Archive for the ‘Energy & Environment’ Category

Has the government of Prime Minister Erdogan finally succumbed to the authoritarian impulses that doomed so many other Turkish leaders before him?

As I write these words in my Ankara hotel in the early morning hours, I can still hear the distant voices of massed demonstrators chanting slogans a few blocks from the presidential palace and the prime minister’s residence. Thousands of people are continuing to protest the government and its deeply undemocratic actions. The TV is showing images of the brutal police attack against peaceful demonstrators that took place earlier today in Istanbul’s Taksim Square.

The clashes in Istanbul go on as I write: Emergency rooms in the hospitals near Taksim are struggling to cope with the hundreds of people injured by the police. Earlier today in Ankara, where the protests have so far remained largely peaceful, I’ve watched protestors linking arms to form human chains blocking the streets. What struck me the most was the reaction from ordinary people. Rather than protesting the snarled traffic caused by the demonstrators, Ankarans passing by in their cars supported the protestors by honking and waving victory signs from their windows.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been taking some of my students from the United States on a trip around Turkey. The aim of our trip has been to explore the pros and cons of the country’s development experience. We started with the early days of the republic (overshadowed by the war for independence, ethnic cleansing, authoritarianism, forced cultural modernization, and economic failures) and have worked our way up to the challenges that shape the country today (democratization, the Kurdish conflict, the rise of the current Islamist government, and the tensions between secular Kemalism and religious politics). I’ve done my best to help my students see the forty shades of blue separating the empty half of the glass from the part that’s full. Read more…

Firat Demir teaches in the Department of Economics at the University of Oklahoma.

As published in www.foreignpolicy.com on June 1, 2013.

As its recent experience in Kunming shows, Beijing can handle environmental protests. But is this approach sustainable in the long term?

Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan province, has become the latest city in China to be rocked by environmental protest. On May 4 and then again on May 16, 1,000 to 2,000 protesters took to the streets to demonstrate against the construction of an oil and chemical refinery in the nearby city of Anning by the state-run oil company China National Petroleum Corporation.

Kunming Mayor Li Weirong attempted to placate the protesters — offering to open a personal Weibo account through which residents could communicate with him and even promising that the project wouldn’t continue if “most of our people don’t agree with it.” The South China Morning Post offers a fascinating blow-by-blow account of the beleaguered mayor’s interaction with the protesters.

It is tempting simply to add the Kunming protest to the growing list of Chinese urban environmental protests, and note once again that the Communist Party has not found the right balance between economic development and environmental protection. However, the real significance of these protests is that they signal the failure of Chinese institutions to adapt to the changing needs and demands of the people for a greater voice in the political process. Environmental politics has become a game of crisis management.

Formally, there are a few ways in which Chinese citizens can participate in environmental decision-making. For one, they can take part in reviewing environmental impact assessments for proposed large projects in their neighborhoods. As Chinese scholars have noted, however, there are a number of limitations to this process: only a small percentage of projects are subjected to compulsory public participation; the timing and duration of engaging the public is short; the method of selecting those who can participate is often biased; and the amount of information actually disclosed is often quite limited in an effort to prevent social unrest. Read more…

As published by The Atlantic on May 20, 2013

By Charles Krauthammer

You know you’re in trouble when you can’t even get your walk-back story straight. Stung by the worldwide derision that met President Obama’s fudging and fumbling of his chemical-weapons red line in Syria, the White House leaked to the New York Times that Obama’s initial statement had been unprepared, unscripted and therefore unserious.

The next day Jay Carney said precisely the opposite: “Red line” was intended and deliberate.

Which is it? Who knows? Perhaps Obama used the term last August to look tough, sound like a real world leader, never expecting that Syria would do something so crazy. He would have it both ways: sound decisive but never have to deliver.

Or perhaps he thought that Syria might actually use chemical weapons one day, at which point he would think of something.

So far he’s thought of nothing. Instead he’s backed himself into a corner: Be forced into a war he is firmly resolved to avoid, or lose credibility, which for a superpower on whose word relies the safety of a dozen allies is not just embarrassing but dangerous.

