Climate change and Paris conference

S P SETH

The Paris conference on climate change led to immense relief, simply because the nearly 200 countries involved agreed on a deal to keep global warming under control. A target of 2 degrees Celsius, preferably less, compared with pre-industrial levels, might just do that. Anything above 2 degrees is likely to do irreversible damage to our planet. Even with the voluntarily agreed emission reductions, the planet is likely to warm by 2.7 degrees, which is not very hopeful. But with periodic reviews of progress every five years, with provision only for further reductions, a process is set up to keep a handle on global warming. However, there is no enforceable mechanism in the deal.

In a world with different levels of economic development, it is not possible to expect developing countries to suddenly make a significant contribution to reducing carbon emissions already way below, on a per capita basis, of the rich countries that have contributed in a big way to the present mess and still continue to do so. And despite wanting to make their fair contribution, developing countries do not have the necessary resources, both financially and in technology terms, to do their bit. At the same time, they are keen to lift social and economic conditions of their people but their capacity to do so with renewable alternative energy sources is severely constrained. And they are sometimes made to look like they are a major impediment to progress.

The climate deal makes provision for $100 billion a year in funding from rich industrialized countries to help poorer nations to cope with the change. As the New Yorker has pointed out in a commentary, “The Obama Administration has pledged three billion dollars [pathetic as it is], but…. Senate Republicans have vowed to block any U.S. contribution.”  There are, however, no specified figures for the donor countries, and there is no knowing how the inevitable gap between pledges and actual funding will be met.  The promised 100 billion dollars a year for the developing countries looks like a notional figure.

 All in all, the Paris climate deal is lacking in specifics, apart from five yearly reviews of voluntary emission targets. Which is not to say that the deal is insignificant. It is important that most, if not all, the countries in the world now accept that global warming is happening and that humans are responsible for much of it by emitting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, much of it by burning fossil fuels like coal and oil. Which has led to the recognition that the world needs to reduce/stop the use of these dirty fuels and replaces them with renewables like solar and wind power. But there is not much time to lose if our planet is not irreversibly damaged.

As earlier pointed out, even with the Paris deal and if it is carried out with agreed emission reduction targets, the world will still be warmer by 2.7 degrees Celsius, beyond the preferably less than the desired 2 degrees. According to climate scientists, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has already reached a level of carbon concentration of above 400 parts per million. A 350-ppm is considered safe. In other words, we are already in the danger zone.

The question then is how and in what way global warming is affecting our planet? The most obvious is that fossil fuel burning is choking our cities and polluting our rivers. And we can also see it from rising temperatures and unusual weather pattern with increased frequency of cyclones, tornadoes, bush fires, floods etc. And it is causing sea level to rise and if the warming of the atmosphere is not kept under 2 degrees Celsius, the sea-level rise would become a serious threat to low lying parts of the world, possibly submerging some of the small island countries and territories, and coastal regions of the world. Which would cause large-scale displacement of populations and a flood of environmental refugees. That is why it is also regarded as a major security challenge, turning the world upside down.

The rising sea level from warmer temperature affects it in three ways. First, warmer temperatures cause the water in the seas to expand. At a conservative estimate of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the sea will rise between half-meter and a meter by the end of the century. That is if global warming is kept under 2 degrees.  The picture of melting glaciers and ice sheet is terribly worrying. The world’s 200,000 or so mountain glaciers are said to be rapidly melting and draining into the seas. In the same way, the Greenland ice sheet is melting, and the same process is under way in Antarctica. How far and fast the sea water rises depends upon the thawing/melting of glaciers and ice sheet. Which is connected to the rising of temperatures in the atmosphere from global warming. There is nothing mysterious now about the process of global warming. It is happening and is caused mostly by human beings and the burning of fossil fuels. There are still a small minority of climate change deniers. They deny the climate change science and global warming. In their view if it is happening at all, it is a natural phenomena unconnected with human activity.

