( Tomdispatch.com) – It’s an ocean of conflict and ecological decline. Despite its vast size — 1.3 million square miles — the South China Sea has become a microcosm of the geopolitical tensions between East and West, where territorial struggles over abundant natural resources may one day lead to environmental collapse.

While the threat of a devastating military conflict between China and the United States in the region still looms, the South China Sea has already experienced irreparable damage. Decades of over-harvesting have, for instance, had a disastrous impact on that sea’s once-flourishing fish. The tuna, mackerel, and shark populations have fallen to 50% of their 1960s levels. Biologically critical coral reef atolls, struggling to survive rising ocean temperatures, are also being buried under sand and silt as the Chinese military lays claim to and builds on the disputed Spratly Islands, an archipelago of 14 small isles and 113 reefs in that sea. Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam have also laid claim to many of the same islands.

Perhaps no one should be surprised since oil and gas deposits are plentiful in the South China Sea. The U.S. government estimates that 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are ready to be extracted from its floor. Such fossil-fuel reserves, some believe, are helping to — yes, how can anyone not use the word? — fuel the turmoil increasingly engulfing the region.

This year, the Washington-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative reported that several countries are pursuing new oil and gas development projects in those contested waters, which, the organization notes, could become a “flashpoint in the disputes.” Between 2018 and 2021, there were numerous standoffs between China, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian countries over drilling operations there, and fears are building that even more severe confrontations lie ahead.

The United States, of course, lays the blame for all of this on China, claiming its aggressive island-reclamation projects violate international law and “militarize an already tense and contested area.” Yet the U.S. is also playing a significant part in raising tensions in the region by agreeing to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines as part of its Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security pact. The goal, no doubt, is to restrain Chinese activity with the threat of Western military might. “Next steps could include basing U.S. nuclear-capable platforms — such as strategic bombers — in Australia as well as cooperation on hypersonic missiles, cyber operations, [and] quantum computing,” writes Derek Grossman for the Rand Corporation, the “paramilitary academy” of American defense policy. (And, in fact, the U.S. is evidently preparing to deploy the first nuclear-capable B-52s to that country soon.)

On August 25th, in partnership with Australia and the Philippines (where Washington is getting ready to occupy bases ever closer to China), U.S. Marines practiced retaking an “island” supposedly captured by hostile forces. In that exercise,1,760 Australian and Filipino soldiers and 120 U.S. Marines conducted mock beach landings and air assault maneuvers in Rizal, a small town in western Palawan province in the Philippines, which does indeed face the South China Sea.

“A whole lot of damage can be done to Australia before any potential adversary sets foot on our shores and maintaining the rules-based order in Southeast Asia, maintaining the collective security of Southeast Asia, is fundamental to maintaining the national security of our country,” said Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles of the joint military drills. 

Like AUKUS itself, those war games were intended to send a message: China beware. The resources of the South China Sea aren’t for the taking.

But here’s a question to consider: Is all this international saber-rattling only about fossil fuels? Trade routes through the area are also vital to the Chinese economy, while its fisheries account for 15% of the reported global wild fish catch. Yet neither its well-used shipping routes, necessary as they are to the flow of goods globally, nor those fisheries fully explain the ever-heightening controversy over the region. Having exploited that sea’s wild fisheries for decades, China is now becoming a global leader in fish farming, which already accounts for 72% of the country’s domestic fish production, It’s also increasingly true that fossil fuels have a distinct shelf life. But is it possible that another set of natural resources, arguably more crucial to the economic future of the global superpowers, could be adding to the growing territorial furor over who possesses the goods in the South China Sea?

Mining the Deep Blue Sea

You could call it a race to the bottom, with China leading the charge. In December 2022, that country unveiled its Ocean Drilling Ship, a deep sea mining (DSM) vessel the size of a battle cruiser set to be operational by 2024. Instead of weaponry, however, the ship is equipped with advanced excavation equipment capable of drilling at depths of 32,000 feet. On land, the Chinese already hold a virtual monopoly on metals considered vital to “green” energy development, including cobalt, copper, and lithium. Currently, the Chinese control 60% of the world’s supply of such “green” metals and are now eyeing the abundant resources that exist beneath the ocean’s floor as well. By some estimates, that seabed may contain 1,000 times more rare earth elements than those below dry ground.

It’s difficult to believe that devastating the ocean’s depths in search of minerals for electric batteries and other technologies could offer a sustainable way to fend off climate change. In the process, after all, such undersea mining is likely to have a catastrophic impact, including destroying biodiversity. Right now, it’s impossible to gauge just what sort of damage will be inflicted by such operations, since deep-sea mining is exempt from environmental impact assessments. (How convenient for those who will argue about how crucial they will be to producing a greener, more sustainable future.)

The U.N.’s High Seas Treaty, ratified in March 2023, failed to include environmental rules regulating such practices after China blocked any discussion of a possible moratorium on seabed harvesting. As of 2022, China holds five exploration contracts issued by the U.N.’s International Seabed Authority (ISA), allowing the Chinese to conduct tests and sample contents on the ocean floor. While that U.N. body can divvy up such contracts, they have no power to regulate the industry itself, nor the personnel to do so. This has scientists worried that unfettered deep-sea mining could cause irreparable damage, including killing sea creatures and destroying delicate habitats.

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“We’ve only scratched the surface of understanding the deep ocean,” said Dr. Andrew Chin, a scientific adviser to the Australian-based Save Our Seas Foundation.

“Science is just starting to appreciate that the deep sea is not an empty void but is brimming with wonderful and unique life forms. Deep sea ecosystems form an interconnected realm with mid and surface waters through the movement of species, energy flows, and currents. Not only will the nodule mining result in the loss of these species and damage deep sea beds for thousands of years, it will potentially result in negative consequences for the rest of the ocean and the people who depend on its health.”

Others are concerned that the ISA, even if it had the authority to regulate the budding industry, wouldn’t do it all that well. “Not only does the ISA favor the interests of mining companies over the advice of scientists, but its processes for EIA [environmental impact assessment] approvals are questionable,” says Dr. Helen Rosenbaum of the Deep-Sea Mining Campaign.

This brings us back to the South China Sea, which, according to Chinese researchers, holds large reserves of “strategically important” precious metals. China has already been fervently scouting for deposits of the polymetallic nodules that hold a number of metals used in virtually all green technologies.

“Learning the distribution of polymetallic nodules will help us to choose a site for experimenting with collection, which is one of the main goals of the mission,” said Wu Changbin, general commander of the Jiaolong, a submarine that discovered just such polymetallic nodules in the South China Sea.

Unsurprisingly, the U.S., lagging behind China in acquiring minerals for green technologies, has been keeping close tabs on the competition. In 2017, a Navy P3-Orion spy plane conducted repeated flyovers of a Chinese research vessel near the island of Guam. Scientists on the ship were allegedly mapping the area and planting monitoring devices for future deep-sea exploration.

