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Chinese Deputy PM Abruptly Cancels Meeting With Japanese PM
By Steve Herman
Tokyo
23 May 2005
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-05-23-voa5.cfm?renderforprint=1
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Japan says it is at a loss as to why China's Vice Prime Minister Wu Yi at the last minute canceled a meeting Beijing had requested with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
The sudden cancellation of Monday's meeting between China's vice prime minister and the Japanese prime minister is being interpreted here as a diplomatic slap at Tokyo.
Japanese officials say they were told that "sudden duty" in China compelled Vice Prime Minister Wu Yi to quickly leave for Beijing on a chartered flight from Tokyo.
Prime Minister Koizumi told reporters he has no idea why China canceled the discussion, but he remains willing to meet with them at anytime.
Reporters asked Mr. Koizumi if his plans to again visit a Shinto shrine seen as a symbol of Japan's past militarism caused Ms. Wu to change her schedule.
Mr. Koizumi says he has no idea whether that might have been the case, but he stresses that he has not tried to exacerbate the already frayed relationship with China.
Japanese Foreign Ministry officials say Chinese diplomats made it clear that the change of plans had nothing to do with the controversial shrine, although some Japanese news media quote other officials here as contradicting that view.
Chinese President Hu Jintao on Sunday complained during a meeting with Japanese lawmakers in Beijing about Mr. Koizumi's plans to visit Yasukuni. Mr. Hu said that a visit would damage bilateral ties "in an instant."
China strongly opposes Japanese leaders paying their respects at Yasukuni because it honors convicted World War II criminals, along with all of Japan's war dead.
Ms. Wu arrived in Japan six days ago primarily to visit the China pavilion at an international exposition near Nagoya. She had been scheduled to return home on Tuesday after meeting with Prime Minister Koizumi.
In a speech earlier in the day in Tokyo, the Chinese vice prime minister gave no indication she would not meet with Mr. Koizumi. In her remarks, Ms. Wu said it was necessary to change the status of the current relationship, which she called "not satisfactory or benign," as quickly as possible.
Ms. Wu says that at a summit in Jakarta last month, the Chinese president proposed ways to improve and develop ties with Japan. She says this demonstrated the strong will of the Chinese leaders to promote cooperation between China and Japan, and that Japan responded positively to the proposal.
Sino-Japanese relations have ebbed to their lowest point in three decades. There were sometimes violent anti-Japanese protests in several Chinese cities last month. Demonstrators said they were angered by new Japanese history textbooks, which downplay early 20th century imperial Japanese atrocities in China and Korea. The demonstrators also said they opposed Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
AUSTRALIA: For the First Time, a Deputy Head of State Confirms Peak
[Last month Australia's Treasurer Peter Costello explained to his country's citizens that new domestic projects due to come online will only go so far in offsetting depletion. With abundant coal, some geothermal potential and natural gas reserves, Australians have resisted the idea that there's big trouble coming. There are tax incentives for oil exploration there, but none for renewables - while in 2003, AU$ 8 billion worth of exploration discovered AU$ 4 billion worth of crude. Having peaked in 2000, the country now imports oil at an average of about $25 billion per year, extending a substantial trade deficit. Now the Deputy PM is adding his voice to the growing chorus of petro-realists, heralding a possible change of course. -JAH]
Anderson fears for oil reserves
ABC NEWS ONLINE
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1373262.htm
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson believes high fuel prices reflect the inevitable decline in the world's oil and gas reserves.
He expressed deep concern about the long-term future of oil and says fuel prices will have to be high enough to encourage more exploration.
Mr Anderson says the world could reach peak production of oil and gas far sooner than predicted because of the rapid increase in energy demands in China.
"We are using stored energy left over from ages gone by at an alarming rate and it isn't re-making," he said.
"While people talk about new technologies and they say as soon as oil reaches a certain price everybody will switch over to hydrogen and what have you.
"The reality is that it may not be as simple as that and you have to wonder whether over the next decade we won't start to get towards peak production and that could be a very interesting time and a very challenging time."
[Here is the flip side to the destructiveness of modern agriculture. On the land, modern agriculture depletes the soil and water resources, leaving us with a landscape polluted by pesticides and herbicides, and genetically weak monocrops just waiting to be wiped out by the evolution of a super-pest. Then the excess fertilizers and pesticides run off into streams and lakes which are choked by an accelerated process of eutrophication. Finally, the effluvia of industrial agriculture makes its way to the oceans, where it results in the spreading dead zones mentioned in this report.
