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UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS
Cambridge International Level 3 Pre-U Certificate
9777/03/PRE
May/June 2009
INSTRUCTIONS (Pre-Release Material)
To be given to candidates
*7962108967*
READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST
Guidance for Teachers
This Resource Booklet contains stimulus material to be used by candidates preparing their presentation for
9777/03. One copy should be given to each candidate.
Presentations must be prepared in a four-week period. This may take place at any point between 1 March
and 31 May. All presentations must be submitted to CIE via eRepository by 31 May.
Instructions to Candidates
•
•
•
•
•
•
You should use the enclosed stimulus material to help you identify the subject for your
presentation.
You are advised to frame the subject of your presentation in the form of a question.
Your presentation must address alternative perspectives on the question you select and must
engage directly with an issue, an assumption, a piece of evidence and/or a line of reasoning
(explicit or implicit) in one or more of the documents within this Booklet (i.e. not just a free-standing
or peripheral word or phrase). Presentations should be aimed at a non-specialist audience.
Originality in interpretation is welcomed.
Your presentation may be prepared in a variety of formats (e.g. PowerPoint, video, weblog or web
pages) and should normally include an oral presentation or commentary. Where this is not
possible, accompanying written notes must be provided.
The speaking or running time of your presentation should be a maximum of 15 minutes.
This document consists of 15 printed pages and 1 blank page.
IB09 06_9777_03/3RP
© UCLES 2009
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Document 1
‘Shocked! How the oil crisis has hit the world.’
The Independent, 31 May 2008
SHOCKED!
How the oil crisis
UNITED
STATES
Four-day weeks
brought in to
cut petrol use
UNITED
KINGDOM
Brown forced
to offer help
with fuel bills
has hit the world
EUROPE
Desperate EU
tells members:
don’t cut any
fuel taxes
DENMARK
Ferry company
cuts routes
to UK and
lays off staff
CHINA
Three major
cities introduce
fuel rationing
to cut demand
YEMEN
Rioting over
failure to share
soaring oil
revenues
SPAIN
Thousands join
fishermen in
protest over
soaring costs
ETHIOPIA
Aid agencies
say relief work
hit by rising
transport costs
GAZA
Palestinians
forced to fill cars
with olive oil
instead of diesel
SOUTH AFRICA
Anger as diesel
price rises
again, up by
49% this year
AUSTRALIA
Beleaguered
airlines cut
routes and
slash jobs
INDONESIA
Removal of fuel
subsidies leads
to furious
street protests
[http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/shocked-how-the-oil-crisis-has-hit-the-world837477.html - see under Further Pictures/Last]
© UCLES 2009
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Document 2
‘Food shortages: think big.
If we're to solve this global problem, we need more globalisation and less sentimentality.’
The Times, 15 April 2008
Paul Collier
The world price of staple foods has rocketed, almost doubling in the past 18 months. For consumers
in the rich world this massive increase in the price of wheat or rice is an inconvenience; for consumers
in the poorest countries it is a catastrophe.
Food accounts for around half of the entire budget of most Africans. Of course some poor households
sell food, but many are net buyers. Indeed, decades of agricultural stagnation and growing
populations have turned many African countries into food importers. The households that are poor
and net purchasers of food are concentrated in the urban slums. These slums are already political
powder kegs: rising food prices have triggered riots from Ivory Coast to Indonesia, from Burkina Faso
to Bangladesh. Indeed they sow the seeds of an ugly and destructive populist politics.
Why have food prices rocketed? Paradoxically, this squeeze on the poorest has come about as a
result of the success of globalisation in reducing world poverty. As China develops, helped by its
massive exports to our markets, millions of Chinese households have started to eat better. Better
means not just more food but more meat, the new luxury. But to produce 1kg of meat takes 6kg of
grain. Livestock reared for meat to be consumed in Asia are now eating the grain that would
previously have been eaten by the African poor. So what is the remedy?
The best solution to a problem is often not to reverse what caused the problem. If you broke your leg
by falling off a cliff, it is not a good idea to climb back up. The best solution to the rise in food prices is
not to arrest globalisation. China's long march to prosperity is something to celebrate. The remedy to
high food prices is to increase supply. The most realistic way is to replicate the Brazilian model of
large, technologically sophisticated agro-companies that supply the world market. There are still many
areas of the world - including large swaths of Africa - that have good land that could be used far more
productively if it were properly managed by large companies. To contain the rise in food prices we
need more globalisation not less.
