call to mind another historic hurricane, the Labor Day hurricane of 1935.

As one of the editors of “The Letters of Ernest Hemingway Volume 6 (1934-1936),” with Sandra Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel, I am reminded of the eyewitness account that the writer, then a resident of Key West, Florida, gave of the catastrophic storm that leveled Upper Matecumbe Key and Lower Matecumbe Key and took the lives of more than 400 people, many of them World War I veterans.

Then, as now, the aftermath of a natural disaster included political finger-pointing.

Today the debates center around how resources from the Federal Emergency Management Agency are allocated or how climate change contributes to the intensity of the storms.

Back then, Hemingway had a different beef with the government, blaming the deaths of hundreds of World War I veterans on the failure to evacuate Upper Matecumbe Key and Lower Matecumbe Key ahead of the storm.

The calm before the storm

Hemingway was no stranger to hurricanes.

A serious deep-sea angler who fished the waters off Florida, he kept an eye on weather patterns. Hurricane season was an anticipated, if dreaded, annual event.

“Now the lousy hurricanes are starting,” he wrote his friends Jane and Grant Mason in June 1934. “Wish we would get lots of east wind and current … and then have a fine july and august without hurricanes.” Knowing that these conditions were unlikely, he jokingly asked the Masons “and what do you want for xmas Mr. and Mrs. Mason yourselves?”

Ernest Hemingway was an avid fisherman. Here he poses with a marlin in Havana Harbor, Cuba.
Ernest Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

In a Sept. 30, 1934, letter, he wrote friends Gerald and Sara Murphy with hopes that he would get through the rest of hurricane season without incident: “no hurricanes yet […] if we get through the next 20 [days] are all right,” and he was glad that he “can fish without having to tie [the boat] up somewhere up some creek.”

The next day, he wrote to fellow novelist John Dos Passos, “Hurricane months if you dont get a hurricane are fine.”

‘Not a building of any sort standing’

But the following year, when the hurricanes did come, it was not fine.

Over Sept. 2-3, 1935, a hurricane made landfall in the Florida Keys. Occurring in the days before storms were given names, the Labor Day hurricane, as it is commonly known, was the first recorded Category 5 hurricane in the U.S.

It remains the third-most intense storm on record in the Atlantic basin, with a barometric pressure drop to 892 millibars and wind gusts exceeding 200 mph. Much of its damage was caused by the storm surge, and the Overseas Railroad, which had been completed in 1912 and connected the Florida Keys to the mainland, was destroyed and would not be rebuilt.

Children wave at a train on the Overseas Railroad, which was destroyed in the Labor Day hurricane of 1935.
Graphic House/Staff via Getty Images

After the storm, Hemingway wrote to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, describing its aftermath.

Though communications were down and the island was cut off from the mainland, Key West had sustained relatively little damage.

Upper Matecumbe Key and Lower Matecumbe Key, however, were a different story.

“Imagine you have read about it in the papers but nothing could give an idea of the destruction,” Hemingway writes. “The foliage absolutely stripped as though by fire for forty miles and the land looking like the abandoned bed of a river. Not a building of any sort standing. Over thirty miles of railway washed and blown away.”

Worse yet were the human casualties: He notes that the last time he witnessed so many dead in one place was in Europe during World War I as a Red Cross ambulance driver, adding, “We made five trips with provisions for survivors to different places and nothing but dead men to eat the grub.”

A corpse floats in the aftermath of the hurricane.
Ernest Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

Many of the victims were veterans, employed by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration to work on the Overseas Highway construction project. Outraged by the federal government’s failure to send a train to evacuate the workers in time, Hemingway tells Perkins that the veterans “were practically murdered.”

Federal administrators, he adds, “had all day Sunday and all day monday to get those vets out and never did it. If they had taken half the precautions with them that we took with our boat not a one would have been lost.”

The letter contains graphic descriptions of the hundreds of dead bodies, rapidly decomposing in the Florida sun as they awaited transport to Arlington, Virginia, to be buried.

‘That smell you thought you’d never smell again’

Hemingway would repeat many of these same details in an article published in the Sept. 17, 1935, issue of the leftist magazine The New Masses.

The article, which Hemingway titled “Who Killed These Men?,” and which was re-titled by the editors as “Who Murdered the Vets?,” criticized the federal government for not evacuating the workers.

