Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
In addition to global peak energy, climate change will be double whammy
My brother in Seattle had to spend $1000 to buy a portable AC that msrp $300
Tomorrow Portland hits 115F
People in Seatac area without AC cannot even book into hotel rooms because its all booked out by now
Thanks a lot Western capitialism imperial colonizers for screwing up the planet...
Had Qing dynasty and native Americans been left alone the planet would still exists in harmony with humans for 10000 years
Homeless mobs living in PNW tent cities will be the first frontline casualities of the heat wave
Freezing to death in Texas, burning to death in Seattle, and getting crushed to death in Florida....
America 2021 Jai Hind
My brother in Seattle had to spend $1000 to buy a portable AC that msrp $300
Tomorrow Portland hits 115F
People in Seatac area without AC cannot even book into hotel rooms because its all booked out by now
Thanks a lot Western capitialism imperial colonizers for screwing up the planet...
Had Qing dynasty and native Americans been left alone the planet would still exists in harmony with humans for 10000 years
Homeless mobs living in PNW tent cities will be the first frontline casualities of the heat wave
Freezing to death in Texas, burning to death in Seattle, and getting crushed to death in Florida....
America 2021 Jai Hind
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AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
plawolf
Lieutenant General
These sorts of reports are utterly worthless and produced purely to advance the interests of the parties that funded them. It’s exactly the same as the now infamous pandemic readiness study produced just before COVID-19 happened.
LOL.... 
- For all the talk of ‘building back better’, the truth is that G7 nations are still coming up short in finding the cash for such grand gestures
- The continued ostracising of China and its institutions on political grounds is unworthy of those who aspire to global leadership
Published: 1:30am, 28 Jun, 2021
Updated: 1:30am, 28 Jun, 2021
Anyone might have been forgiven for thinking that leaders who gathered in Cornwall for their recent summit were “lords of the universe”, seeing the airy confidence with which they presented plans to set the world to rights on everything from the pandemic and to infrastructure.
There was no sign of the humility which descended on the G7 for a while. After the 2008 global financial crisis brought these powers to their economic knees, a new group of advanced and emerging economies – the
– came into being in which China was recognised as a powerful economic force.
China has now been relegated to the ranks of a leading threat by the United States and its allies within the G7 while Russia has been
for several years. In this sense, things have regressed, rather than progressed, from a global perspective.
What emerged from the latest G7 gathering was that market economies are having problems aligning the resources of their public and private sectors behind their national plans. For all their talk of “” after the destruction wrought by
, the truth is that G7 nations are still coming up short in finding the cash for such grand gestures.
This is vitally important when infrastructure is being relied on so heavily to give the world the stimulus needed to get back on track after the pandemic. Yet, the G7 seems more intent on countering China’s
than on producing financially viable and global solutions.
Successive attempts to challenge the initiative have amounted to little, for want of finance on a scale to match China’s resources. So, who exactly is the new champion conjured up in Cornwall by the G7 to challenge the Chinese dragon?
The lengthy final communique had characteristically grand language about what the G7 leaders hoped to achieve by democratic and “rules-based” actions in the realm of infrastructure and elsewhere. However, it was just that – words.
“Reflecting our shared values and shared vision, we will aim for a step change in our approach to infrastructure financing, notably on quality infrastructure and investment, to strengthen partnerships with developing countries and help meet their infrastructure needs,” they promised, without putting any price tag on their ambitions.
We are talking about hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars that will be required if G7 members are going to help developing countries build anything like the kind infrastructure networks envisaged under China’s and plans.
“We will each pursue necessary actions through our own DFIs [Development Finance Institutions] and other relevant bodies,” the communique said. On the face of it, this sounds promising. There are hundreds of national development banks around the world, the biggest of which are based in G7 countries.
If these all lined up behind infrastructure, the impact could be significant. But, as senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington Hung Tran noted to me, “the G7 initiative didn’t come with any financial commitments – this means no increase in the resources at current DFIs of the G7 countries”.
So where can the G7 find the colossal sums needed for infrastructure, not to mention dealing with and pandemic challenges to global health services? For all its sweeping presumption, it does not have a convincing answer.
The weak link in the Belt and Road Initiative is that it is not a formal entity able to raise funds internationally and allow stakeholder representation on its governing body, which is in effect the Chinese government. It relies mainly on the and other sources for funding.
But the (AIIB) is a recognised multilateral development bank with some 140 country shareholders who do . Senior Chinese figures such as head of the Centre for China and Globalisation in Beijing, have urged the US and Japan to join the AIIB and recognise its role as a unique “global” infrastructure investment bank.
There is logic in this suggestion. For all the criticism that has been levelled at the AIIB over , non-adherence to quality standards and so on, it has been prudently managed.
Unlike the World Bank and regional multilateral development banks that perform a variety of functions, the AIIB is dedicated solely to financing and building infrastructure. It has a strong case on paper to become a universal institution for meeting the global infrastructure challenge.
Instead of considering this idea in the interest of global cooperation, the US and its G7 allies seem intent on ostracising China and its institutions, ostensibly on human rights and non-economic grounds but in reality because of strategic competition. That is unworthy of those who aspire to global leadership.
a lovely anecdote:
ten years ago, just before the Fukushima incident, a jap bragged on China's television, he claimed that japs nuclear power plants could handle earthquake up to Richter scale 10. I was hoping a real thing could check that jap out, my wish was granted soon.
