【宏觀視野】Global Climate and Environmental Issues: point d'entrée for Cross-Strait Cooperation

【宏觀視野】

Global Climate and Environmental Issues: point d'entrée for Cross-Strait Cooperation

Kirill Thompson

Associate Dean, Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences at National Taiwan University. Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University.

‧Anthropocene Age

　　The age of globalization in human affairs has provoked a growing awareness that human activities are starting to impact vaster geological affairs. This is the age in which it is mostly human activities that shift, tip, and possibly topple the global climate and ecosystems.

　　On the eve of the second millennium, the atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen discerned that humanity was living in such an unprecedented new geologic age, impacted mainly by human activities. He noted deep sea vessels scraping sea beds, dams catching gigatons of sediment, vast jungles and forests being leveled, agricultural lands being over irrigated (desertified), mines getting ever wider or deeper. He registered that human beings around the world were stirring a new age of planetary change. He called this age "the Anthropocene."

　　The Anthropocene age commenced slowly with the advent of the Agrarian Age 12,000 years ago, but has accelerated exponentially since the Industrial Revolution.

　　Nowadays, under the conditions of rapid global economic development, expansive industrial production, industrialized agriculture, profligate consumption, waste, and pollution, we see rampant environmental destruction and accelerated climate change and mass extinctions, seemingly to the les point de non retour.

　　These environmentally destructive trends are reported in the media and thus increasingly obvious to the naked eye, so political, business, religious, academic, and NGO leaders around the world are stepping up to find ways to—in Al Gore's words—"reduce humanity's carbon footprint" and overall environmental impact. However, as production and profit remain the bottom line for government officials and their major donors in big business, the proper concepts for arranging a sustainable and environmentally friendly way of living are always watered down, postponed, and slow in implementation.

‧Anthropocene Cross Strait Situation

　　The countries flanking the Taiwan Strait—Taiwan to the east and China to the west—are hotspots of the aforementioned expansive production and consumption, waste, and pollution: industrial zones and factories line Taiwan's west coast, with even more across the Strait and north and south along China's southeast coast. China's waste and pollution are much greater, yet Taiwan is a principal investor in China's industries. As a result, the South China Sea is among the most heavily polluted in the world, with diminishing fish stocks and large dead zones of toxic waste and no O2. The skies above the Strait are increasingly smoggy. Clear days and fragrant air are ever rarer in the cities of western Taiwan and southeastern China.

　　Experts and commentators always tend to discuss cross-strait relations strictly in terms of Economy, Politics, Society, and Defense. Indeed, economy and trade form deepest bond between Taiwan and China. The two sides see and exploit many win-win cross strait opportunities. Twenty years ago, Taiwan and China had a largely symbiotic relationship: China needed Taiwan's knowhow and investment capital, and Taiwan wanted China's cheap labor and new markets. Today there is more straightforward cooperation in various mixes of cross-strait cooperation. Cross strait Politics remain complicated: neither regime can recognize—or acknowledge—the other, because their overlapping jurisdictions and claims; yet, there is tacit acceptance of their respective spheres of control. The root problem is the contradiction between the autocratic single party governance in China vs. the capitalist democratic governance in Taiwan. Social intercourse among people from across the Strait goes fairly smoothly though occasionally stressed by differences in thought and aspiration, as well as lingering distrust. Militarily, while insisting on its legitimacy, institutions, and free lifestyle, Taiwan shows its good will and pacifistic approach and China has been low key and cooperative on economy and trade but introduces new firepower, stations new missiles, and occasionally rattles its sabers. Cross-strait military relations are calm—but could flare up at a moment's notice.

　　At a deeper level, all Cross Strait political, military, and especially economic, activities depend on the health of the natural environment—on the land, in the sea and the sky, and in multiple ecosystems. Moreover, although Taiwan and China occupy discrete geographic and geopolitical spaces, their natural settings of land, sea, air, and ecosystems overlap and are proximate and continuous. Human activities on either side exert an impact on the other side. Of course, Chinese activities exert a far greater impact on Taiwan than vice versa; however, besides Taiwanese activities on Taiwan, Taiwan invested activities in China have an environmental impact on China and less directly on Taiwan, as well. Hence, people across the strait have reason to cooperate on the natural environment in balanced ways.

