are expendable many of these lectures believe that they're being forced to make a difficult choice between living precariously giving up the career. i love me. walker al jazeera london watch worn everything recovery. right? yeah, al jazeera dot com watch us on live streaming there as well. ah, screen okay, landlines now. world health organization is saying the new corona virus strain on the chrome has been detected in 38 countries. it's been a week since the highly mutated variant was declared to be of concern after 1st being reported in south africa, top us infectious diseases expands. he found she says, vaccine manufacturer is already working on contingency plans, including the possibility of an only con specific booster. they do have plans that

have multiple contingency. one is to wrap up the production of the vaccines that they already have. the next is to make, for example, a bio balance where you have the, a vaccine against both the ancestral strain and the new variant. and the other is to make a variant specific boost, the degree to which they're going to be doing that they are now assuming they may have to do that. and being prepared for that. in our other headlines, iran's chief negotiator has told al jazeera that well power is working to revive the nuclear deal, cannot reject his country's draft proposals. ali balcony. connie says that's because iran submissions were based on the original 2015 agreement in an exclusive interview call for all nuclear related sanctions to be removed immediately. the usaa tree of saint anthony lincoln is at the latest round of vienna talks and it because that ron doesn't seem serious about returning to compliance under the tail

. lebanon's president says he hopes the resignation of the country's information minutes or put an end to a dispute with saudi arabia and other gulf states. george could die triggered a diplomatic crisis after making comments about saudi's role in the war in yemen. it led to a ban on lebanese imports, and the recall of the saudi ambassador and ukraine's defense minister is saying russia could mountain military offensive on his country. as soon as next month warning, there could be more than $94000.00 troops waiting across the border. a large number of them are in occupied crimea, which was annexed by russia, and 2014 others are massing near the dumbass region. those are the headlines this our do stay with us for counting the cost. that's the program coming up next. december 4th was c gumby, a vote, and the country's most significant election till day. it's been 5 years since the

home on long term leda yard jammies, printed to rearrange, was brought to an antique. what political divisions remain and the company of deliver on its post democratic transition, special coverage on al jazeera. ah, [000:00:00;00] i hello, i'm camels, santa maria, this is counting the costs on al jazeera, your weekly look at the world of business and economics this week on the crunch. does it ever seem to end another new karone of ours variance, forcing governments to impose travel bands just as economies we're starting to recover the explorer? what impact on the con could have on the health of the global economy? also the sweet green hydrogen haled is the clean energy of the future. but can it

really help end the use of fossil fuels and start to dekalb and eyes economies. and when sport and money collide, you get a fierce bidding walk. my billionaires and broadcast is abetting heavily on the world's richest sport cricket in india. ah. so just when you thought things might be getting back to normal, if a normal noise and along comes a new variant of coven 19 throwing everything into disarray. again, a big part of the discussion is whether it's the variance or the fear of the variant which is unsettled things so much. but on, in kron is a reminder of just how much our economic normalcy relies on the course of this pandemic. he's what we know about the new varied festival scientist trying to understand more about it after it was officially labeled by the world health organization as a variant of concern. and given that name all micron. the general consensus is that on the cons. mutations would make it more infectious and perhaps less responsive to

vaccines. the 1st detective in south africa and later identified in some parts of europe, the u. s. japan, israel, and now many other countries as well. and then came the reaction and it was fast. borders was suddenly closed off to passenger travel from southern african countries, which brought a lot of anger, especially as south africa, fell down the right thing and alerting the well to the new very to the 1st place. oil prices fell more than 10 percent as soon as the variant was detected, stock markets took a hit to and are expected to face weakness of uncertainty is invested closely. watch for updates on, on, maker on. so what comes next, largely depends on what scientists discover and how quickly they do so. so what all this means is that we're back into the realms of one step forward to step back. in fact, we arguably already were before me con, emerge, consumer demand was rising, with good economies reopened. people were back out shopping regularly, particularly with the end of the holidays approaching. but keeping up with that demand was already a problem. there were

a lot of backlogs in the global supply chain and codes and manufacturing hubs, which made a good old fashioned bottleneck was flowing everything dumb. also prices have been soaring. inflation rates have increased in many parts of the world. in fact, in september, in the united states, inflation was 5.4 percent, which was the highest in 13 years. and the travel industry, well, it was starting to recover from its pandemic losses, but the knee jerk reaction to close borders and restrict international travel. i mean, the airlines and hospitality industry are in uncertain territory again. and so the focus and this is part of understanding this new variance is now on how effective our current bank seems will be against omicron. drug makers have given mixed information on that so far. 5 by and take us out. beat about protecting against the via coven? madonna's not so sure. and of course, there's still the problem of the huge disparities in vaccination rates around the globe. estimated around 2 percent of people in low income countries have received

