All right on the night: AfD’s victory

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0:56The Economist

1:02Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor.

1:12Today on the show, the climate case for cutting aeroplane condensation trails and why young Koreans are embracing Buddhism.

1:26First up though,

1:35Overnight, a shocking election result. The Alternative for Germany party, the AFD, won a thumping victory in the East German state of Saxony and Halt. It's a party so extreme that even some other populist right organizations in Europe refuse to work with it. Last week on the show, our Berlin bureau chief Tom Nuttall spoke about the prospect of a right-wing nationalist leader running a German state for the first time since the Second World War. Now the AFD has come a big step closer.

2:14I was in the Alters Theater in Magdeburg, the capital of the state of Saxony, Anhalt, last night, where the AFD held its election night party.

2:29When we got the first exit polls at 6pm, projecting that the AFD had won 44 % of the vote, which was more than any opinion poll had projected, as you can imagine, the mood was ecstatic. You had all of these AFD grandies on stage hugging each other, leading the crowd in lusty renditions of German songs and the national anthem. them. They were all expecting to come first in this election, but I don't think anybody was expecting the score was going to be quite that high. 44 % is a staggering or shocking headline figure, depending on your view. Talk me through the details of that. For a long time, the opinion polls had suggested that the AFD was going to win very big in Saxony-Anthalt, which is a state in the east of Germany, relatively small, relatively poor, so kind of fertile ground for the AFD.

3:25It's governed by the centre-right Christian Democrats, that's the party of the Chancellor Friedrich Merz. All of the speculation before the vote was whether it was going to be possible for the CDU to assemble some very complicated, incoherent coalition to keep the AFD out of power. And the election result is such that this morning that just doesn't feel like a plausible possible possibility. The AFD has won such a big share of the vote. It hasn't won a majority, but it has come quite close to it, that it obviously is going to have the mandate now to try to form a government. And I think a lot of people thought that that was not where we were going to be this morning.

4:03And how did other parties do? Well, the big story is the absolute collapse of the Christian Democratic Union, the Conservative Party that has been running the state for a very long time. Their vote more or less halved to 17%. This is absolutely devastating. I think one reason for that is that there was some last-minute tactical voting for people who wanted to keep the AFD out of power. Some of them will have shifted to parties like the Greens to get them over the 5 % threshold. So that depressed the CDU score. But there's no sugarcoating it. There's a bunch of people who immediately called for the resignation of Sven Schulze, the CDU Premier of Saxony Antal.

4:43This is very bad news for Frédéric Merz, the Chancellor. The party may well lose one of its minister presidents here. We've got two more state elections in a couple of weeks' time. All in all, the party that had hoped somehow that it might be able to keep the AFD out and cling on this morning is chastened, licking its wounds. I actually moved from the AFD party to the CDU party last night and talk about a buzzkill. I mean, it was like turning up at a wake. One aide to Sven Shorts had told me that the result was like a punch in the stomach. So this was a really rough night for the CDU. The AfD hasn't quite got a majority.

5:22So what happens now? Is there a way for other parties to block it? Perhaps the most important development in a way last night was the fact that a party called the Bundnessar Wagenknecht, which is a kind of populist left outfit, pro-Russian, anti-elite, they defied expectations and just managed to creep into Parliament with five of the 83 seats in the Saxony-Hanhill Parliament. And what's important about this is that unlike every other party, the BSW has not ruled out working with the AFD. And last night, their lead candidate said that she could envisage working on specific projects with the party.

6:03This might be things like pushing for an easing on sanctions on Russia, on energy policy, on doing stuff to the curricula in schools. But the BSW, unlike any other party, might enable Ulrich Siegmund, who is the leader of the AFD in Saxony-Anhalt, to become state premier. Had the BSW not made it into parliament, then we'd be looking at a very different set of circumstances this morning. So now there's going to be a lot of attention on how that party decides to position itself. What happens if no party can form a government? I think this is highly likely. Ulrich Siegmann from the AFD has said that he would not want to lead a minority government, and there doesn't appear to be an alternative to that right now.

6:48I'm also not sure that he would want to make himself hostage to the BSW, which is a very complicated, troubled party. They split in a neighbouring state just last week, putting the government there into jeopardy. So if I was in the AFD's position, I'm not sure I'd want to make myself hostage to that sort of party. So if none of this works out, I mean, it will take some time for all of this stuff to play out. But if none of it works out, then we really are in stalemate because under the laws of Saxony and Young Health, there is no time limit in which a vote for the minister president has to take place.

7:22So then Schultz can just carry on as acting state premier, more or less indefinitely, at least that's what the law says. So you can imagine that we enter a stalemate that eventually the parliament decides it would need a two-thirds majority, but the parliament decides to hold fresh elections maybe sometime next year. It's not at all clear how things are going to proceed, but I would say that the chances of Germany having its first ever far-right state premier since the Second World War are higher this morning than we expected they were going to be. What does that ultimately mean for Germany then?

