By 2050 we'll be turning off the last carbon fuelled car, lifting off in biofuel space shuttles and generally being clean, green and ... totally ... mean.As in cheap. Because, apparently, with the size of the age bomb about to hit America, whatever economy survives will have the air sucked right out of it by medicare and social security costs.
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global aging a $53 trillion financial asteroid
from heroes to zero
stripey iceberg - an antarctic oddity pointing towards global collapse?
EDITORIAL | COMMENT
Last week's report calling for zero carbon emissions by 2050 is the latest in a series of reports calling for yet more reductions.
Not so long ago, less than five years it seems, a majority of scientists talked in terms of centuries and millennia.
Now, we are warned, action must take place within current lifetimes or face disaster by the end of the century.
What can be said with certainty is that in global terms the Pacific Islands rate very lowly in terms of awareness of impacts. Other countries discuss economic loss, human displacement. Pacific Islands face loss of entire islands, for low-lying states, sovereign extinction.
Lack of awareness can be traced back mostly to a lack of cohesion among island nations which, as they do with hiv.aids, regard global warming as a distant threat.
Why is it, for example, that Tuvalu remains the region's leading advocate of global warming concerns, far ahead of much bigger and better resourced neighbours?
Fiji attracts more headlines through outlets like google news, but that is to be expected when the stories use Tuvalu as a primary example.
In urging Fiji to grow up, this agency is not focusing just on a lack of political maturity, more the astonishing scale of the challenges facing us as a region.
We're young, we are not particularly wise in the ways of the world, and, economically, the world tends to do to us as Fiji does on the sevens field - fast, furious and defiant of laws of nature.
There are big stories, in other words, to be tackled, savagely.
How to start?
Forty years ago, popular culture lept forward to a planet focused far beyond its own earthly boundaries.
Instead of mysteries of interplanetary travel, however, 2001 is now remembered for an uncomfortably wide range of questions about the origins of a terrorism attack on the same country that inspired generations with visions of freedom, democracy and prosperity.
Seven years later, the globe remains preoccupied with fallout from the deaths of 3,000 people in New York on 11th September 2001, on a planet where ten times as many people die every day from hunger and disease than could be solved with a snap of fingers in the same city.
So, yes, global warming represents more of a challenge than hiv.aids, it can be said, but the same set of obstacles stands in the way of meaningful solutions - a postcolonial passion for divide and conquer and tactics.
Clumsy context, to be sure, but Fiji media needs to aim higher than its current preoccupation with commander Bainimarama - or whoever else is next on the coup top 10.
Already operating beyond the call of duty, Fiji media needs to learn how to fight smarter, not harder, in answering clear and present dangers not just to itself, but the whole of the region.
Oh, alright, the world.
Hopefully, it won't take the an iceberg floating into Suva harbour to wake up our media elites to those clear and present dangers - stripey or otherwise.
Details of exactly what the scale of that disaster might be and who it will effect most are not easily gleanable.
message to fiji - grow up
COMMENT
It is very rarely that a newspaper feels confident enough to tell anyone to "put up or shut up" as one did yesterday in a slap-down challenge to the Fiji military government.
In fact, with all respect to the Fiji Times, that is the last thing Fiji's "interim" Attorney General should do. There are genuine causes for concern about levels of professionalism, accuracy and performance among journalists in Fiji, as there are across our island region. Oh, alright, the world.
Let's start in Suva. By attempting to mislead with its fabricated Fiji Times document, the interim administration has ripped down whatever shreds of credibility it had left as a commentator on media justice under its administration. Far from shutting up, Fiji's attorney general owes a full explanation, and apology, not just to a newspaper but to citizens his interim administration purports to represent.
Until that happens, the already gaping chasm between the media and the civic sector on one side, and a wide range of vested interests on the other, have no common ground to gain a foothold on. This can only worsen, not ameliorate or improve, chronic instability in Fiji.
For this is not just about Fiji. As the undoubted regional centre of the region, self obsessed Fiji elites - including the media - have grown fat, complacent and childishly spoilt on a huge inflow of aid flows, supposedly on behalf of us all. Doubt about this contention is now shoved from serious concern to beyond crisis point by the absurd actions of Mr. Sayed-Khaiyum.