The story is much the same in the South China Sea, where the U.S. has conducted numerous surveillance operations to follow Chinese activities there. In May, an Air Force RC-135 surveillance plane was intercepted by a Chinese J-16 jet fighter, causing an international uproar. Without providing any justification for why a U.S. spy plane was there in the first place, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken quickly pointed the finger at China’s recklessness. “[The] Chinese pilot took dangerous action in approaching the plane very, very closely,” claimed Blinken. “There have been a series of these actions directed not just at us, but in other countries in recent months.”

While these quarrels no doubt have much to do with control over fossil fuels, oil, and natural gas aren’t the only resources in the region that are vital to the forthcoming exploits of both countries.

Capitalism and the Climate

Across the globe, oil and coal are increasingly becoming things of the past. A report released in June 2023 by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggested that renewables were “set to soar by 107 gigawatts (GW), the largest absolute increase ever, to more than 440 GW in 2023.” The natural resources supplying this global surge in renewables, like copper and lithium, are becoming the popular new version of fossil fuels. Markets are favoring the phase-out of climate-warming energy sources, which is why China and the United States are forging ahead with mining critical minerals for renewables — not because they care about the future of the planet but because green energy is becoming profitable.

China’s foray into the global capitalist system and the ruins left in its wake are easy enough to track. In the late 1970s, China’s leaders liberalized the country’s markets and opened the floodgates on foreign investment, making it —  at an average clip of 9.5% per year — one of the fastest-growing economies ever. The World Bank described China’s financial boom as “the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history.” It’s no surprise, then, that energy consumption exploded along with its economic gains.

Like many of its global competitors, China’s economy still relies heavily on carbon-intensive fossil fuels, especially coal, but an ever-growing portion of its energy portfolio is made up of renewable energy. Steel-making and vehicle manufacturing now account for 66% of China’s energy use, transportation 9%, and residential use 13%. And while coal is still fueling that economic engine in a major way — China uses more coal than the rest of the world combined — the country has also become a (if not the) world leader in renewables, investing an estimated $545 billion in new technologies in 2022 alone.

While China uses more energy than any other country, Americans consume significantly more than two times that of the Chinese on an individual basis (73,677 kilowatts versus 28,072 as of 2023). And while the U.S. uses more energy per person, it also gets less of its energy from renewables.

As of 2022, the U.S. government estimated that only 13.1% of the country’s primary energy was produced through renewable sources.  Even so, the energy transition in the U.S. is happening and, while natural gas has largely replaced coal, renewables are making considerable inroads. In fact, the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Biden in early 2022, earmarked $430 billion in government investment and tax credits for green-energy development.

The World Economic Forum estimates that three billion tons of metals and fine minerals will be needed for the world’s energy transition if we are to reach zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 — and that number will undoubtedly only grow in the decades ahead. Of course, investors love to cash in and the forthcoming explosion in the mining of green metals on land and in the world’s waters will surely be a windfall for Wall Street and its equivalents globally. BloombergNEF (BNEF), which covers global markets, claims that the demand for key metals and minerals for the energy transition will grow at least fivefold over the next 30 years, which represents something like a $10 trillion opportunity. At stake is the mining of critical minerals like lithium and traditional metals like copper, which will be used in power generation, electrical grids, energy storage, and transportation.

“[T]he energy transition could lead to a super-cycle for the metals and mining industry,” says Yuchen Huo, a mining analyst for BNEF. “This cycle will be driven by massive expansions in clean energy technologies, which would spur demand growth for both critical minerals and traditional metals.”

It should be no surprise, then, that countries like China and the United States are likely to battle (perhaps all too literally) over access to the finite natural resources vital to the world’s energy transition. Capitalism depends on it. From Africa to the South China Sea, nations are scouring the globe for new, profitable energy ventures. In the Pacific Ocean, which covers 30% of the Earth’s surface, the hunt for polymetallic nodules is prompting island governments to open their waters to excavation in a significant way. The Cook Islands has typically issued licenses to explore its nearby ocean’s depths. Kiribati, Nauru, and Tonga have funded missions to investigate deposits in the Clarion Clipperton Zone, a 1.7 million square mile area stretching between the island of Kiribati and Mexico.

“This [deep sea] exploration frenzy is occurring in the absence of regulatory regimes or conservation areas to protect the unique and little-known ecosystems of the deep sea,” contends Dr. Rosenbaum of the Deep-Sea Mining Campaign. “The health and environmental impacts of deep-sea mining will be widespread… The sea is a dynamic and interconnected environment. The impacts of even a single mine will not be contained to the deep sea.”

According to those who want to mine our way out of the climate crisis, such highly sought-after metals and minerals will remain crucial to weaning the world off dirty fossil fuels. Yet, count on one thing: they will come at a grave cost — not only geopolitically but environmentally, too — and perhaps nowhere will such impacts be felt more devastatingly than in the world’s fragile seas, including the South China Sea where major armed powers are already facing off in an unnerving fashion, with the toll on both those waters and the rest of us still to be discovered.

Copyright 2023 Joshua Frank

Tomdispatch.com

The Indo-Pacific region, which includes 24 nations and stretches from Australia to Japan and from India to the U.S. west coast, is home to both the largest concentration of humanity and the greatest source of global emissions. In 2020, the region produced 16.75 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the consumption of oil, gas and coal — more than all other regions worldwide combined.

Success in the global effort to keep global warming below 2 C and stop catastrophic climate change depends on the region to move away from coal and other fossil fuels. Yet at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, China and India proposed countries agree to “phase down” coal instead of “phase out.”

Insufficient financing and the need to increase total energy availability — especially as more sectors become electrified — remain among the structural challenges to energy transitions around the world. China, however, is currently in a better position than the West to assist the Indo-Pacific due to geography, trade dynamics and its own clean tech sector. This could reorient economic networks and shift the balance of power in the region.

As a researcher in the field of green-industrial strategy, I am worried that the democratic world is increasingly losing ground to China in this emerging geo-economic arena. Unless the West provides an alternate network to help the region meet its energy transition needs, it risks ceding the economic alignment of the Indo-Pacific region to China’s government.

Decarbonization

A recent Bloomberg report demonstrated that many Indo-Pacific states can’t meet their 2050 energy transition needs from domestic onshore solar and wind generation. Energy imports have long been a feature of regional politics, but the economics of the energy transition change existing dynamics, favouring fixed-grid integration over more flexible liquid energy imports.

It costs less, in many cases, to build large grids that deliver energy as electrons compared to the added costs of using an energy carrier like hydrogen, which might need to be imported, to meet clean energy needs. Already the Indo-Pacific is moving in the direction of being “wired up,” as demonstrated by the proposed 3,800-kilometre-long “sun cable” to connect Australian solar resources with energy markets in Singapore.

The most efficient course of decarbonization for many East Asian states is to expand their grid connections to their neighbour’s, but this is marred by geo-security risks. Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam, for example, might be less willing to stand up to Beijing if most of their electricity ran through China. And does Japan really want to meet its renewable energy needs by routing power through Russian grid connections?

In addition, much of the industrial capacity for key green technologies and resources required for Indo-Pacific countries to tap their own renewable resources is based in China. A whopping 70 per cent of global lithium cell manufacturing capacity is found in China, and Chinese firms are responsible for the production of 71 per cent of photovoltaic panels (through a supply chain riddled with the usage of Uyghur slave labour).

