KMT scrambles to handle splits in coming polls
　

By Mo Yan-chih
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Oct 04, 2009, Page 3

Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Wu Cheng-tien (吳成典) yesterday ignored possible disciplinary action from the KMT and established campaign headquarters to announce his candidacy in the year-end Kinmen County commissioner election.

Wu lost the party primary to Kinmen County Councilor Lee Wuo-shih (李沃士) earlier this year. The KMT nominated Lee in June.

Announcing his bid as an independent, Wu said the KMT’s primary process did not proceed in a fair manner, adding that he would seek to serve Kinmen residents on his own effort.

“I will accept the punishment given according to the KMT regulations, and I will fight a rational and decent battle to seek local voters’ recognition,” Lee said.

Lee’s announcement created another pan-blue split for the KMT in local government elections scheduled for Dec. 5, with the party scrambling to handle splits in Hualien, Taoyuan, Taitung and Hsinchu.

To prevent another split in Taoyuan County, KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and party secretary-general Chan Chun-po (詹春柏) yesterday visited Taoyuan County Council Speaker Tseng Chun-yi (曾忠義) to seek his support for the election.

Tseng was defeated by Wu Poh-hsiung’s son, KMT Legislator John Wu (吳志揚), in the party primary.

Tseng declined to confirm whether he would give up his bid and said he would make a decision in a few days.

As for the Yunlin County commissioner election, Chan said the party would hold a poll among four hopefuls and present the result to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). Ma, who is taking over the party chairmanship on Oct. 17, will finalize the candidate before the deadline for candidate registration on Friday, Wu Poh-hsiung said.

In Taitung County, the KMT nominated Legislator Justin Huang (黃健庭) in a primary in May, but Taitung County Commissioner Kuang Li-cheng (鄺麗貞) said she would not be discouraged from running for re-election.

In Hsinchu County, Council Speaker Chang Bi-ching (張碧琴) has announced plans to run for the commissionership although the party has nominated KMT Legislator Chiu Ching-chun (邱鏡淳).

In Hualien County, Hualien County Deputy Commissioner Chang Chi-ming (張志明) withdrew from the party to run in the election as an independent against the party’s nominee Tu Li-hua (杜麗華).

Chan said he would soon visit Hualien County Commissioner Hsieh Shen-shan (謝深山), who is reportedly supporting Chang Chi-ming, to seek party integration in the county.

China to ‘rule the world,’ British author says
　

Published earlier this year, British author Martin Jacques’ book ‘When China Rules the World’ argues that the global environment is being reconfigured as a result of the re-emergence of China, a ‘civilization state’ with such a long and complex history that Western concepts of modernity cannot fully account for its significance. Jacques sat down with ‘Taipei Times’ staff reporter J. Michael Cole on Tuesday to discuss this development

Sunday, Oct 04, 2009, Page 3
　

Taipei Times (TT): When China Rules the World — that’s a very strong title. Will China, indeed, rule the world?

Martin Jacques: No. The title shouldn’t be taken literally. The theme of the book essentially is the rise of China to a point where it becomes the dominant global power and what that will be like, how it will exercise its hegemony and how that will differ from the Western era, particularly the American era. You need a catchy title that’s provocative and makes you think.

TT: Some critics say that your portrayal of modern China is overly positive. Perhaps most notably is Ian Buruma’s review of your book in the Sunday Times, where he argues that your views on China are based on “received opinions” — those of the Chinese elite and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — especially on topics like the ­Tiananmen Square Massacre and the desire for political change. You write, for example, that few Chinese actually desire democracy and that in fact there has been a turn away from democracy since ­Tiananmen Square.

Jacques: Writers like Buruma and others see Tiananmen Square as a defining moment — and many did, it was almost a Western consensus in 1989. [For them] the meaning of Tiananmen Square was almost the same, more or less, as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many even talked about the breakup of China. It seems to me that the people who argue this need to be honest with themselves, in the sense that that didn’t happen and therefore that for some reason they got it fundamentally wrong.

Does anyone feel comfortable about what happened at Tiananmen Square? Of course not, this was a terrible thing to happen, but we have to try to understand what it was all about. It is a simplistic notion that it was a great uprising for democracy and a great challenge to the CCP. Obviously there were elements of this, but you can’t easily fit it into history if you look at everything that’s happened since. Part of its significance is that it was 11 years into the reform period, the new market system was beginning to take root, new divisions were appearing between rich and poor and there was a reaction among the elite — students, intellectuals and so on. This is where it was concentrated the most. There was a concern among intellectuals about a turn away from politics and culture toward economics and a preoccupation with growth. I don’t think it represented any profound turning against the CPP among the people generally.

