doug

About doug

http://www.asiamanufacturingnewstoday.cpom

Posts by Doug Green:

The countries where it’s best to be a woman

Norway and Switzerland are the best countries to be a woman and Yemen and Afghanistan the worst, said research on Tuesday which found the state of women’s rights is not “all doom and gloom” around the world. While life for women has improved in some 60 countries, it has deteriorated in Yemen and other war-torn nations, research organizations Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security and Peace Research Institute Oslo concluded. The researchers looked at 167 countries since 2017 when the first Women, Peace and Security Index was compiled, weighing variables such as access to bank accounts, jobs and security. Rounding out the top of the list were Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Austria, United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Sweden and Netherlands tied for ninth place, followed by Canada. At the bottom were Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Iraq, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Mali and Libya. “There are important areas of progress. It’s not all doom and gloom,” said Jeni Klugman, managing director of the Georgetown Institute and lead author of the index. Gains were strongest in women’s access to financial accounts, either mobile or at conventional banks, in fewer discriminatory laws and through increasing legislative representation. “A national election can bring about big changes, both positive and negative,” Klugman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We have a number of countries which boosted the share of women in their national legislatures. We also had several countries which went the other way,” she added. Iceland lost its top spot from 2017 after elections brought a drop in the number of women in parliament. The United States inched up to No. 19 from No. 22 two years ago, in part due to 2018 elections when a record number of women were elected to Congress. But Klugman said the United States […]

As Turkish troops move in to Syria, the risks are great – including for Turkey itself

Turkey did not waste much time in launching an attack on Syrian soil just days after US President Donald Trump announced he would withdraw US forces from northern Syria. As this development opens a new chapter in Syria, Turkey maybe unwittingly sinking deeper into that country’s civil war. This is not the first time president Trump has mentioned withdrawal from Syria – he voiced it in April 2018. Alleged gas attacks by the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s incumbent government followed, which resulted in the US continuing its stay in Syria despite its reluctant president. The US government has always been tentative with its Syrian policy, which was openly exploited by Russia in its bid to support the Assad government’s grip on power in the embattled country. It is also not the first time Turkey has talked about a military presence in Syria. In January 2018, it sent troops to north-western Syria, establishing its control over lands to the west of the Euphrates river. Turkey has increased its military build up on the Syrian border ever since. The US contained any further Turkish advances by making it clear Turkey was not welcome to the east of the river, especially when the US needed the support of Kurdish forces in ending Islamic States’s presence in Syria. Why does Turkey want to increase its military presence in Syria? There are three main reasons Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is eager to send more troops in to northern Syria east of the Euphrates river. The first is the prospect of free Kurdish states near its borders inspiring the sizeable Kurdish populations in the south east of Turkey to seek similar aspirations. Northern Iraq is slowly moving towards independence. If Kurds in northern Syria were to establish an autonomous region, it would only be a matter of time before the same demands were raised in Turkey. […]

Blowout: Big Oil and Gas Versus Democracy—Winner Take All

by Rachel Maddow Rachel Maddow’s Blowout offers a dark, serpentine, riveting tour of the unimaginably lucrative and corrupt oil-and-gas industry. With her trademark black humour, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe—from Oklahoma City to Siberia to Equatorial Guinea—exposing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas. She shows how Russia’s rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia’s rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the United States, and the West’s most important alliances. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, but ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson emerge as two of the past century’s most consequential corporate villains. The oil-and-gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, “like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can’t really blame the lion. It’s in her nature.” This book is a clarion call to contain the lion: to stop subsidising the wealthiest industry on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of predatory oil executives and their enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, “Democracy either wins this one or disappears.”

