ICYMI
American woman saves hundreds of bats from freezing to death
Cathy Free13:13, Dec 31 2022

Mary Warwick's heart sank when she realised temperatures were plunging below freezing in Houston in the days before Christmas.

She raced over to downtown Houston before sunset on December 21 to check under the Waugh Drive Bridge, where a colony of 250,000 bats has lived for almost 30 years and is a popular attraction.

Her fears were confirmed: There were dozens of tiny bats on the ground suffering from hypothermia, too weak to hold on to the narrow crevices in the concrete beneath the bridge. They had dropped four to nine metres onto the cold cement below and looked lifeless.

"They're only three inches long at the most, they don't have much body fat and they get cold very quickly," said Warwick, executive director of the Houston Humane Society TWRC Wildlife Centre. "When they shut down from hypothermia, they release from the bridge and some of them will die."

Warwick, 60, put on a pair of gloves and gently collected the unresponsive bats one by one. She picked up 138 bats and placed them in a box lined with a soft blanket.

"I put the box on my heated car seat, and as the bats warmed up, they started moving around," she said.

Warwick said she was horrified to see the small animals in distress, but glad she had taken a break from her holiday shopping to check on them. They are part of a colony of Mexican free-tailed bats that thrive in temperatures above 10C. While most Texas bat populations head south for the winter, she knew that a sizeable number remained behind.

She was determined not to have a repeat of the time in February 2021 when Texas endured arctic temperatures for nine days, and more than 5000 bats dropped from the bridge and died in the cold.

ROBERT WARWICK/ROBERT WARWICK
Warwick with one of the Mexican free-tailed bats she rehabilitated in Houston over the holidays.

Warwick decided to take them home to warm them up in an incubator. She injected fluids beneath the bats' skin with a needle and syringe and hand-fed them a gruel made of mealworms, she said.

For the next several nights, she returned to the Waugh Drive Bridge with extra boxes and a flashlight to rescue more bats, and she stopped at another bridge south of Houston to rescue bats from a second colony.

"By the time I was up to 900 bats, I decided it was time to slow down their metabolism so they wouldn't need to eat as much," she said. "It was becoming pretty time-consuming to care for them all."

The solution, Warwick decided, was to put the recovered bats in large dog kennels in her attic where the temperature was cooler, until it had warmed up enough outside to return them to the bridge.

MARY WARWICK/MARY WARWICK
Warwick kept the most critically injured bats in a warm incubator inside her Houston home.

"When it's cold, but not freezing, their metabolism will slow down," she said.

The Houston Humane Society posted on social media that Warwick was single-handedly rescuing the creatures. People quickly offered to help.

"I adore sky puppies - not just for their adorable faces and gentle natures, but for everything they do for us in Texas, mosquito wise," one person commented on Facebook. "Happy to donate and thank you for helping these beautiful, so misunderstood little guys."

Chris Cruz, a sign-language interpreter who often drives past the bat colony and enjoys watching them in warmer weather, said he immediately felt compelled to spend his Christmas Eve looking for cold and injured bats.


Warwick rescued hundreds of bats.

"I was scrolling through Instagram when I came across a local TV story about what Mary was doing," said Cruz, 31. "I thought that was something I could help with, so I grabbed a foam cooler and poked some holes in it."

Cruz found 14 bats on the ground and carefully swept them into the cooler with a handheld broom, he said. He then took them home to warm them up and arranged to turn the bats over to Warwick on Christmas Day.

"I was worried that one or two might not make it through the night, so I was happy when they all started scurrying around in the box," he said, noting that he didn't dare take the lid off.

"It was a fun way to spend Christmas," Cruz said. "Bats don't really ask for anything, and I was happy to help them. Besides, they're pretty cute."

MARY WARWICK/MARY WARWICK
Some of the bats rescued by Warwick and volunteers during a cold snap in Houston.

By Christmas night, Warwick said she had more than 1500 bats hanging inside dog kennels in her attic. She kept bats from the two colonies in separate containers and made sure to keep them hydrated.

"What she did for these bats is incredible," said Beverly Brannan, board chairperson for the Houston Humane Society.