“Who sent nearly a thousand war veterans … to live in frame shacks on the Florida Keys in hurricane months?” Hemingway asks.

Hemingway, no stranger to the sight and smell of the dead from his experiences during World War I, was disgusted not merely by the bodies “swollen and stinking” but by what brought the veterans to the work camps to begin with.

Skeptical of the various government programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Hemingway saw the Federal Emergency Relief Administration work camps as a way for Washington to conveniently rid itself of hundreds of down-on-their-luck veterans, many of whom were experiencing what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I would like to make whoever sent them there carry just one out through the mangroves, or turn one over that lay in the sun along the fill, or tie five together so they won’t float out, or smell that smell you thought you’d never smell again, with luck,” Hemingway writes.

This impassioned response to the disaster in 1935 still resonates. Hemingway recognized that while storms are inevitable, mass casualties do not have to be. The government can’t control the weather, but it can fulfill an obligation to protect the most vulnerable in the path of the storm. Läs mer…

Fusion energy has the potential to be an effective clean energy source, as its reactions generate incredibly large amounts of energy. Fusion reactors aim to reproduce on Earth what happens in the core of the Sun, where very light elements merge and release energy in the process. Engineers can harness this energy to heat water and generate electricity through a steam turbine, but the path to fusion isn’t completely straightforward.

Controlled nuclear fusion has several advantages over other power sources for generating electricity. For one, the fusion reaction itself doesn’t produce any carbon dioxide. There is no risk of meltdown, and the reaction doesn’t generate any long-lived radioactive waste.

I’m a nuclear engineer who studies materials that scientists could use in fusion reactors. Fusion takes place at incredibly high temperatures. So to one day make fusion a feasible energy source, reactors will need to be built with materials that can survive the heat and irradiation generated by fusion reactions.

3D rendering of the inside of a fusion reactor chamber.
xia yuan/Moment via Getty Images

Fusion material challenges

Several types of elements can merge during a fusion reaction. The one most scientists prefer is deuterium plus tritium. These two elements have the highest likelihood of fusing at temperatures that a reactor can maintain. This reaction generates a helium atom and a neutron, which carries most of the energy from the reaction.

In the D-T fusion reaction, two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, fuse and produce a helium atom and a high-energy neutron.
Sophie Blondel/UT Knoxville

Humans have successfully generated fusion reactions on Earth since 1952 – some even in their garage. But the trick now is to make it worth it. You need to get more energy out of the process than you put in to initiate the reaction.

Fusion reactions happen in a very hot plasma, which is a state of matter similar to gas but made of charged particles. The plasma needs to stay extremely hot – over 100 million degrees Celsius – and condensed for the duration of the reaction.

To keep the plasma hot and condensed and create a reaction that can keep going, you need special materials making up the reactor walls. You also need a cheap and reliable source of fuel.

While deuterium is very common and obtained from water, tritium is very rare. A 1-gigawatt fusion reactor is expected to burn 56 kilograms of tritium annually. But the world has only about 25 kilograms of tritium commercially available.

Researchers need to find alternative sources for tritium before fusion energy can get off the ground. One option is to have each reactor generating its own tritium through a system called the breeding blanket.

The breeding blanket makes up the first layer of the plasma chamber walls and contains lithium that reacts with the neutrons generated in the fusion reaction to produce tritium. The blanket also converts the energy carried by these neutrons to heat.

The fusion reaction chamber at ITER will electrify the plasma.

Fusion devices also need a divertor, which extracts the heat and ash produced in the reaction. The divertor helps keep the reactions going for longer.

These materials will be exposed to unprecedented levels of heat and particle bombardment. And there aren’t currently any experimental facilities to reproduce these conditions and test materials in a real-world scenario. So, the focus of my research is to bridge this gap using models and computer simulations.

From the atom to full device

My colleagues and I work on producing tools that can predict how the materials in a fusion reactor erode, and how their properties change when they are exposed to extreme heat and lots of particle radiation.

As they get irradiated, defects can form and grow in these materials, which affect how well they react to heat and stress. In the future, we hope that government agencies and private companies can use these tools to design fusion power plants.

Our approach, called multiscale modeling, consists of looking at the physics in these materials over different time and length scales with a range of computational models.

We first study the phenomena happening in these materials at the atomic scale through accurate but expensive simulations. For instance, one simulation might examine how hydrogen moves within a material during irradiation.