Unfortunately, large-scale commercial agriculture is deeply, perhaps irredeemably, unromantic. We
laud the production style of the peasant: environmentally sustainable and human in scale. In respect
of manufacturing we grew out of this fantasy years ago, but in agriculture it continues to contaminate
our policies. In Europe and Japan huge public resources have been devoted to propping up small
farms. The best that can be said for these policies is that we can afford them.
In Africa, which cannot afford such policies, the World Bank and the Department for International
Development have orientated their entire efforts on agricultural development to peasant-style
production. Africa has less large-scale commercial agriculture than it had 60 years ago. Unfortunately,
peasant farming is not well suited to innovation and investment. The result has been that African
agriculture has fallen farther and farther behind.
Our longstanding agricultural romanticism has been compounded by our newfound environmental
romanticism. In the United States fear of climate change has been manipulated by shrewd interests to
produce grotesquely inefficient subsidies to biofuel. Around a third of American grain production has
rapidly been diverted into energy production. This demonstrates both the superb responsiveness of
the markets to price signals, and the shameful power of subsidy-hunting lobby groups. However, just
as livestock are eating the food that would have been consumed by poor Africans, so Americans are
running their SUVs on it. One SUV tank of biofuel uses enough grain to feed an African family for a
year.
© UCLES 2009
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In Europe deep-seated fears of science have been manipulated into a ban on both the production and
import of genetically modified crops. This has obviously retarded productivity growth in European
agriculture. Again the best that can be said of it is that we are rich enough to afford such folly. But as
an unintended side-effect it has terrified African governments into banning GM lest their farmers be
shut out of European markets. Africa definitely cannot afford this self-denial. It needs all the help it
can possibly get from GM drought-resistant crops.
While the policies needed for the long term have been befuddled by romanticism, the short-term
global response has been pure beggar-thy-neighbour. It is easier for urban slum dwellers to riot than
for farmers: riots need streets, not fields. And so, in the internal tussles between poor consumers and
poor producers, the interests of consumers have prevailed in the developing countries.
Governments in grain-exporting countries, such as Argentina, have swung prices in favour of their
consumers and against their farmers by banning or restricting exports. But such tariffs and export
bans make investing in commercial-scale food production less attractive, drive up prices further still in
the food-importing countries, and discourage farmers from increasing their yields, exacerbating global
food shortages.
Unfortunately, trade in agricultural produce has been the main economic activity to have resisted the
force of globalisation. The cost of this is now being picked up by the poorest people in the world.
[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3746593.ece]
© UCLES 2009
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Document 3
‘We have lost our way with food.
Most of the hysteria around GM produce is a sign of our separation from our agrarian roots.’
The Times, 9 June 2008
Melanie Reid
Personally, I blame the Industrial Revolution. If the average British housewife had never been
separated from her agrarian roots, we would not be in half the mess we are in. We'd grow our own
organic vegetables, make low-fat casseroles out of pigs' entrails and live healthily and hysteria-free
beyond the subliminal control of the Tesco mother ship. We might also be a teensy bit bored, but
that's another column altogether.
Can there be anything more depressing than the oppressive superstition of today's food shoppers predominantly female - when faced with what they perceive as ‘bad food’? I doubt it. Logic doesn't get
a look in. Although faced with galloping bills, a grave world food shortage and unassailable evidence
that the high-salt, high-fat and high-sugar processed diet that they favour is killing their loved ones
with kindness, consumers are opposed to technological solutions.
For - surprise, surprise - the first credible survey into attitudes to food derived from cloned animals
has revealed strong concerns. The public - for which read women - are worried about safety, ethics
and animal welfare. The Food Standards Agency found that they regarded cloned animal products as
‘interfering with mother nature’; ‘an unstoppable juggernaut’; and ‘a slippery slope’ - and that they
plainly preferred to die of stale clichés rather than drink fresh milk from cloned cows. They feared
such products might be unsafe for human consumption and wanted extensive five to ten-year tests presumably until the moon was in Aries and Gemini was in the ascendancy - in line with checks on
new medicines.
It is a funny old world. As food riots break out in Haiti and Egypt and leaders at the UN food summit
declare that a relaunch of agriculture is necessary to feed the planet, the great British shopper takes
anti-science to new levels by objecting to increased food production.
We have been here before. This same emotional argument put a stop to the widespread use of
genetically modified cereals in the UK. GM became a tainted brand that is now snuck into cheap food
in small print. Yet if there is evidence that GM foods do any environmental or human damage, I'm still
waiting to see it. (Like I'm still waiting for the predicted millions to die of human form CJD from
infected burgers.)