The reason revolutions work is because even though only a minority takes the action, it symbolically represents the people and then the people resist and it becomes a much wider conflagration within society. Clearly that didn’t happen with Tiananmen Square. I think its significance has been greatly exaggerated. There is a lot of conventional wisdom I disagree with, lots of cliche’s that Westerners feel happy with. The great problem is reading Chinese society through the prism of the West. That is the great weakness of Western writing and reactions and predictions about China. People want to fit China into a Western template. This is wrong, this is Western hubris.

TT: You also argue that Hong Kong has changed very little since retrocession in 1997. Some Hong Kong democracy activists, however, people like Albert Ho (何俊仁), would counter that a string of political reforms since 1997 shows the failure of the “one country, two systems” or, as you put it, “one civilization, many systems.”

Jacques: Again, from a Western angle, we didn’t really understand what was happening or how to perceive this constitutional proposal. The West — and certainly Britain, the [outgoing] colonial power — thought it was just a public relations exercise. They thought it was just some device thought up by the Chinese to reassure. The reaction was ‘can we really believe them,’ with a very strong dose of skepticism. I think it’s absolutely clear the Chinese meant it. They were loyal to what was agreed and gave Hong Kong a great deal of latitude. In that sense, the striking thing about Hong Kong is how little it has changed. There are things that have changed, but they are things that really have to do with economic integration with the mainland.

As a vast and diverse “civilization state,” China thinks in terms of different systemic solutions because you can’t run the place like a nation-state. The provinces are very different — there is huge variety in China. There is a view that China is a profoundly centralized country; in a sense it is, but it is also extremely decentralized. You can’t run a continent from Beijing. In that sense, we can’t criticize Beijing, because it runs Hong Kong as a “civilization state” would run it. We failed to understand that in 1997.

I said to [former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten] at the time: ‘Don’t you think it’s hypocritical that you start talking about democracy just as you’re handing it over, but since the Opium Wars, nothing was further from our minds?’”

TT: As China makes its global presence known and invests in media abroad, what impact will this have on freedom of expression globally?

Jacques: The effectiveness of what you say depends on how you communicate it. If it’s very stilted, it will fall on largely deaf ears. Typical Chinese government spokesman talk won’t be very effective, but I think that when they get the hang of it — something the Soviets never did — the Chinese will develop quite a powerful model. After all, Al-Jazeera is not funded by a democracy; it’s quite a good channel. Why shouldn’t the Chinese do the same? Over time, what you’ll get is competing world views and the Chinese view will be increasingly important, especially in the developing world, with which China has much in common.

TT: Throughout your book, you refer to Taiwan as a country, yet all the maps show Taipei as a provincial capital. Was there any disagreement between you and your publisher on this?

Jacques: We drew the maps ­according to what would be ­acceptable in China.

TT: Acceptable in China?

Jacques: Yes.

TT: Because of the size of the market?

Jacques: I’m very keen that the book gets an audience in China. An interesting question is who did I write the book for? The Burumas of this world have no doubt at all that everything is Western, that the template is Western. I suppose I was writing my book with a Western audience in mind, but because I know the other audience as well and am really interested in them and care about how they think and react, I also wrote the book for a range of audiences in this region. I wanted to be taken seriously by them. Will they think it’s just another typical Western book about them? Will a Chinese person ask if I actually “get” China, or if I’ve really tried to understand what China is? I think most Western writers about China don’t really understand it. To do this book, I had to question my own identity as a Westerner and my personal experiences changed me in a fundamental way. Many writers never question their own Western hubris.

　

The rich, not the poor, are burning the planet
　

Paternalism lies behind the notion that climate change is caused by a growth in population

By George Monbiot
THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Sunday, Oct 04, 2009, Page 9
　

ILLUSTRATION: LANCE
　

It’s no coincidence that most of those who are obsessed with population growth are post-reproductive wealthy white men: It’s about the only environmental issue for which they can’t be blamed.

The brilliant Earth systems scientist James Lovelock, for instance, said in August that “those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational.”

But it’s Lovelock who is being ignorant and irrational.

A paper published on Monday in the journal Environment and Urbanization shows that the places where population has been growing fastest are those in which carbon dioxide has been growing most slowly, and vice versa. Between 1980 and 2005, for instance, sub-Saharan Africa produced 18.5 percent of the world’s population growth and just 2.4 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide. North America turned out only 4 percent of the extra people, but 14 percent of the extra emissions. Sixty-three percent of the world’s population growth happened in places with very low emissions.