This is not to suggest the IAG acts alone. Highly intemperate language in the recent media review takes nothing away from claims that the report is just another lame apology for what is not really any administration, interim or otherwise, but a military dictatorship of thugs. A pity, because laying buried beneath the hyperbole and frothy spittle are serious issues needing industry debate.
We are a long way from that happening, now or for the forseeable future.
What can be done? Not much in Fiji, itself, perhaps. Time for the region to apply more pressure, not by taking sides, but putting the heat on all sides of what is fast staging from a tragedy to a farce. It is time, in other words, that the interim attorney general, his overly combative interim administration, and, sorry, a small-minded media take several careful steps back to reassess the big picture, instead of ridiculous schoolyard-style scraps Fiji seems addicted to subjecting the rest of us to.
Not time for Fiji to put up, or shut up, then, but to grow up.
Yes, grow up.
canaries singing louder
NEWS Back when the "internet" consisted of telegraph wires and morse code keys, a low-tech warning system was used to warn of dangerous gases in coal mines - a canary in a cage. If the bird stopped singing, miners knew to start heading for the exits. On a planet with no exits, however, glaciers are being described as a canary in awareness efforts to fight global warming, with the United Nations Environment Programme warning member countries to quickly agree to carbon limits. "There are many canaries emerging in the climate change coal mine," UNEP's executive director Achim Steiner said in a statement. "The glaciers are perhaps among those making the most noise and it is absolutely essential that everyone sits up and takes notice."
unsubscribe me says asian media appointee
OVERVIEW Island journos are bemused over the sudden declaration of resignation of an editor from pacific islands journalists online. "Unsubscribe me !" said National editor Yehiura Hriehwazi from Papua New Guinea. His email to the group contained no criticism or explanation for his decision to jump out of the region's newest - and only - functioning media forum, barely two months old. Former editor, as it turns out. Hriehwazi, casual research reveals, no longer edits the National newspaper. In April 2007, ethnic Chinese owners from Malaysia had him "redesignated" regional manager of the company's new office and printing plant in Lae, to "cater for increasing circulation nation-wide." BACKGROUND Hriehwazi slid into the crosshairs this week when parts of an off-the-record debate online appeared in an editorial about the deportation of Fiji Sun editor Russell Hunter. He offered an immediate apology, and an explanation. Then resigned, without one. Lively debate continued. Pretty much like it used to at regional media mecca, the Fiji Press Club meetings at Traps, in Suva, Fiji. Someone would generally bang out the door before the night was through, an ethical dressdown from colleagues ringing in their ears. Online, pretty much the same, just without the beer, smokes and shouting. OUTLOOK Early days yet, but one media advocate described the forum as the "liveliest" she had seen in years. Welcome signs of life from a profession that has hid under an aid-funded blanket of silence for years. Evidence of the chilling effects of aid on freedoms of speech? Perhaps. But also of corporate correctness in Australia, and New Zealand, especially, where journalists are actively discouraged from self-examination, much less self-criticism. Welcome, also then, that PNG-led PINA, the Pacific Islands News Association, has gone on record in response to the Hriehwazi leak, rather than simply ignore everything, like former presidents, most recently from Samoa. As a private forum, pijo does not have as much transparency as some members would like. But OTR discussions from newsroom floors apparently help encourage public accountability from PINA, established, in Samoa, in 1976 and still the only regional media body more than three decades later. 30 days headlines PINA steers clear of RAMSI issue PINA urged Pacific media to be responsible Deported publisher 'touched' by support Outrage over publisher’s deportation from Fiji PINA condemns Hunters deportation Fiji deports Australian publisher, citing threat to national security MEDIA-FIJI: Activists Condemn Expulsion of Aussie Publisher Ombudsman unaware of facts related to Hunter's case but PINA ... Solomons in Need for Media Cooperation Government TV to telecast live on Independence Day 30 days google links web: ifex alerts for "pacific islands news association" news: ifex alerts for "pacific islands news association"
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