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NoneWASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. severely lags behind China in shipbuilding capacity, lawmakers and experts have warned, as the Biden administration tries to build up the country's ability to develop and produce weapons and other defense supplies to fend off war. Speaking at a congressional hearing Thursday, Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said the country lacks the capacity to “deter and win a fight” with China and called for action. “Bold policy changes and significant resources are now needed to restore deterrence and prevent a fight” with China, Moolenaar said. China’s navy is already the world’s largest, and its shipbuilding capacity, estimated to be 230 times larger, dwarfs that of the U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking Democratic member of the committee, told Fox News last week that “for every one oceangoing vessel that we can produce, China can produce 359 in one single year." The U.S. government has come to see China as its “pacing challenge," and officials have warned that Beijing is pursuing the largest peacetime military buildup in history, raising concerns about how the U.S. would respond and ensure victory in case of a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, where tensions are high in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea . Krishnamoorthi on Thursday warned that a weak military industrial base could invite aggression and argued that strengthening it is necessary to avoid war with China. “History tells us we need a healthy defense industrial base now to deter aggression and make sure the world’s dictators think again before dragging the U.S. and the world into yet another disastrous conflict,” Krishnamoorthi said. National security adviser Jake Sullivan called it a “generational project” to fix the problem after the American shipbuilding industry had its “bottom fell out” in the early 1980s. “Part of it is we don't have the backbone of a healthy commercial shipbuilding base to rest our naval shipbuilding on top of,” Sullivan said Wednesday at the Aspen Security Forum in Washington. “And that's part of the fragility of what we're contending with and why this is going to be such a generational project to fix.” The challenge in shipbuilding has been “especially immense,” stemming from the hollowing-out of the U.S. manufacturing base where its workforce shrank and suppliers left, Sullivan said. And it is part of the broader problem of a weakened U.S. military industrial base, as manifested in the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, Sullivan said, when Kyiv in eight weeks “burned through a year's worth of U.S. 155-millimeter artillery production." “Decades of underinvestments and consolidation had seriously eroded our defense industrial base, and there was no way around it,” Sullivan said. The head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Samuel Paparo, warned last month that the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East were eating away at critical U.S. weapons stockpiles and could hamper the military’s ability to respond to China should a conflict arise. He said providing or selling billions of dollars worth of air defenses to both Ukraine and Israel were hampering U.S. ability to respond to threats in the Indo-Pacific. “It’s now eating into stocks, and to say otherwise would be dishonest,” he told an audience at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Nov . 19. Several researchers at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said China’s rapid military buildup could allow the country to prevail over the U.S., especially in case of a prolonged conflict. “China’s massive shipbuilding industry would provide a strategic advantage in a war that stretches beyond a few weeks, allowing it to repair damaged vessels or construct replacements much faster than the United States,” the researchers wrote in June. On Thursday, the congressional panel heard suggestions from experts who said it would take time to rebuild the defense industrial base, but for quicker fixes, the U.S. could innovate to make low-cost and autonomous systems and tap resources of its allies. “We need to look at co-production of whether it's munitions in Australia or shipbuilding in Korea,” said William Greenwalt, a non-resident senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank American Enterprise Institute. “We need to get numbers as fast as we can," he said.