From these simulations, we look at properties such as diffusivity, which tells us how much the hydrogen can spread throughout the material.

We can integrate the information from these atomic level simulations into less expensive simulations, which look at how the materials react at a larger scale. These larger-scale simulations are less expensive because they model the materials as a continuum instead of considering every single atom.

The atomic-scale simulations could take weeks to run on a supercomputer, while the continuum one will take only a few hours.

In the multiscale modeling approach, researchers use atom-level simulations, then take the parameters they find and apply them to larger-scale simulations, and then compare their results with experimental results. If the results don’t match, they go back to the atomic scale to study missing mechanisms.
Sophie Blondel/UT Knoxville, adapted from https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2011.37

All this modeling work happening on computers is then compared with experimental results obtained in laboratories.

For example, if one side of the material has hydrogen gas, we want to know how much hydrogen leaks to the other side of the material. If the model and the experimental results match, we can have confidence in the model and use it to predict the behavior of the same material under the conditions we would expect in a fusion device.

If they don’t match, we go back to the atomic-scale simulations to investigate what we missed.

Additionally, we can couple the larger-scale material model to plasma models. These models can tell us which parts of a fusion reactor will be the hottest or have the most particle bombardment. From there, we can evaluate more scenarios.

For instance, if too much hydrogen leaks through the material during the operation of the fusion reactor, we could recommend making the material thicker in certain places, or adding something to trap the hydrogen.

Designing new materials

As the quest for commercial fusion energy continues, scientists will need to engineer more resilient materials. The field of possibilities is daunting – engineers can manufacture multiple elements together in many ways.

You could combine two elements to create a new material, but how do you know what the right proportion is of each element? And what if you want to try mixing five or more elements together? It would take way too long to try to run our simulations for all of these possibilities.

Thankfully, artificial intelligence is here to assist. By combining experimental and simulation results, analytical AI can recommend combinations that are most likely to have the properties we’re looking for, such as heat and stress resistance.

The aim is to reduce the number of materials that an engineer would have to produce and test experimentally to save time and money. Läs mer…

It’s not surprising that technology regulation is an important issue in the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign.

The past decade has seen advanced technologies, from social media algorithms to large language model artificial intelligence systems, profoundly affect society. These changes, which spanned the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations, spurred calls for the federal government to regulate the technologies and the powerful corporations that wield them.

As a researcher of information systems and AI, I examined both candidates’ records on technology regulation. Here are the important differences.

Algorithmic harms

With artificial intelligence now widespread, governments worldwide are grappling with how to regulate various aspects of the technology. The candidates offer different visions for U.S. AI policy. One area where there is a stark difference is in recognizing and addressing algorithmic harms from the widespread use of AI technology.

AI affects your life in ways that might escape your notice. Biases in algorithms used for lending and hiring decisions could end up reinforcing a vicious cycle of discrimination. For example, a student who can’t get a loan for college would then be less likely to get the education needed to pull herself out of poverty.

At the AI Safety Summit in the U.K. in November 2023, Harris spoke of the promise of AI but also the perils from algorithmic bias, deepfakes and wrongful arrests. Biden signed an executive order on AI on Oct. 30, 2023, that recognized AI systems can pose unacceptable risks of harm to civil and human rights and individual well-being. In parallel, federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission have carried out enforcement actions to guard against algorithmic harms.

President Joe Biden signs an executive order addressing the risks of artificial intelligence on Oct. 30, 2023, with Vice President Kamala Harris at his side.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci

By contrast, the Trump administration did not take a public stance on mitigation of algorithmic harms. Trump has said he wants to repeal President Biden’s AI executive order. In recent interviews, however, Trump noted the dangers from technologies such as deepfakes and challenges posed to security from AI systems, suggesting a willingness to engage with the growing risks from AI.

Technological standards

The Trump administration signed the American AI Initiative executive order on Feb. 11, 2019. The order pledged to double AI research investment and established the first set of national AI research institutes. The order also included a plan for AI technical standards and established guidance for the federal government’s use of AI. Trump also signed an executive order on Dec. 3, 2020, promoting the use of trustworthy AI in the federal government.

The Biden-Harris administration has tried to go further. Harris convened the heads of Google, Microsoft and other tech companies at the White House on May 4, 2023, to undertake a set of voluntary commitments to safeguard individual rights. The Biden administration’s executive order contains an important initiative to probe the vulnerablity of very large-scale, general-purpose AI models trained on massive amounts of data. The goal is to determine the risks hackers pose to these models, including the ones that power OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT and DALL-E.