The ironies mount up: the same people who happily pay thousands of pounds for IVF babies, or seek
gene therapy cures for their child's asthma, condemn genetic modification as ‘dangerous’. The
fastidious public, misshapen by obesity and sentenced to early death by doughnut, worry about
‘Frankenstein food’.
What this irrationality illustrates, vividly, is how ignorant people have become since they were
divorced from the basics of agriculture. The land taught a wisdom we have lost. Genetic modification
is simply selective breeding; it has been key to farming since the first hunter gatherer decided to stay
put and find a bull for his cow. The slow-motion process of modifying animals by breeding has been
going on for thousands of years and there is not a single strain of cow, sheep, pig, horse, dog, cat or
hamster that is not the result of extensive generations of species manipulation by humans. An
identical process went on with plants. And by doing so, productivity has improved immeasurably.
It is completely bonkers to think that today's animals and plants bear any resemblance to what used
to exist in the wild. Once upon a time all dogs looked the same; we simply modified them by breeding
those with genetic abnormalities. And clever gardeners have done the same: creating, for example,
broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower as mutations from the same species of plant.
© UCLES 2009
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Genome selection means nothing more radical than clever breeding - discovering what kind of genes
work best and using them to improve existing strains or exclude disease. Cloning is a further
acceleration of that process - jumping the time period that normal reproduction takes; speeding up of
the selection of the most productive. Scientists tasked with solving the world's food crisis - and we
can't leave it to politicians - know it's safe. Similarly, the US Food and Drug Administration has
decreed produce from clones and their offspring ‘as safe as food we eat every day’. The European
Food Safety Authority, a little more cautiously - because it works on European snail time - says the
same.
What happened with GM cereals cannot be allowed to happen again over meat and milk simply
because the British shopper is overwhelmed by the ‘yuck’ factor. There is a much more at stake than
the sensibilities of the squeamish. It is as simple as this: the welfare, productivity, health and
sustainability of farm animals have to improve if the world is going to keep eating meat. The oceans
are being fished out, agricultural land is going to biofuels: something has to produce the protein to
keep the world alive. The first cloned Holstein dairy cows, said to be capable of producing 30% more
milk, have been born in Britain. Instead of getting the vapours, we should rejoice.
[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/melanie_reid/article4092115.ece]
© UCLES 2009
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Document 4
‘Eat, Shop, Purge.’
Adapted from The Times, 26 April 2008
Janice Turner
Mega-inflation in the price of staple foods - maize, rice and wheat - will be felt as a global wave, we
are told. From Haiti to Bangladesh to the bacon counter in Tesco, customers will be shaking heads at
prices. Except that while families in the developing world are already giving up healthcare or taking
children out of school or cutting back on vegetables to pay for rice, in Britain we still throw away a
third of all the food we buy.
Contemplating dinner yesterday, I looked into a half-empty fridge and was about to head down to
Sainsbury’s when I realised I had enough for days. It wasn't that I craved roast chicken or a nice steak
or anything else we lacked. I just wanted to shop, to browse and buy. And then enjoy the pleasure of
filling my shelves, perhaps discarding the two sausages and slightly manky mushrooms I was tired of
looking at, to make way for the new, interesting foods with all their unexplored menu possibilities.
Just how decadent is a society that can purge itself of decent food? The estimated £800 rise in a
family's annual grocery bill could be more than absorbed by eliminating waste and reviving respect for
food, eroded by decades of cheap produce. But then our bulimic society does not value any
commodity for long. It's striking that while drug addicts or alcholics are viewed with severity, the term
‘shopaholic’ is a joke. It is a giddy, girly-pink, frivolous name for the kind of idiot women, spurred on by
fashion-magazine ‘must have’ diktats, who ‘can't resist’ a pair of shoes, or bags. It is fine, even
encouraged, for a shopaholic to hide her habit; conceal her purchases, rip up receipts and lie to
husbands - the fun-suckers - about her egregious debts.
Not that shopaholics I've come across garner much pleasure from what they buy. Unopened bags
clutter up wardrobes, that sparkly top - one of three similar because, at Primark prices, why not buy
every colour? - is worn twice before ending in a bin bag in the back room. One former colleague
would spend most lunchtimes in Oxford Street, arrive back flush-faced with a dozen frocks and tops,
then the next afternoon return most of them for refunds. Her credit card swelled briefly to capacity,
before the purge allowed her to trawl Selfridges, hungry once more.
