Globalisation has a downside for Singapore

business-times.asia1.com.sg :

While Singapore looks set to do well economically in an increasingly globalised world, domestic concerns - such as increasing social inequalities and a perceived lack of political freedom - are still aplenty, said speakers at the Institute of Policy Studies' annual Singapore Perspectives 2006 forum.

Other than intensifying economic competition and Singapore's increasing susceptibility to problems originating elsewhere (such as with Sars), globalisation will accentuate social inequalities, said Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Vivian Balakrishnan.

'Those with unique marketable skills will command First World wages, whilst those without relevant skills will have their wages dragged down by the going rate in the Third World,' he said.

- I believe the Minister has just about described the ongoing "Race to the Bottom". For the vast majority of the people who are not in the fortunate position of having "unique marketable skills", they are the ones who are currently involved in this peculiar race.

Just think about it. By definition, "unique" means being different from the majority. Having *unique* skills means having skills that, by its very definition, the majority of the population DOES NOT POSSESS. By extension, if anyone attempts to restructure the entire society such that more people have these skills, they will, again by definition, be NO LONGER UNIQUE. Wonderful, isn't it? The impossibility of the current situation.

Back to the original question which I posed to myself in Sep 2003, regarding all those folks unemployed due to the wonders of globalisation and outsourcing : "... are they going to upgrade their skills to become top-notch aerospace engineers, broadcast engineers, coders, researchers, or biotech scientists too?"

Say goodbye to the days of million-dollar HDB flats

This article belongs to the Singapore property market story arc.

sengkang.com :

Weekend - January 7, 2006
Letter from STEVE K NGO

I refer to the article, "Real estate prices go high-rise". I disagree that climbing property prices are signalling a recovery. In fact, there is no basis to suggest that Singapore's residential property market has promising prospects ... how can property prices increase when there is no shortage, but, in fact, hints of over-supply? There is the negative equity of home-owners and close to 10,000 unsold HDB units. Last year, the Government allowed a drop in down payment for property purchases from 20 per cent to 10 per cent. The change has not shown much impact so far.

We have come to a stage no different than in the United States, where properties are for our own dwelling, not speculation. We can say goodbye to the days when people paid nearly a million dollars for a HDB flat in Bishan. It is important that today's property owners be realistic.

Norway plans fail-safe seed bank

peakoil.com -> english.aljazeera.net :

Norway is to build a doomsday vault in a mountain close to the North Pole that will house a vast seed bank to ensure food supplies in the event of catastrophic climate change, nuclear war or rising sea levels, New Scientist says. Built with Fort Knox-type security, the $3 million vault will be designed to hold around two million seeds representing all known varieties of the world's crops. They are the precious food plants that have emerged from 10,000 years of selection by farmers. The facility "would essentially be built to last forever," according to a feasibility study.

To be preserved, the seeds must be kept below freezing point. Operators plan to replace the air inside the vault once a year at winter-time, but even if for some reason this becomes impossible, the permafrost will still keep the seeds viable. The thick walls, airlocks and doors mean that even if global warming accelerates badly, it would take many decades for hotter air to reach the seeds.

(2006-01-17 00:31:10 SGT) [Env] Permalink

World's big polluters to fund clean energy projects

news.yahoo.com :

Six of the world's biggest polluters, the United States, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea and India, will create a multi-million dollar fund to encourage mining and power industries to develop and use cleaner energy technologies to combat climate change. Combined, the six countries account for half the world's greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil and their Sydney meeting is the first for their clean-energy partnership. But the six nations did not reveal how much funding would be made available for new energy technology development.

Green groups said the two-day talks in Sydney were a facade and were aimed at subverting the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States and Australia refuse to sign claiming its mandatory greenhouse gas cuts would threaten economic growth. They said that without binding targets, which the Sydney climate pact will not propose, then it was doomed to fail. "Talk is cheap and the price of inaction is expensive," Greenpeace spokeswoman Catherine Fitzpatrick said. "The dirty, black fingerprints of the coal industry are all over this pact."

(2006-01-17 00:28:05 SGT) [Env] Permalink

GM stays under pressure from all sides

news.yahoo.com :

As Asian car makers tighten their grip on future growth in world production, limping giant General Motors came under a withering attack from an activist investor who said Detroit's traditional ways of doing things needed to change. GM lost nearly $4 billion in the first three quarters of 2005 and will slash 30,000 jobs and close 12 plants in North America. Rival Ford Motor Co is expected on January 23 to announce its own round of plant closing and job losses. Both of have had their credit ratings slashed to junk.

Corporate turnaround specialist Jerome York said the whole U.S. industry needed to look at the stakes and work together. "When a company is in deep trouble - and make no mistake, GM is at the present time ... the time has come to go into crisis mode.", York said. York's criticisms echoed many analysts in the last year. But his voice has the financial muscle of his boss, financier Kirk Kerkorian, whose Tracinda Corp holds almost 8% of GM stock and is the single largest individual shareholder.

The call to arms and crisis mode at General Motors compared to the sunny outlook at Japanese giant Toyota Motor Corp. Most analysts expect Toyota to pass GM as the world's top maker of cars and trucks in a year or two, powered by a reputation for quality and fuel efficiency as seen in models like the pioneering Prius gas-electric hybrid.

My Web 2.0 : american auto-makers
Google Base : american auto-makers

(2006-01-17 00:22:50 SGT) [Biz] Permalink

Clean energy from coal bed gas

peakoil.com -> www2.rnw.nl :

Coal contains methane gas, a combustible gas with a high caloric value that can be used in much the same way as natural gas. Many coal layers are simply too deep underground, or too thin to be exploited in the traditional way. Yet, they can hold large deposits of methane.

The Dutch research and development institute TNO has recently conducted a large-scale test in Poland of a new way of extracting this valuable gas. The new method that Henk Pagnier and his colleagues have been working on is called ECBM, 'Enhanced Coal Bed Methane'. It takes the old CBM method one step further: the methane gas is not simply released naturally by depressurising the coal, but pushed out by injecting another gas, preferably a gas we want to get rid of anyway, like greenhouse gas CO2.

Henk Pagnier says: "The beauty of the whole thing is that CO2 happens to bind to the coal when injected. Better still, it dissolves the methane gas from the coal in the same chemical process. Instead of the 40% of gas which can be extracted from the coal by using the old method, Enhanced Coal Bed Methane can extract up to 80%, and that makes the whole concept economically viable in many more cases ... if you use the methane on the spot for a local power plant, you can use the CO2 that the plant produces for extracting more methane from the coal bed. It's a closed circle. And completely clean."

(2006-01-17 00:08:36 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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