even just their 1st cove at 19 shot. so let's try to get some answers in london. greg o and is with us. he is the director and chief economist at the strategic advisory group, global counsel. greg, thanks for your time. a little bit of retrospect, 1st of all, now that we've had a bit of time since the on the kron variant was 1st announced, what do you make of those market and will reactions that we saw. i mean, oil fell off the class pretty quickly. markets were all over the shop as well. i mean, is that just the uncertainty, the fact that we just didn't know what we were really dealing with? yeah, i mean, we had a few days to begin to get our head run me, all of on the kron let alone the economic impact of it. so i think at the moment, you know, the economic impact is really a highly uncertain and it will be at least a few weeks before we know how big a deal it is in terms of its public health consequences. and therefore, what sort of impact may have economically markets reacting in

a perfectly natural way in those circumstances at their tunnel that reflect sounds seem as if it is about balance, isn't it? i'm talking about the idea of, of looking off the people's help obviously. but of locked downs and travel restrictions and all these type of things. you would hope by this stage of the pandemic, that we would have learnt how this works now. and that may be immediate shut down and locked down like that aren't the best way to go. well, i think, i think governments around the world have been incredible amounts about the right way to introduce public house measures how to communicate them. what the economic impact is likely to be and how to calibrate the response appropriately and different circumstances. i mean, it's complicated by politics making a mistake about that. politics gets in the way of good policy making. sometimes i think what we've seen so far in response to alma tron is, you know, governments, the sort of the most restrictive measures that we've seen so far have been on the

travel sacks. i don't think that makes sense. but governments are also really sort of the, i think the really carefully focused on the messaging around on the tron. i think the wording about some of the behavioral impacts and that is why the messaging is being quite nuanced so far. and i think we continue to see that until we get hard evidence of what the public health implications of it are. and therefore we begin to see what sort of restrictions may or may not be required by governance. that's both some other elements and then supply chain problems. inflation has well, even if on the wrong turns out to be not as bad as we think there's still a number of other things which, which are holding the economies back. yes. so the supply chain problems remain quite severe. the cussing considerable logistical problems in

a number of different sectors. and at the same time, if you think about what the impact of cobit has been on, on demand shifted mind away from services and towards the goods sector. and then, and so for that we've had, we've had a labor shortages and some markets for reasons that are still being debated. that all of this is putting pressure on, i think, gives prices in particular goods, price inflation has been much more much higher than the consumer services inflation and a number of different markets. and i'm trying to is going to add to that, you know, probably for a couple of reasons for 1st of all, because central banks are expecting a rebalancing of demand away from goods what services and that will be delayed. secondly, we could actually see some more disruption to specific nodes and complex supply

chains that's going to exacerbate problems bear on. i think all of that means that it's just gonna take more time for the knots and supply chains to become disentangled. so this combination of supply chain destruction, feeding into inflation, i think it's going to, is going to cause headaches, a central bank for some time to come in. this may and then to take a step back, even from the supply chain that the, the supply itself, the manufacturing, they were already some limitations. again, coven related on manufacturing helps places like china, for example. is that a concern that the stuff won't be there? or as you've said, maybe there's going to be this rebalance away from goods and back to what services will. so, i mean, obviously supply chain disruption feeds into the destruction of manufacturing processes. we've seen impact thing most dramatically on, on those manufacturing sectors that are more sensitive to supply chain disruption.

so the ultimate and frankly sector and disruption to semi conductor supply center has been particularly badly affected. i think china is interesting for a number of reasons. one is china, you know, just putting on trying to, i'm sorry, china, china has a challenge in the months ahead, which is hard to exit from the pandemic. if, if, at some point, you know, the world does exit from at least this phase of the pandemic trying to get a corporate policy at the moment. how you exit from that begins to open up china to the rest of the world in terms of foreign travel and the rest of it that's it's not clear have that to happen. and i think i'm trying to delete the moment the time and difficult decisions need to be taken. but it will actually probably make those decisions even more difficult when eventually we do need to be taken. because the sort of decline community of chinese population will be lower and the public health challenges creator. so, you know,