At least this woman was only wasting her life. With personal debt rising to epidemic levels and the
demise of cheap credit, surely the Government should warn us of the dire consequences of spending
so far beyond our means. But shopaholics are the Gurkhas of the economy, bravely forging onwards
through the high street while weaker, fearful consumers retrench. Their country needs them.
And, especially among the young, there is no shame in overspending: a fifth of 18 to 34-year-olds,
according to a Mintel survey, see no stigma, should their financial pressures build to bursting point, in
declaring themselves bankrupt and thus disgorging all their debts.
Globalisation has become a glib, catch-all phrase to explain why your favourite café was swallowed
by Starbucks. But the world food shortage illustrates its true meaning: that our lives and our consumer
choices are finely connected with those of the rest of the planet. I remember reading about biofuels a
while back with bemusement. What, you fuel a car with corn? Wouldn't that take an awful lot of corn?
Isn't it as daft as feeding, say, strawberries to a pig?
I assumed that far cleverer brains than my own - really worthy eco-minds - had figured this all out.
(After all, I find most supposed solutions to global warming incomprehensible: how does donating
money make a multinational company ‘carbon neutral’, how can I ‘offset’ my flight to Australia by
planting a tree?) But now when we drink more expensive beer - land that once grew hops having
been turned over to ethanol-producing corn - we have some distant connection with Asia's empty rice
bowls. Maybe we will realise the insanity of pretending we are saving the planet by pumping the
© UCLES 2009
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West's SUVs with the hungry's cereal crop. Maybe we'll realise that the only solution is to consume
less.
And when I hear teenagers contemptuous of a model of mobile phone because it's six months old, or
when a young woman with a good job tells me she has 50 pairs of shoes, £6000 on her cards, but
thinks she'll never own her own home, I wonder if this is a bad thing. Many of us struggle with one
appetite or another. We comfort eat, comfort shop, binge and purge.
Maybe a recession will hurt, but it might help to align our wants with our needs.
[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/janice_turner/article3818283.ece]
© UCLES 2009
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Document 5
‘Keeping up with the Patels.’
The Times of India, 22 June 2008
Chidanand Rajghatta
For the longest time, ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ has been a popular expression in the Englishspeaking world, used to refer to economic and social aspirations of those lower down the pecking
order. The phrase is said to have originated from an American comic strip in which the Joneses were
better-off neighbours of the strip's main characters. They (the Joneses) were always spoken about but
never seen. The strip itself was reportedly inspired by friends known to the cartoonist Arthur Momand
who were in endless competition with their neighbours, Joneses, including constantly expanding their
home, ‘to keep up with the Joneses’.
True to the sweeping changes taking place in the 21st century, the primacy of the emblematic
Joneses is now being challenged. A recent survey in Britain that examined buying behaviour of the
country's most common surnames showed that the Patels are spending more per head on electronic
goods and gadgets than any other group. According to the online retailer who commissioned the
survey, the Patels splurged $5000 a year on items such as home entertainment systems, computers,
phones, cameras, etc., far more than the Jones (who came in 16th), Smiths and Browns.
Linguistic revisionists are now suggesting that ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ be replaced with
‘Keeping up with the Patels’, particularly since idiom — in the form of Indlish — if not economics and
demographics, points to growing Indian influence across the world. You buy that?
Patels are now ubiquitous across the world. There were 80,000 Patels in UK a decade ago, when
they were said to be the 40th most common surname (the Joneses came in second, so the Patels
have plenty of catching up to do demographically). According to the year 2000 US Census, there
were 49,740 Patels in the US. Patel ranked 591 in the list of most common American last names,
ahead of such notables as Dalton, Roth, and Nixon.
In the interest of euphony, ‘Keeping up with the Jains’ could have been a more pleasing transition,
except that Jains, typically, are a frugal and austere lot. If anything, keeping up with the Jains would
suggest the opposite of keeping up with the Joneses and Patels, i.e. divesting oneself of worldly
possessions and paring life down to bare necessities.
For that matter, even with Patels, there are attributes outside acquisitive and consumptive tendencies
which do not square with the Joneses. Patels are exceptional entrepreneurs — an industrious, selfmade, risk-taking lot. Joneses are more likely well-bred aristocrats, the kind that inhabit Wodehouse's
world, although Indiana Jones (aka Harrison Ford) has a different story to tell. But if it comes to
competition in business between Patels and Joneses, it's a no-contest. No one can keep up with
Patels.
