Climate Change: an unconvenient truth and a time to take action
At first when I thought of writing an article on Climate change and the urge to react, I thought of explaining with simple words what was going on. However the result what a vague summary of general information that would not give out the message I was aiming for. Why is that? Humans are not rational creatures. Although they know a problem is hanging out somewhere their ability to react will only emerge in confrontation. Therefore I will give out facts and not blind words.
The 2007 IPCC report highlights the dangers of the climate challenge; however it seems it only shares a best-case scenario as it is missing out on several points. Other than a deep need of an update as it does not take into account the latest science, the high speed development of China and India has to be acknowledged as well. As the global emission of co2 is much higher today than it was a few years back, the data of the report is even more unreliable. Correcting it will not only draw a more alarming prospect of the future as it would also underline some catastrophic consequences.
To avoid this apocalypse scientists agree we should keep temperature under a 2°C rise. Although we already attained half of this safe increase the MIT report on probabilistic forecast of the 21st century shows that this is only the beginning as we can expect a 5°C rise before 2095. How come such prospects could even happen?
The poles are melting and this is no big news. However, who has ever talked about permafrost? When melting out, this frozen peat will give off co2 or, if decaying in water, methane. As methane is 21 times more dangerous as a greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide, and considering that the permafrost contains as much co2 as the entire atmosphere holds, then if released there will be no safe exit.
While our planet is warming up, floods will wipe out our cities, and the wild climate and increasing precipitations will affect our health, lifestyle and environment. Forests such the Amazon will burn out and meaning less oxygen and more carbon dioxide. Of course these are horrific images however it will happen if the matter is not taken seriously. Don’t close your eyes on the subject. We are in this together and action starts at home.
“This is the most serious threat we have ever phased in all of history and it is happening very rapidly”, our generation “will see it, our children will live it and it is a question whether our grandchildren will get through it”, says Dan Miller. This member of the Copenhagen Climate Council is dedicated to create awareness of the importance of the COP 15. As the UN conference will be held in December in order to replace the Kyoto protocol, he believes there is still time to reverse the tide.
Therefore taxing emission of greenhouse gases, banning coal plants and managing energy efficiency as to prefer a renewable source than fossil fuels is a start. However, as a developed country such as Britain “generates far less renewable energy, as a proportion of the total, than most of its European neighbours” no optimism lies in the present, though maybe in the future.
Copenhagen is just around the corner so let’s hope for the best.
What’s up in Asian Contemporary literature?
When thinking of contemporary Asian literature the first thing you may have in mind would be that book that became an acclaimed movie about the life of servitude and forbidden love of a women who dedicated herself to the arts and entertainment of men. If you are referring to Memoirs of a Geisha to illustrate Asian literature then think again. This marvelous dossier about Japanese society before WWII was written by Arthur Golden. However its huge success did have an impact on the Oriental image as this American novel set a new trend and interest in our reads worldwide.
Picking a book randomly in a library I found Ha Jin. In the Bridegroom he depicts with incredible talent a post-Cultural Revolution China and the changing conditions of its people’s daily lives. Every story has a twist linked to a similar theme as in “things are not always are what they seem”. Interpretation is always personal of course but one can understand a fair criticism of the unrealistic communist peace and welfare ideals. As those are illustrated as shockingly absurd in the events occurring in the stories, it is a fun read and a beautiful peace of work.
What do I like about Asian literature nowadays? It is the poise, the poetry and its genre that attracts me. I have never found anything like it in western literature. It is like a bridge to an unknown world. That is what I found in Blind willow, sleeping woman by H. Murakami. The words flow in a delicate poetic ensemble that makes your intellect disconnect completely with the exterior. Therefore you feel the book, and you understand the narrator as if he was talking to you in person. Just like a magic spell while reading, an invisible hand invites you to step in and be part of an experience. One not to miss is Kafka by the shore by Murakami. It is insanely powerful, controversial and fascinating.
The power of the Asian culture is so different to ours though it translates well giving us a chance to understand it. Never in my life have I experienced such an agreeable read. Maybe the fact that their writing system, transcribing the art of calligraphy and poetry through a diversity of meanings, is so estranged to ours explains it. However it is enchanting to see that the past can be felt in each of their words, references or metaphors. Although I don’t assume that they are all alike, I do understand however the impact the culture and tradition has in the shaping of their sentences and stories, almost in a lyrical way.
The woman warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston is an example at that. Although she is a Chinese American she uses traditional legends and references to her ancestor’s culture as a form of story telling. Using as well personal happenings, family tragedies and rumors she invites the reader to a discuss gender and ethnicity. Taking us to the past and back to the present to lead us to an understanding of what future will behold to a world of mixed heritages.
