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
Having lived through former British prime minister Boris Johnson’s tumultuous and scandal-ridden administration, the last place I had expected to come face-to-face with “Mr Brexit” was in a hotel ballroom in Taipei. Should I have been so surprised? Over the past few years, Taiwan has unfortunately become the destination of choice for washed-up Western politicians to turn up long after their political careers have ended, making grandiose speeches in exchange for extraordinarily large paychecks far exceeding the annual salary of all but the wealthiest of Taiwan’s business tycoons. Taiwan’s pursuit of bygone politicians with little to no influence in their home
In a recent essay, “How Taiwan Lost Trump,” a former adviser to US President Donald Trump, Christian Whiton, accuses Taiwan of diplomatic incompetence — claiming Taipei failed to reach out to Trump, botched trade negotiations and mishandled its defense posture. Whiton’s narrative overlooks a fundamental truth: Taiwan was never in a position to “win” Trump’s favor in the first place. The playing field was asymmetrical from the outset, dominated by a transactional US president on one side and the looming threat of Chinese coercion on the other. From the outset of his second term, which began in January, Trump reaffirmed his
Despite calls to the contrary from their respective powerful neighbors, Taiwan and Somaliland continue to expand their relationship, endowing it with important new prospects. Fitting into this bigger picture is the historic Coast Guard Cooperation Agreement signed last month. The common goal is to move the already strong bilateral relationship toward operational cooperation, with significant and tangible mutual benefits to be observed. Essentially, the new agreement commits the parties to a course of conduct that is expressed in three fundamental activities: cooperation, intelligence sharing and technology transfer. This reflects the desire — shared by both nations — to achieve strategic results within
It is difficult not to agree with a few points stated by Christian Whiton in his article, “How Taiwan Lost Trump,” and yet the main idea is flawed. I am a Polish journalist who considers Taiwan her second home. I am conservative, and I might disagree with some social changes being promoted in Taiwan right now, especially the push for progressiveness backed by leftists from the West — we need to clean up our mess before blaming the Taiwanese. However, I would never think that those issues should dominate the West’s judgement of Taiwan’s geopolitical importance. The question is not whether
RSS