There are, of course, a range of views about the speed and intensity of it. One view, at the extreme end, is that if the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica were to melt entirely, it could mean a sea-level rise of several metres, turning the world into a vast expanse of sea. But that is considered unlikely. In between, still on the side of disaster on a relatively smaller scale, is an estimate of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius. Professor Eric Rignot of earth sciences at the University of California, Irvine, is quoted as saying that, “You can fiddle around and say, ‘ It’s going to take a long time.  [But if]  We warm the climate by 2 or 3 degrees C, Greenland’s ice is gone.’” Which is a roundabout way of saying that even the Paris target of 2 degrees is not going to avert the thawing/melting of ice sheets and glaciers and the impending disaster. In other words, there is need to set the Paris target at less than 2 degrees to get really serious about saving the only planet that we have.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily times.

Donald Trump and the US

S P SETH

Donald Trump, the Republican contender for the US presidential nomination, is the country’s worst nightmare that simply will not go away. In the process, if the unthinkable were to happen in the next year’s presidential election and he gets the Republican Party nomination and ends up as the US’s next president, he will also become the world’s worst nightmare. Win or lose, he has come to reflect the deep insecurity and vulnerability many Americans feel about their country’s situation both at home and abroad. And they feel that the political leadership of the country on both sides of the political spectrum, Republicans and Democrats, is failing to put the country back on track to restore its ‘greatness’. The challenges are many from China’s assertiveness, Russia’s ‘belligerence’, and Islamic militancy with IS as its biggest and most dangerous manifestation.

At home, Obama’s presidency seems to have only deepened the racial divide between the country’s African Americans and White citizens, if the recent killings of blacks at random and in police shootings are anything to go by. At the same time, a number of Republican-run states are seeking to restrict and/or make difficult for African Americans to exercise their right to vote, as they tend to vote Democrats.

Obama’s presidency has also hardened the Republican Party’s immigration policy against the Latinos, particularly Mexicans. The Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012 presidential race did create some introspection among the Republican leadership for the need to win over Latino voters, who voted for Obama in large numbers, by toning down their opposition to facilitating the path for citizenship for many Mexican immigrants already in the US. But it backfired enabling Trump to play upon the deep-seated insecurities of conservative White America by labeling the Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. He promised to build an impenetrable border fence and actually make Mexico pay for it. He tapped the vulnerable underbelly of many Americans and they found in him an authentic voice and a strong voice, saying it the way they often felt. One important cause of insecurity for many Americans is that with the demographic changes in the US, Whites are gradually losing their preponderant voting advantage. As a result, minorities like African Americans and Latinos are able to decisively affect voting outcomes, creating a fear that Whites could end up losing control of the country. Obama’s election as President was greatly helped by African Americans and Latinos favouring him in large numbers. They constitute about 13 and 17 per cent of the US population respectively.

Trump never let off the advantage that he sensed might flow from tapping into the dissatisfaction and disenchantment from Obama’s election in the hardcore White constituency. With his obvious political ambition to have a go at presidential nomination, particularly after the Republican Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012, he kept up seeking to delegitimize Obama’s Presidency. He continued to run the line that Obama was not born in the US and that he was, in some ways, a closet Muslim. Obama’s father was a Kenyan (Muslim), and with his name as Barack Hussein Obama, Trump and the likes of him were having good fun at raising doubts about his credentials. In other words, Obama’s patriotism was suspect, insinuating that that his ‘weak’ policy against Islamic terrorism was indicative of this.

This has two objectives. First is to paint Obama as weak and lacking commitment to pursue US’ national interests. Secondly, and its natural corollary, the country needs a strong president willing to say things as they are. Which is that the country is in dire shape across a whole range of issues and that only Trump can deal with it without ambiguity and dillydallying. And among the issues that need immediate attention is Islamic terrorism. And for Obama to make distinction between moderate and radical Muslims is simply evading the issue. In a sense, all Muslims are terrorists. Therefore, there is need to create a database for the Muslims in America analogous, in some ways, with Hitler’s Germany where Jews were targeted. He didn’t stop at this. When San Bernardino massacre happened in California involving the killing of 14 people and 22 injured by a husband-wife Muslim team, Trump called for a ban on the entry of Muslims into the US because all Muslims are potential, if not real, terrorists. And any criticism and opposition to his ravings, at home and abroad, does not deter him from stirring up hysteria in the United States against Muslims.