Patels could well be a generic name for well-heeled Indians at large. The evolution is already
underway. For instance, a ‘Patel shot’ is now a generic term for the standard photo touristy Indians
take in front of a famous monument or familiar scene — like the Eiffel Tower or Niagara Falls. Some
years back, referring to the profusion of Indians in the tech world, someone coined the expression
‘Intel Inside, Patel Outside,’ although there are few Patels in technology. Then there is the term
Potels, to describe motels owned by Indians, although in addition to Patels, there are also Shahs,
Mehtas and others who are in this line of business.
In fact, some economists will argue that Patel is now a generic term for millions of Singhs and
Zhangs, Shahs and Xiaos. It's their growing purchasing power — and their keeping up with the
Joneses — that's expected to keep the world economy afloat.
[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/Keeping_up_with_the_Patels/articleshow/3152
754.cms]
© UCLES 2009
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Document 6
‘Asian nations vie for stake in Moon.’
Adapted from New Scientist, 29 October 2008
Anil Ananthaswamy
Asian nations vie
for stake in Moon
ANIL ANANTHASWAMY
WHEN India’s
Chandrayaan-1 lunar
orbiter reaches its
destination on 8
November, it will join two
others - and neither is
American, Russian or
European. For the first
time, probes from China,
Japan and India will be
orbiting the moon.
This signals the latest
stage in a new space race
in which Asian nations are
seeking a place alongside
the established space
powers. Whatever the
motivation for these
missions, the information
they gather will greatly
expand what we know
about our nearest
neighbour. “A wonderful
new era of lunar
exploration has opened
up”, says Richard
Vondrak, project scientist
for NASA’s planned Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter at
the Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt,
Maryland.
The probes will study the
Moon in unprecedented
detail. By mapping surface
features in 3D, and
MISSION COSTS
JAPAN: Kaguya. Launched: 2007
Weight: 3 tonnes. Cost: $480 million
CHINA: Chang’e-1. Launched: 2007
locating key elements and
Weight: 2.3 tonnes. Cost: $180 million
minerals, they will help
INDIA: Chandrayaan-1. Launched: 2008
identify sites for future
Weight: 1.4 tonnes. Cost: $74 million
moon bases. Combined
with measurements of the
US: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Launched: 2009
Moon’s gravity field and
Weight: 1 tonne. Cost: $460 million
remnants of its magnetic
field, these observations
HELIUM-3
will also shed light on its
Both India and China are
origin and evolution.
looking for helium-3 in the
The possibility of
lunar crust as a possible fuel
exploiting lunar resources
for nuclear fusion reactors on
is one drving force PROTON
Earth. Though they are far
especially for China and
from ready to exploit it, both
India. “We cannot afford to DEUTERIUM
nations want to ensure they
be lagging behind the US,
ENERGY have a stake for the future.
Russia and China”,
The Moon is estimated to have
Madhavan Nair, chairman
HELIUM-3
a million tonnes of the stuff, the
of the Indian Space
result of billions of years of
Research Organisation,
HELIUM-4
bombardment by the solar
said on Indian television
wind. Most helium-3 will
before the launch of
PROTON
NEUTRON probably be found in the
Chandrayaan-1.
Moon’s extensive basaltic
Yet cooperation, as well
plains - the dark regions visible
as competition, marks out
from Earth.
the Indian mission and the
(Icarus, vol 190, p15)
probe’s payload includes
instruments from the US
3D MAPPING
and Europe. “Scientific
exploration is a journey,
The Asian probes will provide the most detailed and
not a race”, Vondrak says.
comprehensive 3D map of the Moon’s surface to date.
“The information from
Japan’s Kaguya spacecraft is orbiting 100 kilometres above
these spacecraft will be
the surface, creating maps with a resolution of 10 metres.
used to improve our
From a similar altitude, India’s Chandrayaan-1 will survey
understanding of the
the Moon’s near and far sides at a resolution of 5 metres to
Moon, which will benefit
create a 3D atlas that will be used to pick sites for human
everyone.”
missions and moon bases.
[http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026803.900]
© UCLES 2009
ESA: SMART-1. Launched: 2003
Weight: 366kg. Cost: $95 million
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Document 7
‘Why the elephant can dance better.’
The Times of India, 3 August 2008
Shashi Tharoor
In an April 20 column, I argued the case for Sino-Indian economic co-operation, suggesting the two
countries had complementarities that could make such co-operation mutually beneficial (as some
companies in both countries are already proving). I also dismissed any talk of comparing India to
China, arguing that the two countries' systems are so different that we simply can't compete with
China in the growth stakes. Lest some readers infer from this that I think China is superior to India in
every respect, let me assure them that they are wrong.