manufacturing disruption in china. i suspect we may not have seen the last or even perhaps the most severe elements about possibly spend a minute ago. and great to talk to you. thank you so much for your time today. you're very welcome. the. it's still climate now and as the global crisis escalates, the world is banking on green energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. thing is wind turbines and solar panels can clean up everything and our cars, trucks, plains, they all require a lot more energy than those sources can, provides. some say they could be a silver bullet in the form of hydrogen. it's most abundant. ellamin and it's a clean burner. there are in fact 3 types gray hydrogen is extracted from natural gas. so it's the most commonly used form of hydrogen, but it emits a lot of carbon dioxide. so that's not great. if you capture carbon dioxide though and store it safely, it's called blue hydrogen. so that sounds better,

but it emits a lot of methane, which is also not great. and so green hydrogen that is generated by splitting the 2 components of water, oxygen and hydrogen with an electric current that's powered fully by renewable sources. so given that simple chemistry involved green hydrogen could really help us reach 0 emissions. that is the point where we remove as much greenhouse gas from the atmosphere as we emit. meeting the ambitious plans being made for green hydrogen domains building a whole new industry. there isn't enough renewable energy to produce large amounts of green hydrogen in many places. and the machines used to carry out that electron us process are expensive and the gas could cost up to almost $5.00 a kilogram to make when really it needs to be below a dollar to be competitive. that said, we are seeing some movement. the european union is among the biggest invested in green hydrogen. it's planning to build equipment capable of generating 40 gigawatts

of renewable electricity into hydrogen. by the year 2030, the united states, saudi arabia, china, and south africa are also exploring ways to produce it. according to bank of america, the whole hydrogen market is expected to be with 11 trillion dollars. by the year 2050. but already there are companies trying to get more hydrogen energy out there . one of them is the striding mining company for to scoot metals group, which has funds to produce $15000000.00 tons a year of green hydrogen and 10 years from now. and i'm very pleased to say the chairman of for the skew, andrew forest is with us now from sidney. thank you for your time, mr. forest. we've just done a little bit of an explainer for our view is about the different types of of hydrogen, the green, the blue and the gray. it seems that at the moment most of it is is gray. and that's not great because if it's a polluting element and blue is not great on that front either. so is there any point in going down those paths? should we just be focusing solely on the green?

i think we should focus solely on green, blue and grey, have really had that dye in the sun gray float about 15 times per unit carbon than it ever produces hydrogen blue. we don't know if it's much better. we think it's probably about 12 to 16, but what we do now is most blue will come from maintained o l n g, as it's cold in the popular sent. but ellen, geez, just made time. that's $80.00 to $90.00 times more dangerous is a global warming agent than carpet so. so we're worried about global warming. we've moved straight away from gray. we wouldn't touch blue and we'd go grained grain will be abundant. we can see it very clearly. i've done this before. the huge companies of projects from scratch by can see this very clearly. this is going to happen. i've got a feeling that green is expensive. you find anything is expensive at the start. hm

. luckily, most of your consumers, they're not gonna buy the 12000. you're still a microwave. when it 1st came out, they'll probably end up buying the $100.00 microwave, which is much, much better than the 1st one, which came out a lot like the computer. it, it will, will be initially expensive, but that's going to come more at our cost by the time we're really in production in the late $20.00 twenty's. this will be as competitive as any fuel out there with one great difference. you will not be polluting the planet you will not be harming the future of your planet or your kids. so let's talk about what you've got plans for. we mentioned the numbers before. i think it was 15000000 a year by, by a 10 years from now and also this plan to build what would be the world's largest electrolyzer if i'm saying that correctly. ah, tell us a little bit about that and what that will actually mean in an, in an output sense. like what we will get out of that. in theory. we have great hardship projects now all over the world. ah, ah,

in every major precinct of our little planet, we're prepared though to be very confident as good as guarantee the 15000000 tons from our own country. we not best. there's a huge upside with every other country africa, the middle east, latin america, europe, etc. but from our own country week, we can, we can be assured of it. so the 1st $15000000.00 tons is likely to come from australia within top up supplies. we grow towards $50000000.00 tons. now specifically, i can share with you that that tonnage is on. it's way good. good to hear. my very simple question for the day is and forgive my ignorance. is it like oil and gas? can you ship it? is it, is it? is it cost effective as well to move it around? right now you would container. i mean, any, any highway you drive down, you'll probably be passing a great ammonia or grain hydrogen trucks. i,