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As the newly-named host of the 2034 World Cup in men's soccer , Saudi Arabia says it will construct or renovate 15 stadiums, create a futuristic city and expand airports in a massive buildout to accommodate millions of athletes, coaches and spectators. That will emit tons of planet-warming greenhouse gases as concrete and steel are manufactured and transported, diesel-powered excavators and trucks move material and new buildings are powered and cooled. When all the emissions associated with the world's buildings are grouped together, they are the largest contributor to climate change . Constructing so many new venues is “environmentally wasteful in the extreme” because so much carbon will be emitted and scarce resources used, said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College in Massachusetts who has written several books about the economics of mega sporting events. Zimbalist said the World Cup should be held in countries with a developed soccer culture and industry. Seth Warren Rose, founding director of the research organization Eneref Institute, said the world will be even hotter a decade from now, and can’t afford this added warming. “I’m sorry, but we’re living in a different planet. We have to prepare for that,” Rose said. “By 2034, we’ll be living in a different climate and that’s not a metaphor." Rose said his message to organizers is: Make a genuine effort to reduce emissions or don't host at all. Saudi Arabia’s plans will rely heavily on concrete, which is responsible for about 8% of worldwide emissions that warm the planet, with iron and steel accounting for another 7% . Human rights groups are concerned that giving the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia will endanger migrant workers . In a bid book detailing its plans for development across five cities ahead of the World Cup, Saudi Arabia said three new stadiums are currently under construction and eight more are planned, to accommodate 2034's first-ever 48-team games. Buildings constructed for international sporting events often end up becoming “white elephant” venues that sit idle once games are over. The Saudi Arabian Football Federation did not respond to request for comment. Saudi Arabia has proposed 134 accommodations for teams and referees, new hotels, several fan festival locations, transportation expansions, including high-speed rail and further investment in its futuristic city of Neom . Much of what the nation included in its bid book relates to its Vision 2030 strategic plan, which the government calls a plan to diversify its economy and unlock new business opportunities. The bid does include sustainability initiatives, said Karim Elgendy, a fellow at London’s Chatham House think tank. Among them are running stadiums on clean electricity such as solar, using energy-efficient natural ventilation and shading and mandating green building standards. But Elgendy said the sheer scale of Saudi Arabia's apparent plans for the event, plus the distances between host cities suggest this could become the most carbon-intensive World Cup in history. Elgendy said how they mitigate this undertaking will determine the environmental impact and without measures, the event could have a carbon footprint that is almost twice the record set in 2022. In contrast, organizers of this summer’s Paris Olympics said this week they met their goal of cutting the games’ carbon footprint by half compared to 2012 and 2016. They did this using renewable energy, recycled materials, plant-based food options that are less carbon-intensive than meat and even powering the famous Olympic cauldron with electricity and lights rather than burning gas. To critics who suggest FIFA ought to have chosen a different host country, like the United Kingdom which has dozens of stadiums, Walker Ross, a researcher of sport ecology and sustainability at the University of Edinburgh points out the Saudi bid was the only one in a fast-tracked process. The next World Cup, in 2026, will span 16 cities across North America. Ross said that could have a significant carbon footprint, too, as teams and fans travel across an entire continent. The same could be said for the 2030 World Cup to be played across six countries. If anyone is at fault, it's FIFA, he said, because it's their bid process. Ross said he thinks locations shouldn’t be ruled out because they are hot or there aren’t a lot of stadiums. “People kind of throw their hands up in the air and act like there are certain countries that should and shouldn’t host when it comes to these events,” he said. “But if this sport is truly for the world, then we have to be open to everyone hosting.” Qatar went on a $200 billion construction spree , building seven stadiums, a new metro system, highways, high-rise buildings and a new city ahead of the 2022 event there. Organizers and FIFA projected it would produce some 3.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over the decade spent preparing for the tournament, or about 3% of Qatar’s total emissions in 2019, according to World Bank data. Experts say the Qatar event had the highest carbon emissions to date. Skeptics and outside experts said Qatar’s accounting that it hosted a ‘carbon neutral’ World Cup didn't encompass the event’s full carbon footprint . FIFA accepted Saudi Arabia’s sustainability and climate promises in an evaluation released in November , noting that “whilst the extent of construction would have a material environmental impact, the bid provides a good foundation for delivering mitigation measures to address some of the environment-related challenges.” FIFA directed The Associated Press to the evaluation Thursday when asked for additional comment. Saudi Arabia's emissions have been growing; it emitted 533 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022 , or 1.6% of global emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, and its fossil fuel production is skyrocketing. Renewable energy remains nearly nonexistent. The country has a goal to source at least half of its power from renewables by 2030 . “It appears that FIFA has learnt very little from the debacle with the World Cup in Qatar," said Khaled Diab, a spokesperson at Carbon Market Watch. Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .When the Hero World Challenge takes place in the Bahamas at the start of December, tournament host Tiger Woods will not be part of the field. Still recovering from his latest surgery on his back in September, Woods had the option of joining the 20-player field in the December 5-8 exhibition event, but announced on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) he would not do so. "I am disappointed that I will not be able to compete this year at the Hero World Challenge," Woods wrote on social media, going on to announce Justin Thomas, Jason Day of Australia and Nick Dunlap as exemptions into the field. The 15-time major champion played in the tournament at Albany Golf Club last year and finished 18th of 20. Woods' sixth back surgery was done to repair a nerve impingement in his lower back, about two months after his last competitive start at The Open. "The surgery went smoothly, and I'm hopeful this will help alleviate the back spasms and pain I was experiencing throughout most of the 2024 season," Woods said in a statement at the time. "I look forward to tackling this rehab and preparing myself to get back to normal life activities, including golf." It is unclear when Woods will compete again. He has played the PNC Championship, a family team event, with his son Charlie each December for the past four years.
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