Abu Dhabi: The Capital of Prudence?

Abu Dhabi doesn’t look anything like a pinnacle of prudence. Construction cranes outnumber existing buildings in some parts of the capital of the United Arab Emirates. At the vast Capital Centre building site, just one of dozens scattered around the city, hoardings announce: “23 towers, 7 hotels, 1 world class exhibition centre.” Across the road, the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, having just hosted the World Future Energy Summit (the so-called Davos of renewable energy), is getting ready for February’s megagathering, the International Defence Exhibition & Conference 2011. Two suspiciously pharaonic projects, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, are in the works on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island (“one island, many masterpieces”). As the rest of the world struggles out of the Great Recession, Abu Dhabi’s grand ambitions beg the question: is all this really sensible?

It’s not as wild and crazy as it looks. Abu Dhabi is not Dubai. The two best known of seven emirates have taken very different paths in the 40 years since independence. Dubai is a port that grew into a business hub and financial center – and, like Wall Street or the City of London, was hit hard by the financial crisis of the last three years. Business sagged, construction slowed, rents dropped, expats left, and tourists cooled on the OTT Vegas-style hotels and manufactured beaches. In short order, stories about Dubai’s collapse spread around the world.

Abu Dhabi didn’t completely escape the financial blows, but it was cushioned against them. By oil, for one thing: sitting on over 90 percent of the UAE’s oil, Abu Dhabi possesses 9 percent of world reserves and has benefited from rising oil prices (up more than 20 percent over the past year). With GDP per capita behind only even tinier Luxembourg and another petrostate, Norway, Abu Dhabi has lavished guaranteed incomes-for-life and other extraordinary benefits on its citizens, who make up only 19 percent of the population, the rest being non-Emiratis. As Dubai shrinks, Abu Dhabi’s economy and its population of 1.6 million continue to grow: many expats who work in “AD” commute by car from Dubai, where housing is plentiful and rents lower.

Even though Abu Dhabi’s oil reserves are forecast to last through the century, the ruling Al Nahyan family is pouring billions into the diversification of its economy – from oil- to knowledge-based. The focus on higher education, homegrown entrepreneurs, renewable-energy research, and overseas investment is evident at Masdar, the state-funded renewable energy company. Its units include Masdar Capital, which invests in renewable and clean-tech companies around the world, and Masdar Institute (photo), a research-driven graduate school developed with MIT that offers full scholarships and stipends to national and foreign students. This is not an exercise in charity, says Masdar CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber. “We’re here to make money. Financial sustainability is the number one item on our agenda,” he says, adding what could be, or should be, Abu Dhabi’s motto: “If you’re not financially sustainable, you can’t sustainable in anything else.”

The State Arizona Is In

Arizona, which many of us know mostly as one of the most beautiful states in the American West, will now be known to many more people as the place where Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head at point-blank range on Jan. 8, where a federal judge, John Roll, and five other people were killed, including a 9-year-old girl, Christina Green, and where 13 people besides Ms. Giffords were wounded. Here are some other things to know about Arizona, taken from an article by Ken Silverstein in the July 2010 issue of Harper's magazine:

Although dozens of states are facing budget crises, the situation in Arizona is arguably the nation’s worst, graver even than in California. A horrific budget deficit has been papered over with massive borrowing and accounting gimmickry, and the state may yet have to issue IOUs to employees and vendors. All-day kindergarten has been eliminated statewide, and some districts have adopted a four-day school week. Arizona’s state parks, despite bringing in 2 million visitors and $266 million annually, have lost 80 percent of their budget, with up to two thirds of the parks now in danger of closure. The legislature slashed the budget for the Department of Revenue, which required the agency to fire hundreds of state auditors and tax collectors; lawmakers boasted that these measures saved $25 million, but a top official in the department estimated that the state would miss out on $174 million in tax collections as a result...

Arizona lawmakers have shown little enthusiasm for dealing seriously with the state’s insolvency. They have instead preferred to focus on matters that have little to do with the crisis. Lawmakers have turned racial profiling into official policy, through a new law that requires police to stop suspected illegal immigrants and demand to see their papers; anyone not carrying acceptable proof of citizenship can be arrested for trespassing and thrown in jail for up to six months. But this is just one bill in what has been a season of provocative legislating. Another new law bans the funding of any ethnic-studies programs in the public schools, while a third prohibits “intentionally or knowingly creating a human-animal hybrid.” Lawmakers declared February 8 the “Boy Scout Holiday,” took time out to discount fishing-license fees for Eagle Scouts, and approved a constitutional right to hunt…

In January, Senator Jack Harper, an immaculately combed zealot who speaks in the patter of an infomercial voiceover, submitted a bill that would allow faculty members to carry guns on university campuses, saying it was “one very small step in trying to eliminate gun-free zones, where there’s absolutely no one who could defend themselves if a terrorist incident happened.” The house passed a measure that would force President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate to state officials if he runs for re-election, as well as a bill that bars Arizona from entering into any program to regulate greenhouse gases without approval from the legislature. “There are only two ways to vote on this,” said Representative Ray Barnes of the latter initiative. “Yes, or face the east in the morning and worship the EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] because they own you.”...

As the national midterm elections approach in November, the Tea Party movement is supplying the Republican Party with most of its momentum. But this movement, and the strain of aggrieved libertarianism it espouses, cannot claim much representation in elected office. This disparity has led many on the left to dismiss Tea Partiers as a media phenomenon, and to speculate that their ideas could not possibly “stand up to the test” of real governance. But there is, in fact, one place where the results of Tea Party governance has already been tested: Arizona, where the Tea Party is arguably the ruling party....

There will always be an England

It could only happen here. Two great English institutions -- cricket and the Shipping Forecast -- have collided. A live radio broadcast of an England v Australia match was interrupted to bring BBC listeners the Shipping Forecast, which goes out four times a day to give details of conditions in the seas around the UK, Ireland and beyond. The Shipping Forecast has a loyal following, and not just among sailors. But it was no ordinary cricket match that was interrupted. It was the Ashes, a Test cricket series played between England and Australia that is considered the most celebrated rivalry in the sport and dates back to 1882, and the broadcast happened to come at the very moment “the tourists” (i.e., England) were about to win in Oz for the first time in 24 years. Have a listen here.