Wednesday, December 30, 2009

‘Hopenhagen’ Suicide Pact

‘Hopenhagen’ failed to live up to the pre-conference hype to safeguard the generations of tomorrow. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the fruit of the 1992 Rio summit that convened in Copenhagen in December 2009, hosted 192 nations, joined by Iraq and Somalia ─ one of the largest gathering of world leaders in history ─ with the misplaced hope that a treaty that will protect future generations will be signed. Instead, what was signed was a weak farcical face-saving global suicide pact in order to avoid a complete embarrassing global political collapse. More empty promises by empty political suits.

A non-binding agreement that does not spell out any global emission targets for 2020 or 2050, or set a deadline for transforming the objectives outlined in the accord into a legally binding treaty. All the signatories agreed to was to “take note” of the agreement. “Take note?” They must be kidding. If not, if that is the best they can come up with, it is nothing short of a complete collapse of global political will and leadership that humanity can ill afford.

The lack of sincerity, political grand standing by irresponsible delegates walking out of chaotic meetings and accusatory inflammatory rhetoric, confirmed yet again the U.N.’s incompetence and irrelevance in the new world order. The lack of basic common sense of what must be done today in the scorching glaring face of the apocalyptic fate the world faces because of climate change is beyond comprehension.

China likened rich countries refusal to help poor ones pay for the transition to cleaner economies, with “short-term financial aid” leading to the gradual establishment of “long-term support mechanism,” to people eating at a fancy restaurant who are joined for dessert by a poor friend and then demand he pay a share of the cost of the entire meal.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the world’s only legally binding emissions-curbing treaty, which America did not sign, required rich nations’ emissions to be cut by around five percent from 1990 levels by 2008, but not surprisingly, failed to achieve.

More political hot air was emitted by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who after his dismal performance in Copenhagen, dared promise that a legally binding treaty on climate change will be reached in 2010. Not if the U.N. is running the show again.

The U.N. must be taken out of the climate change equation if a treaty that replaces Kyoto is to be signed in 2012. A new environmental organization with political clout and effectiveness headed up by the U.S. and China, together with a manageable group of representatives from the various environmental constituencies represented is long overdue. No more global summits that create more carbon emissions than they reduce.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

America’s China Option In Afghanistan

China shares a 76-kilometer border with Afghanistan and is doing a lot of business there without committing any boots on the ground.

Without China, Afghanistan will become America’s worst military quagmire ─ making Vietnam and Somalia look like a traditional U.S. family picnic in a local park.

China and America have agreed to cooperate on ensuring that neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan is used as a terrorist base. Because of China’s long border with Afghanistan, it fears Islamic extremism is bleeding into its Western frontier which has been racked by unrest.

Beijing is also discussing intelligence cooperation with the U.S. of the sort that took place in the ’80s, when America, China and Pakistan worked together to boot the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

The original goal of America when it launched “operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan in 2001, was to capture Osama-bin-Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders and bring them to justice after the attacks of 9/11. Meanwhile, they have moved to the Pakistan side of an un-patrolled border.

While America is squandering billions on the war in Iraq, after its fleeting shortsighted victory of routing the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2002, the Taliban has returned with a vengeance, and now has a presence in 80 percent of the country. Of the 42-nation International Security Assistance Force, 56 percent want their troops back home ─ and that includes America. After eight years, more than 1,500 ISAF soldiers have died. Meanwhile, China Metallurgical Group paid $3 billion in 2008 to prospect for copper deposits worth some $88 billion in Afghanistan’s Logar province. So who is really winning and why isn’t America engaging China?

With al-Qaeda leaders urging Uygurs to launch a holy war against oppressive China is there any doubt in any political realist in America, regardless of party affiliation, that this is America’s best Afghanistan option?

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Party Split

The Internet is fueling the rumor mill about the division within the Communist Party that threatens to rupture the party. China’s one-party Communist system is gradually splintering into two-party factions ─ that look to become two parties ─ within the Party. The Shanghai faction of elitists, including the princeling children of high-ranking officials, favor an increase in coastal development and place a far greater emphasis on economic growth and free trade, is headed by former President Jiang Zemin. It is lined up against the populist nationalistic faction headed up by President Hu Jintao, who favor improving China’s social safety net, introducing greener policies, and balancing development between the wealthy east coast and the poor western hinterlands.

The two factions are divided by geography and by real economic and political issues. The Shanghai faction favor market and trade liberalization and pursuing China’s export-driven economic model which tends to favor the cities and its big factories at the expense of the rural areas. The populist faction is more nationalistic and if it consolidates its power, it could auger a more prickly economic relationship with the U.S.

