At a tipping point
Ban Ki-Moon

WE ALL agree. Climate change is real, and we humans are its chief cause. Yet even now, few people fully understand the gravity of the threat or its immediacy. Certainly I did not. It was only after I took a recent fact-finding “eco tour” of vulnerable regions that I realised the true magnitude of the danger. I have always considered global warming to be a matter of utmost urgency. Now I believe we are on the verge of a catastrophe if we do not act. Last week, in Antarctica, I saw extraordinarily dramatic landscapes, rare and wonderful. It was the most vivid experience of my life. Yet it was deeply disturbing, as well, for I could see this world changing. The age-old ice is melting, far faster than we think.
You have heard how the famous Larsen ice shelf collapsed and disappeared five years ago. A giant slab of ice 54 miles long — the size of some small countries — vanished in less than three weeks. What if this “Larsen effect” were to repeat itself on a vastly greater scale? At the Chilean research base on King George Island, scientists told me that the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet is at risk. Like Larsen, it is a continuous sheath of floating ice, comprising nearly one-fifth of the continent.
If it broke up, sea levels could rise by 20 feet. Think of the effect on the coastlines and cities: New York, Mumbai and Shanghai, not to mention small island nations. It may not happen for 100 years — or it could happen in 10. We simply do not know. But when it happens, it could occur quickly, almost overnight. It sounds like the script of a disaster movie. But this is science, not science-fiction. Dr Gino Casassa, a leading Chilean glaciologist with the Chilean Center for Scientific Studies and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that recently shared a Nobel Prize, worries particularly about the Antarctic Peninsula — a finger of land on the northern coast that he designates as one of three global “hot spots”, along with Central Asia and Greenland.
Temperatures there are rising 10 times faster than the global average, he has found. Glaciers are visibly retreating. Grasses are taking root in Antarctica’s barren soil, including one used on American golf courses. In the summer, it rains rather than snows increasingly often. A decade ago, Dr Casassa was a sceptic on climate change. Today, he fears a calamity.
I am not scare-mongering. But I believe we are nearing a tipping point. These are signs. I saw them everywhere I visited. In Chile, researchers told me that roughly half of the 120 glaciers they monitor are shrinking, at rates twice as fast as a decade or two ago. These include the glaciers in the mountains outside the capital, Santiago, that provide fresh water for 6 million residents. To the north, increasing drought threatens the country’s mining industry, a mainstay of the economy, as well as agriculture and hydroelectric power.
I spent a day in perhaps the world’s most magnificent national park, Torres del Paine. Like Antarctica, it was beautiful, pristine and majestic — and equally troubling. The snows of the Andes are also melting faster than we think. I flew over Grey Glacier, a virtual ice sea framed by towering alpine peaks. In 1985, it retreated a full two miles in little more than two weeks. Yet another demonstration of the abrupt, unpredictable and potentially devastating Larsen effect.
I ended my travels under a great Samaumeira tree on the island of Combu, not far from Belem in the Amazon river delta. This was the heart of the fabled “lungs of the earth”, the tropical rain forest prey to the deforestation and land degradation that accounts for an estimated 21 per cent of global carbon emissions.
Scientists say that climate change could turn the eastern Amazon into savannah within decades. My own itinerary had to be changed at the last moment because a tributary of the Amazon I planned to visit, near the port of Santarem, had run dry from drought.
All this might have been discouraging. Yet I left Brazil immensely heartened. Largely unnoticed by the rest of the world, Brazil has transformed itself into a quiet green giant — a leader in the fight against global warming. Over the past two years, it has cut deforestation in the Amazon by half. Vast tracts of jungle have been placed under federal protection.
In Brasilia, President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva assured me that the Amazon and its immense treasure chest of biodiversity was the common heritage of mankind and would be preserved. Brazil leads the world in renewable energy. It is one of only a few nations to successfully produce biofuels on a large scale. Yes, controversy surrounds the programme. Some fear that land currently used to grow food will be converted to fuel. Others worry that forests will be cut to make way for biomass plantations.
It is up to governments to balance social costs and benefits. But the important point is that Brazil is acting. Its efforts to combat global warming are worth watching, as lessons for us all.
For too long, we have underestimated the urgency of climate change. It is time to wake up. Last month, the UN Environment Program released its GEO-4 report, calling for “drastic steps” in the face of a challenge that “may threaten humanity’s survival”. This weekend in Valencia, Spain, I will present the latest synthesis report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is sobering reading. Yet its conclusions are encouraging. The overarching message: We can beat this. There are real and affordable ways to deal with climate change.
A report last week from the International Energy Agency (IEA) was also cautiously upbeat. Global energy demand is rising more quickly than most estimates suggest — increasing 57 per cent by 2030, according to IEA projections. But the amount of power generated by renewable sources, excluding hydroelectric, is expected to grow fivefold or more. As we see almost daily in the financial news, global business is going “green” in a big way.
All this sets the stage for the critical UN Climate Change Summit in Bali two weeks from now. We need a breakthrough: an agreement to launch serious negotiations for a comprehensive climate change deal that all nations can embrace. The challenge will be to lay out an achievable agenda of issues, from transferring alternative energy technologies to helping developing nations finance their own programmes for fighting and adapting to climate change.
We are all responsible for this. Climate change respects no borders; solutions must be global. —Khaleej Times