But there is a method to his madness. Trump is seeking to erase the line that seeks to distinguish between the vast majority of Muslims that are against terrorism and the hard-core militant radicals bent on inflaming the Islamic world, presenting the Islam-versus-West (Christianity) as a conflict between two civilizations, a carry over from history of the Crusades, with victory assured for Islam.

The problem is that Trump and his kind are simply reinforcing the theory of civilizational conflict, a version of which received some respectability in the nineties propounded by the US academic Samuel P Huntington. Donald Trump’s crude version is intended to exploit popular prejudice against Muslims in the US, much more so that he is now seeking Republican Party nomination. As with his tirade against the Muslims, Trump represents/reflects all that is crass, repulsive and dangerous in US society and body politic. In one of the debates among Republican contenders, when a woman moderator asked him some tough questions, he sought to put her down by referring to her menstruation cycle for no reason at all. And when he was asked about one of his supporters attacking a Latino, Trump simply brushed it aside by saying that his supporters were very passionate. The worrying thing is that he is getting away with all sorts of offensive and contemptible behavior because many people in the US think like this and now Trump has put a powerful political voice to it.

In other words, Trump’s rhetoric is overtaking any rational debate because his rival presidential contenders in the Republican Party try to play catch up with him but feel constrained, in varying degrees, by the sheer outrageousness of his rhetoric. And Trump increasingly becomes the authentic voice of a hardcore constituency, which is not insubstantial, that makes him such a dangerous political figure. Whether or not he wins the Republican Party nomination or the country’s presidency, he is a political phenomenon that will influence US politics for the worst. 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.   

God’s forsaken people

S P SETH

One of the issues preoccupying the world, especially Europe, is the influx of refugees, particularly from the Middle East and northern Africa. And this is caused in large part by a mix of internal factors, external intervention, religious extremism in some Muslim countries, the interplay of regional rivalries with strong sectarian overtones as between Shia Iran and Sunni (Wahhabi) Saudi Arabia. And on top of it all is an overlay of people’s mounting economic and social frustrations, often finding an outlet in religious extremism represented by IS and other militant groups, when everything else seems to have failed. A classic example is the monumental failure of the Arab Spring that swept a number of Arab countries, early in the decade, to overthrow dictatorships. The resultant vacuum is filled by religious extremism of IS and the like.

Egypt is another example where a return of military dictatorship, disguised as civilian rule, is challenged both by the Muslim Brotherhood and a version of Islamic State, operating mostly in Sinai where they claimed to have downed a civilian Russian aircraft killing all its 224 passengers as an act of revenge against Russian bombing of IS and other extremist targets in Syria. And a failed state in Libya is a free-for-all for all sorts of militias, including a version of Islamic State. While Iraq’s Shia regime, with considerable help from the US by way of aerial bombing of IS targets, weapons’ supplies and training of troops, as well as from Iran, is unsuccessfully battling it out with IS, the regional situation seems to be getting worse by the day. The Saudi bombing of Yemen to defeat the Houthi rebels, who overthrew the regime supported and aided by Saudi Arabia, is only adding to an already complex and bloody situation.

The situation in Syria is probably the worst, with almost half its population (about 11 million) displaced, with 4 million as refugees in camps in neighbouring countries, like Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, and a large number also on the move to seek refuge in Europe. According to press reports, close to one million entered Europe seeking asylum. And this is likely to get worse by end-2016, considering the way the Syrian situation is going. Germany seems to be the favourite destination. There are said to be 60 million people globally seeking refuge.

We knew even before refugees hit Europe in large numbers that the conflicts raging in the Middle East and elsewhere were creating human misery that seemed to defy any solution. But with important and rich European countries now directly affected, there is greater recognition of it. Will it make any difference? Probably not. There is already a hardening of attitude, even among well-meaning politicians in Europe, as it takes toll politically with people turning more and more against refugees. The hard right in the European countries is capitalizing on people’s mistrust of Muslims because of their religion, which many people in those countries have increasingly come to identify with terrorism since 9/11 attacks in the US. And the recent Paris carnage has added fuel into the fire. The continuing chaos in the Middle East, with the rise of IS, is only magnifying the situation.

