Sustainable growth and improvements in technology are the key ingredients for limiting the impact of climate change, while developed nations need to get serious about reducing emissions, Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling said in Taoyuan yesterday.
"We should not attempt to urge developing countries to sacrifice development significantly in the interest of holding down greenhouse emissions," Schelling said in a speech on global warming and climate change delivered at the National Central University.
Schelling shared last year's Nobel Prize in Economics with Robert Aumann for his work utilizing game-theory to understand conflict and cooperation.
"Developed countries like my country and yours probably should devote the next decade to not only taking this problem seriously, but demonstrating to countries like China that we are taking this seriously," he said.
Only then, he said, can developed nations ask the developing world to "climb on board."
"We have to recognize that the main adverse impact of climate change will be on poorly-developed countries dependent on agriculture and susceptible to diseases that may increase in extent and virulence due to climate change," he said. "Fifty years ago malaria was a severe problem in Taiwan, it is not any longer. The best defense for China, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Guatamala ... is their development."
However, when it comes to Taiwan's prospects in the event of serious global warming, Shaw Daigee (簫代基) of the Chung-hua Institute for Economic Research is not optimistic.
Taiwan is "somewhere between developed and undeveloped," Shaw said yesterday, adding that a sure guide for how much impact global warming is going to have on a country is its climate.
"The more tropical it is, the harder the country is going to get hit," he said at the conference.
Shaw cited rising sea levels as a cause for alarm.
In his speech to a packed conference room of mostly students, Schelling told the crowd that global warming is a problem that is not going to go away.
"I think by the time you are middle-aged you will still be wondering what we are going to do to cope with climate change. By the time you are my age ... it will still be a question," said Schelling, who has worked on global warming related issues for 25 years.
"It took the United States at least a couple of decades to think straight about nuclear policy, and we are just beginning to learn how to think about terrorism," he said, labeling global warming "a new subject."
As for how nations are going to work together, Schelling does not favor the Kyoto protocol approach: "I am very skeptical that we are ever going to have any kind of treaty with enforced quotas."
Instead, he advocates an approach modeled on the Marshall Plan or NATO. He also stressedd the need for countries to spend more on research and development.
BACK IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: The planned transit by the ‘Baden-Wuerttemberg’ and the ‘Frankfurt am Main’ would be the German Navy’s first passage since 2002 Two German warships are set to pass through the Taiwan Strait in the middle of this month, becoming the first German naval vessels to do so in 22 years, Der Spiegel reported on Saturday. Reuters last month reported that the warships, the frigate Baden-Wuerttemberg and the replenishment ship Frankfurt am Main, were awaiting orders from Berlin to sail the Strait, prompting a rebuke to Germany from Beijing. Der Spiegel cited unspecified sources as saying Beijing would not be formally notified of the German ships’ passage to emphasize that Berlin views the trip as normal. The German Federal Ministry of Defense declined to comment. While
‘UPHOLDING PEACE’: Taiwan’s foreign minister thanked the US Congress for using a ‘creative and effective way’ to deter Chinese military aggression toward the nation The US House of Representatives on Monday passed the Taiwan Conflict Deterrence Act, aimed at deterring Chinese aggression toward Taiwan by threatening to publish information about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials’ “illicit” financial assets if Beijing were to attack. The act would also “restrict financial services for certain immediate family of such officials,” the text of the legislation says. The bill was introduced in January last year by US representatives French Hill and Brad Sherman. After remarks from several members, it passed unanimously. “If China chooses to attack the free people of Taiwan, [the bill] requires the Treasury secretary to publish the illicit
A senior US military official yesterday warned his Chinese counterpart against Beijing’s “dangerous” moves in the South China Sea during the first talks of their kind between the commanders. Washington and Beijing remain at odds on issues from trade to the status of Taiwan and China’s increasingly assertive approach in disputed maritime regions, but they have sought to re-establish regular military-to-military talks in a bid to prevent flashpoint disputes from spinning out of control. Samuel Paparo, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, and Wu Yanan (吳亞男), head of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command, talked via videoconference. Paparo “underscored the importance
CHINA POLICY: At the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China, the two sides issued strong support for Taiwan and condemned China’s actions in the South China Sea The US and EU issued a joint statement on Wednesday supporting Taiwan’s international participation, notably omitting the “one China” policy in a departure from previous similar statements, following high-level talks on China and the Indo-Pacific region. The statement also urged China to show restraint in the Taiwan Strait. US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and European External Action Service Secretary-General Stefano Sannino cochaired the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China and the sixth US-EU Indo-Pacific Consultations from Monday to Tuesday. Since the Indo-Pacific consultations were launched in 2021, references to the “one China” policy have appeared in every statement apart from the
RSS