Certainly, in absolute numbers, the Chinese are way ahead. Their export of electronic goods now tops
$180 billion a year. One out of every three shoes exported in the world is made in China. They make
75% of the world's toys. Foreign direct investment is at the level of $70 billion a year (for comparison,
India gets $15 billion). Shanghai alone has nearly 4,000 skyscrapers (more than all of India, and
exceeding Los Angeles and Chicago combined). China has built an estimated 60,000 kilometers of
expressways in less than two decades and will soon outstrip the total length of the US highway
network. Per capita income has risen nearly 10-fold since 1978 to over $6,000 a head, and the
number of people living in absolute poverty has dropped from 425 million two decades ago to 26
million today. The population is almost totally literate; life expectancy is reaching developed-country
levels. This year, China is expected to overtake Germany to become the world's third largest
economy, behind the US and Japan. It won't stay Number Three for long.
Against this, though, are a number of factors suggesting that not everything is rosy in China.
Economic growth has occurred at breakneck speed, but that means some necks have been broken:
the human cost of development has not been negligible (population displacement, farmers thrown off
their lands, villages flooded by dams, mounting pollution, low-wage labour in appalling conditions,
widening disparities between the rich and the poor, an absence of human rights and few checks on
governmental abuses). The Chinese have seen great and rapid improvements in their Internet
access, but Beijing employs some 40,000 'cyber-police' to monitor politically-undesirable activity on
the Web.
Equally important, China's success has not just been China's; a disproportionate share of the benefit
goes abroad, to the foreign companies who have set up factories in China. It has been estimated that
of the $700 American price of a Chinese-made laptop, only $15 remains in China. Only four of the
country's top 25 exporters are Chinese companies, according to Forbes magazine's Robyn Meredith,
who adds that in practice, 'Made in China' really means 'Made by America (or Europe) in China'. The
Chinese financial system also leaves much to be desired. Where India has been running
sophisticated stock markets since the early 19th century — and Indians are so skilled at doing so that
they got the Bombay stock market up and running within 24 hours of the 1992 bomb blasts — China
is new at the game, and not particularly adept at it The financial information provided by China's
companies, especially those in the large governmental sector, is notoriously unreliable, and standards
of corporate governance are low. There are no world-class Chinese companies with sophisticated
managers to match Tata or Wipro or Infosys. China's capital markets are weak and its banks
inefficient: the Chinese banking system carried an estimated $911 billion in unrecoverable loans as of
2006, mainly to government firms. State-owned enterprises still account for half of China's economic
assets. China has yet to master the art of channelling domestic savings into productive investments,
which is why it has relied so extensively on foreign direct investment.
And the world has yet to develop any confidence in China's legal system (where a contract still means
whatever the government says it means). In other words, it still lags behind India on the 'software' of
development — not just technical brainpower or engineering know-how, but the systems it needs to
operate a 21st century economy in an open and globalising world.
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And then there's politics. Whatever you might say about India's sclerotic bureaucracy versus China's
efficient one, our tangles of red tape versus their unfurled red carpet to foreign investors, our
contentious and fractious political parties versus their smoothly-functioning top-down Communist
hierarchy, there's one thing you've got to grant us: India has become an outstanding example of the
management of diversity through pluralist democracy. Every Indian has been allowed to feel he or she
has as much of a stake in the country, and as much of a chance to run it, as anyone else: after all, our
last elections were won by an Italian woman of Roman Catholic heritage who made way for a Sikh to
be sworn in as PM by a Muslim president, in a nation 81% Hindu.
And our largest state is being ruled by a Dalit woman, from a community once considered
'untouchable', who bids fair to rule the entire country if she can make the coalition arithmetic add up
right after the next election. She wasn't promoted by the Brahmin elite in New Delhi; she rode to the
top on the ballots of her political base. Contrast this with Beijing, where political freedom is unknown,
leaders at all levels are handpicked from the top for their posts, and political heresy is met with swift
punishment, house-arrest or worse. India's politics means its shock-absorbers are built into the
system; it has endured major road-bumps without the vehicle ever breaking down.
In China's case, it is far from clear what would happen if the limousine of state actually encountered a
serious pothole. The present system wasn't designed to cope with fundamental challenges to it except
through repression. But every autocratic state in history has come to a point where repression was no
longer enough. If that point is reached in China, all bets are off. The dragon could stumble where the
elephant can always trundle on.