Donald Trump departs from Washington D.C., on Feb. 11, 2019, shortly after signing an executive order on artificial intelligence that included setting technical standards.
Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

Antitrust

Antitrust law enforcement – restricting or conditioning mergers and acquisitions – is another way the federal government regulates the technology industry.

The Trump administration’s antitrust dossier includes its attempt to block AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner. The merger was eventually allowed by a federal judge after the FTC under the Trump administration filed a suit to block the deal. The Trump administration also filed an antitrust case against Google focused on its dominance in internet search.

Biden signed an executive order on July 9, 2021, to enforce antitrust laws arising from the anticompetitive effects of dominant internet platforms. The order also targeted the acquisition of nascent competitors, the aggregation of data, unfair competition in attention markets and the surveillance of users. The Biden-Harris administration has filed antitrust cases against Apple and Google.

The Biden-Harris administration’s merger guidelines in 2023 outlined rules to determine when mergers can be considered anticompetitive. While both administrations filed antitrust cases, the Biden administration’s antitrust push appears stronger in terms of its impact in potentially reorganizing or even orchestrating a breakup of dominant companies such as Google.

Cryptocurrency

The candidates have different approaches to cryptocurrency regulation. Late in his administration, Trump tweeted in support of cryptocurrency regulation. Also late in Trump’s administration, the federal Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed regulations that would have required financial firms to collect the identity of any cryptocurrency wallet to which a user sent funds. The regulations were not enacted.

Trump has since shifted his position on cryptocurrencies. He has criticized existing U.S. laws and called for the United States to be a Bitcoin superpower. The Trump campaign is the first presidential campaign to accept payments in cryptocurrencies.

The Biden-Harris administration, by contrast, has laid out regulatory restrictions on cryptocurrencies with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which brought about a series of enforcement actions. The White House vetoed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act that aimed to clarify accounting for cryptocurrencies, a bill favored by the cryptocurrency industry.

Data privacy

Biden’s AI executive order calls on Congress to adopt privacy legislation, but it does not provide a legislative framework to do so. The Trump White House’s American AI Initiative executive order mentions privacy only in broad terms, calling for AI technologies to uphold “civil liberties, privacy, and American values.” The order did not mention how existing privacy protections would be enforced.

Across the U.S., several states have tried to pass legislation addressing aspects of data privacy. At present, there is a patchwork of statewide initiatives and a lack of comprehensive data privacy legislation at the federal level.

The paucity of federal data privacy protections is a stark reminder that while the candidates are addressing some of the challenges posed by developments in AI and technology more broadly, a lot still remains to be done to regulate technology in the public interest.

Overall, the Biden administration’s efforts at antitrust and technology regulation seem broadly aligned with the goal of reining in technology companies and protecting consumers. It’s also reimagining monopoly protections for the 21st century. This seems to be the chief difference between the two administrations. Läs mer…

During a Taiwan National Day speech on October 10, Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te said that Taipei was determined to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty against “annexation and encroachment”, and emphasised that “China has no right to represent Taiwan”.

China’s response was swift. Less than a week after Lai’s provocative speech, a record 153 Chinese war planes swarmed and surrounded Taiwan during a Chinese military exercise over 24 hours. Beijing’s intention was simple: issue Taipei a “stern warning” for what China considers a “separatist act”.

Beijing sees the island as a “sacred and inseparable part of China’s territory” that must return to the fold. The Taiwanese president sees things differently. Currently, the self-governing island has a different political system, and few Taiwanese are in favour of reunification with China.

Though Washington doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Taipei officially, it does have regular communication through back channels and a strong economic relationship. The island is a key US trading partner and is a major supplier of semiconductors which are critical to the production of computers and other technologies. It also sells arms to Taiwan, although this has reduced significantly under Joe Biden.

China has not ruled out taking Taiwan by force, and if it does, the US might come to the self-ruling island’s defence as indicated by Washington in the past.

China holds extensive military exercises around the island of Taiwan in October 2024.

But Xi will be hoping the outcome of the 2024 US presidential election might bring a leader that would have a different attitude to Taiwan as well as helping China resolve its economic storm, which has resulted in a rising number of protests. So, between an outspoken Donald Trump and a seemingly even-tempered Kamala Harris, does Beijing have a favourite? And do either of them offer Xi anything new?