"Mary is really the only bat expert in our area - she's a one-woman show," she said. "When she saw that those bats needed help, she didn't sleep for several days so she could save them."

Brannan, 82, said she picked up several boxes filled with bats from volunteer rescuers and delivered them to Warwick's house.

ANIAH HERNANDEZ/ANIAH HERNANDEZ
Chris Cruz with a cooler full of bats he rescued.

"When I got there, she was triaging bats, doctoring them and feeding them, one bat at a time," she said. "Her dedication to the bats was next level."

Warwick said her instincts as a wildlife expert kicked in and she felt an obligation to see the rescue through to the end.

All creatures - no matter how small - have value on the planet, she said.

Over the years, she has also rehabilitated squirrels, raccoons, hawks, ducks and owls, Warwick noted.

"Mexican free-tailed bats are common in Texas, and I'd received some training on caring for them," she said. "These bats are important to our ecosystem and they eat lots of mosquitoes. The bridge is also a popular tourist attraction, so the bats deserve our help."

Although 115 of the bats couldn't be saved, the rest perked up after five or six days. Most of the Waugh Drive Bridge bats were released back to their colony after sunset on December 28, and the others will be released in the coming days, Warwick said.

"I'm excited to get them out of my attic and send them back into the wild," she said. "I hope they'll stay warm and happy, but if they need help, we're here."

READ MORE:

* 100-year-old trees that are home to little owls face chop for new housing

* Taranaki forest frequented by endangered long-tailed bats bought by conservation trust

* Breakthrough in bat recovery project at Pelorus Bridge

* Focus on protecting NZ's long tailed bat

Air pollution forces suspension of in-person education in some Iranian provinces

Classes Saturday to be held virtually, says state news agency

Haydar Şahin |31.12.2022


TEHRAN

Rapidly deteriorating air quality in the Iranian capital of Tehran and adjacent cities has forced authorities to order the closure of schools Saturday in some provinces, according to media reports.

But classes will be held virtually, said the state news agency, IRNA.

The Air Pollution Emergency Committee met Friday in Tehran and decided to suspend face-to-face education in schools because of the high levels of air pollution in the capital and the provinces of Alborz, Qazvin and Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari.

The school week in Iran is from Saturday to Wednesday, with Thursday and Friday being the weekend.

Tehran has, in recent years, emerged as one of the most polluted cities in the world with poor air quality often forcing the closures of schools and businesses.

This year, the quality of air in the capital and other major cities recorded an alarming drop during the summer season. But the problem has begun to be aggravated with the onset of winter.

In July, poor air quality forced the closure of all educational institutes and government offices in Tehran and other cities as the air quality index was deemed unhealthy for sensitive groups.

Iranian Health Ministry data released last month that said in the last calendar year, March 2021-March 2022, the number of deaths caused by long-term exposure to PM2.5 particles surged by more than 87% compared to the same period during the previous year.

The study was carried out in 27 cities, including Tehran, Ahvaz, Mashhad, Tabriz, Shiraz, Isfahan and Hamedan with a total population of 35 million in those cities.

The alarming dip in air quality in 2022 has been accompanied by sand storms, originating mostly in Iraq and Syria.


*Writing by Zehra Nur Duz.

Robert Glasser on Australia’s Turn to Climate Action

The Australian Labor Party has positioned itself well politically to pursue an ambitious climate agenda.

By Catherine Putz
January 01, 2023

TOMORROW'S NEWS TODAY


Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attends the G20 leaders summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022.Credit: AP Photo/Dita Alangkara, PoolADVERTISEMENT

In the last few years, the costs and impacts of climate change have become unavoidably clear to Australians. In the summer of 2019-2020, the country saw one of its worst bushfire seasons and in 2021-2022 devastating flooding filled headlines. In an editorial endorsing the Labor Party’s bid for government earlier this year, The Age wrote that “a change of government is needed to begin restoring integrity to federal politics and … face up to the challenge of climate change.”

