Source:
https://scmp.com/comment/letters/article/1912401/its-time-cross-us-and-them-divide-or-planet-doomed
Opinion/ Letters

It’s time to cross the ‘us and them’ divide or planet is doomed

Letters
Letters

Updated: 12:47pm, 15 Oct, 2020

Why you can trust SCMP
Lance Frederick, 18 year veteran of the custom harvesting industry, is photographed with a John Deere combine in the background in Penalosa, Kansas, June 20, 2001. Frederick with his brothers and their caravan of crew and family members are the nomads of the plains. Their 22-member clan treks annually from Texas north to Montana and back again, traveling the rutted, unpaved side roads of the nation's heartland, cutting wheat, corn, sunflowers, canola and more. The nomadic lifestyle, contracting with farmers who do not have the time, money or other resources to bring in their own crops, is not unique to Frederick Harvesting. Indeed, the brothers' outfit is one of an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 custom harvesting companies that annually trace a path through rural America to collect the food that feeds millions. REUTERS/Denice Kuhns/TO MATCH FEATURE STORY LIFE-NOMADS

We live in an age of great dichotomies. Some countries consume too much and produce too little, while some do the opposite. Some rejoice in the take-off of the Fourth Industrial Revolution while still many others have no power supply on a large scale.

The world remains callous to the threats of global warming, epidemics, extremism and human migration.

Much of the current state of affairs has to do with how the world is organised.

The 193 countries in the world just do not serve our global village well. How many free trade agreements must a country sign to enjoy free trade? The asynchronous monetary policies adopted by various countries are helping a currency war. Many have flocked to regional blocs for safety in numbers, only to find a greater stumbling block to solving their problems. Monetary union without fiscal union entrenches many nations, and their people, in the rich-poor divide.

If we are all sharing earth’s finite resources, it calls for better allocation of these scarce economic resources. The world is in disequilibrium because of huge imbalances between surplus units (emerging economies) and deficit units (developed world). It calls for an urgent restart to the game to reduce these imbalances. The human migration of recent times, either out of necessity or choice, is perhaps a sign of this rebalancing.

The world order is still served by arcane institutions inherited from past eras.

Despite acknowledging that Mother Earth has got warmer, countries are still bogged down in yearly bickering on how to address global warming. If we remain steadfast in this “us against them” mentality, falling along the developed against developing nations divide, soon there will be no planet earth to speak of.

We face a common destiny. It is time we questioned the old order amid an age of great disruptions exacerbated by technology. The resurgence of fundamentalist thoughts is perhaps a response to gripping fear of these disruptions faced by humanity.

Lee Teck Chuan, Singapore