Taiwan and Xi’s legitimacy

Aside from Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, Xi is the only sitting Chinese head of state without term limits and whose political ideology is enshrined in the Chinese constitution.

Xi could potentially prove his place in history by resolving China’s economic crisis. However, Beijing’s increasing isolation from the west due to its support of Russia’s Ukraine conquest makes this doubly hard.

Read more:
Biden on Taiwan: Did he really commit US forces to stopping any invasion by China? An expert explains why, on balance, probably not

Like it or not, Xi might have to ramp up whatever agenda Beijing has for Taiwan. If he could make sufficient progress towards unification, he may be hailed as one of the greats of the Chinese Communist Party, which would consolidate his status within the party, and distract from the nation’s economic woes.

Unlike Harris, who appears to take take alliances and partnerships seriously, Trump questions the benefits of many alliances forged by the US. In fact, the few times that he spoke about Taiwan centres on how the island state has taken America’s semiconductor business, and should pay more to the US for its defence.

So, would Trump come to Taiwan’s aid if China does invade Taiwan? Given the importance of semiconductors to electronics and AI, he just might. But Trump also has a reputation as a “dealmaker-in-chief”, so he might just cut a deal with Beijing, which erodes Taiwan’s independence. And that is likely to worry Taipei.

The Russia dilemma

As Russia’s “partner of no limits”, China has been supplying Russia with technology that fuels Russia’s war machinery against Ukraine. But this has strained Sino-western relations and earned Beijing trade and import restrictions, which hampers China’s economic recovery.

China could halt its aid to Russia to avoid western scrutiny, but that is not likely. Beijing needs a strong Russia to be a viable ally in its battle against a US-led world order, and to avoid being the focus of the west if Russia falters amid its conquest in Ukraine.

While Harris backs Kyiv and sees the war as a strategic and moral issue, Trump has criticised US aid to Ukraine. He also believes that Kyiv should provide concessions to Russia to end the war that Putin started in February 2022.

A future Trump administration might strengthen Russia by withdrawing support for Ukraine and lifting sanctions against Russia. And a more robust Russia is good news for Beijing.

US economic hostility

So, at first glance, Trump and Harris’s approaches towards China are different. Trump’s return to the White House could also intensify the trade war that he started in 2018, as tariffs on Chinese goods could go to as high as 60%. This might hasten the economic decoupling between the US and China.

Harris, on the other hand, wishes to “de-risk” China. This approach seeks to maintain US global interest while engaging with the east Asian economic behemoth. In such a scenario, Beijing might prefer a Harris presidency as it leaves room for negotiation.

However, Harris has relatively little foreign policy experience, and is expected to pick up where Joe Biden left off. This means the tariffs and technological restrictions that China faced under a Biden administration could stay under her presidency.

Another factor is Tesla founder Elon Musk, who is an ardent supporter of Trump, and may take a top job within a Trump administration.

How much influence the tech multi-billionaire actually has over Trump is uncertain. However, it’s worth noting that Musk has substantial business dealings in China, and might seek to lean on Trump if the former president’s policies harms Tesla’s interests.

With many of these factors unclear at the moment, Beijing will be hoping for a US leader who is more interested in economic wins than protecting Taiwan, and one that Xi can negotiate with to warm up relations between the two countries. Läs mer…

The spectre of the Reform party has been haunting the Tories since the general election. There is a general consensus that Reform split the vote on the right of the ideological spectrum, and this significantly contributed to the Tory defeat.

And now that the more centrist candidate James Cleverly has been eliminated from the leadership contest, the party is heading in a rightward direction. Both of the two finalists, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenock are on the right of the party and appear to think the next election will hinge on winning votes back from Reform.

But are they right to see Reform as their main threat? The results of the last election are still being analysed but it already looks like our perception of how the rightwing vote played out may be wrong. The perception is that in many constituencies, Reform ate into votes that would have otherwise gone to the Conservatives, costing them parliamentary seats. But that isn’t quite right.

The chart below shows the relationship between the vote shares for the Conservatives and Reform in Britain in the general election, with each dot representing a constituency. The summary line shows that the correlation between the Reform vote and the Conservative vote is positive (+0.21). This means that the two parties were in effect electoral allies rather than rivals. Their vote shares increased in tandem. To be fair, the correlation is modest, so they were rather weak allies, but who can ask for more than that in this electoral climate?