Meanwhile, a recent White House report put Chinese firm ownership of global cobalt and lithium processing infrastructure at 72 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively.

Export polluting industries

China’s dominance in the production of clean energy technologies is also bolstered by the success of the nation’s trade networks. China is already the largest source of trade for most countries in the region, and through its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing is increasingly providing financing for regional infrastructure.

The nature of Chinese infrastructure investments through the initiative has, so far, been damaging to global efforts to combat climate change. China had been the largest financier globally of coal plants, following a development pattern established by wealthier countries (western and non-western), of exporting polluting industries to poorer nations.

However, President Xi Jinping, in keeping with his endorsed vision of ecological civilization, has made improving the sustainability of China’s trade networks a priority. China’s established trade networks within the region provide a foundation for an increasingly Sino-centric economic orbit, and will likely be flipped to distribute clean energy infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific.

Energy transitions

It’s important the West develop its own green foreign investment strategy to provide Indo-Pacific states a choice of infrastructure as they transition their economies. Giving Indo-Pacific countries, especially energy-poor South and East Asian states, the option to purchase low-carbon technology and resources from a variety of sources will alleviate pressure to concede to Chinese foreign-policy.

Over the long term, the West must focus on developing supply chains in solar and and lithium-ion batteries to balance out Chinese capacity in these markets. However, there are a range of energy transition technologies that western states hold a competitive advantage in, and that could be the focus of a development strategy for the region — starting right now. Investments should, for instance, immediately focus on lowering the costs of exporting green hydrogen by maritime routes.

Australia and Canada both have favourable renewable energy resources to produce green hydrogen, with Canada a leader in the development of hydrogen fuel cells.

Many Indo-Pacific countries have opportunities to generate power from sources beyond wind and solar, with Indonesia and the Philippines already market leaders for geothermal. When it comes to wind, U.S. and European wind turbine manufacturers share about 60 per cent of the market.

In June, G7 leaders announced the Build Back Better World (B3W) partnership, which aims to use their financing potential to help low- and middle-income countries meet an estimated US$40 trillion in infrastructure needs.

It is too early to speculate on the success of the B3W, but its visible actions have been limited to scoping tours in Latin America and West Africa, with another planned for South East Asia.

However, the B3W could look to the recent financing deal between the U.S., Germany, France and the United Kingdom to aid South Africa’s transition from coal power for inspiration. The first B3W funded projects are slated to be announced in early 2022.

Decision-makers in China know that in the short term they are uncertain to come out on top in a hard power competition with the U.S., and have identified economic dominance as another front of strategic competition. Subsequently, if the West doesn’t want to further cede the economic orientation of the Indo-Pacific towards China, it must increase its efforts to provide the region’s states with a strategic choice in how they meet their energy transition infrastructure needs.

Jonas Goldman, Reserach Associate, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Bloomberg: “Why China’s Electric Car Lead Has Been a Long Time Coming”

Zhao is quoted as saying, “The US should give up the path of sanctioning, and should not create obstacles for the peaceful reconstruction and economic development of Afghanistan.”

American sanctions on Iran, with which China does substantial business, have been a sore point between Beijing and Washington.

In contrast, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken insisted that the U.S. would use its economic leverage to ensure that the Taliban allowed the free passage out of the country of those who wanted to leave, as Joel Gehrke at the Washington Examiner underlined.

While the Biden administration can impose unilateral economic sanctions on the Taliban, an international effort to pressure the new government would require assent of all five members of the United Nations Security Council. China is announcing that it will not be on board with such UNSC sanctions.

Al Jazeera, because it is based in Doha, Qatar, has been in a position closely to cover the Taliban negotiating team there, and reports that the Chinese foreign ministry welcomed a Taliban delegation last July and acknowledged how important the movement was to Afghanistan.

Al Jazeera asked what the Chinese want in Afghanistan and answered this way:

1. Beijing wants guarantees from the Taliban that they will prevent Uighur fundamentalists from attacking Xinjiang in northwest China from Afghanistan, which has a short border with China in the Pamir mountains. Some Uighur militants over the years have fought alongside the Taliban.

2. China wants to invest in Afghanistan so as to share in its natural resources and mining. Afghanistan has iron, copper, uranium and lithium, which China would like to mine. A Chinese company already operates a copper mine.

The Qatar-based news agency says that the Taliban appear also to want this Chinese investment, calling its neighbor “a friendly nation,” and welcoming its role in rebuilding Afghanistan, which has suffered forty years of war. Taliban spokesman Sohail Shahin pledged that the Taliban would guarantee the security of Chinese investments in Afghanistan. Another Taliban spokesman recently admitted that the country would be dependent on Chinese funds for rebuilding the economy.

3. China wants to incorporate Afghanistan into its vast pan-Asian transportation and infrastructure plan, the One Belt, One Road. Al Jazeera alleges that the Chinese demarche in South and Central Asia is intended to assert Chinese economic and policy strength in the face of competition from the US on the one side and from the Russian Republic on the other.

The analysis says that the Taliban for their part hope for Chinese investment and help with rebuilding their economy, for Chinese support in international forums, and for a possible Afghanistan-Pakistan-China strategic agreement.

China also fears that the US will pivot more forcefully toward East Asia now that it is free of its Afghanistan entanglement. The government of Xi Jinping is protesting the possible inclusion by the Biden administration of South Korea in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement, which had previously been limited to white English-speaking countries– the US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Likewise the Biden administration is strengthening its naval relationship with Australia and the UK, especially with regard to nuclear submarines, with China as the unstated target.

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Bonus Video:

CGTN: “Acting Afghan FM meets Chinese ambassador in Kabul”

The bad news for Americans is that most of this increase took place in Asia, especially China. In this strategic set of technologies, China is eating America’s lunch.

Given that China beat the pandemic even before the vaccine with masks and social distancing, while the odious Trump left counties on their own and refused to mobilize the federal government, it is no surprise that the Chinese economy saw a growth spurt last fall and grew for the year. In the first quarter of 2021, China’s economy grew an eye-popping 18.3 percent! Along with its rapid march to renewables, China is becoming more and more formidable. Unlike the Biden administration, I don’t see this as a threat, but as a healthy challenge. If we want to compete, we have to swing into action.

In 2020, the global net increase in renewables was 261 gigawatts (GW). That is the nameplate capacity of some 300 nuclear power plants! There are actually only 440 nuclear power plants in the whole world, with a generation capacity of 390 gigwatts.

So let’s just underline this point. The world put in 2/3s as much renewable energy in one year as is produced by all the existing nuclear plants!

Those who argue we absolutely must construct more nuclear plants to beat the climate emergency are clearly just wrong. Renewables can do it all, and they can be installed much more inexpensively and way faster than nuclear plants. Nuclear is a distraction and a diversion of resources at a time when we are racing to get the earth down to producing no net carbon dioxide.

Asia was responsible for the lion’s share of the new renewables capacity, at 61 percent.

In other words, the United States was lying down on the job. President Biden wants to turn this lackluster performance around and put the US back into the vanguard of this crucial emerging technology.