All this tends to work on historical memory when the Ottoman Empire reached the European periphery. Some of the smaller European countries, which are the gateway to Germany, where many refugees are seeking asylum, fear their culture, religion and Christian way of life will be threatened by these newcomers. In other words, Europe is faced with a huge challenge.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called it the “the next great European project” and bigger than the Greek debt crisis. It might be recalled that the Greek debt crisis and threat from it to euro as a common currency was, until recently, the staple of news in Europe and featuring prominently in the world media. It is still not sorted out but somehow is not as much in the news. How Europe will deal with the refugee influx has the potential of making and/or breaking European Union. In other words, the flow of refugees is a global crisis. Though it is causing the most havoc where it is originating from, like in Syria and the neighbouring countries, it has the potential of unraveling the European project. The EU countries are already at odds with each other about controlling borders, and the allocation of refugee numbers to member countries and so on. At the same time, there is no knowing where the number of refugees will stabilize, if at all. There are so many unknowns and hence the difficulty of any kind of planning.

The only effective way of dealing with the refugee crisis is to create security and stability in the countries of origin. But any of these hot spots, like Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, look likely to go on with no real resolution. It is tempting to blame the local factors but external intervention has and continues to play a major role. It started with Afghan and Iraq wars and these two countries are still reeling from the aftermath of those US-led invasions, creating waves of refugees, But they weren’t regarded as a major problem for the world because many of them trekked to neighbouring Pakistan and Iran, which don’t have the kind of clout Europe has.

Syria is another story because a large number, approaching 1 million, are heading to Europe. And the situation in Syria keeps getting worse, with IS threat looming large over Iraq and Syria. The recent international conference in Vienna didn’t even get a serious start, with the US, Saudi Arabia and others insisting that Russia should facilitate Assad’s fall before things could move ahead, though the US now seem inclined to see him in a transitional role to facilitate an alternative.  It is not clear, though, how Assad’s fall would miraculously create a secure and stable order in that country. As happens with international gatherings, Vienna process is also likely to become an instrument of power play, where the real issue of Syria’s misery, death and destruction of its people seems to get lost. In that situation, the refugees from Syria and other trouble spots in the Middle East and elsewhere will continue to take chances with their lives, and the route from Turkey to Greek islands and further on to Germany and Northern Europe, is likely to remain attractive as people smugglers and traffickers enrich themselves from the misery of God’s forsaken people. Turkey is being enlisted by the EU to help stem the tide of refugees to Europe with financial inducement of billions of dollars, as well as helping its induction into Europe. But such solutions are half-baked, dealing only with the symptoms and not the source of the malady.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

  

       

       

A crisis in Russian-Turkish relations

S P SETH

The recent shooting downing of a Russian warplane by Turkey has added a new dimension to an already complicated and dangerous situation in the Middle East. Turkey blamed Russia for breaching its air space in its bombing raids over Syria.  Ankara had earlier complained of Russian over flights but in the latest incident, it decided to act alleging that Russian military aircraft was ignoring warnings from its air force. Turkey is a member of the Atlantic alliance, which makes the shooting down of the Russian plane potentially a serious issue between not just between Turkey and Russia but also between Russia and the Atlantic alliance. Even though neither Turkey nor Russia is inclined to let it develop into a military conflict, President Obama supported, in principle, Turkey’s right to defend its sovereignty, finding fault with the way Russia is operating in Syria close to the Turkish border targeting moderate rebels (and not IS) to bolster up the Assad regime.

Why did President Erdogan and his administration decide to act against Russia  for its bombing raids inside Syria? Such straying of aircraft into another country’s air space wouldn’t normally invite such drastic action like the shooting down of an aircraft, as Russia wasn’t involved in a warlike situation with Turkey. Indeed, the plane in question was shot down in Syria on the Syrian-Turkish border. It was therefore a provocative action on Turkey’s part.