Sure enough, Australia’s federal election in May 2022 saw the incumbent Liberal/National Coalition – then led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison – fail to secure a fourth consecutive term. Instead, for the first time since 2007 the Labor Party, led by Anthony Albanese, achieved a majority government. Across Australia, voters swung away from the Liberal Party’s coalition, switching their votes to Labor or “teal independents” for whom climate change is a critical issue.

Months later, the Labor government has maneuvered Australia toward becoming a more responsible global power when it comes to climate change. The road ahead isn’t easy, particularly given Australia’s significant coal industry. But, as Dr. Robert Glasser explains in the interview below, Labor has positioned itself well politically to pursue an ambitious climate agenda.

Glasser, head of the Climate and Security Policy Centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, spoke to The Diplomat’s Cathrine Putz about the role of climate change in Australia’s modern politics.

What impact did the issue of climate change have in the Australian Federal election in May?

Climate change had an enormous impact in the Australian Federal election. Indeed, it was called the “climate election” by many. Labor campaigned on a platform of more ambitious climate action, and it was a major factor in the swing against Scott Morrison’s conservative coalition.

The changes in rhetoric and action on climate change since Labor’s election victory have been striking. The government has enshrined a more ambitious climate target – reducing greenhouse gases by 43 percent by 2030 – in legislation. It has produced the nation’s first climate and security risk assessment and initiated a process across government to develop a major strategy to strengthen national resilience to climate impacts.

CANADIAN EH
Albert Reichmann, Patriarch of a Real Estate Empire, Dies at 93

He and his brothers built the World Financial Center in New York and the first phase of Canary Wharf in London. But their company was upended in 1992.

The real estate developer Albert Reichmann, left, with former Gov. Hugh L. Carey of New York in 1985 at the official opening of the World Financial Center, which was built by the Reichmann family company, Olympia & York Developments.

Credit...Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times


By Sam Roberts
Dec. 30, 2022

Albert Reichmann, the billionaire patriarch of a real estate dynasty that built the World Financial Center, became the largest private owner of commercial property in New York City, and began the transformation of London’s derelict Docklands into the gleaming Canary Wharf cluster of skyscrapers, died on Dec. 17 in Toronto, the family’s hometown. He was 93.

His death was confirmed by his grandson Robert S. Reichmann.

The ultra-Orthodox Jewish sons of a rabbi who fled Vienna with his wife and children in 1938 as the Nazis were poised to plunge Europe into war, Mr. Reichmann and his brothers were estimated by Forbes magazine to be worth nearly $10 billion before their real estate empire, Olympia & York Developments, plunged into bankruptcy in 1992. After drowning in debt as the London real estate property market collapsed, the Reichmanns reconstituted a multibillion-dollar portfolio, O & Y Properties, which they sold to Brookfield Properties in 2005.

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York, center, with New York City’s comptroller, Harrison Goldin, left, and Mr. Reichmann, preparing to sign a steel beam symbolizing completion of the World Financial Center’s steel skeleton on May 31, 1984.

Credit...Neal Boenzi/The New York Times

Albert’s mother helped concentration camp inmates and refugees during World War II and he followed in her philanthropic footsteps by supporting Jewish schools and religious institutions around the globe, primarily in Israel, Hungary and the former Soviet Union.

“Albert’s avuncular temperament was better suited to giving away money than making it,” Anthony Bianco wrote in “The Reichmanns: Family, Faith, Fortune, and the Empire of Olympia & York” (1996).

Paul Reichmann, who died in 2013, was widely seen as the company’s ambitious, perhaps hubristic, deal maker. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher personally recruited him to reinvent the Docklands. Albert was more focused on administration, construction and other internal workings of the family firm as it expanded in North America and Britain.

“Once, during a rare appearance at a country club reception for a visiting Israeli dignitary,” Mr. Bianco wrote, “Albert managed to evade news photographers by hiding behind a column for two hours and then walking out backwards. And Albert was supposed to be the outgoing one!”

Mr. Reichmann showed Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, a model of the Canary Wharf development project in London in 1991, as Mr. Reichman’s wife, Egosah, looked on.