The Library Book

by Susan Orlean On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realised this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerising and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before. In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago. Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present—from Mary Foy, who in 1880 at eighteen years old […]

Greta: the voice of climate activism who says ‘don’t listen to me’

She’s the voice of a global movement who mobilised millions of young people to demand action against climate change. Yet Greta Thunberg’s message to the US Congress – a hotbed of climate scepticism – was: “I don’t want you to listen to me. Little more than a year ago, we hadn’t heard of Thunberg. That changed after August 2018 when she held her first skolstrejk för klimatet, a ‘school strike for climate’, ducking out of class to protest outside Sweden’s parliament. “I want you to listen to the scientists.” Before long others joined her school strikes and, within a matter of months, a global movement was born. By March 2019, more than 2 million students across 135 countries were holding school strike demonstrations. Thunberg has come a long way in a year, both literally and figuratively. Just weeks after her 16th birthday she attended the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, where she famously urged world leaders to “panic” at the seriousness of the situation. “I don’t want your hope,” she told the audience. “I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I do. Every day. And want you to act. I want you to behave like our house is on fire. Because it is.” In March Thunberg was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Time magazine named her one of the world’s most influential people ans put her on its cover. She has addressed the European Parliament, the French National Assembly, the UK’s House of Commons, and met with Pope Francis. Now she is addressing the United Nations Climate Summit, a meeting she travelled to by carbon-neutral yacht. “It is insane that a 16-year-old would have to cross the Atlantic to take a stand,” she told reporters on arrival at the harbour. “The climate and ecological crisis is the […]

Terry Chapin receives Volvo Environment Prize 2019

An ecology professor who has spent decades doing research and field work in the challenging conditions of the Arctic is the winner of the Volvo Environment Prize 2019. Over the 30 years of the prize, the jury has often selected prize-winners whose research has proven to be vital in shaping the modern sustainability agenda. Terry Chapin is no exception to this rule. As an Ecology Professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, he has spent long periods in the tundra of Siberia and Alaska, studying processes that we now know can have dramatic effects on the global climate. For the past 10 years he has been linking his knowledge of ecology to ethics, creating the concept of Earth Stewardship. Decades ago, only a few scientists, including Terry Chapin, began to understand the impact of climate change on the carbon-rich tundra, permafrost and boreal forests of the Northern Hemisphere. Says Terry Chapin: – Climate change happens twice as fast in Alaska and in the rest of the Arctic as for the globe as a whole. And since Alaska is so sensitive to temperature, this is where processes are going to be most affected. It is already happening. Wildfires have always occurred in the Alaskan wilderness, but the past decade they have increased dramatically. The wildfires are larger and more frequent, due to warmer temperatures and drier weather conditions. That is why the city of Fairbanks, Alaska, located in pristine wilderness and far away from polluting industries, can for weeks have some of the worst air quality found anywhere on Earth when nearby wildfires spread their vast plumes of smoke. Scientists at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, are closely monitoring the changes that are occurring in the frozen ground. Thawing releases carbon under anaerobic conditions to emit methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. […]

Climate explained: why we need to cut emissions as well as prepare for impacts

First, let’s accept climate change is happening and will have major negative impacts on New Zealand. Second, let’s also accept that even if New Zealand did absolutely everything possible to reduce emissions to zero, it would still happen, i.e. our impact on climate change is negligible. Third, reducing our emissions will come with a high financial cost. Fourth, the cost of dealing with the negative impacts of climate change (rising seas etc), will also come at a high financial cost. To argue that we should not act to reduce emissions because it is not in our interests to make a contribution to global mitigation is ultimately self-defeating. It would be to put short-term self-interest first, rather than considering both our long-term interests and those of the wider global community. Our options on climate are looking increasingly dire, since we as a global community have postponed combating climate change so long. But in New Zealand – and indeed in any country – we should still do as much as we can to reduce the extent of climate change, and not, at this stage, divert significant resources away from mitigation into “preparing for” it. Starting with the physics, it is clear that climate change is not a given and fixed phenomenon. It is unhelpful to say simply that “it is happening”. How much heating will occur will be determined by human actions: it is within humanity’s grasp to limit it. Any significant action taken over the next decade in particular will have high payoffs in terms of reducing future warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in effect says emission cuts of 45% or more over the next decade might just avert catastrophic change. Inaction, on the other hand, could condemn humankind to experiencing perhaps 3℃ or more of heating. Each further […]

