Michael Richardson - The Japan Times

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Michael Richardson

For Michael Richardson's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

COMMENTARY

Mar 21, 2009

Are Earth's oceanic 'carbon sinks' filling up?

Russian and South Korean scientists made a disturbing discovery recently in the Sea of Japan. They found that the amount of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas, being absorbed in the water dropped by half between 1992 and 2007.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 15, 2009

Maritime lines of conflict in South China Sea

SINGAPORE — America's protest last week to China over the alleged harassment of two of its navy ships by Chinese vessels, and China's reaffirmation of ownership of the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, highlight two festering maritime disputes. Either position could lead to conflict in the region unless it is carefully managed.

COMMENTARY

Mar 10, 2009

Warming up for the bottom line on climate

SINGAPORE — Researchers from around the world meet in Denmark this week to discuss the latest scientific findings on climate change, following recent warnings that the severity of global warming this century will be much worse than previously expected and that changes to the climate will be difficult if not impossible to reverse for centuries to come.

COMMENTARY

Mar 3, 2009

Tackling the dangers of mercury

SINGAPORE — Fear sparked by global recession, strains on banks and volatile paper currencies has brought the glitter back to gold. Its value has been rising rapidly in recent months, as investors seek a safe haven from the economic and financial storm.

COMMENTARY

Feb 25, 2009

Building an Asian safety net

Asian finance ministers have agreed to build a regional safety net to help countries withstand currency weakness and avoid a financial meltdown. However, they appear to be making haste slowly when the deepening global recession demands decisive action.

COMMENTARY

Feb 17, 2009

Former saviors racking up losses

SINGAPORE — A year ago, before the financial crisis started to bite hard, the United States and Europe were worried that Asian and Middle East nations, armed with a mighty war chest of surplus foreign exchange reserves from their exports of manufactured goods and oil, would gobble up so-called strategic assets in the West.

COMMENTARY

Feb 4, 2009

Guantanamo closure raises key issues for U.S.

The Obama administration has moved swiftly to end controversial practices that tarnished America's international reputation and undermined its moral authority. But in doing so, it has raised new questions about how the United States will prosecute and punish terrorists in future, and where and under what conditions it will send them if they are not considered to be a major threat.

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 27, 2009

North Korean crisis heating up

SINGAPORE — Will North Korea be the Obama administration's first Asian crisis? Pyongyang has recently been cranking up its bellicose rhetoric, declaring that it would maintain its "status as a nuclear weapons state" and "smash" South Korea's government in an "all-out confrontation" for tying aid to disarmament.

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 9, 2009

Who can win on oil slicks?

SINGAPORE — What a roller-coaster ride! It took more than four years for oil to go from $35 per barrel in 2004 to just above $147 in July 2008, and less than six months to go all the way down again. Today, the oil price is two-thirds lower than its peak last year, despite Israeli military strikes in Gaza that have raised concerns about the disruption of Middle East supplies.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 31, 2008

China flexes naval muscle

SINGAPORE — Two Chinese destroyers and a supply ship are on their way to join other foreign warships on anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia. This is a milestone for a navy that has long focused on coastal defense and lacked the capability to project power overseas.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 30, 2008

Making nice in Asia during a global slump

SINGAPORE — Global financial dislocation and the economic slump are putting Asian regional cooperation to the test. They also appear to be shaping somewhat different responses in Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. The latter, which formed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations way back in 1967, has a big head start in institutionalizing collaboration and recently signed a charter that makes the group a legal entity for the first time. Northeast Asia has no organization equivalent to ASEAN.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 18, 2008

Modest signs of progress in Poznan

SINGAPORE — The world remains on a path toward a new treaty to limit greenhouse-gas emissions, blamed by some scientists for warming the planet to potentially dangerous levels. But clinching a comprehensive deal designed to control climate change has been made increasingly difficult as both developed and developing countries argue over how to apportion costly emission cuts at a time of deepening global recession.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 8, 2008

Preserving tropical forests also cuts emissions

SINGAPORE — Can the world's remaining tropical forests in Indonesia and elsewhere be protected and brought into the battle against climate change? Working out ways of halting or slowing the cutting of forests for valuable timber and agriculture is now being discussed at U.N. climate change negotiations taking place in Poznan, Poland, through Friday.

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 25, 2008

Room for Asian influence in G20 structure

SINGAPORE — Finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 advanced and emerging economies have been meeting regularly for nearly a decade. But the decision to convene a summit of the G20 heads of government in Washington the weekend of Nov. 15 marked an important turning point in the way global economic problems are handled. The summit agreed on a plan for tackling the financial crisis and the deepening slump.

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 16, 2008

Sticky details of Obama's clean-energy plan

SINGAPORE — U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is coming to power on a torrent of promises and high expectations. Yet as recession bites deeper into the world's biggest economy, investment slumps, jobs are lost, tax revenues fall, and the U.S. budget deficit grows ever larger. It is expected to more than double next year to around $1 trillion.

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 11, 2008

Protectionist sentiment to challenge Obama

SINGAPORE — Asian economies that have benefited from trade liberalization in recent years tend to prefer U.S. Republican administrations over Democratic ones because the former are seen as having a more consistent commitment to free trade. Now that Barack Obama is president-elect with a sizable Democratic majority in Congress, much of Asia is nervous about what this may portend for trade relations and economic growth.

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 1, 2008

Rich in geothermal fields? Then exploit them

SINGAPORE — In their quest for energy security, Indonesia and the Philippines are planning to develop nuclear power to buttress a key part of their electricity generating systems. This provides the near constant, or base load, electricity needed by industries and households. However, the possibility of accidents and deadly radioactive releases from nuclear power plants — particularly those in countries like the Indonesia and the Philippines, which are peppered with active volcanoes and subject to earthquakes and tsunami — worries neighboring nations in Southeast Asia as well as Australia.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 27, 2008

Sri Lanka sees LTTE at the end of the tunnel

SINGAPORE — Sri Lanka's government says its armed forces are in the final stage of a campaign to annihilate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the rebel group that has been fighting for 25 years to carve out a homeland for minority Tamils in the north and east of the island-state.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 11, 2008

Combating the piracy plague

SINGAPORE — The confrontation between foreign warships and well-armed pirates off the coast of lawless Somalia is a dramatic reminder to Asia of the importance of safeguarding busy channels used by international shipping.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 6, 2008

Tinge of green as China becomes top polluter

SINGAPORE — The latest tally of greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for warming the world shows that China has emerged as the top polluter, ahead of the United States, by an increasingly big margin.

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[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

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Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Students ‘study abroad’ on island of Suo Oshima

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