Credit...Marty Lederhandler/Associated Press

Albert Reichmann was born in Vienna on Jan. 18, 1929. His father, Samuel, was a Hungarian-born exporter of eggs who had moved to Austria in 1928. His mother was Renée (Gestetner) Reichmann.

After the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Germany, Samuel transferred his bank accounts to London and converted his assets into gold, which he used to finance the family’s escape.

The Reichmanns moved to Paris and then to Tangiers, where Samuel became a currency trader. His wife led the family in packaging and forwarding food and other necessities to concentration camp inmates in Europe during World War II, via the Spanish Red Cross. The family’s home in Tangiers became a sanctuary for other refugees.

Albert was mostly home-schooled, his grandson said.

He married Egosah Feldman, a Romanian immigrant who taught school, in Israel in the mid-1950s. In 1959, the couple moved to Toronto. She died this year.

Mr. Reichmann is survived by their four children, Philip and David Reichmann, Bernice Koenig and Libby Gross; many grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and his youngest brother, Ralph, his only surviving sibling.

By the time Albert arrived in Toronto, two of his brothers, Edward and Louis, had established Olympia Floor & Wall Tile in Montreal, and his brother Ralph was in charge of the tile company’s Toronto affiliate. His brother Paul was running a property-development affiliate in Toronto.

With about $40,000 from his father, Albert formed York Factory Developments to build warehouses. In 1964, at their father’s urging, the brothers merged the companies into Olympia & York Industrial Development. A global real estate behemoth was born that would make the Reichmanns one of the world’s wealthiest and most philanthropic families.

Among the projects they built were Exchange Place in Boston, the Olympia Center in Chicago and the 72-story First Canadian Place in Toronto, which was the tallest building in Canada when it opened in 1975.

The World Financial Center, designed by Cesar Pelli, was built by Olympia & York across the street from the original World Trade Center. It is now known as Brookfield Place, after the company that bought the property.

John E. Zuccotti, a former New York deputy mayor who was named president of Olympia & York (U.S.A.) in 1989, became chairman of Brookfield in 1996.

In the late 1970s, while New York City was still reeling from its brush with municipal bankruptcy, the Reichmanns gobbled up some 10 million undervalued square feet of office space. That audacious gamble elevated them to the status of, as The Washington Post put it, the “Rothschilds of Canadian realty.”

As the city’s economy rebounded, the return on that investment helped finance other projects, including the World Financial Center and the riskier rehabilitation of the Docklands in London, which eventually proved to be an enormous commercial success for its developers and investors — including the Reichmanns, who managed to renew a stake in the venture.

“There have been two great real estate deals in the history of New York,” Meyer S. Frucher, chief executive of the Battery Park City Authority, the state agency that owns the land under the World Financial Center, told The New York Times in 1987.

 “The first was when the Dutch bought the island of Manhattan. The second was when the Canadians bought the island again.”

Sam Roberts, an obituaries reporter, was previously The Times’s urban affairs correspondent and is the host of “The New York Times Close Up,” a weekly news and interview program on CUNY-TV. @samrob12

 

Moderate Islam Faces An Uncertain Future In Indonesia – Analysis

 December 31, 2022 

By East Asia Forum

By Alexander R Arifianto*

In 2022, two leading moderate Indonesian Islamic figures, Ahmad Syafii Ma’arif and Azyumardi Azra, passed away. With their departure, Indonesia’s Islamic discourse lost two moderate voices.

As chairman of Muhammadiyah — Indonesia’s second largest Islamic organisation — Ma’arif was instrumental in promoting theological reforms. Between 1998 and 2005, Ma’arif reoriented Muhammadiyah’s theological outlook from a rigid, conservative direction towards one that is progressive and compatible with Indonesia as a multicultural, religiously diverse and democratic nation.

Ma’arif’s passing marked the death of one of the last Indonesian neo-modernist Islamic thinkers. Neo-modern Islam arose alongside the movement of theological reformers who became prominent Muslim intellectuals from the 1970s to the 1990s. Neo-modernist figures such as Nurcolish Madjid, Dawam Rahardjo and Abdurrahman Wahid became founders and spokespersons of the moderate Islamic movement in Indonesia.