And it resorted to such dramatic provocation for a number of reasons. Having won recent parliamentary elections on the issue of stability and security for his country, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey wanted to build on it in the international arena. Russia is seeking to bolster up the Assad regime that the Erdogan administration has been unsuccessfully seeking to unseat by favouring the Syrian rebels. At the same time, Turkey has been unhappy with the US over, what it considers, its failure to remove Bashar al-Assad regime. But the US dithered, even after Assad crossed Obama’s ‘red line’ when it used chemical weapons. Ankara wanted him replaced by a moderate rebel coalition under its patronage, and thus get rid of the ‘hated’ Alawite (a Shia sect) rule over the country’s Sunni majority.

Instead, to Erdogan’s great disappointment and exasperation, the Obama administration seemingly collaborated with Russia to save the Assad regime by their joint action to get rid of its chemical weapons.  Which, in their view, created conditions for the rise of IS, making the so-called IS caliphate into the dreaded phenomena it has become. But, in Ankara’s view, Assad appears an even bigger monster for oppressing and killing his people and for daring to ignore Erdogan’s dictum to step aside. And after Russia’s military intervention in his favour, Assad looks like further entrenching his position. This has greatly incensed the Erdogan administration. Having failed to register its unhappiness with Russia by oral warnings over its over flights on bombing raids in Syria, it apparently decided to act dramatically and provocatively, if not aggressively, by shooting down its military aircraft. And it certainly succeeded in capturing international attention, with what consequences is still not clear.

President Vladimir Putin called it “a stab in the back” carried out by the accomplices of terrorists, saying it would have serious consequences for Moscow’s relations with Ankara.  In other words, he accused Turkey of supporting terrorists. Elaborating, Putin reportedly said that, “We established a long time ago that large quantities of oil and oil products from territory captured by Islamic State have been arriving on Turkish territory” and that was how IS militants had been funding themselves. And Moscow even accused Erdogan family, particularly his son, of involvement in the oil smuggling racket from IS.

At the same time when Russia has sought to fight terrorists, according to Putin, Turkey has been attacking its planes. Russian aircraft “was shot down on Syrian territory by an air-to-air missile from an [Turkish operated] F-16… It fell on Syrian territory four kilometres from the Turkish border. It was flying at 6,000 metres, one kilometer from Turkish territory when it was attacked.”  And this, Putin said,  “despite the fact that we signed an agreement with our American partners to warn each other about air-to-air incidents.” Indeed, according to this account, Russia had passed on the flight details of their military aircraft to the Americans to avoid incidents, but it was of no avail, with the Russian president hinting at complicity.

And here is the thing. President Erdogan worried that international efforts at a united front against IS, more so after the momentum from Paris carnage, might further come to the rescue of the Assad regime as happened between Russia and the US after they agreed to get rid of his chemical weapons arsenal. The shooting down of the Russian plane for violation of Turkey’s air space was supposed to rally NATO behind it, being an attack on a NATO member’s sovereign space. And this will throw a spanner into the works, as if, to sabotage any progress with Russia over a united strategy against IS, likely based on Moscow’s position that Assad would still be around, at least during any political transition.

But it seems that it hasn’t worked so far. NATO support for Turkey has been, at most, lukewarm, emphasizing more the de-escalation of the crisis. At the same time, if Ankara was expecting Moscow to rethink its support for the Assad regime, it appears to have only strengthened its resolve to stand by the regime and increase its bombing of border areas in Syria. And this is not all. Russia is  freezing/scrapping all economic and trade relations, including a very thriving tourism sector, with serious consequences for Turkish economy.

The Erdogan administration was apparently over-estimating NATO solidarity on its behalf and under-estimating Russian reaction. Its bluster has serious consequences for its wide-ranging and fast growing relations with Russia. And Ankara is now trying to backtrack and de-escalate the situation. Hopefully, things will settle down over time and put a damper on Erdogan’s delusions of power, though there are no signs of it yet. And might even help to tone down his obsession and paranoia about the Kurds who, he fears, might come out stronger from a virtual US-Kurdish alliance to beat back IS. This is another reason Ankara is unhappy with the US, fearing that Kurdish gains might eventually work to its disadvantage by strengthening Kurdish separatism. Turkey is thus caught in a web of its own making, getting only deeper into it. 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.