Even this does not capture it. The paper points out that about one-sixth of the world’s population is so poor that it produces no significant emissions at all. This is also the group whose growth rate is likely to be highest. Households in India earning less than 3,000 rupees (US$63) a month use a fifth of the electricity per head and one-seventh of the transport fuel of households earning 30,000 rupees or more. Street sleepers use almost nothing. Those who live by processing waste — a large part of the urban underclass — often save more greenhouse gases than they produce.

Many of the emissions for which poorer countries are blamed should in fairness belong to the developed nations. Gas flaring by companies exporting oil from Nigeria, for instance, has produced more greenhouse gases than all other sources in sub-Saharan Africa put together. Even deforestation in poor countries is driven mostly by commercial operations delivering timber, meat and animal feed to rich consumers. The rural poor do far less harm.

The paper’s author, David Satterthwaite, points out that the old formula taught to students of development — that total impact equals population times affluence times technology (I = PAT) — is wrong. Total impact should be measured as I = CAT: consumers times affluence times technology. Many of the world’s people use so little that they wouldn’t figure in this equation. They are the ones who have most children.

WEAK CORRELATION

While there’s a weak correlation between global warming and population growth, there’s a strong correlation between global warming and wealth.

I’ve been taking a look at a few super-yachts, as I’ll need somewhere to entertain government ministers in the style to which they are accustomed. First I went through the plans for Royal Falcon Fleet’s RFF135, but when I discovered that it burns only 750 liters of fuel per hour I realized that it wasn’t going to impress Lord Mandelson. I might raise half an eyebrow with the Overmarine Mangusta 105, which sucks up 850 liters per hour. But the raft that’s really caught my eye is made by Wally Yachts in Monaco. The WallyPower 118 (which gives total wallies a sensation of power) consumes 3,400 liters per hour when traveling at 60 knots. That’s nearly a liter per second. Another way of putting it is 31 liters per kilometer.

Of course, to make a real splash I’ll have to shell out on teak and mahogany fittings, carry a few jetskis and a mini-submarine, ferry my guests to the marina by private plane and helicopter, offer them bluefin tuna sushi and beluga caviar and drive the beast so fast that I mash up half the marine life of the Mediterranean. As the owner of one of these yachts I’ll do more damage to the biosphere in 10 minutes than most Africans inflict in a lifetime. Now we’re burning, baby.

Someone I know who hangs out with the very rich tells me that in the banker belt of the lower Thames valley, near London, there are people who heat their outdoor swimming pools to bath temperature, all year round. They like to lie in the pool on winter nights, looking up at the stars. The fuel costs them £3,000 (US$4,800) a month. One hundred thousand people living like these bankers would knacker our life support systems faster than 10 billion people living like the African peasantry. But at least the super wealthy have the good manners not to breed very much, so the rich old men who bang on about human reproduction leave them alone.

GOOD CAUSE

In May the UK’s Sunday Times carried an article headlined “Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation.” It revealed that “some of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly” to decide which good cause they should support.

“A consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat,” the Sunday Times said.

The ultra-rich, in other words, have decided that it’s the very poor who are trashing the planet. You grope for a metaphor, but it’s impossible to satirize.

James Lovelock, like Sir David Attenborough and Jonathan Porritt, is a patron of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT). It is one of dozens of campaigns and charities whose sole purpose is to discourage people from breeding in the name of saving the biosphere. But I haven’t been able to find any campaign whose sole purpose is to address the impacts of the very rich.

The obsessives could argue that the people breeding rapidly today might one day become richer. But as the super wealthy grab an ever greater share and resources begin to run dry, this, for most of the very poor, is a diminishing prospect. There are strong social reasons for helping people to manage their reproduction, but weak environmental reasons — except among wealthier populations.

The Optimum Population Trust glosses over the fact that the world is going through demographic transition: population growth rates are slowing down almost everywhere and the number of people is likely, according to a paper in Nature, to peak this century, probably at about 10 billion. Most of the growth will take place among those who consume almost nothing.

But no one anticipates a consumption transition. People breed less as they become richer, but they don’t consume less — they consume more. As the habits of the super-rich show, there are no limits to human extravagance. Consumption can be expected to rise with economic growth until the biosphere hits the buffers. Anyone who understands this and still considers that population, not consumption, is the big issue is, in Lovelock’s words, “hiding from the truth.” It is the worst kind of paternalism, blaming the poor for the excesses of the rich.

So where are the movements protesting about the stinking rich destroying our living systems? Where is the direct action against super-yachts and private jets? Where’s Class War when you need it?

It’s time we had the guts to name the problem. It’s not sex; it’s money. It’s not the poor; it’s the rich.