Lessons from China on how to drive sustainable growth

The Chinese dream will see us break the link between growing incomes, rising production and degradation of the environment. Our businesses should continue to grow even as our cities, farmland and entire ecosystems become greener and more sustainable. Long-term wealth creation should go hand-in-hand with sustainability. Earlier this year, Lyu Jun, Chairman of COFCO Corporation, described how the commercial case for sustainable production is lagging behind the moral one. Since his article was published as part of the World Economic Forum 2019 Annual Meeting, we have been actively demonstrating the commercial value of sustainability. In July, my company partnered with a consortium of 21 banks to engineer a $2.3 billion loan. Under the terms of this loan, we pay a lower interest rate if we can meet a series of annual targets on sustainability. Any interest saved will be re-invested into initiatives that increase our sustainability performance even further. Sustainability earns us money. This loan demonstrates some of the keys to sustainable growth. Here are five of them: Finance is emerging as a major driver of sustainability. Government policy and consumer preferences can certainly shift corporate behaviour, as tariffs on soy have shown. And most consumer-facing businesses are adapting to their customers’ preferences for more sustainability. But I see a more interesting role for the banks, whose influence is immense. The financial sector is shifting quickly towards sustainability as the links to reduced risk and better financial performance become clear. In the first half of this year, the issuance of sustainability-linked loans leapt 63% to $44 billion, as much as in all of 2018. Money talks. Innovation will be part of any solution While the public sector has limited funding resources, private investment and capability could play an instrumental role in achieving sustainable agricultural development goals. But current levels are not enough to […]

How China’s propaganda machine tried to control the message in the Hong Kong protests

China is known for the strict control it exercises on information, especially online. Discussion of events that might reflect unfavourably on the government is often censored, or framed in such a way that it becomes pro-government propaganda. That’s why so many Chinese citizens remain unaware of, for example, the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Online discussion of the recent protests in Hong Kong against a now-suspended extradition bill was no different. But this was also a rare occasion when China’s news propaganda machine was mobilised to simultaneously target several audiences both inside and outside China. China’s propaganda network is made up of a constellation of domesticand international news outlets. They span social media, mobile apps, websites and traditional media. The news is tailored to particular audiences according to different agendas. Everything, however, comes under the direction of the Central Publicity (formerly translated as “Propaganda”) Department of the Chinese Communist Party. This is an amazing time lapse of the hundreds of thousands of protesters in Hong Kong. Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen the China extradition bill elevated from a local Hong Kong controversy to a story of international concern following the protesters’ lobbying campaign targeted at the G20 summit. As events escalated from peaceful rallies focused on a single issue to at times violent confrontations seeking a range of demands, including the resignation of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, the agendas of several spheres of China’s propaganda converged. The first day protesters took to the streets was March 31. That was two days after the extradition bill was published in the Gazette, the official publication of the Hong Kong government. The same day, two Chinese-language newspapers that have long acted as de-facto official media of the Chinese government in Hong Kong (but not openly declared as such) swung into action. Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao both used either the entire or the majority of the second […]

Scientists amazed as Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years early

Matthew Green – Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.General view of a landscape of partially thawed Arctic permafrost near Mould Bay, Canada, in this handout photo released June 18, 2019. The image was captured in 2016 by researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks who were amazed to find the permafrost thawing 70 years faster than models predicted. A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilized the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia. “What we saw was amazing,” Vladimir E. Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters by telephone. “It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years.” The team’s findings, published on June 10 in Geophysical Research Letters, offered a further sign of a growing climate emergency. The paper was based on data Romanovsky and his colleagues had been analyzing since their last expedition to the area in 2016. The team used a modified propeller plane to visit exceptionally remote sites, including an abandoned Cold War-era radar base more than 300 km from the nearest human settlement. Diving through a lucky break in the clouds, Romanovsky and his colleagues said they were confronted with a landscape that was unrecognizable from the pristine Arctic terrain they had encountered during initial visits a decade or so earlier. The vista had dissolved into an undulating sea of hummocks – waist-high depressions and ponds known as thermokarst. Vegetation, once sparse, had begun to flourish in the shelter […]

«‹ 22 23 24 25 ›»