Governments, local and national, must work with private sector Read more
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climate change
Xi and Obama: the shifting relationship between two powers
China's President Xi Jinping (left) and US President Barack Obama at the White House in September © Getty Images
President Xi Jinping’s visit to the US in late September was risky, coming at a time when China’s economy was seemingly in trouble. Would he be on the defensive and appear weak since market perceptions of China have turned more negative in recent months? Yet the economic realities are less alarming and Beijing has the potential to put its economy on a more sustainable growth path if it so chooses.
Mr Xi’s visit was a meeting between two powers, each with its own strengths and insecurities. China is now the largest economy in the world in terms of purchasing power parity. Thus it is not surprising Gallup polls showed that in 2014, 52 per cent of the American public believed that China was the world’s leading economic power, and with this perception comes many overhyped fears. When the Chinese were asked the same question, they responded that America was the world’s leading economic power. And the Chinese are right. A country’s economic might is determined not solely by the size of its economy but also by its per capita income level, which determines its capacity to deal with issues such as foreign policy and security. By that measure, China now ranks about 80th globally and is the first developing country to become a great power. This explains its insecurity and reluctance to assume the responsibilities expected of a great power. Read more
The US Senate finally admitted climate change is real. Now they need to act
© Mark Wilson/Getty Images
For some time, the US debate over climate change has been dominated by the question of whether it is happening at all, and only secondarily on its cause — whether it is man-made, or caused by some geophysical process we do not yet understand.
So-called climate change denialists believe there is no climate change; that it is some invention of liberal scientists to advance an agenda of state control of the economy. Although an overwhelming majority of scientists have repeatedly stated their belief that climate change is a real phenomenon, a small minority, often funded by the fossil fuel industry, have succeeded in muddying the waters sufficiently to prevent significant government action.
But on January 21, there was a breakthrough of sorts. The US Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution saying, “It is the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax.”
While this sounds like progress, some US Democrats believe they were tricked into agreeing to a statement that means nothing. Why else, they say, would such a well-known global warming denialist as Sen James Inhofe of Oklahoma (author of The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future) support it? By gutting an accompanying resolution that would have indicted climate change as man-made, Republicans prevented any action to curtail it, Democrats believe. Read more
Smog in Harbin, northeast China © Getty Images
When the leaders of the world’s biggest economies gather this weekend at the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, they must recognise the real scale of subsidies for fossil fuels and accelerate their eradication.
In 2009, G20 leaders agreed to “phase out and rationalize over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies while providing targeted support for the poorest”. They acknowledged that “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change”.
While that commitment has been restated at many summits since, action to implement it has been unacceptably slow. Read more