Almost all (91 percent) of the new renewables capacity consisted in wind and solar farms.

h/t International Renewable Energy Agency

Asia has 1,286 gigawatts of renewables, and they put in 167.6 GWs just in 2020! North America, despite being industrially and technologically advanced, only has 422 gigawatts. For shame, America. Even Europe has 609 gigawatts.

Since I cover the Middle East a lot at this site, it is worth noting that this region only has a minor renewables capacity, of about 24 gigawatts, only 1 percent of the global production. It only put in 1.2 gigawatts last year. This result is because the region has so much natural gas. But note that renewables are nevertheless cheaper and more reliable in their pricing. In the region, only Morocco has made real strides toward renewables, though there are some big projects planned in Egypt.

The rate of new wind energy installation almost doubled in 2020 year on year, with an increase of of 111 gigawatts in 2020 against only 58 new gigawatts in 2019.

China was the world leader here, putting in 72.4 gigawatts of new wind all by itself. The US only put in 14.2 gigawatts of wind.

This kind of statistic has made President Biden worried about American competitiveness in the new world that is taking shape. China is leaving us in the dust.

Offshore wind reached 5% of total wind capacity in 2020. It is still a small part of the sector but it is growing rapidly and has enormous potential.

In what is perhaps a sign of the future, solar energy, which was a poor cousin to wind a few years ago, has now caught up with it and its responsible for just about as much electricity production.

Asia was the leader here too, putting in 78 gigawatts of new solar in 2020 (up from 55 GW in 2019). China alone put in nearly 50 gigawatts of new solar. Vietnam put in 11.6 GW of new solar. Japan, despite being an advanced industrial country, only put in 5 GW of new solar.

India only put in 4 GW of solar in 2020, despite its big ambitions, about the same as South Korea.

The United States was down around the Vietnam level, with only 14.9 gigawatts of new solar.

I’ve been in places like Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Arizona in the summer, and I cannot understand why every single house doesn’t have solar panels. In some Republican-ruled such states, the legislature has even put in fees to discourage solar and promote dirty fossil fuels, which are wrecking the planet with global heating.

As a result, China is making the breakthroughs in solar panel technology and is a major exporter of panels. The US? Desperately breaking up underground rocks and polluting the environment chasing the last wisps of natural gas under there so as to add to the climate emergency.

I grew up in the age of the moon shot and I am not used to America being so backward.

—-

Bonus Video:

CGTN America: “China’s efforts in fighting climate change”

The US is heading for having the highest number of coronavirus cases in the world next week. Admittedly the US is a big country and it still won’t have the highest number of cases per capita. But it won’t even be in the running for the country with the fewest per capita. The United States was once the most advanced country in the world. America put a man on the moon. To have Germany and South Korea outflank us in dealing with the disaster is an enormous disgrace.

As of April 9, there had been 2349 deaths in Germany, which is a country 1/4 the size of the US. That that would be like 9,396 US deaths. The actual US death toll on the same date? Nearly 15,000 Nearly 15,000.

Trump keeps saying that the US has carried out 2 million tests, the most in the world. But the US is huge, so it has by no means carried out the most testing per capita in the world. South Korea has tested for the coronavirus at many times the rate per capita of the United States, and Germany at twice the rate. Germany has done 350,000 tests a week. South Korea’s technique of testing widely, and tracing back all the people who came into contact with someone testing positive, has allowed its economy to avoid having completely to close down.

It is like for Trump to boast that 10 Americans, each worth $100,000, are richer than a single South Korean who is worth $900,000 all by himself. This is true, but the South Korean guy is still richer than each of the 10 Americans.

Then there is just sheer technology. Quest Labs in California fell way behind in processing the tens of thousands of test kits it received and has a backlog of 115,000 tests. It was trying to process them manually. It has now switched to a technique of automatic testing developed by the Swiss company, Roche.

A Swiss company. American corporations have been playing the stock market casino, buying their own stock to inflate share prices, and concentrating only on highly profitable sectors, as well as overcharging consumers.

A Swiss company.

The US is increasingly like a Third World country, with an isolated, coddled class of super-wealthy at the top, a crumbling scientific infrastructure, and a wasteland of plastic strip malls and 2 dollar an hour wait staff.

When did we become so backward?

——

Bonus Video:

World Economic Forum: “How South Korea effectively tackled Coronavirus”

The president’s high school locker-room braggadocio provided rich material for comedians and maybe for shrinks.  Meanwhile, there remains the continuing danger of a war in the Koreas, whether premeditated or triggered accidentally by a ship seized, an aircraft downed, a signal misread… you get the picture.  No serious person could dismiss this scenario, but even the experts who track the evidence closely for a living differ on just how probable it is.  In part, that’s because, like everyone else, they must reckon with a colossal wild card — and I’m not talking about Kim Jong-un.

The Pessimists

On one side are those who warn that President Trump isn’t blowing smoke when he talks, or tweets, about destroying North Korea’s nuclear warheads and missiles, the infrastructure supporting them, and possibly even the whole country.  By now, it’s common knowledge that his national security officials — civilian and military (the distinction having blurred in the Trump era) — have been crafting plans to strike before that country’s nuclear arsenal becomes fully operational.  

No one who listened to PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff interviewing National Security Adviser Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster just after the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy in December could simply dismiss the warnings as those of so many Cassandras.  McMaster dutifully summarized that document, which included a pledge to “respond with overwhelming force to North Korean aggression and improve options to compel denuclearization.”  When Woodruff then asked whether he believed war was becoming more likely by the day, he agreed, adding that “the president has asked us to continue to refine a military option, should we need to use it.”

Others who should be in the know have offered even scarier prognoses.  During an interview with ABC News on the last day of 2017, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen claimed that, while McMaster and Defense Secretary James Mattis had stayed Trump’s hand so far, their ability to continue to restrain such a “disruptive” and “unpredictable” president was diminishing. “We’re actually closer to nuclear war with North Korea and in that region,” he concluded, “than we’ve ever been.”

Then there’s Trump himself.  He has long since moved from saying, as he did last May, that he would “be honored” to meet Kim Jong-un “under the right circumstances” to warning, in August, that if North Korea threatened the United States, it would “be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” In September, he upped the ante again in a speech to the U.N., declaring that he would “have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea” if that were needed to defend the United States. 

Left unspecified was Trump’s definition of “defend.”  Would additional North Korean nuclear and missile tests pose a sufficient threat for him to order a preventive war?  Was his red line a fully operational North Korean nuclear force?  Or did he mean that he would retaliate in kind only if Pyongyang were to attack the United States, Japan, or South Korea with nuclear weapons? If either the first or second scenario represents his threshold, then Mullen’s dire assessment can’t be discounted as hyperbole. If it’s the third, the world can breathe a bit easier for now, since there’s no conceivable reason for Kim Jong-un to attack a country with nuclear weapons, least of all the United States, except in response to the potential destruction of his state.