To avoid the appearance of a party split, the party declared at a 2009 Central Committee plenum, “intraparty democracy” is the party’s “lifeblood.”

The split between the elitists and populists has resulted in brutal criticisms being leveled against each other and party officials being arrested and jailed for corruption. In 2006, Shanghai’s party secretary became the first Politburo member in years to be purged and imprisoned for corruption. His arrest helped Hu Jintao consolidate populist influence.

The Chongqing Party Secretary, a princeling identified with the elitist bloc, declared war on the deeply entrenched Chinese crime syndicates in Chongqing in 2009. He arrested more than 2,000 people, including the city’s former deputy police chief, three billionaires, 50 government officials, six district police heads, two senior judges, and more than 20 triad bosses. One of those bosses is a local parliamentarian.

Both factions recognize that their differences have to be contained and compromised for the Communist Party to remain in power. Both sides are mindful it was the open confrontation between conservatives and liberals in 1989 that led to the Tiananmen demonstrations and bloodshed. Neither faction wants to risk an open rupture in the Internet age. They are keenly aware of how People Power can be galvanized by mobile internet technology and social networking sites. The People Power movements in nearby Philippines, Thailand, Japan and South Korea that brought about political change at the top is not an option.

There is increasing reflection and criticism in China today that the price of China’s progress and economic success has been inequity ─ especially towards the peasants and workers ─ and entrenched corruption.

Reform within the party system and aggressive crackdown on corruption are preferable to revolution. That is the only way the Communist Party can remain in power.

Friday, December 04, 2009

Hot Danish

It doesn’t look like a climate change agreement will be reached in Copenhagen next week. All the more reason the U.S. and China have to work together to save the world from the looming climate crisis that knows no borders. Science dictates action now. Political rhetoric of future mid-century intentions is not good enough or acceptable to prevent a global warming apocalypse.

America’s will to cut carbon emissions by only 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, when compared to the European Union’s 20 percent, Japan’s 25 percent and China’s 40 to 45 percent, is shortsighted and shameful.

Just cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not good enough either. China and the U.S. have to lead the world and get it to place a greater focus on the reduction of deforestation and on research for new clean technologies.

Reducing deforestation is the cheapest way to mitigate climate change in the short term. If we stop cutting and burning tropical forests in Brazil and Indonesia we can eliminate 17 percent of all global emissions. But to do so requires putting in place a whole new system of economic development that makes it more profitable for the poorer, forest rich countries to preserve and manage their trees than chop them down to make furniture and toys. Without a new system for economic development in the timber-rich tropics, the rain forests are doomed.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio da Silva wants “gringos” to pay Amazon nations to prevent deforestation as a price for their environmental sins of the past.

Laser Inertial Fusion Energy, or LIFE, is a new clean cutting edge technology worth pursuing. It is a controlled nuclear fusion ─ fusing nuclei rather than splitting a nucleus, as happens in existing nuclear-fission power plants ─ can produce an endless supply of safe, clean energy. In a fission reaction, the nucleus of a uranium atom is split into two small atoms, releasing energy in the form of heat. The heat is used to make steam, which drives a turbine and generates electricity. In fusion energy, the second half of this process, that is heat makes steam makes electricity, remains the same. But instead of splitting the nucleus of an atom, you’re trying to force a deuterium nucleus to merge, or fuse, with a tritium nucleus. When that happens, helium is produced that throws off energy.

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have been given $3.5 billion of taxpayer money to develop this new fusion technology in a commercially viable way. It involves a small pellet that contains a few milligrams of deuterium and tritium, isotopes of hydrogen that can be extracted from water that is blasted with a powerful laser that creates a reaction like the one that takes place at the center of the sun. Harness that reaction, and you’ve created a star on earth, and with the heat from that star you can generate electricity without creating any pollution. It is real solar power that can replace nuclear, coal and oil power plants.

LIFE would produce energy with no carbon emissions, from a fuel that is cheap and abundant. Ten gallons of water could produce as much energy as a supertanker of oil.

Scientists believe utility companies could be building prototype “LIFE engines” by 2020, and have commercial plants up and running by 2030

China is also pursuing nuclear fusion energy. Why don't China and the U.S. develop fusion technology together? Fusion energy is a potential solution to a looming crisis.

China, the front runner in the fight to address climate change, is prepared to lead the climate change charge alone or with the other BRIC countries. It certainly has the money to do so. If it does, it will literally leave the U.S. in its dust.
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