If the objectives that have been set to safeguard against climate change are to be met, action on at least three fronts will need to be implemented: leading economic (and also social) sectors will need to be dismantled; new sectors will need to be launched to replace them (plus that the infrastructure they will require would have to be built, such as new charging depots for electric cars); and tpeople at large will have to accept to absorb new burdens and costs.
Difficult as action on the first two fronts is bound to be, it will be on the third front that challenges will be the toughest. One can gather this just from the point that least reference is made to such a problematic area.
Indeed, one can understand that initially at least, the discontent it will give rise to is likely to be greater than the discontent and fear generated by the effects of a climate that is warming up fast. In democracies, that could trigger election losses. In authoritarian systems, it could soon boost an opposition subjected to tight controls.
Still how can it be feasible for billions of people to make radical adjustments to their way of life without losing anything of the prosperity they have gotten used to?
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MALTESE IN AUSTRALIA
Quite a number of good studies have been published about some areas of the history and aspects of the life of the Maltese in Australia. What we still do not have and what we need however, is a comprehensive history of the community, covering its birth and expansion, then its further growth till it began to dissolve in the wider Australian reality.
Such a history would be of the greatest interest to many families in Malta and Australia, but not only. It could contribute to a better awareness of the Maltese heritage. Yet, on our side here, one cannot consider that there has been a sustained commitment to Australian studies. Would that have been because the protagonists in the history of the Australian Maltese were largely coming from the working classes?
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TAIWAN
The latest developments regarding Taiwan have been bleak. Some are predicting that a war is coming, with the usual sources pinning all the blame on China.
The latter has recently expressed much disquiet about Taiwan. On the one hand, it considered that the present Taiwanese government has stressed too hard that the island is separated from China and will remain like so. At the same time, a group of countries, some from Europe, seem to have been giving a higher diplomatic recognition to Taiwan – an approach that the Chinese consider to be an attack on one of their most cherished values, committed as they are to the concept that Taiwan still is and will remain, as it always was, an integral part of the Chinese fatherland.
On the other hand, the Chinese themselves did make inflammatory statements about Taiwan, gave fuel to the belief that they were preparing to take it over and launched military exercises that continued to fuel tension.
What’s worse in all this is that matters have inevitably gotten locked into the increasing rivalry between the US and China. Still it is in the interests of none that any face to face confrontation over Taiwan is allowed to escalate in ways that would increase the risks of war.