Ten years ago, the world was worried that China would not be able to feed itself in the new millenium.
Now that the growing giant has defied all predictions and China can largely feed itself, there are new headaches.
Two of Washington's leading environmental think tanks warned recently that the economic boom in the emerging industrial giants of China and India could present one of the world's gravest threats yet to the environment.
The two countries together have 2.5 billion people, or nearly 40 percent of the world's population of 6.5 billion.
China now eats up just under one-third of the world's rice, over one-quarter of the world's steel and nearly half of its cement, the Worldwatch Institute says in its "2006 State of the World" report released on Wednesday.
The Earth simply cannot supply these countries' rising demands for energy, food, and raw materials, which are already having "ripple effects worldwide," Worldwatch president Christopher Flavin said.
Lester Brown, author of the 1995 book Who will feed China?, president of the Earth Policy Institute and founder of World-watch, agrees.
"Though [China] doesn't admit it yet, the US model won't work for China. And if it does not work for China, it will not work for India," Brown said at the release of his new book, Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.
The use of oil has doubled in India since 1992, while China went from near self-sufficiency in the mid-1990s to becoming the world's second largest importer in 2004, the Worldwatch report says.
Prices worldwide have soared as India and China scooped up shares in oil companies around the world.
Some critics might find the worries of these US environmentalists hypocritical, since the US is still the greatest burner of oil, using 25 percent of global annual supplies and producing 25 percent of carbon emissions.
The US also has the largest ecological footprint. The average US citizen requires about 9.7 hectares to provide consumable resources and space for waste, an amount that is 205 percent of what the country can provide within its borders.
That figure is only 1.6 hectares for the average Chinese person, or 201 per cent of the country's capacity, and 0.8 hectares for the average Indian, or 210 per cent of the country's capacity.
On the positive side, Worldwatch pointed out that both India and China have ambitious programs to use renewable energies.
China's congress passed an "ambitious" renewable energy law that comes into force this month. The country has been a pioneer in the use of small wind turbines, hydro-generators and biogas plants, the institute said.
India now has the world's fourth largest wind power industry and aims to raise its share of renewable energies to 20 to 25 percent of power generation, according to Worldwatch.
Still, Siva Yam, president of the US-China Chamber of Commerce in Chicago, sees one major hindrance for sustainable development in Asia.
"The world is getting smaller and it's a very competitive market," Yam said. "Paying more attention to the environment would disadvantage China against its competitors, for example India."
"China already has extensive laws protecting the environment, the problem lies in enforcing regulations. Local authorities just don't enforce them," he added.
The World Wildlife Fund's director for climate change, Hans Verolme, however supports the view that China is on the right track.
"Both nations are signatories of the Kyoto Protocol, but as developing nations they are exempted from cutting their emissions. However, China has already taken voluntary measures which have had a very positive impact," Verholme said.
Referring to last year's gathering on global warming in Canada, Verholme said: "What we saw in Montreal now was that while China came forward with measures it has taken to improve environmental sustainability, the US did not."
The White House’s decision to take a 9.9 percent stake in Intel Corp is looking like very shrewd business indeed. Since the government bought in at US$20.47 a share last August, the US chipmaker’s surging stock price has delivered the US a US$43 billion return. One of the reasons the investment has so far proved so sound is that the White House has made sure of it. According to The Wall Street Journal, Howard personally pushed deals on Intel’s behalf with some of the most lucrative clients imaginable. They include Nvidia Corp, the company at the heart of the AI
A single photograph can cut through a lot of noise, but it can also be used to misrepresent the truth. At the very least, it can concentrate the mind on something that requires further investigation. On Monday last week, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation CEO Tai Hsia-ling (戴遐齡) and former National Security Council secretary-general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) held a news conference in which they showed a photograph of former foundation CEO Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑), now Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) deputy chairman. In the image Hsiao is seated next to Xiamen Taiwan Businessmen Association chairman Han Ying-huan (韓螢煥). The two men were holding
I first met Professor Ray Jiing (井迎瑞) as a film and documentary student at Shih Hsin University’s (SHU) Department of Radio Television and Film in 1988. The following year, he went on to become the director of the Chinese Taipei Film Archive — forerunner of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI). Over his eight-year tenure, Jiing rescued and restored over 200 classic Taiwanese films. In 1997, he established the Graduate Institute of Studies in Documentary and Film Archiving at Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA), and I joined the program in his third cohort of students. Beyond a
President William Lai Ching-te’s (賴清德) May 20 second-anniversary address was not just a routine policy review; it was damage control. US President Donald Trump’s remarks — that he did not want to see anyone move toward independence and that the delivery of a major Taiwan arms package could depend on the progress of US-China relations — unsettled Taiwan’s public and created an opening for opposition parties to question whether Taiwan was being treated as a bargaining chip in Washington’s dealings with Beijing. Lai’s speech was designed to close that opening. The address covered the expected ground: sovereignty, cross-strait relations, defense spending,
RSS