12 Leaders The Economist March 19th 2022
the fact that energy markets go through cycles of boom and bust.
The years Ms Warren has chosen as a benchmark were not good
ones: in two of them, 2015 and 2016, the net operating margin of
the global listed energy industry was negative. There was an
other year of operating losses in 2020, during which the oil price
briefly fell below zero owing to the pandemic. If companies
must endure the bad times but find chunks of their profits are
seized when prices rise, their businesses lose viability.
That may sound appealing to those climate activists who
want to drive out of business firms like bp,whose boss recently
said that high prices had turned the firm into a “cash machine”.
But today’s energy crisis shows that the world needs a carefully
managed phaseout of carbon emissions, not a sudden halt in
fossilfuel investment, especially if Europe is to wean itself off
Russian gas. Renewable energy cannot immediately replace gas
for some tasks, such as heating homes with gas boilers. Even if
the infrastructure to run entire economies on electricity were in
place, battery storage remains unable to plug gaps when the
wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. Nuclear power
plants provide a constant supply but take years to build.
The European Commission says that renewable producers,
which are also benefiting from high prices, should pay up too.This is doubly misguided. If even cleanenergy companies have
their profits seized during periods of shortages then the incen
tive to solve renewables’ intermittency problem, for example by
making batteries better or by storing energy as hydrogen, will be
blunted. And it is not just power shortages that need to be
plugged as economies move to net zero. The private sector will
need to find ways around shortages of everything from the min
erals used in electric cars to the balsa wood used in wind tur
bines. It is a fantasy to think that the vast investments that are
necessary will happen if the most innovative firms worry that
their profits could be seized when their bets pay off.
The thorniest argument is that companies are benefiting
from war. Windfall taxes live up to their name when firms have
profited not from wise decisions, but from unforeseeable events
that are unrelated to their investment choices. Yet geopolitics is
a top concern of big energy firms, which must lay pipelines that
cross borders and anticipate global energy needs far in advance.
There is nothing unusual about a conflict affecting their profits,
and the risks posed to Europe from Russian gas have been obvi
ous for years. Hiving off the rewards that are on offer for supply
ing energy during today’s shortage will only makethenext sup
ply crunch—even a predictable one—all the worse.nL
ia thomas, a studentattheUniversityofPennsylvania,isan
excellent swimmer. She often beats her rivals by tens of sec
onds, breaking records. Her success is based on three things.
One is natural talent. Another is relentless training. And the
third is biology.
For although she identifies as a woman, Ms Thomas was born
male. Since humans cannot change their sex (unlike their self
identified gender), she remains that way. On the eve of her big
gest competition, Ms Thomas finds herself at the centre of the
badtempered debate about whether trans women—males who
identify as women—should compete in women’s sports (see
United States section). That, in turn, is part of a
broader argument: should brute biological facts
sometimes override people’s deeply held feel
ings about their identities?
This newspaper believes it is almost always
unfair to allow transgender women to compete
in women’s sports. The advantages bestowed by
male puberty are so big that no amount of train
ing or talent can enable female athletes to over
come them. Florence Griffith Joyner’s 100metres world sprint
ing record has stood for three decades. A male matching it would
not even make it to the Olympics, let alone the final. In 2016, at
an American event for highschoolers, four of the eight boys in
the 100metres final ran faster.
Much of the male advantage is granted by testosterone, a
potent anabolic steroid whose levels rise sharply in male puber
ty. For many years many sporting bodies, following the lead of
the International Olympic Committee, hoped to finesse the is
sue by allowing trans women to compete in women’s events pro
vided they took testosteronesuppressing drugs. But the sciencesuggeststhisdoesnotleveltheplayingfield. Suppressing tes
tosterone in adults, it seems, does little to undo the advantages
granted by a male adolescence.
Sports must therefore choose between inclusion and fair
ness; and they should choose fair play. That does not mean, as is
sometimes alleged, that trans women would be barred from all
sport. One way to make that clear would be to replace the
“men’s” and “women’s” categories with “open” and “female”
ones. The first would be open to all comers. The second would be
restricted on the basis of biology.
Sport is public, and results can be measured objectively. That
means the argument that the material facts of
biology should sometimes outrank a person’s
subjective sense of identity is easier to make.
But it applies in other areas, too. Several coun
tries, including Britain, Canada and parts of
America, allow male prisoners to declare that
they are women and be housed in female jails.
Scandalously little thought has been given to
the risk that predatory males taking advantage
of such rules pose to female prisoners. The conflation of sex and
gender by wellmeaning officials also risks eroding the useful
ness of official statistics on everything from pay gaps to crime.
Some of these arguments will be touted or twisted by those
who wish trans people ill. Such bigotry exists, as a Republican
bill in Florida to restrict “instruction” in schools about gender
identity or sexual orientation makes plain. That should be re
sisted, too. Most of the time, it costs little or nothing to respect
people’s choices about how they wish to present themselves. In
the rare cases where rights clash,societymust weigh the trade
offs sensitively and with open eyes.nBiology must sometimes trump identity. Sport offers the clearest exampleFacing the facts
Trans women in sport