Here is my bet about the future of Sunni, Shiite, Arab, Turkish, Kurdish and Israeli relations: If they do not end their long-running conflicts, Mother Nature is going to destroy them all long before they destroy one another. Let me point out a few news items you might have missed while debating the Iran nuclear deal.
On July 31, USA Today reported that in Bandar Mahshahr, Iran, a city adjacent to the Persian Gulf, the heat index soared to 72.8oC “as a heat wave continued to bake the Middle East, already one of the hottest places on Earth.”
“That was one of the most incredible temperature observations I have ever seen, and it is one of the most extreme readings ever in the world,” AccuWeather meteorologist Anthony Sagliani said in a statement.
Illustration: Yusha
“While the temperature was ‘only’ 115 degrees [46.1oC], the dew point was an unfathomable 90 degrees. The combination of heat and humidity, measured by the dew point, is what makes the heat index — or what the temperature actually feels like outside,” he said.
Then we saw something we have not seen before: An Iraqi government was sacked over its failure to deliver air conditioning. Two weeks ago, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi abolished all three vice presidential posts and the office of deputy prime minister and proposed sweeping anti-corruption reforms after weeks of street protests over the fact that the government could supply electricity for air-conditioning for only a few hours a day during weeks of 48.9°C temperatures.
As the New York Times’ Anne Barnard reported on Aug. 1, the heat issue in Iraq “has even eclipsed war with the Islamic State. The prime minister... declared a four-day weekend to keep people out of the sun... and ordered an end to one of the most coveted perks of government officials: round-the-clock power for their air-conditioners.
“Several thousand people — workers, artists and intellectuals — demonstrated on Friday evening in the center of Baghdad, chanting and carrying signs about the lack of electricity and blaming corruption for it. Some men stripped to their shorts and lay down in the street to sleep, a strong statement in a modest society. The protest was unusual in that it did not appear to have been called for by any major political party,” she said.
On Feb. 19 last year, The Associated Press reported from Iran: “The first Cabinet decision made under Iran’s new Prime Minister Hassan Rouhani, wasn’t about how to resolve his country’s nuclear dispute with world powers. It was about how to keep the nation’s largest lake from disappearing. Lake Oroumieh, one of the biggest saltwater lakes on Earth, has shrunk more than 80 percent to (nearly 400 square miles [1,036km2]) in the past decade, mainly because of climate change, expanded irrigation for surrounding farms and the damming of rivers that feed the body of water, experts said.
“‘The lake is gone. My job is gone. My children are gone. Tourists, too,’” said Mozafar Cheraghi, 58, as he stood on a dusty platform that was once his bustling teahouse.”
Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell run the indispensable Center for Climate and Security in Washington that tracks these trends.
They said that South Asia expert Michael Kugelman recently observed “that in Pakistan more people have died from the heat wave than from terrorism this year. We would emphasize that there shouldn’t be a competition between ‘terrorism’ and ‘climate stress,’ but that the resources spent on the former vastly outstrip the latter.”
“A 2011 study from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] found strong evidence that winter precipitation decline in the Mediterranean littoral and the Middle East from 1971 to 2010 was likely due to climate change, with the region experiencing nearly all of its driest winters since 1902 in the past 20 years,” they said.
“The social contract between governments and their people is being stressed by these extreme events, and that matters are only likely to get worse, given climate projections for many of these places. Governments that are responsive to their public in the face of these stresses are likely to strengthen the social contract, while those who are unresponsive are likely to weaken it. And for the most part, we’re seeing inadequate responses,” they said.
Indeed, see Syria: Its revolution was preceded by the worst four-year drought in the country’s modern history, driving nearly 1 million farmers and herders off the land, into the cities where Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s administration completely failed to help them, fueling the revolution.
All the people in this region are playing with fire. While they are fighting over who is caliph, who is the rightful heir to the Prophet Mohammed from the seventh century — Sunnis or Shiites — and to whom God really gave the holy land, Mother Nature is not sitting idle. She does not do politics — only physics, biology and chemistry. If they add up the wrong way, she will take them all down.
The only “ism” that is likely to save them is not Shiism or Islamism but “environmentalism” — understanding that there is no Shiite air or Sunni water, there is just “the commons,” their shared ecosystems and unless they cooperate to manage and preserve them — and we all address climate change — vast eco-devastation awaits them all.
In an article published in Newsweek on Monday last week, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged China to retake territories it lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. “If it is really for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t China take back Russia?” Lai asked, referring to territories lost in 1858 and 1860. The territories once made up the two flanks of northern Manchuria. Once ceded to Russia, they became part of the Russian far east. Claims since then have been made that China and Russia settled the disputes in the 1990s through the 2000s and that “China
China has successfully held its Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, with 53 of 55 countries from the African Union (AU) participating. The two countries that did not participate were Eswatini and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which have no diplomatic relations with China. Twenty-four leaders were reported to have participated. Despite African countries complaining about summit fatigue, with recent summits held with Russia, Italy, South Korea, the US and Indonesia, as well as Japan next month, they still turned up in large numbers in Beijing. China’s ability to attract most of the African leaders to a summit demonstrates that it is still being
Trips to the Kenting Peninsula in Pingtung County have dredged up a lot of public debate and furor, with many complaints about how expensive and unreasonable lodging is. Some people even call it a tourist “butchering ground.” Many local business owners stake claims to beach areas by setting up parasols and driving away people who do not rent them. The managing authority for the area — Kenting National Park — has long ignored the issue. Ultimately, this has affected the willingness of domestic travelers to go there, causing tourist numbers to plummet. In 2008, Taiwan opened the door to Chinese tourists and in
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Thursday was handcuffed and escorted by police to the Taipei Detention Center, after the Taipei District Court ordered that he be detained and held incommunicado for suspected corruption during his tenure as Taipei mayor. The ruling reversed an earlier decision by the same court on Monday last week that ordered Ko’s release without bail. That decision was appealed by prosecutors on Wednesday, leading the High Court to conclude that Ko had been “actively involved” in the alleged corruption and it ordered the district court to hold a second detention hearing. Video clips
RSS