As mentioned in this article, the Mississippi River alone dumps 1.6 million tons of nitrogen into the Gulf of Mexico annually. World fertilizer use has increased ten-fold over the past fifty years. And nearly a third of the world's dead zones are found off the coast of the United States.
This nitrogen run-off is the product of natural gas based fertilizers. The tale of the oceans' dead zones is one more sign that we have evolved a system of exploitation which simply cannot go on much longer. We have destroyed much of this country's natural ability to recycle organic wastes while overwhelming it with a tsunami of toxic wastes. Meanwhile, our population and economy have grown to unsustainable excesses.
This cannot go on much longer. The only question is: will we back off gently before there is a major catastrophe, or will we push this situation to the breaking point? -DAP]
Increase in 'Dead Zones' Starving the World's Seas
'Dead zones', where pollution has starved the sea of life-giving oxygen, are increasing at a devastating rate
by Andrew Buncombe and Geoffrey Lean
Published on Sunday, May 15, 2005 by the Independent/UK
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines05/0515-05.htm
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
It has arrived early; it's bigger than ever and it promises a summer of death and destruction. The annual "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico - starved of oxygen, and thus killing fish and underwater vegetation - has appeared earlier than usual this year.
This is just one sign of a rapidly growing crisis. The number of similar dead zones in the world's seas has doubled every decade since 1960, as a result of increasing pollution. The United Nations Environment Program says that there are now 146 of them worldwide, mainly around the coasts of rich countries. Its executive director, Klaus Töpfer, calls their growth "a gigantic, global experiment ... triggering alarming, and sometimes irreversible, effects".
The Gulf of Mexico dead zone - which can cover more than 7,000 square miles - is mainly caused by fertilizers, flowing down rivers to the sea. Every year the Mississippi river - which drains 41 per cent of the United States - dumps 1.6 million tons of nitrogen in the gulf, three times as much as 40 years ago. Most comes from the highly productive corn belt, which helps to feed the world. The nutrients feed blooms of algae and phytoplankton. The algae drain oxygen from the water, as do the decomposing bodies of the plankton, when they fall to the seabed and die.
It hits a fishery that provides one-fifth of the country's entire harvest from the sea. As a result, catches of brown shrimp, the gulf's most important species, have dropped since 1990. The worst years match those with biggest dead zones, which appear to block juveniles from reaching their offshore spawning grounds. Last year, the dead zone was even blamed for a tripling in shark attacks on Texas bathers. Fish and swimming crabs flee the pollution for cleaner water, followed by the sharks.
Scientists recently found 19 locations with severely depleted oxygen in the gulf, where they expected to find none at this time of year. "It usually doesn't start until June," said Steven DiMarco, a researcher at Texas A&M University, one of several groups involved in the testing. "It was larger at that time than it was at any time in 2004. During January and February of this year, the flow of the Mississippi river was larger than at any time in 2004."
The stratification levels between the fresh river water and heavier salt water of the sea created the dead zone, which usually is at its most severe between 30 and 60 feet below the surface. The zone was first recorded in the early 1970s. It originally occurred every two to three years, but now returns each summer.
The world's biggest dead zone is in the Baltic, where sewage and nitrogen fallout from burning fossil fuels combine with fertilizers to over-enrich the sea. Fish farming can also exacerbate the problem.
Nearly a third of the world's dead zones are off the United States - including a notorious one in Chesapeake Bay - but they also cluster round the coasts of Europe and Japan, and have reached China, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.
World fertilizer use has soared tenfold over the past 50 years, mirroring the increase in dead zones. And half the natural wetlands that used to filter out nutrients before they reach the sea have been destroyed worldwide. Big farming states such as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa have drained more than 80 per cent of theirs.
But there is some good news. After the lobster fishery collapsed in the Kattegat Strait between Denmark and Sweden 20 years ago, the Danish government implemented an action plan, which dramatically cut pollution from agriculture, industry and sewage and restored wetlands.
Now new experimental programs in the United States - which persuade farmers to use less fertilizer in exchange for a guarantee of compensation if their yields drop - have cut its use by a quarter. They raise the hope that, if expanded, the relentless growth of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico might finally be reversed.
© 2005 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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Chinese Deputy PM Abruptly Cancels Meeting With Japanese PM