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Last week President Obama gained a much needed diplomatic victory when he and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a bilateral climate change deal. The non-binding accord pledged both nations to make feasible steps in reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and lays the foundation for environmental cooperation. It creates the first cap of Chinese CO2 emissions – the highest in the world – and may eventually produce a comprehensive global climate deal in Paris next year. While some climate activists praised the deal, others warned that it did not go far enough. Republicans argued that the deal will present another workaround of Congress and hurt the American economy. Other nations, especially those who have resisted caps on CO2 emissions, remained mum about the accord.
This topic brief will discuss the tenets of the China-U.S. climate deal, the challenges and difficulties of making it work, and how the deal may impact the world’s ability to produce a new climate deal by the end of 2015.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
Last Sunday, Brazilian voters went to the polls and re-elected Dilma Rousseff by the slimmest margin since the country reverted back to democracy in the 1980s. Rousseff, aligned with the leftist Workers’ Party (PT) defeated center-right candidate Aecio Neves of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) in the runoff election by a three point margin, 51.64% to 48.36%. The results show that the country is divided between its poorer, more dependent northern regions and its more prosperous, middle-class southern regions. Rousseff has promised to do more to clean up corruption, enact political reform, and rejuvenate Brazil’s ailing economy, but her campaign pledge to maintain generous social benefits and the nastiness of the general election campaign may hinder her ability to do any of these things. Since Brazil has the seventh-largest economy in the world and is part of the BRICS nations extempers should be prepared to discuss the country’s economic problems and the outcome of the presidential election at future tournaments.
Last week Canada was rocked by two terrorist attacks. On Monday, Martin Couture-Rouleau drove his car into two Canadian soldiers in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, killing one of them, and on Wednesday, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau killed a soldier guarding the National War Memorial in Ottawa and wounded a guard in the Canadian Parliament. Both men were killed in their attacks and were recent converts to Islam. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper argued that the actions of Couture-Roleau and Zehaf-Bibeau were inspired by the Islamic State, which has urged its followers to attack Western nations. Harper plans to push for legislation that would grant more powers to Canadian intelligence services and strengthen authorities in anti-terrorism operations, but his opponents argue that these security reforms could do significant damage to Canadian politics and culture. These Canadians worry that Harper will push anti-terrorism measures too far and that their country will eventually have the same intrusive surveillance systems as the United States and Great Britain.
Two weeks ago, citizens of Hong Kong took to the streets to agitate for universal suffrage. In 2017, Hong Kong will be able to elect its chief executive, but the candidates for that office will be approved by a nominating committee that is sympathetic to mainland China. Once a British colony, Hong Kong reverted back to Chinese rule in 1997. Since that time it has agitated against the Chinese government’s attempts to impose greater control over some of the city’s affairs. The recent protests have caused some observers to remark that there are parallels between the agitation for wider democracy in Hong Kong and the aims of the Tiananmen Square protesters of 1989, who sought to turn China into a democratic republic. China violently suppressed the Tiananmen protests over two decades ago, but doing the same in Hong Kong could do significant damage to the country’s international reputation and economic standing.
Although the Scottish independence referendum failed last week, the cloud of secession still looms over Europe. Catalonia, a region located in Northeastern Spain, is pushing for an independence referendum. Catalans view their culture as separate from that of the larger Spanish state and the country’s economic problems have led growing numbers of Catalans to conclude that they would be better off if they went their own way. A day after the Scottish independence referendum failed, Catalonia’s regional parliament authorized Catalan President Artur Mas to call a “consultation” (a fancy name for a referendum) on independence. The Spanish government, headed by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, says that a Catalan independence vote would violate the Spanish Constitution and they have vowed a legal challenge to the measure. Since the Catalan secession issue might drag out for the remainder of the year, extempers should be prepared to talk about the subject at tournaments.
Arguably no other country in Latin America has defined the region’s shift to the political left like Venezuela. Embarking upon a socialist revolution under former President Hugo Chavez in 1999, the country spread its left-wing policies to other nations such as Nicaragua, Peru, and Bolivia. Under Chavez, Venezuela nationalized foreign businesses, bought international allies with subsidized oil, and became a vocal critic of American foreign policy. Unfortunately, poor economic decisions laid the foundation for the country’s current economic mess. President Nicholas Maduro has thus far shown himself ill-equipped to make the hard choices necessary to rescue the economy from inflation and a heavy reliance on imports. Since the failure of the Venezuelan economy would indict the cause of Bolivarian socialism throughout Latin America, it is imperative that extempers continue to follow Venezuela’s economic difficulties.