(Ban Ki-moon is the Secretary-General of the United Nations)


Hindu fanaticism
Waqar Ahmed

POST-INDEPENDENCE India is sated with examples of Hindu extremists aggravating communal situations, targeting particular communities, and aiding and abetting riots. The label of Hindu Terrorism may be new but the act of Hindu Terrorism is an old phenomenon. Contrary to the perception that the Sangh Parivar has gained momentum only since the 1990s, various commissions that have looked into communal riots since 1947 have gathered a significant body of evidence on the role of the RSS and affiliated organizations in terror related activities. The Reddy Commission, which in 1969 looked into rioting in Gujarat; the Justice Madon Commission, which analyzed the riots in Bhiwandi, Maharashtra, in the early 1970s; the Justice Vithayathil Commission, which probed the 1971 Tellicherry riots - all of these provide solid details of the involvement of either the RSS or its mass political platform, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, in fomenting the trouble. Now the general public in India has also started to believe that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bajrang Dal, and some other Hindu extremist organizations, collectively known as the Sangh Parivar (Hindu fundamentalist family of organizations) are utilizing religion to provoke communal violence toward organizing non-secular and undemocratic nationalism in India.
Hindu fundamentalism is well funded by Indians abroad. These organizations receive substantial contributions from Hindus in the United States and elsewhere. For example the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) is one of the most conspicuous charity organizations that raises funds in the United States to support RSS battalions in India. The ultimate object of all these endeavours is Hindu Sangathan i.e. consolidation and strengthening of the Hindu society. Increasing intolerance among the Hindu fundamentalist organizations, which poses a serious threat to democracy, is an indication of the rise of fascist forces in India. The essence of Hindu fascism includes curb of civil liberties and hyper-nationalism. It is a well known fact that according to the Bajrang Dal, sympathy and brotherhood should not be extended to those who are not Hindus.
India has a long history of violence between the Hindu majority and Muslims. Recently, Christians also have been targeted. More than 80 percent of India’s nearly one billion populations is Hindu. Muslims form a sizeable minority of around 15 percent, while just 2.5 percent are Christians. Hindu fundamentalist groups in India are trying to curb the activities of other religious groups and control the “expressions” of those not conforming to their view. The local government passed an order prohibiting religious conversions without the prior permission of the local police and a district magistrate. The order stipulates that a citizen wishing to convert must undergo a police inquiry to explain his or her reasons. India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, has passed a bill restricting the building and use of places of worship. Similarly, in 1992, Muslims became the main target of Hindus with the destruction of Babri mosque built in the 16th century on a site some Hindus believe was temple of Ram at one time. The ideology behind this hatedriven politics is called Hindutva. The organization at the core of Hindutva activities is the extremist, paramilitary, Fascist-inspired Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The RSS is dedicated to turning India from a secular democratic multi-religious society into an authoritarian anti-minority `Hindu nation’. The RSS and its family of closely allied organizations have been repeatedly alleged by international and Indian human rights organizations, judicial commissions and official bodies for their role in large scale violence and hatred against minority groups, including the Gujarat massacre in 2002.
The moderate Indians at home and abroad must oppose the deep infiltration of the Hindutva into the press as well as other institutions, political, military, bureaucratic, civic, business, educational and law and order of India. Such infiltration is creating a nation where religious fundamentalists violate the Constitution of India and the state tolerates such violation. While the present government has overt and close links to organizations within the Sangh Parivar, citizens are assured that secularism and democracy are sacred and secure. The reality is different. The Indian government’s handling of communal violence is clear to the observers and threatens to jeopardize India’s capacity to function as a nation. The US and India have recently inked a civil nuclear energy pact. The US must examine the politics of hate encouraged by extremist Hindu organizations in the name of charity and social work. Indians, one of the most financially successful groups in the United States, must take seriously their moral obligation to ensure that their dollars are not funding malice and scrutinize the organizations that are on the receiving end in India.
In the United States, where substantial funding is raised for Hindu extremist agendas, the government must act to ensure that organizations that broker terror should not continue to enjoy their non-profit status within the country. It will, at the same time, require considerable effort on the part of progressive Indians and Muslims to conceive a secular nation where religion is indeed separate from the integrity of the state and where pluralism guarantees rights and respect to the religious and non-religious alike. They should challenge assertions that a secular constitution is anti-Hindu. Patriotism and nationalism demand that all social, political and religious groups should work for an India free of institutionalized violence, corruption and rampant discrimination.