it's very common. we've been sending it up into space. 50 is sending it across the the oceans would be contained initially, but we're going up tend to, in the common year for grain, hydrogen ships and great ammonia ships with all the major shipping plies. we know that green hutch and perspective they're going to correct that. not just like they, they cracked the may say o l n j not so we know it's going to be done. but in any event, to the well shipping industry, all those you need ammonia that 15000000 tons would supply, sending to 80000000 tons of great ammonia, which will power the shipping industry. huge power called 5 power plants, which you can drop by 50 percent, immediately replace it with great ammonia. so there's a huge demand already for those hot molecules as ammonia, but we won't stop there where to turn to also ship our customers hodgen because they made green hodgen as well as great ammonia when you're doing all this at a, at a corporate level. and as you say you've,

you've built previous things from scratch before. how important is that the government's get on board. now the european union is one which has said very much, yes, we are committed to this idea is the strategy and government are there others out there? i think it's absolutely critical. governments get on board. there's no, i was powerful enough. now the major plan supposed flat rate will never cut this. it's just not sustainable. you need a fully sustainable therefore business like approach to the end of global warming. a approach which is so large that it can actually bring the warming of our planet to an end over time. that will need to be sustaining that that is, of course, the power of business, the power of commerce. bet empowerment. we're only happen if the government get on board. you cannot wash your hands and say, well, business will fix everything because actually businesses like mine got into this. businesses like mine must get us out. with the same. i mean, we were all focused on cop 26, not long ago that this is that kind of thing,

which governments could easily get behind. because if we, as you said, you're looking for actual solutions, then well, it's there and, and not ready to go. but the planning is already there, come out, this is a practical implementable solution for the world's energy and grain energy product requirements can be fertilized, they can they steal it. conduce made it can do. mobility can be fixed flawed. we just need to get in behind. grain hodgen people have said to me all or has been around for a while. i remind them that it took a 100 years for the stay mention to actually get into a try and which revolutionize transport. yes, hydrant has been around for a while, but now it's day has come and why not? it's the most abundant element in the universe. it will never run out. we make it with great energy, only, not anything to do with carbon, like oven fuels. we make it with great energy. we now have a permanent supply of pollution for

a fuel. we owe that to ourselves. we are that drop planet. we owe that to our kids . and 2 for it's great to talk to you and good luck with things. thank you, come out funny this week, my favorite sport, cricket. and if i'd been any good at it, when i was younger than now in 2021, i'd be part of something huge, especially in india, where it is without question, the most popular sport. and now the richest, the indian premier league now has an estimated brand value of $6800000000.00 that attracts millions of viewers world wide. and so broadcast as a bidding high for the rights to stream the matches. after 2 franchises was sold for a combined $1700000000.00, the new broadcast contract starts in 2023. it covers the following 5 years and is expected to bring the indian cricket board up to $5000000000.00. even facebook stone, it's had in the ring, especially with the i p. i'll expand into a 10 teen season next year with 74 matches that a 74 opportunities to make some megan money. look at this from duff and phelps, a financial consultancy,

which produces an appeal brand valuation report each year. the broadcasting fees per match last year were in the realm of $8000000.00. not that much less than both the english premier league football and american major league baseball and higher than the german football league, the blender slager and the n b a. it's all ridiculous amounts of money, quite frankly. so we've got simon chadwick with us to help understand it. simon is the director of the center for your asian sport industry is joining us from commentary in the u. k. simon. good to see you as always, can i make a grand sweeping statement to start with and say that sport is not about sport any more? it's about not just money, it's about broadcasting, right? this is the center of it all. i think school is about a lot of things and not just about sport money, but about politics as well. um, it's interesting because we, we, we talk about broadcasting and i think increasingly we need to, to, to talk less about broadcasting and more about content generation. and, and that really is where a sport is, i think, beginning to, to boom,

not just cricket, but i think across the world in so many ways because essentially, fur fur over the top platforms like netflix, for example, for amazon and many others. sport is a way of filling schedules it to where filling air time it's, we're generating content for, for people to access on their, on their tv, on their mobile devices, on the, on their tablets and so forth. and, and so there is an intense optimism and, and, and a great deal of speculation about the financial windfalls that the future will bring on. so i think we're doing is we're seeing not just traditional media companies and broadcast is entering the industry. but lots of new places as well, because i think there is this view, the over the next 10 years. what we're going to see is a sport being really one of the man drivers of the development of these over the top platforms. okay, so for talking about content, if we talk about the i p l as content, what is it that might fit attractive? obviously, it's cricket,