In his latest gyration, having failed to scare Kim into denuclearization, Trump has welcomed talks between Seoul and Pyongyang that he had only recently discounted and, predictably, taken credit for a turn of events that has sidelined him.  He even suggested that the United States could eventually join the negotiations, meant in part to prevent a conflict during the February Winter Olympics in Seoul, and reacted positively to the possibility that they might continue even after the games end.

Of course, this president can turn on a dime, so such words mean next to nothing and should offer no solace.  After all, on two occasions he derided Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s efforts to defuse the crisis through negotiations, declaring, “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he’s wasting his time trying to negotiate with little Rocket Man.  Save your energy, Rex, we’ll do what has to be done.”

The Optimists (Well, Sort of)

On the opposing side of the how-likely-is-war debate are the optimists, a different coterie of journalists, ex-officials, and policy wonks.  Their basic point boils down to this: yes, Trump has made fire-and-brimstone statements about North Korea, but chalk up the endless bombast to his problem with impulse control and his desire to feed red meat to his base, while scaring Kim.  

Unfortunately, you can’t put much stock in this take either — not once you consider the accompanying caveats.  Gideon Rachman, an Asia specialist and Financial Times columnist, is typical of this crew in concluding that war on the Korean peninsula is unlikely — only to liken the current atmosphere in Washington to the one that prevailed just before the 2003 Bush administration invasion of Iraq.  For good measure, he adds that Lindsey Graham — super-hawk, Trump confidant (to the extent that anyone is), and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee — believes that war is “inevitable.” (This is optimism?)  Rachman’s fallback suggestion is that Australia, Japan, and South Korea won’t support a preventive strike on North Korea.  Now ask yourself this: How often does Donald Trump take others’ advice?  When is the last time you heard him say “multilateralism”?

Jeffrey Lewis, a well-regarded expert on nuclear weapons, discounts the likelihood of war for a different reason.  He thinks Trump’s bombast is so much bluster, designed to jangle Kim’s nerves and drive the North Korean leader to relinquish his nuclear cache lest an out-of-control American president vaporize his regime.  Given what we now know about the present occupant of the Oval Office, that might be a modestly convincing thought if Lewis didn’t introduce his own qualifiers.  He believes Trump’s faith that China, in hopes of getting economic rewards from the United States, will eventually persuade (or coerce) Kim to denuclearize is misplaced because Beijing lacks the necessary clout in Pyongyang.  Indeed, Kim doesn’t trust China and has killed or sidelined those whom he suspects of being pro-Chinese.  

Lewis also lays out a range of possibilities, each of which could trigger a spiral toward war. These include North Korea shooting down an American reconnaissance aircraft or sinking a South Korean naval vessel, both of which, he reminds us, Pyongyang has done in the past (the first in 1969, the second in 2010) — when it still lacked nuclear weapons.  So Lewis’s American-style optimism doesn’t offer any more grounds for cheer than Rachman’s British variant.

Where does this lack of consensus on the likelihood of war leave us?  The answer: no one can really assess the gravity of the danger, particularly because the man who occupies the White House is arguably the most volatile president we’ve ever had.  

It’s no pleasure to quote former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, but when it comes to the probability of war in the Koreas, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the “known unknowns.”

What We Do Know

The inability to fathom just how close we may be to war there doesn’t mean we know nothing about the Korean crisis that’s worth knowing.    

We know that North Korea has long been committed to building nuclear weapons and produced small quantities (six to thirteen kilograms) of weapons-grade plutonium as early as 1992.

We know that North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (which it joined in 1985) in 2003; that it detonated its first nuclear weapon in 2006 during the rule of Kim Jong-il, the father of North Korea’s current leader; and that it has conducted five other tests since then in 2009, 2013, 2016 (twice), and 2017 — four of them after Kim Jong-un took power in December 2011. 

We know that North Korea has been no less dogged in building and testing ballistic missiles, beginning in 1984, and that the Hwasong-15, test-fired last November (with an apogee of 2,800 miles and an estimated range of 8,100 miles), has the capacity to strike the continental United States.  And Pyongyang has gone beyond liquid-fuelled missiles (that require prolonged, telltale preparations to launch), testing solid-fueled variants, which can be fired at short notice.

We know that Pyongyang is close to producing, or has already produced, a warhead that can be placed atop an intercontinental ballistic missile and survive the heat and stress encountered on reentering the earth’s atmosphere.  In other words, North Korea is without question effectively a nuclear weapons state, which means Kim Jong-un’s claim, in his 2018 New Year’s Day speech, that he has a nuclear button on his desk may not be an idle boast (even if no literal button exists).

Finally, we know that American threats and military maneuvers on and around the Korean peninsula, a series of U.N. Security Council sanctions since 2006, and behind-the-scenes diplomacy by China and Russia have not induced Pyongyang to change course, even though China, in particular, recently imposed draconian limits on energy exports to that country, which could potentially cripple its struggling economy.

The Denuclearization Fantasy

No one (outside of Pyongyang) could celebrate a nuclear-armed North Korea, but no one could reasonably be surprised by it either.  Nuclear weapons have long served as a symbol of exclusivity for great powers and their regional cohorts.  It’s no accident that all the Security Council’s permanent members are nuclear states.  Having accorded such weaponry supreme prestige, who could be shocked that other countries, even relatively small and poor ones, would try to acquire them as well and refuse to be cowed by political or economic pressure.

Despite various campaigns for nuclear disarmament, the current nuclear states have not shown the slightest inclination to give them up; so the promise of a nuclear-free world rings hollow and is unlikely to persuade states that really want nukes not to build them.  Beyond conferring status, these weapons make attacking a country that has them dangerous indeed, providing a de facto guarantee against regime change.  

The North Koreans have made this point more than once, citing the fates of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, each of whom gave up his country’s nuclear program and then was taken down by the United States.  The idea that the leaders in Pyongyang are simply paranoid maniacs or can’t possibly believe that they face such a threat from the United States (which already fought one war on the Korean peninsula) is preposterous.  If you were Kim Jong-un, you’d probably build nuclear weapons.

The upshot: short of a war, there’s no chance of denuclearization. That, in turn, means: were Trump and his generals to launch an attack on North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and even a single warhead capable of striking the United States survived, Pyongyang might well use it to retaliate.  According to the experts who engage in such grisly estimates, a 15-kiloton nuclear weapon (equivalent to “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945) that lands somewhere in, say, Los Angeles would kill more than 100,000 people immediately and yet more thereafter.  To put this in perspective, bear in mind that the estimates of the yield of the warhead North Korea tested last September run as high as 250 kilotons.  And don’t forget that, even if it couldn’t effectively reach the United States, the North could still target either South Korea or Japan, causing a devastating loss of lives and sending shockwaves through the global economy. 

And even if Kim couldn’t retaliate with nuclear weapons, he could still order the thousands of artillery pieces his military has trained on the South Korean capital, Seoul, to fire.  The metropolis and its satellite towns are home to nearly 25.5 million people, half of the country’s total population, so the death toll would be enormous, even taking into account the limitations of the North’s artillery.  And given that some 28,500 American troops and nearly 137,000 American civilians are based in South Korea, many close to the border, Trump’s reported remark to Lindsey Graham that, in the event of such a war, people will “die over there” is not just callous in its disregard for Korean lives, it’s ignorant.  Even an American commando raid into North Korea could trigger a wider war because the North Korean leadership might reasonably regard it as a prelude to a larger attack.

