World Climate Challenge

COP21 is the UN’s acronym for the summit, reminiscent of the street-smart term for the NYC police force, the cops. The Convention on Climate Change, or the Climate Change Conference as Triple C would be just as bland, but then, we have Triple J on Saipan, so maybe Triple C will have some folks thinking about obsolete fossil fueled cars and get the young to look into inexpensive new hydrogen-based chemical processes that is causing Aramco headaches.

Climate change joins conservatives and progressives together in common cause, save that some GOP members of Congress claims that funding climate change is wasteful of taxes.  As seemingly innocuous as an issue as this global condition, we do have “deny-ers” and “naysayers” in high government positions that think the excessive carbon contents in our skies are illusions. 

Of course, we know that Obama on the lead at the Paris Summit is the magnet for the negative political response.  With the Senate slapping the “O” on the face with intents to dismantle Obamacare, the GOP seems to be more anti “O” than anything else!

Among the climate change villains, China is said to lead the pack since its amount of emissions is at par with the U.S. Uncle Sam allegedly cleaned up its act more than a decade ago along the Allegheny and the Appalachia, thus a river by Cleveland no longer bursts into flames. Never mind that per capita, China will not list on the top 10 even though the U.S. moved production and manufacturing to China when Zhou En Lai and Kissinger got cozy, particularly on light metals used in info tech hardware, the field that fuels Western economy, so China is more intent in the full fruition of its economy in 2030 rather curbing the use of its abundant coal for fuel.

Deng Xiao Peng opened the economic gates to the cheap labor of the Heavenly Realm and western investments poured into manufacturing; the land of the Han has not been the same ever since.

But now China worries of pollution as well. Coal, the source of energy for foreign-fed factories on domestic production, adds to the particle matter index in the air.  Smog made Beijing close shop last week.

So, it did not come as a surprise that China gets the major finger of blame in the Paris Summit of Nations on Climate Change, nor did it help that Beijing’s air has been on the heavily polluted side.

A clear selling point of China tours to Saipan is the quality of air in the CNMI. A guest who stayed for a month away from freezing Dong Bei developed colds on his last two days, revealing a reflex to want to stay longer. He could have but his visa was only good for 31 days and the hassle of extending his stay required visits to authorities that we really did not wish to do. Besides, he needed to face the truth that inhaling pm 2.5 in Liaoning does not add or deter being profoundly human!

The bureaucratic approach to dealing with a situation like global warming is to pass laws, add more policies in the books “to be legally binding,” but in the U.S. where the President’s hands are constitutionally at the mercy of the Senate, it really does not amount to much. 

On Saipan, the popular mandate was to refrain from letting casinos establish on the island, as Dynasty on Tinian and the one-armed bandits in every village on Saipan were sufficient to whet the gambling appetite. So much for public law!

The change of tourists from Japan and Korea to the game-of-chance and fortune seeking Zhongguoren that our casino tables hope to lure, with Macau (Aomen) revenue down by 33 percent when Beijing curbed the illicit siphoning of public funds into the gaming tables, the integrated resort practice started in Singapura to make casinos look acceptable is used as a convenient rationale to turn the CNMI into the Las Vegas of the Far East. Ironically, Las Vegas is itself diversifying its economy beyond gambling as the native population in the U.S. uses their rights to run casinos on reservations, limiting Las Vegas’ allure. Turning Saipan, Tinian and Rota into the new gambling capital of the world is very attractive to the landowners of the CNMI.

Two referenda that defeated casinos on Saipan are to naught. Similarly, warming is a verifiable reality, and the non-biodegradable fossil fuel byproduct plastic in its minute particle form has permeated our oceans and our air, our food and body systems. 

It will not be the summit that makes the difference but ordinary humans who decide to consider alternative energy source, even if the media propaganda promotes oil as “that without which we could not do without.”

Saipan can lead the way of showing that alternative energy is an option. The casinos might just be the means to show that this can be done. Generous with their PR funds, wind turbines and solar panels can show benefits when used, and now, the new universal fuel that might just make oil obsolete. Integrated resorts might show how their structures keep islands air clean. Breath easy.