The wildfires ravaging Los Angeles have killed at least 24 people, displaced 180,000 and scorched about 160km2 — an inferno driven by fierce winds and severe drought in what should be California’s wet season. It is a sobering reminder that the climate crisis is driving wildfires to become more frequent, intense and destructive — leaving ruined lives, homes and livelihoods in their wake.
US President Joe Biden responded by mobilizing federal aid. By contrast US president-elect Donald Trump, a convicted felon who was criminally sentenced on Friday, used the disaster to spread disinformation and stoke political division.
The climate crisis knows no national borders. Deadly floods in Spain, Hawaii’s fires and east Africa’s devastating drought show that nowhere is safe from its effects. Countries must work toward the global common interest and beyond their narrow national interests. The scale of the climate emergency is such that there is a case to view all crises through a green lens.
Instead Trump’s denialism works to foment distrust about the science. He is not just aiming to delay the onset of truth. He wants to demolish it.
It is a familiar playbook: The fossil fuel industry knows the reality of the climate emergency, but chooses profit over responsibility, effectively deceiving the public while the planet burns.
The perils of weaponizing doubt should be painfully clear in the week when scientists said last year was the first to pass the symbolic 1.5°C warming threshold, as well as the world’s hottest on record.
Trump’s politicization of climate denial has supercharged it, turning skepticism into a badge of identity.
When denial becomes ideological, facts turn irrelevant. That makes concerted climate action much harder to achieve.
Trump’s return to power will not halt the US’ path to decarbonization, but it will slow it disastrously. An analysis by Carbon Brief in August last year estimated that his return could add 4 billion tonnes of US carbon emissions by 2030 compared with Democrat plans — inflicting US$900 billion in global climate damage.
To grasp its scale, the emissions surge would equal the combined annual output of the EU and Japan, or the emissions of the world’s 140 lowest-emitting countries.
Confronting the climate emergency demands more than facts; it requires dismantling the political machinery that breeds denialism. The link between the current model of economic growth and the depth of environmental collapse is undeniable. Yet in the face of the overwhelming evidence, too many on the political right cling to denial or place blind faith in the free market.
This is an age of “hyper agency” — where billionaires, rogue states and corporations wield almost unchecked power, fueling climate chaos and global instability. The mechanisms meant to hold power to account are being dismantled with ruinous consequences. Without urgent action, the next disaster will not be a warning. It will be irreversible.
While not much can be expected from Trump, the European “green deal” is too small to plug this year’s projected shortfall in private investment, let alone meet EU commitments under the Paris climate agreement. Climate denialism ought to be confronted with bold policies; business must be held accountable for its role in this crisis; and voters need to see through the rightwing populist parties who prioritize profit over the planet.
The next catastrophe is not a distant threat, it is already in motion. Only immediate and determined action can stop global heating from becoming humanity’s undoing.
The US Senate’s passage of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which urges Taiwan’s inclusion in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise and allocates US$1 billion in military aid, marks yet another milestone in Washington’s growing support for Taipei. On paper, it reflects the steadiness of US commitment, but beneath this show of solidarity lies contradiction. While the US Congress builds a stable, bipartisan architecture of deterrence, US President Donald Trump repeatedly undercuts it through erratic decisions and transactional diplomacy. This dissonance not only weakens the US’ credibility abroad — it also fractures public trust within Taiwan. For decades,
In 1976, the Gang of Four was ousted. The Gang of Four was a leftist political group comprising Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members: Jiang Qing (江青), its leading figure and Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) last wife; Zhang Chunqiao (張春橋); Yao Wenyuan (姚文元); and Wang Hongwen (王洪文). The four wielded supreme power during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but when Mao died, they were overthrown and charged with crimes against China in what was in essence a political coup of the right against the left. The same type of thing might be happening again as the CCP has expelled nine top generals. Rather than a
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) on Saturday won the party’s chairperson election with 65,122 votes, or 50.15 percent of the votes, becoming the second woman in the seat and the first to have switched allegiance from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to the KMT. Cheng, running for the top KMT position for the first time, had been termed a “dark horse,” while the biggest contender was former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), considered by many to represent the party’s establishment elite. Hau also has substantial experience in government and in the KMT. Cheng joined the Wild Lily Student
Taipei stands as one of the safest capital cities the world. Taiwan has exceptionally low crime rates — lower than many European nations — and is one of Asia’s leading democracies, respected for its rule of law and commitment to human rights. It is among the few Asian countries to have given legal effect to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant of Social Economic and Cultural Rights. Yet Taiwan continues to uphold the death penalty. This year, the government has taken a number of regressive steps: Executions have resumed, proposals for harsher prison sentences
RSS