it's the best players in the world. it's india where there's a huge audience. anyway. how is it all packaged up into something which is becoming so attractive and that broadcast is want to pay so much for? i think one of the things you gotta keep in mind is, is the broadcasters over the top platforms and, and others who are involved in, in any sport, need to know that the sport is going to be watched, that it's popular that people will buy what's on offer the, the crucial thing about india is it will very soon be the biggest country in the world. what we've also seen in india is going about 101015 years is really quite daring and courageous development of the game that i think in many ways has changed the world beyond a change cricket beyond recognition across the world over the last decade. and that is this the short format game, because many of us time impoverished, you know, we really busy lives. we got kids to look after. we've got jobs to, to, to go to. we've got other things to do. so we need our sport bundled up into, to really easily consumable bits. and what i p l has done is,

is to provide us with something that is very easy to consume, that really retains the essence of what good sport is all about, which is uncertainty of outcome. so there isn't the domination by just one team. there are several teams always that can win, and that leads to a product that is engaging. it's exciting people. i draw drama from it. they say it is tense. and so in that way it's, it's a great product. it's easy to sell and people are engaging with it. the other side of things where the i, p l is concerned is not just the, the broadcast side, but the actual teams there are going to be 2 new franchises. am is a lot of money being thrown around or to get the licenses for those. i believe even the glaze of family who are in manchester united have shown some interest as well. or is this the other sort of side of it that you know, if you've got a lot of money, then owning a team is, is kind of the new thing or an important thing. one of the things about the global market for sport is, is that there is a lot of sports and there is increasingly

a lot of competition. and so if you want to either improve or even just maintain your position in the industry, you have to spend to 5, you have to invest new technology, new formats, you have to enter new markets and so on and so forth. and i think again, that's what we're, what we're seeing. but i, i think, certainly in terms of the glazes, this is a very interesting move and, and for the glazes themselves, they are sports entrepreneurs. they, they spend money buying clubs and franchises around the world. so i, in one sense their investment or their, their attempted investment into the i, p l is testament to the power of the i, p l and the commercial returns that can be achieved. but i think the other thing about the glazes is, is that clearly they're from the united states and, and what we now beginning to see in the united states is radia. they said that something bubbling up as quick as simmering in the us. and, and what we're seeing is, is investment within the united states in cricket,

in the creation of leagues, and the creation of competitions. and this for me is a really, really significant move because the u. s. remains the largest market for sport in the world, may be somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of global industry size. so there's money there from tv, from sponsors, from audiences and so forth. but crucially, i think in the united states, we also have a very large indian das bra. and what i sense is it's the indian diaspora in the united states that is really driving this forward at the moment. cricket in america who ever thought i simon shepherd, always a pleasure talking to you. thank you. thank you. and that is our show for this week, but i want to know what you think. what do you want to say on the show in the future? 3, her d, m, me out, come all ha, if you are waiting, use the hash tag a j c t c. or if emails more, you'll think counting the cost of al jazeera dot net is our address. and there's more for you online at al serra dot com slash ctc. that'll take you straight to our page, which has individual reports,

links and entire episodes for you to catch up on that. that is it for this edition of counting the cost. i'm time i'll santa maria, the whole team. thanks for joining us. the news on al jazeera is in december on, on just either guitar host, the fee for our upcoming a momentous event for the region and a glimpse of what's in store for the 2022 world cup people in power. invest the gates, the use and abuse of power across the globe. a world exclusive interview with joint nobel peace. lori is recognized by safeguarding freedom of expression as a precondition for democracy and lasting peace from shore. documentaries to in depth explain his portal. showcase is the best voucher zeros digital content. as the year draws to a close, we look back at the events that have shaped the news and look ahead to next year. december on a jesse europe,

we understand the differences and similarities and cultures across the world. so no matter what you see with the news and kind of pause that matter to you. oh, at this point, the very dominant a variant remains delta, the world's budge to focus on all threats posed by the pandemic. while scientists work to answer questions about the new variant, ah, hello, i'm adrian finnegan. this is al jazeera alive from dough. also coming up, iran's chief to goes here to tell 0 that his science proposals of nuclear talks

must be rejected. the u. s. in to europe say that iran isn't being serious. ukrainians describe the hardships of trying to get across. no man's land as tension