The bottom line?  Trump could fulfill his vow never to allow North Korea to become a nuclear-armed power only by resorting to a preventive war, as Pyongyang hasn’t been and is unlikely to be moved to disarm by sanctions or other forms of pain.  And a preventive war would be calamitous.

Stopping the War Machine

Here’s a prerequisite for avoiding war in Korea: stop believing in the North’s denuclearization, attractive and desirable as it might be (if achieved through diplomacy).

It doesn’t follow, however, that war can’t be avoided.  Kim Jong-un and his inner circle are not, in fact, irrational beings immune to deterrence.  Their paramount aim is to ensure the survival of the North Korean state. Starting a nuclear war would destroy it.  Yes, many people have perished in North Korea (whether due to repression or famine), but deterrence worked in the cases of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and China’s Mao Zedong, both of whom enacted policies that killed millions. Mao supposedly even boasted that China could survive a nuclear war because of its huge population. 

Coming to terms with the reality of a nuclear-armed North Korea and trusting in deterrence may not sound like a perfect ending, but under the circumstances it’s undoubtedly the best way to avert catastrophe.  And that, unquestionably, is the urgent task.  There are other ways, down the line, to make the Korean peninsula a better place through dialogue between the two Koreas, by drawing the North into the regional economy and reducing troops and weaponry on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone.  These shouldn’t be ruled out as infeasible.    

For them to happen, though, South Korea would have to separate itself from Trump’s war plans by refusing to allow its sovereign space (land, sea, and air) to be used for such a preventive war.  The symbolism would be important even if Trump could strike in other ways.  

Seoul would also have to build on two recent positive developments that emerged from a surprise January 9th meeting between the Koreas.  The first is the agreement on Kim Jong-un’s proposal (initially advanced by the South last June) to send a North Korean contingent to the February Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.  The second flowed from South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s follow-up idea of restoring the hotline between the countries and beginning discussions of how to tamp down tensions on the peninsula.  (Pyongyang shut down the hotline in February 2016 after South Korea’s conservative government closed the Kaesong joint industrial zone located in the North, which then employed more than 50,000 North Koreans.)  Moon’s suggestion doubtless eased the way for the subsequent agreement to hold future military talks aimed at reducing the risks of war.

There are further steps Seoul could take, including declaring a moratorium on military exercises with the United States — not just, as now (with Washington’s consent), during the February Olympics and the Paralympics that follow and end in March, but without a preset time limit. While such joint maneuvers don’t scare Pyongyang, moves like flying American B1-B bombers and F-15C fighter jets in international airspace off North Korea’s coast do ratchet up the tension.  They increase the chances of one side concluding that the other is about to attack. 

Trump may continue his threats via Twitter and again denigrate the value of negotiations with Pyongyang, but South Korea is a powerful country in its own right. It has a $1.4 trillion economy, the 11th largest in the world (versus North Korea’s paltry $32.4 billion one), and ranks sixth in global exports.  It also has a formidable military and will spend $34 billion on defense in 2017 — more than North Korea’s entire gross domestic product.  It is, in short, anything but the Asian equivalent of a banana republic for which Donald Trump should be able to write the script.

Trump’s generals and the rest of the American foreign policy establishment won’t welcome independent initiatives by Seoul, as witness the condescending remark of a former official about the hazards of South Korea “running off the leash.”  Predictably, mainstream warnings have already begun.  Cunning Kim Jong-un wants to drive a “wedge” between the United States and South Korea.  He’s trying to undo the sanctions.  Agreeing to talks with Pyongyang will only communicate weakness.  The United States must demonstrate its resolve and protect its credibility.  And so it goes. 

Policies based on these shibboleths, which portray South Korea as an American dependency, have brought us to the brink of war.  Continuing them could push us over the edge. 

Rajan Menon, a TomDispatch regular, is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. He is the author, most recently, of The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, as well as John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, John Feffer’s dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt’s Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2018 Rajan Menon

Via Tomdispatch.com

The stricken Iranian oil tanker in the East China Sea could burn for as long as one month, South Korea’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries told Reuters on Wednesday, as the blaze raged for a fourth day following a collision with a freight ship.

Dozens of rescue boats battled strong winds, high waves and poisonous fumes to comb a 900-square-nautical-mile (3,100-square-kilometre) area for 31 missing sailors and tame the fire, amid growing concerns the ship may explode or sink.

“We believe flames would last for two weeks or a month considering previous cases of oil tank accidents,” said official Park Sung-dong.

“What we are concerned about at this moment is the bunker fuel, which could contaminate water if (the ship) sinks,” the ministry official said.

The tanker Sanchi (IMO:9356608), run by Iran’s top oil shipping operator, National Iranian Tanker Co, collided on Saturday with the CF Crystal (IMO:9497050), carrying grain from the United States, about 160 nautical miles (300 km) off China’s coast near Shanghai.

The Sanchi was carrying 136,000 tonnes of condensate, an ultra-light crude that is highly flammable and to South Korea, equivalent to about 1 million barrels and worth about $60 million.

The Chinese government said late on Tuesday it had not found a “large-scale” oil leak, and the condensate was burning off or evaporating so quickly it would leave little residue – less than 1 percent – within five hours of a spill. That reduces the chances of a crude-style oil slick.

Still, condensate is highly volatile when exposed to air and water and concerns were growing the tanker could explode and sink. The ministry official said the authorities suspect the tanker caught fire as soon as it hit the freighter carrying grain.

Park said it’s unlikely the oil will spread to South Korea at the moment because the tanker has moved 100 kilometres (62 miles) to the southeast.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor

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Related video added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English: “Disaster alert from stricken oil tanker in East China Sea”

SEOUL, Dec 13 2017 (IPS) – Renewable energy became the cheapest form of electricity in 58 emerging economies last year. This year, the 11^th Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis (LCOE 11.0) showed that solar and wind energy generation costs (at $46 to $53 per megawatt-hour of generation) easily beat coal and gas (at $60-68).

Solar power was the fastest-growing source of new energy worldwide in 2016, outpacing the growth in all other forms of power generation for the first time. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), on the back of a strong solar PV market, renewable energy accounted for two-thirds of new power added to the world’s grid last year. In addition to this, solar energy is set to surpass nuclear power by the end of 2017.

In November this year, the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) organized its first energy forum in Seoul at which GGGI Member countries shared their energy transformation experience.

In Germany, on one sunny breezy Sunday last summer, solar and wind broke a record 85% of all energy used in the country.

The rapidly growing renewable energy sector is quickly replacing nuclear energy in Germany – while coal is still playing a key role in the energy mix. In the UK, on the other hand, the use of coal in the energy mix has rapidly fallen from 50 to 9% in just ten years, replaced by cheap solar and offshore wind energy – while nuclear energy is maintaining a key role.

The Australian capital city, Canberra, has rapidly achieved the solar and wind investments to shift to 100% renewable energy by 2020, and is now moving to zero emissions by 2030, while the national targets are much more modest.