Azra was an Islamic thinker who promoted Islam’s compatibility with modernity and democracy while condemning violent extremism. As Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University president, Azra instituted a curricular reform that trained a new generation of Islamic studies scholars who shared his passion for a moderate and inclusive Indonesian Islam.

Their passing has left a gap to fill in Indonesia’s moderate Islamic movement, which is has been threatened by a conservative Islamic resurgence over the past decade. There are few moderate figures with similar levels of moral authority and influence over the Indonesian Muslim community compared to those of the neo-modernist reformers.

There are several reasons why conservative Islamists increasingly challenge moderate Islam in Indonesia. First, moderates are losing ground when competing against popular Islamist preachers to promote their ideas on social media and other outlets.

In a highly competitive market of religious ideas in post-Reformasi Indonesia, Islamist groups have been steadily growing and attracting followers and sympathisers among Indonesian Muslims — particularly among younger Indonesians. For example, the Indonesian Muslim Students Action Union (KAMMI)’s campus preaching organisation — the youth wing of the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) — is a primary point of contact to recruit new members.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have also promoted the rise of popular charismatic yet theologically conservative Islamic preachers. These include Abdul Somad (a traditionalist Islamic cleric), Hanan Attaki (founder of the Salafi-influenced Hijrah Youth Movement) and Felix Siauw (loosely connected with Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) – an organisation which calls for the Indonesian state to be transformed into a global Islamic caliphate). Each command popular appeal among Muslim youth on social media outlets like Instagram.

Second, many moderate intellectuals who become staff and policy advisers to Indonesian government ministries and agencies tend to defend government policies instead of speaking out against them — unlike their neo-modernist predecessors.

These include Ulil Abshar Abdalla, an intellectual successor of Abdurrahman Wahid within Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)who became a Democratic Party legislative candidate in 2014 and 2019. And, Raja Juli Antoni, a Ma’arif protege who became an Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) politician and was recently appointed as a deputy minister for land and spatial planning.

Several young NU intellectuals were also recently appointed to various government positions. For instance, Zuhairi Misrawi — a former spokesperson to Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo — was appointed as Indonesia’s ambassador to Tunisia in 2021. Rumadi Ahmad — chairman of Lakpesdam (a semi-autonomous NU institution that promotes interfaith dialogue) — is now a staff member within the Executive Office of the Indonesian President.

Islamist-leaning groups and preachers dominate the breach in religious preaching (da’wa) that the departure of these intellectuals from religious activism to politics creates — particularly around preaching targeted towards Indonesia’s youth. While the government has tried to level the playing field through its ‘religious moderation’ program, which promotes semi-official moderate Islamic preaching, youth da’wa continues. Yet many da’wagroups are shifting underground due to the legal prohibition against groups such as HTI.

The appointment of moderate NU intellectuals to various government positions is adding to the perception that the organisation is closely aligning itself with Jokowi’s government. This raises concerns that NU intellectuals may not speak out against the practices of Jokowi’s government. It combats Islamists with repressive measures used in former Indonesian president Suharto’s era and by enacting legislation curtailing free expression, like the recently enacted Indonesian Criminal Code Law.

This is an unfortunate situation given that Azra, Ma’arif and other neo-modernist thinkers have a long reputation for defending freedom of expression and speaking out against unjust legislation — both during the Suharto and post-Reformasi periods.

As Indonesia’s democratic backsliding continues, it is more important than ever for moderate Islamic intellectuals who are inspired by their predecessors to boldly share their pluralist and pro-democratic vision in Indonesia’s public sphere.

*About the author: Alexander R Arifianto is a Research Fellow in the Indonesia Programme at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Source: This article was published by the East Asia Forum


East Asia Forum

East Asia Forum is a platform for analysis and research on politics, economics, business, law, security, international relations and society relevant to public policy, centred on the Asia Pacific region. It consists of an online publication and a quarterly magazine, East Asia Forum Quarterly, which aim to provide clear and original analysis from the leading minds in the region and beyond.