7:59Well, there's a hell of a lot of soul-searching going on this morning, as you can imagine. 44 % for a party that the state's own intelligence services describe as right-wing extremist is just a body blow to a country that built its entire post-war identity on excluding extremists from power. But that's where we are. The AfD is a more radical party than a lot of its counterparts across Europe. It rallies behind the banner of re-migration. Large parts of the party have a sort of ethno-nationalist idea of what they want Germany to become. They're sceptical about Germany's place in the EU, in NATO.

8:34Large parts of the party are very pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian. And this is why the state's own intelligence services regard the party as right-wing extremists. And there are many people inside the German mainstream who think the party should simply be banned. So this is not a conventional party in any sense of the word. And what about the implications for Europe more generally? So there's no direct implications for Europe because even if the AFD does eventually find its way to power in Saxony and Halt, states in Germany do not have a direct impact on foreign policy. But obviously there's an indirect impact.

9:09It was striking just how many populist right parties in other parts of Europe weighed in to celebrate, with a notable exception, by the way, of Marine Le Pen in France, because there is no love lost between the national rally and the AFD. But most of the other right-wing nationalist parties in Europe jumped right in to celebrate. Some of them were even represented at the AFD party last night. So I think that there will be a kind of morale boosting effect. There'll be a sense that the tide is turning in favor of these sorts of outfits, because if this can happen in Germany, then it can happen anywhere.

9:40Tom, thank you very much. Thanks, Rosie.

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10:32If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.

11:10For about 30 years, people have been aware that the contrails that stretch out behind planes when they fly through the upper atmosphere have a warming effect on the Earth. So if you could make fewer of them, then you could, to some extent, cool the Earth down a bit. Oliver Morton is The Economist's planetary affairs editor. Various people have tried this out in small-scale ways with specific airlines or in specific places, but now a large trial is starting over the North Atlantic, which is a very sensitive area for contrails and almost the perfect place to do it. It's called Operation Blue Skies.

11:53Olly, why do contrails heat up the planet? And how big a problem are they, really? Well, contrails, like all clouds, they give and they take away. They reflect a bit of sunlight out of space, so they're cooling. But they also trap heat trying to get out of the Earth and infrared radiation and re-emit it downwards. So they have two effects. And although some contrails sometimes may be mainly cooling, on average contrails are warming and they're particularly warming of course at night because there's no sunlight to reflect and you just get the warming effect and depending on how you calculate it the warming effects of contrails are a bit less than or maybe the same as the warming effect of the carbon dioxide that's emitted by planes in the first place so in terms of the climate impacts of aviation, it's really significant.

12:48Okay, so that's a big deal, Olly. Half of the climate heating effect of air travel is down to those wispy little trails. Not just the wispy little trails, the clouds that the wispy little trails turn into. But yes, it is striking. Now, I think we should normally say up to 50 % because the error bars on the amount of warming that you get from contrails are quite large. To get up to 50%, you need to think your estimate for the contrails is a bit low and your estimate for the fuel may be a bit high, half is quite possible. A third I think you could probably take to the bank. Aren't they a by-product of flying?

13:24What could you do about them? They are to some extent a by-product of flying, but the ones that really matter are the ones that last and then persist. You'll have seen them in the skies as they spread out and become broader, pale clouds. And that only happens when the plane involved goes through an area which is prepped up for contrailing. These areas are areas where the air is cold, but it's also damp. In fact, it's so damp that if you just put something in it around which ice could crystallize, the ice would crystallize. And so it's not just the water that's coming out of the jet's exhaust that's going into the contrail now.

14:03The contrail's gathering up moisture from around it in order to make a much bigger cloud than the plane could make on its own. Those are the contrails which do most of the warming work. And they only get made in these damp but cold areas, what are called in the trade ice supersaturated regions. They're up towards the top of the lower atmosphere, what's called the troposphere, which is where air traffic mostly goes. And so they're up above eight kilometers, maybe eight to 13 kilometers up in the sky. And they tend to be very broad, but very thin. People talk about them as pancakes. They might be a few hundred kilometres across, but only a few hundred metres deep.

14:44And so if you know where they are, you can normally avoid them simply by flying a little bit lower. Aren't there quite strict rules about where planes can fly, not just for efficiency, but safety? Can you really add another variable to that? Well, that's part of what Operation Blue Skies is doing. The change you need to make to stay out of one of these super saturated regions, these cold, damp pancake bits, it's normally fairly small. You can just drop down a few hundred meters and your problem is over. That's what people who fly stealth bombers do because they don't like to leave contrails. And so you're following the same path, but you're a little bit lower.