It’s interesting to contrast this with the relationship between Labour and Conservative voting in the election. Their correlation was strong and negative (-0.54), indicating that they were clearly rivals. When Labour did well, the Conservatives did badly and vice versa. If Reform was a strong rival to the Conservatives, we would see the same pattern.

Rivals or allies? Constituency level votes

The Relationship between Conservative and Reform Vote Shares in 2024.
P Whiteley, CC BY-ND

Why does the positive correlation show that Reform was an ally of the Conservatives in the election rather than a rival taking votes that would have gone to the Conservatives? The answer lies in the detail. The two parties did well in the same constituencies but appealed to different demographic groups within those constituencies. If they were campaigning for support in the same group of voters they would be rivals, but for the most part they relied on support from different groups.

This is illustrated in the chart below which looks at the social characteristics of constituencies using data from the 2021 census. It shows how different groups supported the two parties in the election.

The chart shows the correlations between the size of a particular group and voting for Reform and the Conservatives in the election. It looks at the 575 parliamentary constituencies in England and Wales, since the Scottish data is not yet available.

The relationships between constituency characteristics and voting in 2024

Less in common than you might think.
P Whiteley, CC BY-NC-ND

We observe large differences between support for the two parties among the different groups. For example, looking at the percentage of people in constituencies over the age of 64, most of whom were retired, we see a big difference. There is a strong positive correlation between this measure and voting Conservative (0.45), indicating that the Tories did well among older people. The opposite is true for Reform, since the relationship is negative (although relatively weak at -0.17). Reform did not rely on older people’s support in the same way as the Conservatives.

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A similar point can be made about the percentages who worked in professional and higher management occupations. The Tories did well in this group, whereas Reform did badly. Among constituencies with high levels of unemployment, the reverse was true. A high proportion of unemployed people boosted the Reform vote and undermined the Conservative vote.

Two rightwing options – but the party doesn’t have to become Reform.
Alamy

If we look at ethnicity, a high proportion of ethnically white people in constituencies helped Reform, but it weakened support for the Conservatives. This seems surprising at first sight until one remembers that many of them voted for Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Greens. The Tories lost a good proportion of the white vote in the election.

The census provided information about the numbers of people who had moved into constituencies from abroad in the previous year. Not surprisingly, given their anti-immigration positioning, large numbers of newly arrived migrants helped both parties, with Reform doing better in these areas than the Conservatives. That said, the correlations were modest and so did not play a large part in explaining the overall results.

Read more:
When did class stop predicting who people vote for in Britain? Know Your Place podcast

Finally, the 2021 census asked people about their national identities and in this case there was an interesting difference between respondents who claimed they were exclusively “English” rather than ‘British’ or some other identity. Englishness helped both parties, but it helped the Conservatives more than Reform. It appears that the Tories are more of an English National Party than Reform.

The next general election is a long way off, but these results mean that if the Labour government fails to deliver growth and curb illegal immigration, it will face a pincer movement from the Conservative and Reform. The Tories will pick up votes in constituencies with a high proportion of prosperous, middle class, retired people and Reform will pick up votes from deprived areas with high levels of young unemployed people. Läs mer…

Tundu Lissu has become the face of opposition in Tanzania following his defiant and unrelenting criticism of the government. Since he came into the national limelight in 1995 when running for a parliamentary seat, Lissu has been a champion of democracy and human rights. He has taken on the ruling elite, exposing corruption and demanding accountability. This almost cost him his life in 2017.

In September 2024, new evidence presented at a London tribunal revealed that the telecommunications company Tigo had shared Lissu’s mobile phone data – including his location – with the Tanzanian government. The implication was that the company was assisting the government in its harassment of the politician. Tigo’s owners have distanced themselves from these reports.

The revelations coincided with a resurgence in government crackdowns on opposition figures.

In the most recent developments, leaders of the country’s main opposition party Chadema (Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo) – including Lissu, who is the party’s vice-chairperson, and chairman Freeman Mbowe – were arrested in September 2024. This followed their attempt to organise mass protests, which were foiled by the police. The protests had been organised to demand government accountability after the killing of a senior Chadema official and the disappearance of other party members believed to have been abducted by state operatives.

I have studied Tanzania’s political party dynamics for a decade and interviewed Lissu as part of my PhD research on the country’s democracy. Lissu’s persistence in tackling democratic backsliding in Tanzania has made him a formidable force, challenging the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party.