By 2050, 25 million more children will go hungry
　

Global warming could worsen malnutrition as food shortages loom in the developing world

By Suzanne Goldenberg
THE GUARDIAN, WASHINGTON
Sunday, Oct 04, 2009, Page 9

“The food price crisis of last year really was a wake-up call to a lot of people that we are going to have 50 percent more people on the surface of the Earth by 2050.”— Gerald Nelson, author of a new International Food Policy Research Institute report

Twenty-five million more children will go hungry by the middle of this century, as climate change leads to food shortages and soaring prices for staples such as rice, wheat, maize and soya beans, a report released on Wednesday said.

If global warming goes unchecked, all regions of the world will be affected, but the most vulnerable — south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa — will be hit hardest by failing crop yields, said the report prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute for the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

The children of 2050 will have fewer calories to eat than those in 2000, the report says, and the effect would be to wipe out decades of progress in reducing child malnutrition.

The grim scenario is the first to gauge the effects of climate change on the world’s food supply by combining climate and agricultural models.

Spikes in grain prices last year led to rioting and unrest across the developing world, from Haiti to Thailand. Leaders at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh last week committed US$2 billion to food security, and the UN is set to hold a summit on food security next month, its second since last year’s riots.

But UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is pressing the World Bank and other institutions to do more. He said the industrialised world needed to step up investment in seed research and to offer more affordable crop insurance to the small farmers in developing countries. Though prices have stabilized, the world’s food system is still in crisis, he said at the weekend.

“Ever more people are denied food because prices are stubbornly high, because purchasing power has fallen due to the economic crisis, or because rains have failed and reserve stocks of grain have been eaten,” he said.

Even without global warming, rising populations meant the world was headed for food shortages and food price rises.

“The food price crisis of last year really was a wake-up call to a lot of people that we are going to have 50 percent more people on the surface of the Earth by 2050,” said Gerald Nelson, the lead author of the report. “Meeting those demands for food coming out of population growth is going to be a huge challenge — even without climate change.”

After several years in which development aid has been diverted away from rural areas, the report called for US$7 billion a year for crop research, and investment in irrigation and rural infrastructure to help farmers adjust to a warming climate.

“Continuing the business-as-usual approach will almost certainly guarantee disastrous consequences,” Nelson said.

The G20 industrialized nations last week began discussing how to invest some US$20 billion pledged for food security earlier this year.

Some regions of the world outlined in the report are already showing signs of vulnerability because of changing rainfall patterns and drought linked to climate change. The British development charity Oxfam on Tuesday launched a US$152 million appeal on behalf of 23 million people hit by a severe drought and spiraling food prices in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda. The charity called it the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa for a decade, and said many people in the region were suffering from malnutrition.

However, southern Asia, which made great advances in agricultural production during the 20th century, was also singled out in the institute report for being particularly at risk of food shortages. Some countries, such as Canada and Russia, will experience longer growing seasons because of climate change, but other factors — such as poor soil — mean that will not necessarily be translated into higher food production.

The report was prepared for negotiators currently trying to reach a global deal to fight climate change at the latest round of UN talks in Bangkok. It used climate models prepared by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia to arrive at estimates of how changes in growing seasons and rainfall patterns would affect farming in the developing world and elsewhere.

Without an ambitious injection of funds and new technology, wheat yields could plunge by more than 30 percent in developing countries, setting off a catastrophic rise in prices. Wheat prices, with unmitigated climate change, could rise by between 170 percent and 194 percent by the middle of this century, the report said.

Rice prices are projected to rise by 121 percent — and almost all of the increase will have to be passed on to the consumer, Nelson said.

The report did not take into account all the expected impacts of climate change — such as the loss of farmland because of rising sea levels, a rise in the number of insects and in plant disease, or changes in glacial melt. All these factors could increase the damage of climate change to agriculture.

Others who have examined the effects of climate change on agriculture have warned of the potential for conflict. In a new book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilising to Save Civilisation, published on Wednesday, Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, warns that sharp declines in world harvests because of climate change could threaten the world order.

“I am convinced that food is indeed the weak link,” he said.

Brown saw Asia as the epicenter of the crisis, with the latest science warning of a sea level rise of up to 6 feet (1.83m) by 2100. With even a 3-feet rise, Bangladesh could lose half of its rice land to rising seas; Vietnam, the world’s second-largest producer of rice, could also see much of the Mekong Delta under water.

Wheat and rice production would also fall because of acute water shortages, caused by past over-pumping and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, which currently store water that supplies the region’s main rivers: the Indus, Ganges, and Yangtse.

“The potential loss of these mountain glaciers in the Himalayas is the most massive projected threat to food security ever seen,” Brown said.