[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/Shashi_Tharoor/SHASHI_ON_SUNDAY/Why_
the_elephant_can_dance_better/articleshow/msid-3319563,curpg-2.cms]
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Document 8
‘The falling oil price is a lull in the storm.’
Financial Times, 20 August 2008
Nick Butler
Little more than a month ago the suggestion that Russian troops would be engaged in a shooting war
in Georgia leading to the closure of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline would have triggered a dramatic rise in
oil prices. A barrel of crude was already trading at more than $140 and the loss of another million
barrels a day (b/d) of supply could have pushed the figure on and up towards the $200 predicted by
some banks and by the chief executive of Gazprom.
In fact prices are almost 20% below their July peak. The fall has come despite a month of assertive
Russian nationalism, whose victims to date include not just Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president,
but also Robert Dudley, chief executive of TNK-BP, who has been forced into exile in an undisclosed
central European location. Other problems also persist – including civil conflict in Nigeria and the
failure of the Maliki government in Iraq to agree on the legal structure through which international
companies can invest in new oil developments.
Why then the fall? The explanation for the change in sentiment lies in a combination of factors that
between them are transforming the level of spare production capacity – a measure that over the past
two years has become the leading indicator of world oil prices and a signal to speculators.
First, demand levels have slipped back and look set to end the year more than 500,000 barrels a day
below the initial projections. Demand, especially for petrol, is down in the US and Europe as high
prices work through to the pumps and as the economic slowdown takes hold. The Japanese
economy, the second-largest single source of energy demand in the world – at 4.5m b/d – shrank by
more than 2% in the second quarter.
Almost all the remaining growth in oil consumption is now coming from the emerging markets –
especially China and India. Even there the rate of increase in demand has slowed in the past six
months. In a market that is sensitive to every change, even the Chinese constraints on car use in
advance of the Olympics have had an impact.
More important is the other side of the equation. High prices have encouraged producers to expand
output and a series of new development projects around the world, such as the delayed Khursaniyah
project in Saudi Arabia and new offshore fields in Nigeria and Angola, are due to come on stream
over the next six months.
The net result of these changes is that the level of spare capacity, which dropped at one point to little
more than 1m b/d, has crept up to about 1.8m b/d and could rise to 3m b/d by next spring. Three
million b/d was the historic level of spare capacity in place throughout the 1990s – a comfortable
margin of security against problems anywhere in the world. If such levels are restored the stage is set
for a reduction of prices through the autumn and winter. Prices could break through the symbolic $100
a barrel level – only this time they will be heading downwards.
Those brave enough to predict oil prices are usually wrong, but the perception that the fundamentals
have changed has begun to affect the trading market and behaviour of speculators. That is why the
Russian invasion of Georgia had so little impact. Speculators in particular are pulling out of oil – with a
few beginning to bet on a further substantial fall. In the words of one London trader: when prices have
risen by more than 100% in 12 months the chances are that the next move will be downwards.
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[Turn over
14
None of this resolves the long-term challenges facing energy policymakers. The world is still
dependent on hydrocarbons for more than 80% of daily energy needs. A year of rising prices has only
served to shift demand to coal. As a result carbon emissions continue to rise. The dependence of the
world’s consumers on Saudi Arabia, Russia and a few other producers remains high. Imports are set
to rise in the US, Europe, China and Japan.
The big oil companies are losing market share and seem unable to secure significant access to the
few new discoveries being made in areas such as Brazil. The bulk of supplies are controlled by state
companies. With Russia and the core of the Middle East closed off, big oil groups face a fundamental
challenge to their raison d’être. Falling prices will relieve some of the pressure on consumers but
complacency would be misplaced. This is a lull in the storm not a reversion to normality. The need for
a transition to a more diversified, lower-carbon energy economy is as urgent as ever.
[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/94952e8a-6eb6-11dd-a80a-0000779fd18c,dwp_uuid=f2b40164-cfea-11dc9309-0000779fd2ac.html]
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Document 9
‘A new twist for offshore wind.’
Adapted from Economist Technology Quarterly, 5 June 2008
Winds sweeping across New England, in the north-east of the United States, blow at an average of
about four metres a second (m/s). But a few hundred metres offshore they blow more than twice as
fast. This increase in speed is found offshore in much of the world. But although engineers know how
to build turbines to generate electricity from offshore wind – mounting them on towers pounded deep
into the seabed, or anchored by massive blocks of sunken concrete – they can only do so in waters
up to about 40 metres deep.