15:27And that's the sort of thing that planes do anyway to avoid turbulence. But the question of whether they can be asked to do it on a regular basis by air traffic control to avoid contrails and whether that can be done safely and routinely. That's one of the things that they're testing in Operation Blue Skies. The other thing they're testing, of course, is that if you do this systematically, do you actually end up with a sky that has significantly fewer contrails in it? And how do you test that? One of the advantages of the North Atlantic as a test region is that it's being continuously looked at by not just one, but two weather satellites.

16:02And they are looking in both the visible and the infrared. So they're pretty good at picking up contrails. And part of Blue Sky is quite a big part, is being undertaken by Google, who are using machine learning to make sure that they can actually ascertain which contrails come from which flights and where they go. The North Atlantic is a good place to do this, because by some calculations, the North Atlantic is about 5 % of the global contrail problem, but a fraction of 1 % of the airspace that the aircraft travel for. Given how expensive fuel is, won't this cost too much in the airline's view?

16:39The airlines may have a particular view about it that doesn't necessarily represent the common good. But in general, it's actually, I think, surprisingly cheap. Flying lower down is slightly less efficient and slightly slower. So you add a few minutes to a journey time and you may add 1 % to 2 % to the fuel costs. But remember, you're only doing this for a fairly small amount of flights. Researchers at an organisation called contrails.org reckon that it's at most 5 % of flights you'd have to change and maybe 2 % of flights and that would give you about 80 % of the potential benefit. If just 2 % of flights is responsible for 80 % of the emissions due to contrails, isn't that quite an easy change for airlines to make?

17:27Well it's easy to make if air traffic control measures can be made that will make it safe and reliable. And if it turns out that the ways we have of predicting where the places where very warming contrails will form, if those systems work, then it should be fairly easy. And if that figure turns out to be too optimistic, you'd still for sure get 70 % of the cooling with 5 % of the flights. At the same time, airlines are very jealously guarding their fuel bills. There's another point to bear in mind as well is that some airlines would end up doing more of this than others. If you're flying in temperate and subtropical Asia, you are much less likely to make a persistent contrail than if you are flying over Canada or over the North Atlantic Ocean.

18:15It's just the atmospheric conditions are different. Nevertheless, a real cost on airlines is something that might be hard to persuade them of. I think that's one of the reasons why doing it through air traffic control is possibly the simplest and most direct solution to this issue. It's true, airlines won't be amazingly happy about it, but airlines have to agree to air traffic control changes. And so they might lobby against doing this, but if people could overcome that lobbying, then I think that system might work quite well. Now, people with a less idealistic hat on say that, well, we'll probably have to sweeten it up for the airlines to some extent.

18:57And that may be the case. But in general, this is an externality of air travel which airlines are imposing on the rest of the world in order to serve airlines passengers. And it's not entirely unreasonable that airlines should pay the cost of that externality. And if they pass it through to passengers, well, I think that would be entirely reasonable too. but it won't be a huge amount of cost passed through to passengers. Ollie, thank you very much. You're welcome, Rosie. Happy travels.

19:42Across South Korea, Buddhist events are popping up everywhere.

19:49There are Buddhist raves where young people dance to sutra-inspired tracks. Temples are organizing meditation festivals and even matchmaking events for singles. These couples are taking part in a trust-building walk. It's part of the program at a Buddhist matchmaking retreat at Daksan-sa Temple in South Korea. Buddhist groups hope these type of events can revive interest in the ancient religion. South Koreans, especially young ones, are becoming less religious overall, and the number of practicing Buddhists is shrinking. Last year, the Association of Buddhist Orders in Korea met to discuss Buddhism's future in the country.

20:32It focused on one core challenge, how to create lasting engagement without being coercive, one of Buddhism's main selling points. I went to a Buddhist expo organized by the Jokye Order of Korean Buddhism in Seoul to see those efforts for myself. When I enter, I'm surprised by the size of the crowd. There are hordes of people queuing to get in. Inside, I see dozens and dozens of stalls selling everything from Buddhist-themed art to prayer beats and singing bowls.

21:14One stall showcases the only funeral provider in the country that still puts on the ceremony the Buddhist way.

21:25A Buddhist funeral prepares six offerings—rice, candles, incense, flowers, tea, and pure water—which represent the six parameters, or the virtues, practiced in Buddhism. These days, most people opt for a more simple funeral with just a framed portrait and flowers. To try it out, I decided to die for a few minutes. Do you want to see this one? I'm going to go to the funeral. The funeral director has me put on a robe. There's golden letters printed on it. It's a passage from the Diamond Sutra, a book about the impermanence of life. Then he tells me to lie down in a coffin. I'm going to try lying in this coffin.

22:08He knocks on the coffin three times, pretending to steal it.