World of opinion
On reducing beef production: The Government is trying to make us eat less meat. A report in the Lancet today, based on a study partly funded by the Department of Health, recommends that the number of animals bred for meat should be reduced by 30 per cent. The Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, backs the report, on public health and environmental grounds. But is it really that simple? Granted, ruminants, specifically cattle, emit methane. But the effect of meat on the environment depends to a great extent on where and how it is produced and how far it is transported.
Beef produced in South America on cattle ranches for which forests have been cleared, which is then transported to Europe, is environmentally damaging in several respects.
But British beef, if produced in an environmentally sensitive manner and transported as short a distance as possible, is less problematic.
[A] blanket target to reduce the number of animals bred for meat is crude.
There are other means of reducing carbon emissions: today the Forestry Commission recommends that another four per cent of our land mass should be used to plant trees. That is an initiative we can all support.
London Evening Standard
On world hunger:
According to the United Nations, more than 1 billion people – one of every six persons on this planet – go hungry each day. In a world of unprecedented prosperity, that statistic is shameful. More appalling still, the number of undernourished individuals is growing despite rising levels of affluence and wealth. It is a moral imperative that we halt this alarming trend and work to eliminate the growing problem of hunger worldwide.
If morality is not sufficient motivation, then more hard-nosed practical considerations should suffice: Hunger undermines growth, creates instability and ultimately threatens the legitimacy of an international order that condemns one-sixth of its members to a daily struggle to survive. …
The dangers are not just to individuals alone. Hunger breeds unrest. The price of wheat, which supplies about 20 percent of food calories consumed worldwide, doubled in 15 months during 2007 and 2008. A surge in food prices last year triggered riots in more than a dozen countries; one government (that of Haiti) was forced to resign as a result. Fears of shortages and instability have prompted governments to stockpile key staples, creating bottlenecks and exacerbating the situation in other states: In a globalized food chain, local decisions quickly ripple beyond national borders. …
The most important step forward is creating new markets for the goods of poor and struggling nations. In other words, it is vital to return to the original purpose of the Doha Development Round – to help developing countries – and conclude a world trade agreement.
Developed nations, Japan prime among them, must recognize that opening domestic agricultural markets is in their own best interest – even if that entails a short-term political cost in the process. That is the sort of change that the new government in Tokyo should embrace – and will demonstrate the sort of leadership that Japan should be offering the world.
The Japan Times, Tokyo
On Russian President Medvedev’s new rhetoric:
President Dmitry Medvedev’s criticism of the governing United Russia party’s heavy-handedness at its annual convention on Saturday suggests that intraparty infighting has replaced interparty democratic competition, but raises some hope that Mr. Medvedev is asserting his independence from Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister and former president.
On Monday, he followed up this sign of comparative liberalism by submitting to the Russian parliament a new statute to support non-governmental organizations. On the other hand, he upheld his own tsar-like power – established in 2004 by Mr. Putin when he was president – to appoint the governors of Russia’s 89 regions, and replaced four of them.
Mr. Medvedev began his convention speech by praising Russia’s handling of the economic crisis, yet went on to say that the country has “a backward, commodity-based economy, which in the modern sense of the word can hardly be called an economy.”
Turning to politics, he observed that “being the ruling party … is not a lifelong privilege.” Mr. Medvedev came close to acknowledging a one-party dominance – somewhat reminiscent of the much more oppressive Communist Party of the Soviet Union – by pointing out that “practically all government elite are in your ranks,” a status that, in his view, imposes special responsibilities.
… Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev appear to continue to be on good terms, but the divergence of their rhetoric raises the prospect that Russian politics will come to be largely about two factions within the governing party …
The current duet of the Prime Minister and the President is odd, but Mr. Medvedev’s direct criticism of the governing party awakes some hope that Russia will start to move away from Mr. Putin’s authoritarianism.
The Globe and Mail, Toronto