The Language of Climate Change

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By  Emanuel Pastreich. Edited by John Feffer,

Foreign Policy in Focus

April 23, 2009

Many think tanks and NGOs in the United States and Europe — Sierra Club, Earthwatch, 1Sky — wield multimillion-dollar budgets with the aim of reducing environmental degradation and climate change on a global scale.

Yet a glance at the websites of these institutions makes it immediately obvious that very few offer materials online (or offline) in the foreign languages spoken by corporate leaders, civil servants, and citizens’ groups in countries the United States expects to make changes in environmental policy. We find nothing on these institutions’ websites in Chinese, Russian, Hindi, or Arabic.

Although English-language prescriptions may have some value in communicating with highly educated, English-speaking researchers from other countries, those individuals aren’t the key figures driving reckless, damaging development and building of factories and coal plants. Nor are they likely to be the decision-makers in the government’s response. To address issues like poisoned groundwater, increased numbers of coal plants, and disappearing forests, one must engage directly with local government and local industry, and make the case in their common language. In some nations, even the elites don’t consider this local language important for intellectual discourse.

In a nutshell, getting serious about combating climate change isn’t about bringing English speakers from developing nations to listen to Harvard professors; it’s about talking to players at the local level in the languages they best understand.

Even highly educated civil servants in Japan find Japanese summaries of English proposals far easier to comprehend. And although educated Indians may wince at the suggestion, at the local level we need to get information out in Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Sindhi, and Bengali.

Someone may ask if we really need to translate our ideas into dozens of languages to be effective. The answer is simple: Yes, eventually we must, if we are to pull the world back from the brink of environmental destruction. In the short term, however, we should focus on key languages such as Chinese, Russian, Arabic, and Hindi.

Translating English-language documents doesn’t imply people in these countries have a greater responsibility for global warming. Indeed, because the United States has the much larger carbon footprint, U.S. NGOs have the greater responsibility to invest in the dissemination of information about global warming.

Translation isn’t simply communication. It’s also the basis for cooperation as U.S. NGOs work with their counterparts overseas to refine the language and implement the recommendations. Translation is more than linguistic; it’s cultural. Anyone who has engaged civil servants and corporations on the ground in Asia soon learns that it’s not enough to make a proposal in the native language. A proposal has to be formatted in a specific form that can be processed by government, NGOs or companies internally. Translation, and translation that is relevant for the task at hand, is a key step in building partnerships.

Yes, it will take extra effort for the Brookings Institution and the Earth Institute to put up websites in Chinese, Arabic, and Russian. But that’s what has to happen if we want to start reaching people who can effect change.

And if we don’t, well, those in the developing world who complain that the developed world is simply not living up to its side of the bargain would have a point.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_language_of_climate_change

Poetry in Motion

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Poetry started appearing in Korean subways a few years ago. But such poems were poorly presented on back walls where they drew little attention.

Recently the glass doors between the platform and the subway car are adorned at some stations with poetry. The poems are there where every commuter will read them, often accompanied by classical music these days. A very effective campaign to transform Korean culture.

The glass doors are an added safety measure that has been implemented over the last year.

Creating a nation of readers

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When Professor Doh Jung-il founded the NGO  “Citizen Action for a Reading Culture”  in 2001, no one took him seriously. But he has put together a strong alliance across the political spectrum for the creation of a “reading culture” in Korea. Five years ago even, I was struck by how many fewer people read books in Korea than in Japan. Although that is still the case, as we observe on the subway, the situation here is changing rapidly. We now see reading promoted everywhere in Korea and increasingly bookstores are popping up in subway stations. 

For an American, I am struck by the ability of Koreans to actually change policy and habits. We lament problems in the United States, but we do not seem to be able to carry out such successful campaigns.

Even more improvements planned for Seoul subway

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The Seoul subway is increasing its sophistication by leaps and bounds, well on track to go far beyond anything found in Tokyo or Singapore in terms of design, efficiency and cleanliness. This advertisement, with some young Koreans with a strong fashion sense, indicated some of the upcoming additions. 

Korea as Number One in the Robot Revolution

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Monday, March 21, 2011
robot

We have read numerous articles describing the apocalyptic future that awaits Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and portions of China’s coastline as a dramatic drop in childbirths, combined with the extended life expectancy, creates cities of elderly with no youth to support them.

Although such concerns are not unfounded, and if all other factors were constant, this would be convincing enough, yet there is one factor that many analysts have left out. There is currently a revolution taking place in robot technology which will be fully unleashed over the next five years, from 2012 to 2017. An increasing number of tasks will be done more effectively and more consistently by robots, a change that may well completely transform society as well as our relationship with machines. Although we are beginning to get some sense of the contours of this shift in our world, most citizens have not fully thought through just how profound those changes may be.

Superannuated societies are distinctive in that they have an extremely low resistance to the use of robots and mechanization. In fact, many children in Korea are hoping that robots will be as sophisticated as possible, as soon as possible, so that they can entrust their aging parents to be cared for by them. It will be no small feat to design robots that can feed, bathe, medicate and amuse aging people, but we have every reason to believe that such robots will be developed in the very near future—in part as a result of the evolution of technology and in part because of demand in Northeast Asia.

The question is not so much what technologies are possible, but rather how much social resistance there will be to their implementation. In this respect, Korea will have the least resistance, as it literally may need robots to run its society. Although this might seem at first glance to be a de- mographic disaster, it is very well possible that we are observing a classic blessing in disguise. As other nations struggle over the pros and cons of complete automation and the use of robots in the home, Korea will have no doubt as to which way they should go. That means that Koreans will be the earliest adapters of robot technologies and Korea will potentially become the leader in the new wave: complete integration of robots in daily life after 2015. Korea will gain tremendous advantages in its technological and economic development, advantages that far outweigh the short term problems of a drop in population.

http://www.biztechreport.com/story/1161-korea-number-one-robot-revolution

Technology with a Human Face

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The remarkable thing about contemporary Korea is that is has so embraced advanced technology, but at the same time, when you make a phone call, a human answers the phone. It is remarkable combination
of human and technological elements. That combination may seem jarring, or even like an indication of a less advanced state of development, but in fact, it may be Korea’s saving grace.

One of Korea’s cultural appeals is that it is both high tech and human. but that state may not be a stable one. Just as Kenyesian economics were a product of the clash of capitalism and socialism in the 1930s, it could not hold up against the later ideological and economic shifts. But right now, Korea is on a roll.

Korea shifts its street address system

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Korea is currently engaged in a massive project to convert all addresses from the Japanese do (block) system –dong in Korean–to street address-based system. The shift is massive and is the equivalent of the US shifting from English to metric measurements. But it is going forward like clockwork. Very impressive indeed.

Beautiful Seoul in the Yellow Dust

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Seoul is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most international cities with a remarkable number of cultural amenities and beautiful walks. If it were not for the yellow dust blowing over from northern China, you might think you were in Paris. We see such paradoxes everywhere: Seoul rapidly becoming the world’s great capital at the same time that environmental demons raise their heads.