Climate affecting typhoons
After reading the Taipei Times’ reports (“Chaos as Philippine schools fail to reopen after flood,” Oct. 6, page 1, and “Low-carbon future is world’s only option,” Oct. 10, page 9), I have great sympathy for those victims’ ordeal.
Here in Taiwan, we are not exempt from similar disasters. Weather chaos looks like a natural catastrophe, but it is my belief that the main cause of climate change is global warming. A global deal on climate change is urgently needed to safeguard the world.
Global warming is an alarming wake-up call for all. Its consequences could be the destruction of our planet, as has been depicted in The Day after Tomorrow. Unfortunately, we have continued burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, which increases greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases cause global warming, resulting in the melting of polar ice caps and rising sea levels. Some countries, such as Bangladesh and the Maldives, could be submerged.
In order to prepare for this crisis, the UN has subscribed to the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to control production of greenhouse gases.
Even though the UN initiated the project to protect the planet, it urgently needs the cooperation of all countries. After all, we have only one Earth, and it’s everybody‘s responsibility to save it.
STEVEN CHANG
Sanchong, Taipei County
Obama deserves prize
While many people were shocked by the news that US President Barack Obama was selected as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, I think that Obama has deserved the prize since the first day of his presidency.
When Obama delivered his inauguration speech, he sent messages of love, hope and peace to the world.
In his other speeches, we learned that he resents people who use violence and respects people who care for the welfare of all mankind. He has called for unity and is reluctant to increase troop levels in Afghanistan.
Obama is the first standing US president to deliver a speech in Cairo, and the first to advocate peace and unity in the Muslim world.
One of the most severe critiques is that the nomination came two weeks after Obama became the US president. I think this issue should be measured against the quality of time spent in office rather than the quantity of time.
It is hard for us to deny that “Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics,” as the Nobel Peace Prize committee said.
MANDY CHOU
Taipei
Reading goes digital
With Amazon’s Kindle e-reader soon to become available in Taiwan, and with many other e-readers coming out soon from various firms, I wonder if in the future the English-speaking world might need a new word to differentiate the kind of reading we do on computer or e-reader screens from the kind of reading we do on paper surfaces.
I have heard a few new terms being bandied about on blogs and the Internet: screen-reading, browsing, skimming, scanning, even “diging” (for digital reading).
Reading is “reading,” of course.
However, we might not be “reading” the new-and-improved newspapers and magazines and “books” of the future. We might be “screening” them. Even the Taipei Times.
CELIA BERTIN
Taipei
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
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