In his recent rambling news conference, Obama said that he needed certainty about the crossing of the red line to keep the “international community” behind him. This is absurd. The “international community” is a fiction, especially in Syria. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are calling the shots.

Nor, he averred, could he act until he could be sure of everything down to the “chain of custody” of the sarin gas. What is this? “CSI: Damascus”? It’s a savage civil war. The antagonists don’t exactly stand down for forensic sampling. Read more…

As published in www.washingtonpost.com on May 10, 2013.

Despite its smoggy reputation, China is doing better than the United States. Much better.

By Ramez Naam

China is an environmental mess. Smog in Beijing is so bad it’s literally broken the air-quality index. In Shanghai, it’s at times turned the city into a scene from Blade Runner. (It almost matches the infamous Cleveland smog of the 1970s.) Meanwhile, thousands of dead pigs—cause of death not yet known—have been floating down a river that cuts through Shanghai and provides part of the region’s drinking water. More than half of China’s water is so polluted, in fact, that even treatment plants can’t make it safe to drink. And China is now responsible for almost half the world’s coal consumption. That coal burning not only contributes to climate change—it’s also saddled China with severe cases of acid rain, something the United States dealt with a generation ago.

All of that makes what I’m about to say sound even crazier: China may one day be the world’s leader in combating climate change. In almost every way you cut it, China is already taking a much more aggressive approach toward climate change than the United States is.

This is important for two reasons. First, China is seeing the world’s fastest growth in energy consumption and in CO₂ emissions. In the United States and Europe, by contrast, energy usage is nearly flat and CO₂ emissions are down. So China’s policies exert a huge lever on future CO₂ emissions. Second, one of the prime arguments against U.S. action on climate change has been that it doesn’t matter what the United States does if China isn’t on board.

Well, China already is on board in a number of ways that the United States isn’t. Consider the following:

1. China is launching a cap-and-trade plan.
In the United States, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade plan fizzled in the Senate in 2009. In China, meanwhile, authorities have moved forward with pilot cap-and-trade systems covering seven regions, including the manufacturing hub provinces of Guangdong and Hubei, as well as the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, and Shenzhen. The first of those cap-and-trade systems, in Shenzhen, will start operation June 17. By 2020, the Chinese government plans to link those regional systems into a national carbon market. Just last month, the governments of China and Australia announced their intent to link the two countries’ carbon markets into a regional one. Read more…

As published in www.slate.com on May 8, 2013

By Scott A. Snyder

North Korea, under its untested young leader Kim Jong Un, has ratcheted up the threats toward South Korea and the United States to unprecedented levels and with greater intensity than ever before.

A torrent of threats has flowed from North Korean spokesmen, including a promise of preemptive nuclear strikes on the United States and calls to “break the waists of the crazy enemies, totally cut their windpipes and thus clearly show them what a real war is like.”

North Korean brinkmanship, bluff, and bluster are stock elements in its diplomatic toolkit, but why have the threats become so outsized, and how worried should we be? Is North Korea playing the same game it has always played, or does the now-nuclear playbook of a rash young leader represent a new threat the we cannot afford to ignore?

In some respects, we have seen this movie before. North Korea has long used its bluff and bluster as a form of self-defense to keep potential enemies off guard, to strengthen internal political control, magnify external threats to promote national unity, and to symbolically express dissatisfaction when international trends are not going its way.

This year, converging factors are squeezing North Korea, creating a stronger-than-usual response in the face of seemingly greater international pressure.

The U.N. Security Council resolution passing financial sanctions on North Korea following its satellite and nuclear tests were tougher than expected, and coincide with U.S.-South Korea military exercises organized to show political resolve to deter North Korean aggression. The establishment of a U.N. Commission of Inquiry into North Korea’s human rights situation tarnishes the standing of the new leadership. North Korea’s over-the-top responses belie a sense of vulnerability. Read more…

Scott A. Snyder is senior fellow for Korea studies and director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

As published in www.cnn.com on March 29, 2013.