Chang’e enters orbit
Li Li

CHINA’S first lunar probe, Chang’e-1, completed the first part of its journey into space on November 7, entering its working orbit of the moon. Following instructions from the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), it began its third brake at 8:24 a.m. and entered a 127-minute round polar circular orbit at 8:34 a.m. The round orbit is the final destination of the probe, where it will carry out a series of planned scientific exploration tasks over the next year. “Chang’e-1 is an extraordinary achievement, since it’s the first time that Chinese scientists have managed to maneuver a satellite, 390,000 km away from the Earth,” said Wang Yejun, Chief Engineer of BACC.
“The probe will travel along the orbit at a stable altitude of 200 km above the moon’s surface. In each circle, it will pass the two poles,” Wang said. “The satellite entered the designed working orbit just in time and very accurately, said Sun Jiadong, Chief Designer of China’s lunar probe project, who has spent more than a decade developing and testing the lunar probe in preparation for its mission. Ye Peijian, Chief Commander and Designer of the satellite system for the lunar mission, considered it “a landmark moment.” “It proves that we have the ability to send our satellite to circle around the moon,” he said. China sent its first satellite into the Earth’s orbit in 1970. The country carried out its maiden piloted space flight in October 2003, making it the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to have sent men into space. In October 2005, China completed its second manned space flight, with two astronauts on board.
Chang’e-1 was originally designed to stay in the moon’s orbit for one year, but Tang Geshi, an official in charge of the orbital control with BACC, estimated that smooth operations and precise maneuvers may have saved 200 kg of fuel and could help to prolong the probe’s lifespan. The BACC cancelled two orbital corrections, which saved a considerable amount of fuel, as Chang’e-1 was running accurately on its expected trajectory. In its 15-day flight, the probe experienced four orbital transfers, one orbital correction and three brakes, and each maneuver used a lot of fuel.
“All the maneuvers in the flight have been completed precisely. The level of accuracy has been much higher than our expectations,” Ye said. The satellite was supposed to position all of its instruments to face the moon on November 18, a posture facilitating its probing work, said Li Jian, an official with the BACC. However, Zhou Jianliang, Deputy Chief Engineer of the BACC, revealed that it is considering giving an order to do this ahead of schedule, since the satellite is in “a very good state.”
Well begun is half done
“The probe’s precise entry into the moon’s orbit has laid a solid foundation for its future work, and we are confident that Chang’e-1 will continue to fulfill its aims step by step,” said Ma Xingrui, General Manager of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASTC) in charge of rocket and satellite systems. The 2,350-kg satellite carried eight probe facilities, including a stereo camera and interferometer, an imager and gamma-/x-ray spectrometer, a laser altimeter, a microwave detector, a high-energy solar particle detector and a low-energy ion detector. According to the project’s plan, Chang’e-1 will open all the instruments aboard it to start scientific explorations after a period of orbit testing. “Currently, all the facilities are in very good condition. Next, scientists need to maintain smooth communication between the ground and the satellite and keep it in the orbit,” said Zhang He, Director of the CASTC’s space technology research institute.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)