　　It is a truism—and a common policymaker excuse—that the rapid speed of cross strait economic development since the 80's left little time for environmental thinking and planning, not to mention quality of life considerations. It is this exclusive worship of monetary value that can no longer be excused. As Robert F. Kennedy said in 1968:

Yet the gross national product (GNP) does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

(See Appendix I below for full text.)

‧Overview of the Global Situation

　　Henceforth, not only scholars and academics but political and business leaders and the common people all must think of Cross Strait relations with the awareness that we are living in the Anthropocene age, and human activities are seriously impacting the biosphere on which we depend for life, not to mention quality of life. The old bottom line of monetary wealth, political authority, and military power is simply too narrow when those goals have such dire effects: the present day despoiling of the lands, the seas, and the skies is in fact destroying the basic conditions for quality human life.

　　The scientific view: Earth-system science sees the planet not just as a set of places but also as a system of forces, flows and feedbacks that act upon each other. This system can behave in distinctive and counterintuitive ways, including sometimes flipping suddenly from one state to another. That the Earth-system increasingly works very differently now in the Anthropocene is shown in nature's recycling systems on which life depends for various crucial elements. For example, in the past two centuries people have released vast amounts of fossil carbon into the atmosphere that in the past the planet had taken hundreds of millions of years to store away. This massive release of fossil carbon has given humanity a leading role in the planet's carbon cycle.

　　Although the natural fluxes of carbon dioxide into and out of the atmosphere still account for more than 10x the amount that humans put into the atmosphere every year by burning fossil fuels, the human addition matters disproportionately because it unbalances the natural flows. The result of putting more carbon into the atmosphere than can be taken out of it is a warmer climate—a melting Arctic, higher sea levels, increased photosynthesis in many plants, intensification of the hydrologic cycle of evaporation and precipitation, and a new unhealthy ocean chemistry (China's burning of coal and Taiwan's burning of oil are major culprits).

　　All of this impacts not just human life but also planetary processes. More rain means more weathering of mountains. More efficient photosynthesis means less evaporation from croplands. And changes in ocean chemistry can be expected to have a direct effect on the geological record if carbon levels rise far enough.

　　Human impact on the nitrogen cycle is equally immense. One crucial part of this cycle—the fixing of pure nitrogen from the atmosphere into useful nitrogen-containing chemicals—depends entirely on living things. And the living things doing most of that work are now people. By adding industrial clout to the efforts of the microbes that used to do the job single-handedly, humans have increased the annual amount of nitrogen fixed on land by more than 150%. The majority is done on purpose, mostly to make chemical fertilizers. This has a variety of highly unwholesome consequences, such as the increasing number of coastal "dead zones " caused by algal blooms feeding on fertilizer-rich run-off waters (South China Sea, East China Sea).

　　Industrial nitrogen's greatest environmental impact, though, is to increase the number of people! Although nitrogen fixation is not just a gift of life—100m people were killed by explosives made with industrially fixed nitrogen in the 20th century's wars—its net effect has been to allow a huge growth in population. About 40% of the nitrogen in the protein that humans eat today got into that food via artificial chemical fertilizers. There would not be nearly so many people now doing all sorts of other things to the planet if humans had not sped up the nitrogen cycle. (Moreover, due to the Postwar population policies of China and Taiwan, respectively, China is the world's most populous country, and Taiwan is the world's second most densely populated country.)

　　Remarkably, the altering of the nitrogen cycle was deliberate. 19th century scientists viewed the shortage of nitrogen as a planet-wide problem. Since natural processes would not increase the supply, they invented an artificial process called the Haber process that could make up the difference. It was the first human attempt at geo-engineering the planet to bring about a desired goal. The scale of its success outstripped the imaginings of its instigators. So did the scale of its unintended consequences.

　　Given the evident risks and dangers of the Anthropocene, further geo-engineering may be recommended, this time regarding carbon. Left to themselves, carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere are expected to remain high for 1,000 years—more, if emissions continue to go up during the rest of the 21st century. Climate scientists argue that human intervention is necessary—the goal of this century should be not be just to stop the amount of carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, but to start actively decreasing it.