In the Republic of Korea, renewable energy currently accounts for just 2% of the country’s electricity production, with coal-fired and nuclear plants generating 40% and 30%, respectively. However, Korea’s new Moon Jae-in government has recently increased the target for the share of renewables in power generation to 20% by 2030.

Frank Rijsberman.

The Korean government plans to set up a renewable energy coordination center in every region; secure a solar system in each village; adopt projects led by local authorities, including offshore wind turbines; and secure economic feasibility of renewable energy through utility-scale renewable energy projects. Is the 20% target too ambitious to achieve in Korea – or is it too modest to deal with the environmental and climate challenges?

The new government’s twin objectives for Korea to become a nuclear free society while also solving the “fine dust” air pollution problems is now actively debated in Korea. Doing both requires reducing nuclear energy, as well as the use of coal and diesel fuel for electricity and transportation. Truly an ambitious, even daunting, set of challenges – but not impossible during a time when both the energy and transportation sectors are experiencing very, very rapid transition.

The speed and depth of the ongoing energy transformation, to renewable energy and to electric mobility, is certainly surprising many around the world. It is a top priority for many governments – making and breaking coalitions – and it is causing disruption in traditional sectors of the economy and employment.

As one country after the next sees record breaking low prices for solar and wind in auctions for utility scale renewable energy, the conventional fossil-fuel powered energy companies pay the price.

E.ON, Germany’s largest utility, for example, had to write off $9Bn in losses last month, half of its remaining market capitalization. No wonder the renewable energy transformation scares the conventional power players and has governments consider whether to protect them.

Countries with large investments in conventional power plants – particularly coal and nuclear – do indeed have a big bill to pay for their stranded assets. Coal-fired power plants that were the cheapest form of energy when constructed only a few years ago risk become albatrosses around energy companies’ necks.

In Bonn, at COP23, a new Power-Past-Coal Alliance of twenty countries announced that they will completely phase out coal from their energy mix before 2030. The Alliance hopes to have fifty members before the 2018 UN COP24 climate change conference. That requires a real change in mindset. Is it imaginable that Korea Powers Past Coal by 2030?

It may seem unrealistic today, but remember that a similar change in the UK just happened, over a shorter period, during a time when renewables were more expensive than today. So why not in Korea?

There are some challenges of course. For example, will this energy transition lead to job losses? Jobs are indeed being lost rapidly in the fossil fuel industry, particularly coal. In Germany, for example, most coal related jobs have already been lost – but at the same time, many more jobs were created in the renewable energy industry.

According to Hans-Josef Fell, a former German parliamentarian for the Green party and current President of Energy Watch Group, the global energy transition to a 100% renewable electricity system can create 37 million jobs by 2050, up by more than 90% from 2015.

As in any rapid technology transition, jobs will indeed be lost, but more new, green jobs are being created, requiring education and re-training of the workforce, but ultimately leading to many new opportunities for businesses and individuals.

Another question is whether renewable energy is too expensive and whether citizens will support a rapid transition to renewables. In Australia, Canberra has powered forward to 100% renewable energy by 2020, leading national action on climate change while creating new jobs in sunrise industries.

The ACT government is leading this green technology revolution in Australia with the full support of its citizens. When the ACT government first announced its plans to legislate a target of sourcing 100 percent renewable energy by the end of this decade, it was careful to engage the community.

The first programs focused on subsidies for rooftop solar for schools, churches, community centers and residences. As a result, all schools and one home in 10 are now equipped with solar on the roof.

Subsequently, and with full community awareness created, ACT government turned to utility scale wind and solar investments, and batteries to stabilize the grid. The costs of large scale solar in Australia has halved in just a few years. While the introduction of renewables did indeed initially raise energy prices for Canberra, surveys of residents show that as awareness increased, so did the willingness of the citizens to pay more for sustainable energy.

Going forward, the price of energy in Canberra will be among the lowest in the nation. Following the success of the 100% renewables strategy, in 2016 Canberra went a step further and committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

For countries that could not provide electricity to all their citizens with fossil fuel and a centralized power grid – such as most African countries and most small island states in the Pacific with coverage rates as low as 10-20% – the renewable energy transition is a wonderful opportunity.

When the alternative is expensive diesel-generated electricity, either powering the grid or as back-ups during power outages, solar energy combined with battery storage is already the cheapest form of energy, as documented in Lazard’s 11^th levelized cost of energy report that came out last month.

That means that for countries in Africa and the Pacific, off-grid, or mini-grid electricity based on “solar+batteries” is a revolution that can bring affordable energy to all citizens, just like the mobile phone revolution did less than ten years ago.

The energy transition is undoubtedly challenging for countries like the Republic of Korea that have fully developed conventional energy sectors – particularly for the owners and operators of the nuclear and fossil fuel power plants, equipment and machinery.

At the same time, Korea has some very significant advantages, such as an excellent national power grid, advanced smart grid technology, and some of the world’s most advanced producers of solar cells and batteries.

During times of disruption our perspectives change very rapidly. Targets such as the Korean 20% renewables by 2030, that appear so challenging today, will probably be seen as only a first step in the right direction in just five years from now.

Licensed from Inter Press Service

Frank Rijsberman is Director-General, Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)

China and South Korea could be game changers on climate — and create a more peaceful region in the process.

There’s been precious little good news from Asia these days. Washington and Pyongyang continue to trade threats of war. Right-wing nationalist Shinzo Abe won reelection as prime minister in Japan last month. Major storms have hammered several countries in the region, most recently Typhoon Damrey in Vietnam.

And now, in the wake of those typhoons comes a mighty wind from the United States. Donald Trump, in the longest foreign trip of his presidency, is currently visiting South Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The silver lining on this Ugly American Tour: Trump probably won’t start a war in a region where he’s currently traveling.

Lost among all this bad news has been some very good news out of Asia. It hasn’t received much media attention here, probably because it only peripherally involves the United States.

Last week, South Korea and China ended a yearlong spat over the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). China, believing the system to be designed to eliminate its nuclear deterrent, punished South Korea economically for welcoming THAAD. Now a new government in Seoul, led by liberal president Moon Jae-in, has announced that it would not add to the existing THAAD system or participate in the proposed regional missile defense that Washington wants to set up. That was enough for China to reengage economically.

It’s a delicate balance for South Korea — to maintain its alliance with the United States and yet repair relations with China. The Trump administration is much happier with the passive-aggressive attitude of Tokyo — passively accepting U.S. hegemony while aggressively pursuing an offensive military posture — than with Seoul’s somewhat more independent position. Witness the time Trump lavished on Abe on this current trip including a round of golf. South Korea, meanwhile, had to make due with a brief stopover and a strident lecture by the president before the National Assembly.

Here’s a radical idea for China and South Korea: Forget Donald Trump, forget the United States, and forget the Cold War divide in Northeast Asia.

The two countries ought to build on their newly repaired relationship. They can make like Germany and France after World War II. But instead of a new regional order based on coal and steel, Beijing and Seoul should establish something completely new: an Asian Environmental Community that promotes renewable energy and sustainable growth.