Lissu spent about three years in exile in Belgium after the 2017 shooting. He staged a comeback as a presidential candidate in the 2020 elections. He lost to John Magufuli in a poll marred by violence and allegations of rigging.

There have been changes in the country since Magufuli’s death in March 2021 and a string of political reforms under President Samia Suluhu. This has created the space for Lissu and his party Chadema to establish an opposition that now threatens the ruling party’s six-decade hold on power. Presidential elections are due to be held in 2025.

So who is Lissu? What’s his history and how did he became involved in politics?

Early years

Lissu’s political activism began during his university years in the early 1990s. This marked the start of a career that would later shape Tanzania’s political landscape. Lissu studied law at the University of Dar es Salaam before going to the UK for a master’s degree in law.

His first foray into national politics came in 1995, when he vied for a parliamentary seat. He was 27. The election was Tanzania’s first under a multiparty system. It introduced Lissu to the arena of opposition politics following his defeat.

A year later, Lissu was one of the lead investigative lawyers for a public interest environmental law organisation investigating abuses and irregularities at a World Bank-backed gold mine in northern Tanzania. His early work focused on environmental and human rights.

Lissu and his colleague Rugemeleza Nshala were investigating the killing of 62 small-scale miners and the evictions of thousands at the mine in 1996. They were charged with sedition over these investigations. The government eventually stopped following up on the case.

Lissu thereafter worked on community land rights at the World Resources Institute, a global organisation focusing on policy research.

Parliamentary years

In 2010, Lissu won the parliamentary seat for Singida East under the opposition party Chadema. As a first-term member of parliament, he gained prominence by exposing significant state corruption scandals, particularly in the energy sector.

Lissu and other Chadema opposition figures became a formidable force, openly naming corrupt government officials and exposing grand theft.

They also began making calls for constitutional reform. These were aimed at addressing excessive presidential powers and the power imbalances of the union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar. This push culminated in then president Jakaya Kikwete initiating a constitutional review process in 2010.

Lissu’s legal acumen played out in the constituent assembly, the body convened to deliberate on constitutional reforms. However, the assembly, dominated by members of the ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi, rejected many of the key provisions of the draft constitution. It had been widely regarded as the “people’s draft” because it included citizen participation. Its key provisions included reduced presidential powers and the establishment of independent state institutions.

The process was to culminate in a referendum in 2014. This prematurely aborted and Tanzania went into the 2015 election without a new constitution.

In these elections, Lissu successfully defended his parliamentary seat. As a second-term legislator, he focused on strengthening Chadema’s presence. This included door-to-door conversations with the public and grassroots mobilisation to build the party.

The party’s momentum, however, was halted by a repressive regime under Magufuli, who became president in 2015. He cracked down on critics and instituted a partial ban on political rallies.

Lissu became very critical of Magufuli’s economic policies. In a public address in 2017, Magufuli admitted to the government’s tapping of Lissu’s phone and described those who opposed his own economic reforms as traitors. Soon after this, Lissu was shot 16 times after leaving parliament buildings in the capital, Dodoma.

Exile

Lissu officially went into exile in Belgium after the shooting. In 2020, he published Remaining in the Shadows: Parliament and Accountability in East Africa, a critical examination of the presidentialist systems in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, which he argued had undermined democratic consolidation in the region.

Through this publication, Lissu continued his activism, challenging political structures.

His brief return to Tanzania to contest the presidency in 2020 was marked by repeated arrests and intimidation during the electoral campaign. After his loss to Magufuli, Lissu went back to Belgium.

He announced his return home in 2023.

Tanzania today

It’s important to understand why Lissu and Chadema are viewed as a current threat in Tanzania.

The country is entering an election period. Local government elections are scheduled for November 2024 ahead of general elections in 2025.

The ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, has in the recent past relied on state violence to secure electoral victories. The last general election in 2020 was marred by violence, as well as intimidation of the opposition and censorship.

It looks likely that Chadema will once again nominate Lissu to contest the presidency in the 2025 general election against president Samia. Lissu’s fearlessness and defiance make him the best candidate to take on the ruling party. Samia has already described Lissu as a troublesome character.