Now wind power could be taken into deeper waters. Building offshore wind farms is expensive: each
turbine costs at least 50% more than one built on land. But the stronger winds out at sea can
generate more electricity, and hence more revenue: wind blowing at 10m/s can produce five times as
much electricity as wind blowing half as fast, and this greatly favours building more offshore wind
farms, says Walter Musial, a senior engineer at the National Wind Technology Centre, a government
research laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. Yet just 300 - 400 offshore wind turbines have been built
worldwide, most of them in British or Danish waters. People think they ruin the view and harm the
offshore environment.
Take, for instance, a project known as Cape Wind, based on plans by Energy Management, an
American company, to build 130 wind turbines some 10km (6 miles) offshore in Nantucket Sound in
Massachusetts. Although it is backed by a number of green groups, local opposition has been fierce.
Jim Gordon, Energy Management’s boss, says, ‘visceral’ local protests have delayed the project by at
least three years and cost his company millions of dollars.
But what if the turbines could be put much further out to sea? Many experts say new technology now
makes floating turbines feasible. These could be sited a long way from land. Devices known as
‘floaters’ are already used to support more than two-thirds of the 4000 or so oil and gas rigs in the
Gulf of Mexico, says Paul Sclavounos, a marine engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. With funding from ConocoPhillips, Mr Sclavounos is developing a turbine floater for the
windy North Sea. He expects an industry making floating wind-turbines to flourish in about five years.
Others think it may take longer, but few doubt it will happen. Building turbines on land can be just as
controversial, suitable locations for fixed-base shallow-water turbines are limited and a new
generation of big turbines will need lots of space: only a couple can be placed in each square
kilometre.
SWAY, a company based in Bergen, Norway, is developing turbine floaters that can operate in 150
metres of water. The firm, partly funded by Statoil, Norway’s energy giant, estimates that each will
cost about as much as a fixed-base turbine placed in 30 or 40 metres of water. Its design uses a
hollow, buoyant cylinder that extends down from the tower to about 100 metres underwater. The
cylinder is anchored to gravel ballast on the sea floor. SWAY plans to float a full-scale prototype in
2010.
In December, a company called Blue H Technologies, based in Oosterhout in the Netherlands, placed
a half-size prototype turbine about 20km off the coast of southern Italy in water 108 metres deep. It
uses a flotation framework known as a ‘tension-leg platform’, similar to that used to float oil rigs.
Construction of full-size floating turbines for the site has now begun. The company has had to
convince Italy’s naval-certification agency that a floating turbine could withstand a ‘100-year wave’
which in that part of the world amounts to a 9.7 metre wall of water. When it blows at sea, it can blow
very hard. That presents difficulties, but it also provides opportunities.
[http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11482484]
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BLANK PAGE
Copyright Acknowledgements:
Document 1
Document 2
Document 3
Document 4
Document 5
Document 6
Document 7
Document 8
Document 9
© The Independent; p.1; Saturday 31 May 2008.
© Paul Collie; The Times; p.17; Tuesday 15 April 2008.
© Melanie Reid; The Times; p.24; Monday 9 June 2008.
© Janice Turner; The Times; p.21; Saturday 26 April 2008.
© Chidunand Rajghatta; Keeping up with the Patels; Times of India; 22 June 2008.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/Keeping_up_with_the_Patels/articleshow/3152754.cms
© Anil Ananthashamy; Asian Nations vie stake in moon; New Scientist; 29 October 2008.
www.newscientist,com/article/mg20026803.900
© Shashi Tharoor; Why the Elephant can dance better; Times of India; 3 August 2008.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/Shashi_Tharoor/SHASHI_ON-SUNDAY/Why_the_elephant_can_dance_better/articleshow/msid3319563.curpg-2.cms
© Nick Butler; Falling Oil Price is a lull in the storm; Financial Times; 20 August 2008.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/94952e8a-6eb6_11dd-a80a-0000779fd18c,dwp_uuid=f2b40164-cfea-11dc-9309-0000779fd2ac.html
© A new twist for offshore wind; The Economist Technology Quarterly; p.8; 7 June 2008.
Permission to reproduce items where third-party owned material protected by copyright is included has been sought and cleared where possible. Every
reasonable effort has been made by the publisher (UCLES) to trace copyright holders, but if any items requiring clearance have unwittingly been included, the
publisher will be pleased to make amends at the earliest possible opportunity.
University of Cambridge International Examinations is part of the Cambridge Assessment Group. Cambridge Assessment is the brand name of University of
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