Armenia Appeals to International Court of Justice to Oblige Azerbaijan to Unblock Lachin Corridor

Published on30 December 2022

YEREVAN — The Republic of Armenia filed in the Registry of the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, a Request for the indication of provisional measures in the case concerning Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Armenia v. Azerbaijan), referring to Article 41 of the Statute of the Court and Article 73 of the Rules of Court.

In its Request, Armenia states that “on 12 December 2022, Azerbaijan orchestrated a blockade of the only road connecting the 120,000 ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh with the outside world, thereby preventing anyone and anything from entering or exiting.”

It further claims that “the blockade is ongoing as of the date of its Request, and there are no signs that it will be lifted any time soon”.

Armenia requests the Court to indicate the following provisional measures: “Azerbaijan shall cease its orchestration and support of the alleged ‘protests’ blocking uninterrupted free movement along the Lachin Corridor in both directions. Azerbaijan shall ensure uninterrupted free movement of all persons, vehicles, and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions.”

Pursuant to Article 74 of the Rules of Court, “a request for the indication of provisional measures shall have priority over all other cases”.

Earlier, the European Court of Human Rights partially satisfied the request of the Armenian government of December 14 to apply interim measures against Azerbaijan.

Thus, the ECtHR ruled “to oblige Azerbaijan to take all measures to ensure the movement of seriously ill people in need of medical care in Armenia through the Lachin corridor, as well as the safe movement of people who are homeless on the way or in need of subsistence.’ However, the court ruling indicates that Azerbaijani control of the Lachin corridor is currently disputed.

 

Closing The Climate Financing Gap: New Proposals And Emerging Risks – OpEd

 December 31, 2022  

By ICAS

By Amanda Jin

As an increasing number of research projects and reports are underlining the need to contain global warming within 1.5 degree Celsius, it is ever more important for the international community to increase their efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Thankfully, global leaders decided to reaffirm their commitments to the 1.5 degree goal at the Sharm el-Sheikh Climate Change Conference (COP27), held from November 6-18, 2022. Furthermore, major powers such as the European Union, the United States and China—as well as multilateral organizations such as G20, ASEAN, the Alliance of Small Island States, African Union and the Vulnerable 20—have all announced additional pledges, proposals and/or action plans to address climate change. As the international community turns to market mechanism ideas to address climate change, these proposals can lead to unintended and counterproductive impacts despite their potential. Accordingly, global leaders and stakeholders should carefully evaluate and implement new initiatives to ensure effectiveness and avoid emerging risks.

The recent global uptick in climate commitments belies a potentially expanding gap in climate-related investment and financing. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an annual average investment of around US$2.4 trillion is needed in the energy sector alone to reach the 1.5 degree goal. In contrast, many developing countries have not recovered economically to their pre-pandemic level, and low-income countries are now cutting public investment critical for long-term sustainable development. As the impacts of climate change intensify, the amount of funding needed for climate adaptation will also drastically increase. Despite promising developments such as the new climate reparation fund and a number of North-South cooperation initiatives, it is unclear whether vulnerable communities and countries will have sufficient resources to respond to climate change impacts and risks. 

As public funding and aid can be insufficient to close the financing gap, global leaders are now increasingly eyeing market mechanisms to incentivize contribution from the private sector. Just as the United States announced the Energy Transition Accelerator in early November 2022 to catalyze private climate financing by allowing developing countries to sell carbon credits to private companies that can “offset” the companies’ carbon emissions, the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative also aims to advance sustainable development by expanding Africa’s carbon credit market, potentially between the region and private companies worldwide. At the same time, countries at the forefront of climate change mitigation are now worried about “carbon leakage”: as a country sets higher environmental and carbon emission standards, companies are prone to move their production and operation elsewhere, leading to trading disadvantages and less effective emission reductions. Accordingly, the European Union has planned to implement a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM); a de facto carbon tariff for certain imports from non-EU producers who have not “already paid a price for the carbon used in the production.” 

The idea of similar “carbon adjustment” tariffs has also attracted bipartisan interest in the United States. More recently, the U.S. has reportedly proposed to establish an “Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum” along with the European Union to jointly impose carbon tariffs against steel and aluminum products that are produced in carbon-intensive ways. This particular arrangement is described as an effort to “level the playing field.” 