　　Carbon reduction might be achieved in part by growing forests and enriching soils, but it might also require high-technology interventions, such as burning newly grown plant matter in power stations and pumping the resulting carbon dioxide into aquifers below the surface of the earth, or scrubbing the air with special chemical-engineering plants, or intervening in ocean chemistry in ways that would cause the seas to consume the air's carbon.

　　Such deliberate interference in the Earth system would undoubtedly provoke alarm. But an Anthropocene age without serious deliberation would be disastrous. A way to split the difference has been proposed by Earth-system scientists under the theme of "planetary boundaries." The planetary-boundaries group urges increased restraint but, where necessary, direct intervention aimed at taking all sorts of factors in the Earth system—from the alkalinity of the oceans to the rate of phosphate run-off from the land—back to the conditions that obtained in the pre-human Holocene period. Carbon-dioxide levels, the researchers recommend, should be brought back from whatever the peak they reach to a level slightly higher than the Holocene's and a little lower than that of today.

　　The precautionary approach urges not simply that things were good the way they were, but that the further the Earth system gets from the stable conditions of the previous Holocene age, the more likely it is to slip into a whole new state and change itself yet further in unforeseeable ways.

　　Now, as grave threats of rapid climate change, water depletion and desertification, mass extinctions loom, Taiwanese and Chinese leaders need to make concerted efforts to create synergy in all sectors of government and walks of life to reduce humanity's carbon footprint, plan development carefully to maintain clean water supplies and sustain natural ecosystems as their new agreed common bottom line. Such common efforts of wisdom and conscience would remind people that what is most precious in life is life itself, and that clean waters and wild nature represent the source of life.

　　But do the leaders possess the necessary wisdom? As long as they stay obsessed with illusory bottom line economic growth, political power, and nationalism, they will not think about what is precious in life and the basic conditions for a satisfying human existence.

The World and the Taiwan Strait are in flux

‧Current Economic and Environmental Situation and Trends

Evolving global-scale production systems—allowing for systematic widespread improvements (Taiwan, China)

Rapid ICT—enabled technological change (Information and Communication Technology)—allowing for ongoing communication in making improvements (Taiwan, China)

Rapid population growth in some areas (SE Asia), and aging in high income areas (Taiwan, China)

Worldwide decline of middle-level skilled jobs (Taiwan, China)

Extreme environmental crises (China, Taiwan): toxic soil, desertification, water pollution, air pollution, earthquakes, some from excessive dams, etc.

Economic and geopolitical multi-polary—trade and commerce diversification, also increased regional and private business initiatives (Taiwan, China)

‧Economic growth and poverty reduction are blocked by four large hurdles:

Growing income inequality and social exclusion

Continued population growth

Growing environmental crises

The limited traditional academic disciplines, which are individually inadequate to conceptualize the issues of culture, economy, environment, and sustainability.

‧Tools for Achieving Sustainable Economic/Environmental Development:

Rapid Technological Transformation (introduction of green technology, humanized production)

Equity in Social Service Provision (public health, education, welfare, opportunity)

Community Protection of Natural Resources (cooperation of local stakeholders)

Strengthening of Local Governance (democratically elected, fair, bribe free)

Sharing Work, Learning, and Leisure (open access online resources)

Restraining Arbitrary Corporate Power (authoritarian rule fosters unhealthy guanxi)

Responsible Investment and Financial Markets (green investment)

Re-Democratizing Our Democracies (people democracy vs. corporate funded democracy)

Identifying Shared Holistic Global Values (via seeking common values in local traditions)

‧Top "Sustainable Systems" Priorities:

Sustainable energy systems (solar, wind, geothermal, tidal)

Sustainable agriculture and nutrition (organic, range, non-gmo)

Sustainable urbanization ("Smart Cities") (clean energy public transport: change driving cities into walking and biking cities, encourage urban agriculture)

‧These projects will require technological breakthroughs:

New global public-private partnerships (PPPs) for sustainable technologies

Low-carbon energy systems

Resilient and sustainable agriculture

Smart ICT-enabled urban systems

ICT-enabled public health & education governance

‧Prioritize Sustainable Development Academic Disciplines to assist in

Understanding Global Mechanisms: climate, biodiversity, economic dynamics

Monitoring and mapping Earth system states and cycles

Developing integrated physical-human systems for the "green economy"

Assisting directed technological change e.g. "deep decarbonization," ICT-based health and education, sustainable agriculture, smart cities

Leading public and university education, and building a shared global framework for action

‧Conclusion

　　In conclusion, the cross strait region is a hot spot in which all the problems of pollution, environmental devastation, climate change, and decline of quality of life come together and are on the rise. In order to face these problems head on, and work toward a resilient green environment and ever improving quality of human life, people in society, business, education, and government all must reflect on and take account of the environmental and climate impacts of their ideas, habits, policies, and practices. They must embrace, share, and live by more holistic and eco-friendly concepts and values. This transformation of human values, thought, and action cannot take place in a vacuum but must be nurtured from all sides, not only from political and business leaders who often have contrary interests, but also the popular media and above all the educators at every level. Even the educators need to be reeducated to cherish the earth and the biosphere and to commit themselves to teaching their students to think holistically and act in eco-friendly ways. Let us start to work together today!

‧Appendix I Robert F. Kennedy's Speech at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968

　　Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task. It is to confront the poverty of satisfaction—purpose and dignity—that afflicts us all.

　　Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product—if we judge the United States of America by that—that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

　　It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.

　　It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

　　It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

　　And it can tell us everything about America (China, Taiwan) except why we are proud that we are American (Chinese, Taiwanese).

If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in the world.

‧Appendix II Importance of Participation of Local Small Stakeholders in Environmental Decision-making

　　In areas of rapid industrial development and growth, the weaker and softer stakeholder voices are often drowned out by the wealthier and better connected stakeholders; however the weaker and softer stakeholders often have valid long-standing interests to protect and tend to be more concerned about local wildlife, ecosystems, the environment, and related public health concerns. The weaker, softer voices often provide important input about pollution and environmental damage that the big stakeholders wish to conceal. Participation of small as well as large stakeholders in local environmental decision-making thus can help the existing social structures and human practices to become more responsive to the challenges of sustainability—and more environmentally responsible. For example, alternative sustainable development strategies for coastal communities in many parts of the world—including the Taiwan Strait—are currently blocked because special interests have the inside track to the decision-makers, so important input from local stakeholder perspectives and knowledge is often ignored by policy-makers. Wider input would provide better information to the environmental experts for determining how to integrate natural science knowledge and technologies when negotiating the cultural-economic concerns voiced at the table. The environmental experts should seek to improve the sustainability prospects of decision outcomes by enhancing social awareness and implementation of the natural science environmental knowledge and technologies.

　　While nation states and governments have had difficulty negotiating meaningful international pollution and environmental agreements, democracies often demonstrate more flexibility because of greater public learning capacities and faster learning curves. The people's learning capacities and learning curves are rooted and sustained in their right to participate, their free practices, and access to such institutions as free and open public media, independent scientific community (with commitment and conscience), and the right to form associations and organize. Small stakeholder participation in joint social learning platforms for the environment and ecosystems certainly can provide important inputs for achieving more broad-based, holistic understandings of the interactive systems of nature and humanity. The extent and quality of stakeholder participation in democratic resource management decision-making can improve a community's capacity for cooperative inquiry and innovative activity. A community's improved joint, inquiry and innovative activity could serve to transform that community's capacity to manage its natural resources fairly and sustainably.

