Leaders from the world’s most powerful countries met in London this week to address the global economic meltdown. Much like solving the financial crisis, business and political leaders must unite to reverse the rapid extinction of the planet’s biodiversity. That’s the point botanist and conservationist Peter H. Raven made at a symposium in Washington earlier this year and it’s also the topic he will address today in a lecture titled Are We Saving Them or Ourselves? Global Action on the Rescue of Endangered Biodiversity. The talk will be held at the National Central Library as part of the Lung Ying-tai Cultural Foundation’s (龍應台文化基金會) MediaTek lectures and will be conducted in English with simultaneous interpretation in Mandarin.
“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. We can’t … rebuild the economy and then hope to turn to environmental problems later,” Raven said.
Raven, who has visited Taiwan on several occasions and has worked with the Academia Sinica’s Biodiversity Research Center, says the nation has to protect its flora and fauna.
“Microchips will not sustain the economy of [Taiwan] over the long run, but biodiversity might, and certainly will continue to be an important element,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Hailed by Time magazine as a “Hero for the Planet” for his conservation work, Raven is at the forefront of research on preserving endangered plants and animals. He is president of the Missouri Botanical Garden, was home secretary of the US National Academy of Sciences for 12 years and was recently appointed to the National Geographic Society’s board of trustees. He obtained a doctorate in botany from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1960 and holds honorary degrees from a number of universities around the world.
The lecture will be moderated by Li Chia-wei (李家維), editor-in-chief of the Taiwanese edition of Scientific American (科學人) and professor at National Tsing Hua University.
Taiwan’s overtaking of South Korea in GDP per capita is not a temporary anomaly, but the result of deeper structural problems in the South Korean economy says Chang Young-chul, the former CEO of Korea Asset Management Corp. Chang says that while it reflects Taiwan’s own gains, it also highlights weakening growth momentum in South Korea. As design and foundry capabilities become more important in the AI era, Seoul risks losing competitiveness if it relies too heavily on memory chips. IMF forecasts showing Taiwan widening its lead over South Korea have fueled debate in Seoul over memory chip dependence, industrial policy and
“China wants to unify with Taiwan at the lowest possible cost, and it currently believes that unification will become easier and less costly as time passes,” wrote Amanda Hsiao (蕭嫣然) and Bonnie Glaser in Foreign Affairs (“Why China Waits”) this month, describing how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is playing the long game in its quest to seize Taiwan. This has been a favorite claim of many writers over the years, easy to argue because it is so trite. Very obviously, if the PRC isn’t attacking Taiwan, it is waiting. But for what? Hsiao and Glaser’s main point is trivial,
May 18 to May 24 Gathered on Yangtou Mountain (羊頭山) on Dec. 5, 1972, Taiwan’s hiking enthusiasts formally declared the formation of the “100 Peaks Club” (百岳俱樂部) and unveiled the final list of mountains. Famed mountaineer Lin Wen-an (林文安) led this effort for the Chinese Alpine Association (中華山岳協會). Working with other experienced climbers, he chose 100 peaks above 10,000 feet (3,048m) that featured triangulation points and varied in difficulty and character. The list sparked an alpine hiking craze, inspiring many to take up mountaineering and competing to “conquer” the summits. A common misconception is that the 100 Peaks represent Taiwan’s 100 tallest
And so, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all the experts on the Strait of Hormuz suddenly became experts on US-China-Taiwan relations. The Internet has certainly expanded human knowledge. Lots of these sudden experts made noise this week about Trump’s words after the meeting with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Trump is going to sell out Taiwan! Longtime Taiwan commentator J. Michael Cole summed the situation up neatly in the Guardian: “We need to keep in mind that he has a tendency to say many things — sometimes contradicting himself within
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