About contemporary Asian literature what strikes me is this encounter of cultures that is illustrated. While nowadays the East opens to the West, it depicts a new horizon that is set on the basis of tradition. Questioning the impact of the occidental world that imposes itself in their life and culture, I believe that Asian authors understand far more than anyone else what globalization is doing, sculpting a new eye to the world’s population towards a culture where borders a less than obvious.
Kami No Shizuki’s Tears of God is a big hit in Asia these days and will soon become a movie. This illustrated book in the Manga style can be seen as the embodiment of a new wave. Wine is the key element to this series of fifteen volumes. No superpowers are involved only a quest, a battle and a prize while two sons fight for the heritage left by their wine specialist of a father. However the only way to get a hold of it is to find the wine he would define as the tears of God. No need to remind anyone that other than Sake, wine is not a very Asian label therefore it does count as an intriguing share of world cultures.
However this is not it. I also see pride in these mixed pages. Although Occidentalism is imposing itself everywhere as being a norm, through writing I feel as if these authors were proud to present a welcoming wave to Western civilization though being shaped into fitting to their standards.
However, not to be too much of an idealist I have to say that others also put forward the bad effects it brings to their country. Of course to make a generalization on this topic would a grave error though in my opinion it is a point that should not be left unsaid. Throughout my reads I happen to have seen several winks to these effects. In Shanghai Baby by Wei Hu, while a young woman writes her first novel she narrates her life and doings. Through her eyes we discover Shanghai and the western imposition, mostly associated with perversion or perverting but all in good harmony. Seems contradictory to you? You’ll see…
Therefore, have a peak to other writers than those you can be accustomed to and hunt for the unknown. Throughout these pages you’ll get an exotic feel of another place that does not feel like the ones we are accustomed to.
Armenia stuck in the past: The Turks could give a hand.
It was two in the morning and I couldn’t go to sleep, zapping on the channels of my TV nothing appealed to me. Suddenly out of no where I saw Charles Aznavour on the screen. In Ararat, the French singer plays a film director trying to bring alive a historical fact that has been forgotten or merely acknowledged. Although the shooting of an Armenian artist’s life is what leads the story, there is more to it than what meets the eye as it only brings the plot together for a far greater scheme. Although this is only a movie, its message is truly touching and revealing. It becomes political, social, philosophical and psychological.
The Armenian genocide remains the key element to the whole synopsis. Multiple stories keep crossing each other and various questions keep on bursting out. However, they all lead to the memory of past events, its effect on the present and of course how to live with it. It doesn’t give out any answers or even tries to blame anyone, it only says: How can we keep on living when everyone has forgotten us and what we have been through?
When there is no justice there is no truth and therefore there can be no trust. This is why the Armenian memory is an everyday battle for its people. The 24th of April is the commemoration day of this tragedy that we can call today genocide. In 2009, French intellectual and philosopher Bernard Henry Levy has said a few words that explain why one should not forget. To negate the events that occurred during 1915-1917 in the Ottoman Empire is to kill the dead once again, to humiliate the survivors and their descendants.
Although the European parliament recognized it in 1987, in 2001 France was the first country to declare that a genocide was operated by the Turks in Armenia in the early XXth century. France didn’t write History as it was already written but not acknowledged. The facts are there, lawsuits were trialed and sentences were pronounced at the end of the 1st world war. Although many documents had been destroyed, the facts remained inerasable. Would there have been a unionist trial in 1919, or then again the Tehlirian lawsuit in 1921 if this tragedy hadn’t happened?
The last time I heard about the Armenian genocide was when Turkey resented the French government’s vote in 2006 on the Gayssot law. This law would have severely punished any negationism upon the subject, which occurrence is still being debated in Turkey. Blaming France for being an intruder in matters that don’t relate directly to its nation, Turks held this matter as a great offense and would have reprimanded greatly by cutting short any shared economic development. The law has still not past but remains an open file.
What about the rest of the world? France giving out the example other countries followed as to restore the truth and knowledge of historical facts. From Europe, Latin America and the USA to the UN, EU and Mercosur, Armenia’s past has been restored. Why can’t Turks admit these events?
Relating to Germany and the Jew massacre, we all know that this horror is indelible. However although the memory of this loss will never tire it is not blamed on the young German generation as they have nothing to do with it. Germany cannot be blamed for ever for what once happened. It was the act and motivation of a group of people that affected a population and a time and was lead by a name and its disciples. In a nutshell, if we keep on blaming each other after all these years we’ll never find peace and reconciliation. What am I trying to say? Simply that if Turkey could acknowledge the wrongs of the Union and Progress committee in these days and their involvement in the killing and deportation of more than a million Armenians and thirty thousand Kurds, then these people could move on. Putting their mutual hate aside a dialogue could be restored between the two countries. If Turkish historian Orhan Pamuk could do that, why can’t its government do the same? It is only about admitting the past in order to embrace the future.
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