A New Geopolitical Moment

Much has been made of Trump’s reeling in of American influence around the world, at least on the soft-power side of things, and China’s eager efforts to capitalize on the new global opportunities. Perhaps future historians will look back at this moment as the time when China began to replace the United States as the anchor of the international community. Or perhaps they will identify this era as the moment when everything began to unravel, from the EU to the UN.

But let’s imagine a different scenario in which the threat of climate change plays the same integrative function as alien invaders in Hollywood films. The planet is at risk: let’s all fight the common enemy together!

True, the world so far hasn’t gotten the message. This week the latest round of meetings began in Germany to discuss the commitments made in the Paris climate agreement of two years ago. The Trump administration, aside from a few token representatives, has been conspicuously absent. Also absent was any real hope that the agreement would achieve its goal of keeping the rise in global temperature from hitting a 2 degree Celsius increase above pre-industrial levels.

Reports The New York Times: “No major industrialized country is currently on track to fulfill its pledge, according to new data from the Climate Action Tracker. Not the European Union. Not Canada. Not Japan.” Even if they do meet their commitments, it still won’t be enough. According to a recent Nature study, even if humans stopped all use of fossil fuels immediately, the planet would still register a 2 degree Celsius increase by 2100.

Not even the announcements that both Syria and Nicaragua will join the Paris agreement, leaving Trump’s America as the only outlier, can alleviate this grim news. The Maldives, Mumbai, and Miami are sinking: It’s time to make plans to move to Mongolia.

Room for Improvement

Enter South Korea and Japan. Here are two economic powerhouses — in the most economically dynamic region of the world — with great PR on climate change.

“Tackling climate change is a shared mission for mankind,” Chinese Premier Xi Jinping said at the launch of the Paris agreement. “Let us join hands to contribute to the establishment of an equitable and effective global mechanism on climate change, work for global sustainable development at a high level, and bring about new international relations featuring win-win cooperation.”

Sounds good. And China has pushed forward with impressive investments into renewable energy — $360 billion by the end of the decade — along with stopping the construction of over 100 new coal-fired power plants. Although China is set to reach peak emissions a decade or more before its 2030 goal, the country remains the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, having surpassed the United States in 2007. In 2015, it released nearly twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as did the United States, and coal still supplies two-thirds of its energy needs. In other words, China has a long way to go before it can claim substantive leadership in stopping global warming.

South Korea has also talked a good game. Former president Lee Myung Bak created the Global Green Growth Initiative, now a multilateral body based in Seoul, to promote sustainability. In 2009, Lee told the UN, “To proactively respond to climate change, Korea adopted ‘Low Carbon Green Growth’ as a guiding vision for our nation and a strategy for further development. We are currently working to enact a

Framework Law on Green Growth and establish a Five-Year Plan for Green Growth. Thereby, we will not only transform our economic and industrial structures, but also change our very lifestyles to become more future-oriented.”

In reality, however, South Korea backtracked from the pledges made during the Lee era. Under his successor Park Geun Hye, now detained on charges of corruption, Korea made a U-turn on greenhouse gas emissions and decided to rely even more heavily on coal for energy generation. As a result of this change of policy, the Institute for Climate Change Action declared South Korea one of four global “climate villains” at the end of 2016.

In other words, both China and South Korea have made impressive commitments to lower the global thermometer even as they continue to be a big part of the problem. But let’s focus on the future. There’s a new government in Seoul. And China has a chance to replace the United States as the global leader on this issue.

So, let’s take it to the next level.

Asian Environmental Community

When France and Germany formed a new partnership in 1950, the architects had much grander ambitions than simply coordinating the production of coal and steel. They wanted to ensure a peaceful Europe.

In his famous declaration that year, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman made the case for cooperation with former enemy Germany:

Five years, almost to the day, after the unconditional surrender of Germany, France is accomplishing the first decisive act for European construction and is associating Germany with this. Conditions in Europe are going to be entirely changed because of it. This transformation will facilitate other action which has been impossible until this day.

Europe will be born from this, a Europe which is solidly united and constructed around a strong framework. It will be a Europe where the standard of living will rise by grouping together production and expanding markets, thus encouraging the lowering of prices.

Up to now, East Asia has been divided ideologically, by territorial disputes, and by different economic visions. The Korean peninsula is a potent representation of all these conflicts. With its One Belt, One Road (OBOR) program, China has offered one way of uniting the region through massive infrastructure development. For many countries in the region, it’s a deal they can’t refuse. The aforementioned GGGI is working to “green” OBOR and even draw China, South Korea, and Japan into trilateral coordination.

There are good arguments for including Japan in a new Asian Environmental Community from the very beginning. Particularly at the municipal level, Japan has made great strides in reducing its carbon footprint. However, there’s considerable resistance in Korea to greater foreign policy coordination with Japan. Japan has outstanding territorial disputes with both China and South Korea. And the Abe administration is focused on breaking out of its constitutional restraints on fielding an offensive military. For all those reasons, it would be best to focus first on achieving consensus between Seoul and Beijing.

So, what would this new Asian Environmental Community do?

Both South Korea and China set rather unambitious targets under the Paris agreement. Their first task would be to establish a more ambitious agenda for cuts in carbon emissions. There’s no reason why both countries can’t follow the example of Uruguay, which has managed to wean itself almost entirely from oil imports over the last two decades. The economic benefits should be attractive to both Seoul and Beijing: The cost of electricity has dropped considerably in Uruguay, the sustainable energy sector generates more jobs than the oil sector, and the country now exports its (clean) energy to its neighbors. Both China and South Korea have traditionally relied on imported oil and gas: This kind of import substitution should appeal to both liberals and conservatives.

Next, the two countries could partner on a much more thoroughgoing greening of OBOR, not just incorporating some sustainable elements but ensuring that the new transportation lines, ports, and power plants are carbon neutral. Yes, the massive undertaking has already started, with nearly 1,700 projects over the last three years. But it’s still at the beginning stages, with plenty of future investment to green.

But a new Asian Environmental Community could be more ambitious still.

Just as Robert Schuman imagined that the coal and steel agreement between France and Germany would bring a broken Europe back together, at least the western half of it, the partnership of China and South Korea could offer a way for Asia to sidestep its myriad disagreements and come together around the one thing that all countries can support. As with early European cooperation, the environmental partnership would be mutually beneficial. Coordinated production of renewable energy — solar panels, wind turbines — could take advantage of economies of scale to bring down prices even more. Generation of clean energy for export could help energy-poor countries go beyond their Paris commitments.

And all this cooperation might just spill over into other realms, making resolution of territorial disputes, economic disagreements, and even North Korea’s nuclear program that much more likely. Never has Northeast Asia been more in need of a virtuous circle of engagement.

Asia set the standard for electronics, for Internet connectivity, and for mind-blowingly telescoped economic development. Now it’s time for China and South Korea to establish a new global green benchmark. The world is desperate for mind-blowingly telescoped environmental development. Let Asia lead the way again.

John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands.

Via FPIF

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

CGTN: “China developing green energy a must not a maybe”