Despite good intentions, legitimate concerns and promising prospects, the above-mentioned initiatives and proposals must be carefully implemented to ensure effectiveness. In contrast to the potential of carbon credits, carbon markets are still at an early stage of development at both the national and regional levels. As emissions trading schemes (e.g., in the European Union and China) are still exploring the best way to ensure accuracy, reliability and accountability in the counting, verification and trading of carbon emission reductions within their own economy, the concerns for greenwashing—namely, that companies will misrepresent or exaggerate their contribution to climate change—have persisted. These issues will only be highlighted when initiatives such as the Energy Transition Accelerator and Africa Carbon Markets Initiative allow carbon credits to flow between the developing countries and the private companies around the world. This is especially important when said private companies are incorporated in economies that do not have a carbon market (e.g., the United States). 

To avoid a global race to the bottom, the international community should at least establish a global coordination and monitoring mechanism, such that best practices are shared and incorporated across different initiatives. Ideally, the individual initiatives should eventually lead to a global carbon market, aiming at genuine and measurable carbon emission reduction progress to jointly contain global warming. 

Notwithstanding the urgent need for global cooperation on climate change actions and market mechanisms, recent developments in “carbon tariffs” could shift the narrative from international cooperation to geoeconomic tensions. As the United States proposes to establish a “climate club” with the European Union and other like-minded partners to jointly impose carbon tariffs against non-members, researchers have found that punitive climate tariffs could inflict significant damage on the economies of others as well as global trade but might not effectively induce further emissions reductions unless non-members of the climate club are forced to join the club. As many developing countries are still struggling to find sufficient resources to invest in climate change mitigation and adaptation, such measures can potentially be counterproductive to global sustainable development and, accordingly, the global fight against climate change. Additionally, the introduction of punitive tariffs risked violating the rules of the international economic order and would erode trust in the global system for sustainable development—trust that has already been tested by the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2017 and the increasing tensions between the United States and China. 

As the international community reaffirms its commitment to climate change actions, global leaders should give careful consideration to the measures that they seek to implement in addressing the climate financing gaps. Effective actions in the progression of sustainable development require not only the effective incorporation and coordination of all countries and stakeholders but also the genuine attention to effectiveness, accountability and the building of trust. 

*About the author: Amanda Jin is a Research Assistant Intern at ICAS

Source: This article was published by ICAS.

ICAS

The Institute for China-America Studies (ICAS) is an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to strengthening the understanding of U.S.-China relations through expert analysis and practical policy solutions.

Demise Of Communist System Left Russians Living Without A Public Future – OpEd

 December 31, 2022 

By Paul Goble

Because the communist system so monopolized the public future, Aleksey Levinson says, its collapse 30 years ago left Russians without a significant public future to believe in and act upon. Instead, they act as if their country’s future will be just like the present or talk about trivialities.

What was important about the Soviet system, the Levada Center sociologist says, is not that it was communist but that it was about the collective future. “And with the demise of the state and its ideological platform, this future disappeared,” depriving Russians of “the future as a category of time” (polit.ru/article/2022/12/29/levinson/).

What remains and did so “almost untouched,” Levinson continues, are private futures, those of the individual, the family, friends, coworkers and so on. “In these structures, everything is very much in order with regard to the category of the future.” Were things otherwise, the country would have descended into complete chaos.

But the lack of a common public future is a serious matter, especially as it affects not only the population but as far as one can tell the elites as well. In the focus groups he conducts, the sociologist continues, Russians simply can’t describe the future when asked that question directly. 

When they are asked what would be the worst that could happen, they do have opinions, he says. Some talk about the disintegration of Rusisa, “the end of the world after which there is nothing and cannot be.” Others, talk about nuclear war.” And still a third talk of a civil war which would lead to either the first or the second.

But when asked about what would be the best, they talk about trivial things such as a stable ruble or oil at 90 US dollars a barrel. And they can’t imagine a future, even a distant one, any different than the present at least as far as their ruler is concerned. In short, they have no vision of the future and so are increasingly lacking one of the present as well.

Red Square, Moscow, Russia.