With the ongoing opposition clampdown, it looks clear that the ruling party is once again willing to do whatever it will take to hold on to power. Even if Tanzania’s democracy suffers. Läs mer…

Climate change is increasing the risk of extreme weather events for Australian households. Floods and bushfires are becoming more likely and severe. As a result, household insurance costs are soaring – tripling in some cases. High-risk areas might even become uninsurable.

The national housing crisis is pushing low-income households in particular to seek affordable housing in areas at risk of flooding. There they can become trapped in a vicious cycle. Unable to pay soaring insurance premiums in these areas, they also can’t afford housing elsewhere.

The regulation of housing in Australia traditionally relies on well-informed buyers being responsible for managing the risks. But our new study found home buyers are often not aware of the long-term risks.

Only after they’ve bought the home do they start thinking about these risks. When faced with unexpected high insurance costs, many opt to take the risk of being underinsured or even uninsured. This leaves them highly vulnerable.

The National Strategy for Disaster Resilience promotes a shared-responsibility concept. However, we found the main responsibility still lies with households. And they are not equipped to cope with the increasing complexity, impacts and costs of extreme weather events.

What’s wrong with the current approach?

The uncertain knowledge about future extreme weather events is challenging the traditional prioritising of individual responsibility. It’s becoming even harder for households to make informed decisions based on past experiences.

Government efforts to regulate increasing flooding events might not be effective when households do not want to relocate or cannot afford housing elsewhere.

Governments are also under pressure to jump in to compensate households for the costs of extreme weather damage.

Our research found a number of issues prevent efficient regulation:

stakeholders such as the insurance industry and home lenders face legal hurdles to sharing data and giving financial advice for housing in high-risk areas
well-intended measures such as buybacks and planned relocations can fail when they do not relate to people’s experiences and life situation, such as limited financial resources and deep connections to a place and community
households’ motivation to insure themselves might decrease if they can expect government to provide compensation as a de facto last insurer.

Who is responsible for what?

In Australia, responsibility for managing extreme weather events is roughly divided among three main stakeholders: the three levels of government, businesses and households.

Within the three levels of government, states and territories bear the main responsibility for managing extreme weather events. They do so through disaster risk management plans and policies, hazard prevention and land-use planning.

Yet housing is still built in flood-prone regions. It happens where commercial interests conflict with regional planning, and governments are under pressure to deliver housing for growing populations.

After extreme weather hits, house and contents insurance cover is key for a household to recover. But insurance costs are based on the risk of events such as flooding. As these risks rise, premiums may also increase and become unaffordable. The Climate Council estimates one out of 25 properties will even become uninsurable by 2030.

When housing is built in at-risk areas, under the current system home buyers are largely responsible for informing themselves about the risks of floods, bushfires and other natural disasters. Our research suggests many are struggling to estimate what insurance is likely to cost them.

To prepare for these costs before they invest in a home, they must assess their own risk, know the value of their house and contents and calculate the costs of rebuilding after a disaster. They must also take into account increasing costs for builders and materials after an extreme weather event.

Climate change is making these already complex calculations even more difficult.

Our study is based on interviews with 26 insurance, legal, financial, policy and urban planning experts. Despite the National Strategy for Disaster Resilience’s concept of shared responsibility, we found most of the burden still falls on households.

Yet households often lack the knowledge to assess the risks. The data and information are either unavailable, or hard to access and understand.

These difficulties, coupled with the complex language of insurance contracts, contribute to high numbers of underinsured and uninsured households.

The Australian government responded in 2022 by setting up a cyclone reinsurance pool. Its aim is to keep premiums for households and businesses affordable.

There are also government buyback programs or relocation plans to move people out of high-risk regions. As noted above, though, these don’t always suit households when offered away from their communities or full costs aren’t adequately covered.

Governments must take on more responsibility

According to the experts we interviewed, households are no longer able to carry the main responsibilities for managing the risks of climate change. Government must take on more responsibility.

At the local level, councils need to better educate their staff on climate change risks. They should ban housing development in at-risk areas.

Better information and data sharing among stakeholders such as insurers and governments will also be crucial. Such data and information also need to be made more accessible and easier for households to understand.

In a climate change world, increasing extreme weather events result in new complexities. Households are not able to assess these new risks and complexities to make well-informed decisions.

Australia needs stronger sharing of responsibilities between different stakeholders such as insurers, governments and households. This includes changes to laws on information and data sharing between insurers, governments and households, bans on building in high-risk areas, and better advice about the costs of buying in high-risk regions. Läs mer…