Reuters World News - Saving the planet meets voter resistance in Germany

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

A backlash over the cost of climate-friendly policies is hitting Germany’s Green Party. What does this voter resistance mean for the fight against climate change in the rest of the world? Argentina becomes the latest Latin American country to green light mifepristone – the drug at the centre of the U.S. abortion battle. Plus, all the latest on the debt ceiling talks and a cooking marathon in Nigeria. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt-out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Germany's Green Party pays the price for making consumers fork out to save the planet. What does this voter resistance say about the prospects for climate change policies elsewhere? They fundamentally agree with trying to protect the environment, but they don't want to have to adapt their behaviour and they don't want to have to fund these changes. Abortion rights gain more ground in Latin America. Argentina becomes the latest country to greenlight the use of abortion pill Mifibristone. plus glimmers of hope for a debt deal in D.C. and a marathon cooking session in Nigeria. It's Wednesday, May 17th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes.

I'm Kim Vinal in London. We begin in Washington and those critical debt-sealing talks. We just finished another good productive meeting with our congressional leadership, about a path forward to make sure that America does not default on a seat. Joe Biden in an upbeat mood after the latest hour-long meeting with congressional leaders. But the clock is ticking. With the threat of a default looming as early as June 1st, Biden is cutting short a trip to Asia to try and get a deal over the line. Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, is hopeful.

It is possible to get a deal by the end of the week. It's not that difficult to get to an agreement. The White House was less confident about that time frame, but calls that. talks productive and direct. Republicans have refused to vote to lift the debt ceiling past the 31.3 trillion dollar limit unless Biden agrees to spending cuts. Okay, let's take a look at the other stories we're following. Joe Biden's urge to get a debt deal completed means he's cancelled a trip to Papua New Guinea and a summit in Australia next week. The summit, which also features Japan and India will instead take place at the G7 this weekend. The National Assembly in Ecuador has begun impeachment proceedings against President

Guillermo Lassau, which could lead to him being removed from office. He denied allegations of embezzling funds from public companies as the trial began. North Carolina's Republican lawmakers have banned abortion after 12 weeks, overriding a veto by the state's Democratic governor. New Zealand police have opened a homicide inquiry after a hostile fire killed at least six people. They say the fire in the capital, Wellington, is suspected to have been arson. To a capital hearing on AI and the most talked about technology for years. I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT. He told the Senate panel there's significant concern about the use of artificial intelligence to interfere with elections. It's one of my areas of greatest concern. The more general ability of these models to manipulate, to persuade, to provide sort of one-on-one interactive disinformation. And he warned there would be an impact on jobs, but added he's very optimistic about how great the jobs of the future will be.

Okay, now to find out if markets are as optimistic about the prospects of a debt deal, Let's speak to Kamal Crimmons. Hey Kamel. Hey Kim. I think markets are more circumspect about the prospects of a speedy debt deal. U.S. stock futures are flat. European shares are down. We've also had downbeat earnings. We had a disappointing outlook from Home Depot and also weaker than expected retail sales data for April. In Europe, UBS has come out and said it expects to take a $17 billion financial hit from its takeover of Credit Suisse. You may remember that deal was done in a huge hurry back in March. and there were real concerns about a banking crisis. So in a regulatory filing, UBS has said that it didn't want to take over its rival and it had only four days to look at its books. Now to Germany, where the Green Party has suffered one of its worst losses in history. Their slump in local elections signals voter concern over the price of environmental policies during a cost of living crisis.

Sarah Marsh in Berlin has been following the party's woes. So Sarah, the Greens in Germany have always been seen as a leading environmental party around the world. What's happened here? So the Greens had seen support really jumped last year to about 23 to 24%. They were actually polling ahead of Schultz's Social Democrats. But now they've seen that support dropped to about 15% in national polls. And in this state election in Bremen, it's actually Germany's smallest state. on Sunday, they source their support dropped by about 30% to 12% in that election,

according to the projected results. Okay, that's huge. Were there any specific issues that hit them really hard? Yes, shortly before the vote itself, the Greens Transport Senator decided to get rid of a very popular measure, which was the so-called Brutcheon pasta, and that translates to bread roll button. And it was a button at parking meters that enabled people to have free parking for about 20 minutes

so they could pop into a store, pop into a bakery to get their bread roll. And the Greens got rid of that because they want to encourage people to take public transport instead. But that did not go down well with voters in Bremen. And similarly, at a national level, one of the issues is a new bill that would ban gas and oil heating and force people to switch over to renewables. And obviously that would cost a lot of money. And so that's also causing a lot of angst at the moment. So could we see this happen in other countries?

It's hard to predict, but as voters realize the cost of climate policies, I think they're going to start thinking twice about whether or not they really want to pay for them. It was easier when it was all in theory and we were just committing to eventually carrying out these policies. But now it's sort of crunch time. We're actually having to implement them.

As the debate of the abortion drug Mifopristone continues in the US, one South American country has approved its use for the first time. Our reporter, Anna Catherine Bridgera, is in Buenos Aires and explains how this traditionally Catholic country is expanding access to the drug. Okay, so Anna, you went to a lab where this drug is being made. Yeah, so we went to visit Laboratorio Dominguez, which is the lab that's producing Mifeperstone here in Argentina. They explained that it was a very long process getting those drugs approved. They spoke to Marcella Paz, who is the medical director at Laboratorio Dominguez.

She really emphasized some of her past experience, working in the public health care system in Argentina and how she sometimes saw women who came in after having septic abortions, having kidney failure. She talked a lot about how that impacted her and how she thought it was important to have access to safe abortion. Why has Argentina approved Mifipristone for abortions now? Argentina, at the end of 2020, approved abortion in cases up to 14 weeks. And so that provided them with a framework to increase abortion access, in particular access to abortion pills. What's going on culturally? Isn't Argentina where the Pope is from, traditionally a very Catholic country? It is, but it also has a very strong feminist movement.

So Argentina is often considered the country in Latin America that started what they call the Green Wave, which is the movement to legalize abortion in many different countries. Some protests have had up to a million people protesting in favor of legalizing abortion. How do Argentinians view what is happening with reproductive rights in the U.S.? I think that many are watching what's happening in the U.S. and worrying a little bit, because often a lot of these movements, both the feminist movement and the pro-life movement, sort of look to the U.S. as an example. So there's definitely a concern that there could be an impact in Argentina and in the region overall as the U.S. is restricting access.

And finally to Nigeria. A huge crowd in Lagos going wild for a chef. They're chairing Hilda Bassi, who's just spent 100 hours stood over an oven, non-stop cooking in a bid to break the world record. President Mohamadu Bihari was among those sending messages of support. I'm very happy and I'm very proud. An exhausted Hilda now has to wait for confirmation that she's done it, as the bid has to be certified by the Guinness World Record officials. That's it for this edition of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow. To get all our shows in your podcast feed, make sure to follow us on your favorite platform or download the Reuters app.