‧Appendix III Future Challenges

　　Current legal systems are largely based on the principle of state sovereignty. This assigns political responsibility for the global commons and for trans-boundary ecosystems to nation states that are effectively free, but often opt out of international environmental agreements. Importantly, however, alternative options do exist: if the subsidiary principle were applied at the planetary level, nested polycentric governance structures might be utilized to deal with specific social-environmental issues at the transnational levels where the problems are often caused and suffered. This approach of subsidiary principle may provide a way for concerned people to develop effective forces against industrial threats to sustainability, such as pollution, erosion, resource overuse than the current easily corruptible political steering mechanisms. New localized ways of managing trans-boundary river, coastal, and coral reef regions point the way. Indeed, if subsidiary local regimes are endowed with inclusive, adaptive institutions and are well networked, then a global, polycentric approach could be brought to bear to harness sustainability supportive forces around the world. For such an approach to be realized, it would be necessary to reframe the place-specific, locally appropriate solutions, which reflect diverse regional, culturally specific initiatives in more general terms and values, under a wide global visionary consensus on the Earth's core sustainability problems.

　　For more suggestions on cooperative, sustainable development, see the works of Jeffrey Sachs (Director, Earth Institute, Columbia University) and the Economist essay by Oliver M. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference on "Global Issues and Cross-Strait Relations" held at National Taipei University on April 30, 2015.

Sources

1.Glaser, Marion, Gesche Krause, Beate Ratter and Martin Welp (eds.), Human-Nature Interactions in the Anthropocene. (New York: Rutledge Press, 2012).

2.Morton, Oliver, "The Anthropocene: A Man-made World," The Economist, May 26, 2011. (Accessible online.)

3.Monastersky, Richard, "Anthropocene: The Human Age," Nature, 519, 7542 (March 11, 2015), pp. 144-147. (Accessible online.)

4.Sachs, Jeffrey, The Age of Sustainable Development (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). (Sachs is active and posts much valuable information online.)

5.The Stockholm Memorandum: Tipping the Scale Toward Sustainability. Nobel Laureate Symposium on Sustainability, May 16-19, 2011.

6.Memorandum Tipping the Scales towards Sustainability 18 May 2011

Classical Inspirations

I. Tao Yuanming 陶淵明, "Returning to Live in the Country" 〈歸園田居詩五首之一〉

Young, I was always free of common feeling.

It was in my nature to love the hills and mountains.

Mindlessly I was caught in the dust-filled trap.

Waking up, thirty years had gone.

The caged bird wants the old trees and air.

Fish in their pool miss the ancient stream.

I plough the earth at the edge of South Moor.

Keeping life simple, return to my plot and garden.

My place is hardly more than a few fields.

My house has eight or nine small rooms.

Elm-trees and Willows shade the back.

Plum-trees and Peach-trees reach the door.

Misted, misted the distant village.

Drifting, the soft swirls of smoke.

Somewhere a dog barks deep in the winding lanes.

A cockerel crows from the top of the mulberry tree.

No heat and dust behind my closed doors.

My bare rooms are filled with space and silence.

Too long a prisoner, captive in a cage,

Now I can get back again to Nature.

少無適俗韻

性本愛丘山

誤落塵網中

一去三十年

羈鳥戀舊林

池魚思故淵

開荒南野際

守拙歸園田

方宅十餘畝

草屋八九間

榆柳蔭後簷

桃李羅堂前

曖曖遠人村

依依墟里煙

狗吠深巷中

雞鳴桑樹巔

戶庭無塵雜

虛室有餘閑

久在樊籠裏

復得返自然

II. Tao Yuanming 陶淵明, "Reading the Classic of Hills and Seas" 〈讀山海經詩十三首之一〉

In the summer grass and trees have grown.

Over my roof the branches meet.

Birds settle in the leaves.

I enjoy my humble place.

Ploughing's done, the ground is sown,

Time to sit and read my book.

The narrow deeply-rutted lane

Means my friends forget to call.

Content, I pour the new Spring wine,

Go out and gather food I've grown.

A light rain from the East,

Blows in on a pleasant breeze.

I read the story of King Mu,

See pictures of the Hills and Seas.

One glance finds all of heaven and earth.

What pleasures can compare with these?

孟夏草木長

遶屋樹扶疏

眾鳥欣有託

吾亦愛吾廬

既耕亦已種

時還讀我書

窮巷隔深轍

頗迴故人車

歡然酌春酒

摘我園中蔬

微雨從東來

好風與之俱

汎覽周王傳

流觀山海圖

俯仰終宇宙