Trump and the Coronavirus: The Triumph of Incompetence

The coronavirus pandemic was the most severe crisis of the Trump administration, and the worst health care crisis in a century. The focus of this chapter is how and why the United States, a country blessed with enormous wealth and scientific expertise, failed so spectacularly and was crippled by the outbreak. It focuses on the incompetence and mistakes of the Trump administration, its delayed response, and the culture of denial and dismissal of science and expertise that abetted the virus's spread. At every turn, Trump and his staff missed opportunities, blamed others, spread false and contradictory information, and failed to take necessary steps to contain its spread. The result was a catastrophic rise in infections that has left half a million Americans dead and 30 million infected. The crisis led to a severe economic downturn and Trump's loss in the 2020 election. The conclusion summarizes the policy failures and what might have been done differently. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Callous Optimism: On Some Wishful Thinking ‘Blowbacks’ Undermining SDG Spatial Policy

Established students and studies of sustainable urban planning and broader regional varieties of spatial evolution have been seized with ambitions to ‘make the world a better place’. To criticise that ambition would be more than churlish, except that it tends to betray a certain ‘cognitive dissonance’. For what they wish to ‘make better’ was already in a bad, even ‘parlous state’ by the aspirations of their predecessor students, studies, and tellingly, actions. Of course, there are exceptions. Some urban actions seem to have ‘worked’ historically. Barcelona’s Eixample by Ildefons, Haussmann’s questionably motivated but now widely admired re-design of Paris, and Vienna’s Ringstrasse vilified by early modernist Adolf Loos, mentor of Richard Neutra, originator of the domestic International Style. These were a mixed bag of architects, by turns municipal, militaristic, and radical, albeit thwarted in Neutra’s case by McCarthyite blacklisting of his Elysian Fields 3300 dwelling public housing project at Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles. Clearly, the top-down tendency persists in the image of the ‘heroic architect’ that can still be found. As well as much-vaunted ‘starchitecture’, it also persists in the failed imagery of ‘garden bridges’, ‘urban Vessels’, ‘smart cities’ and London’s ‘urban mound fiasco’. This article acts as a corrective advocating more collective than individualistic crafting of ‘solutions’ constructed upon wishful thinking if not callous optimism in efforts at mitigation of global heating. The article consists of a brief account of ‘seeing like a city’ rather than a ‘sovereign state’ in sustainability policy-pledging and its origins. It then combs through some five exemplars—from green city planning to ambient heating, food waste, plastic waste and water eutrophication—of ‘callously optimistic’ wishful thinking in SDG proposals for urban and regional climate change moderation. Modest new communicative governance methodology is proposed in the cause of SDG policy learning.

Exploring Indonesia's energy policy failures through the JUST framework

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided momentum for the global energy transition and countries, including Indonesia, should take this opportunity to accelerate this process. This paper reviews Indonesian energy subsidy policy failures using the JUST Framework developed by Heffron and McCauley (2018) and the day-watchman approach by Sokołowski (2020). This article aims to provide different views on why energy subsidy policy failures have hampered Indonesia's energy transition, primarily focusing on the need for urgent policy reform to accelerate its energy transition. The paper utilises quantitative, qualitative, and comparative analyses to assess Indonesian energy policy failures, highlighting different strategies in reforming its energy subsidy policies. The countries selected for comparative study are classified into: OECD and Non-OECD countries. The result confirms that despite the Indonesian Government's efforts in reforming fossil fuel subsidies and improving renewable energy development, Indonesia is no better than comparative countries and should learn from others (France, Spain, and Brazil). Additionally, the result shows that giving more fossil fuel subsidies hampers a country's renewable energy development and energy transition. Therefore, fossil fuel subsidy reform would be conducted most effectively through balanced energy regulation of the day-watchman approach.

The Epidemic Failure Cycle hypothesis: Towards understanding the global community's recent failures in responding to an epidemic.

BACKGROUND: Within a few years, the global community has failed twice in responding to large viral infection outbreaks: the Ebola epidemic in 2014 and the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic in 2020. There is, however, no systematic approach or research available that analyses the repeated failures with regard to an adequate response to an epidemic. METHODS: For a better understanding of failing societal responses, we have analysed the available research literature on societal responses to epidemics and we propose a framework called the 'Epidemic Failure Cycle' (EFC). RESULTS: The EFC consists of four phases: Negligence, Arrogance/Denial, Panic and Analysis/Self-criticism. These phases fit largely with the current World Health Organization pandemic influenza phases: Interpandemic, Alert, Pandemic, Transition. By utilizing the Ebola epidemic and the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic as case studies, we show striking similarities in the response to these outbreaks during both crises. Finally, we suggest three major areas to be of utmost importance for triggering and maintaining the EFC. In terms of ecology, zoonoses, supposed to be the main biological origin for virus epidemics, have been largely neglected by politicians, the media and the scientific community. Socioeconomic and cultural conditions such as harsh living and working conditions as well as conspiracy theories hinder effective preventive and counter measures against epidemics. Lastly, in terms of epistemology, the reliance on knowledge about previous outbreaks has led to slow and inadequate decisions. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that any current society has to be aware of the risks of repeating responses to epidemics that will fail. Being aware of the societal mechanisms that trigger inadequate responses may help to get to more appropriate decisions in the face of an epidemic.