Whats on agenda at Copenhagen?

With the considerable discussions on COP15 arising out of the meetings at Bangkok, Bonn, Barcelona and elsewhere and a global community engaging in the debates and following it through the net, I am left wondering what exactly is it that we will be discussing at Copenhagen?

Especially what will India be speaking and expecting? Will it be India’s stand of the developed world taking stringent emission cuts? Will it be KP beyond 2012? Will it be common but differentiated responsibility? Continuing with Annex I Annex II definitions?

If the US absolutely refuses to do things as we expect it to then are we going to keep it as a sore point which takes our whole focus or will we say chuck the whole world, we will work within our borders to become the one developing country which did the best with the resources available to us?

Is it not high time that we realized the futility of a talk on emissions control at two levels -

At one are we going to be discussing emission cuts and improving lifestyles side by side? Is one possible with the other? I am yet to see a rigorous debate on a paradigm shift which questions the very fundamentals of our developmental paradigm. I read news articles which have lines like

“The broader social and moral questions about coal are vexed ones. How do we weigh the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change against the desire of developing countries to achieve standards of living that the West has achieved by using cheap electricity and steel?”

http://www.theage.com.au/national/old-king-coal-20091107-i2w7.html

Can the discussion at Copenhagen be about realising that if everybody or even half the current population had the standards of living which the West has achieved, then possibly there will be a time sometime in 2110 (I am counting BAU, without any of the dire climate change projections happening) when the population has reached 9 billion, and half of that or 4.5 billion has been guzzling oil and gas and coal at West standards, when suddenly there has to come a time – this is pure maths without any dire exaggerated environmental outburst – when all of oil and gas and coal will be finished.

In such a scenario if we haven’t given sufficient thought a few decades in advance to preparing people to live happily and wholesomely a life and lifestyle, which is not the current Western one, dependent on only high carbon to provide satisfaction, then we will see a scenario where one moment people are driving the best of air conditioned sedans and working in sophisticated offices, and partying an vacationing at great locations and then in another decade everybody is living like the tribals, of the land, trying (trying because they never planned for what was to come) to surviving on decentralized food supply, and in a completely depressed state of existence, large amount of population dying because they bodies cannot bio-chemically adjust to the new situation.

Second, if it is sufficiently proven that technologies like CSP can provide the electricity needed to provide lifestyles like the West for everybody in India and China, then great lets party and see which vested industry lobby is stopping the transition and go one-point at a time to ensuring the whole of India (and China and the world) moves to CSP fed lifestyles by 2030.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/worlds-biggest-solar-power-china.php

Then what is the point of discussing emissions? Why worry about what America does or doesn’t, KP or not, common but differentiated or not? Are resources really a problem? If India just restructures it leaking and completely illogical subsidy structures then we could be in a position to fund projects in our neighboring countries. So the question of requiring funds from the West is gone. Are we going to have the guts to take leadership on dismantling our subsidies and creating resources within the country for everything from efficient and intelligent public transport to a spread of renewable like never before?

Today a completely venal political leadership which with vested narrow minded business interests has taken complete control of India’s climate change agenda discussion.And most in the country just do not have the guts to handle this coalition -  hitting at America is kids play. We are only talking about the faults of others to hide the enormous defects inside. I would much rather have a position where we are correcting our defects irrespective of what the west does or not. And we would be doing this  if we innately cared and were responsible. But our country and its people are no less irresponsible than those we point fingers at.

Are we talking technology for doing all this? I thought we had the best brains in the world? And anyways when we have the money from the source above then we can import the best solutions. Why are ‘we’ (the we is tricky because it may be the vested interests masquerading as speaking on behalf of one billion Indians) looking for charity from the West, by emotional blackmail on their historical emissions record. Can we, like the Australian viewpoint in the article above look at taking a leadership position?

A third important point of discussion will have to be a paradigm shift at the level of human beings who comprise the human species. Will people continue to live in a current paradigm where selfishness and greed and apathy about the community rule or will we move to an educated class which sees education not just as a means to high paying jobs and then high carbon lifestyles (and this has and continues to remain big in India , a whole family co-ordinated operation) but which reads material beyond their degree seeking text books and understands linkages in the much flaunted Vasudhiava Kutumbakam. How many in India have that feeling for the country also – forget the world?

The discussion at Copenhagen will have to be less about emissions and more about values then. Once we have the common and shared (not differentiated) values in place then emissions will automatically restore themselves. When the fresh into a high-paying job 25 year old in America and India will accept paying a higher tax on his vehicle, will accept a much higher electricity tariff for his/her favorite lounge bar, the additional resources from which help solar electrify a  village at a time, and numerous other such segments would have given similar thoughts, then we would have moved to a world where we would have sorted our not just climate change but MDGs and a hundred other problems.

But until the quality of the human being itself is bad, the situation is like high ash high sulphur content coal. If you burn it you will get sulphurdioxide and ash. As long as an irresponsible humans bides 60 years or more on earth we will have emissions, accept it and face the consequences, shut the COP shops and let everyone be on their own.

The Pied Pipers of India

I have been reading intensely (not as much quantitatively as much as I would have wanted to) on the climate change negotiations leading to Copenhagen and various other related topics like technology and the legislation’s being proposed.

I would maybe not express myself as I find below, had I found some credible amount of diversity in India’s positions on climate change as I find in many of the Tier – I industrialized countries (developed in popular lingo). Almost all of the discussion on climate change in India displays a lack of deep research and creative thinking. Almost every article in mainstream papers seems like some kind of a copy paste kaleidoscope. The more dominant ones display a hard headed thinking or smack of a clear vested interest influence. In fact most of the efforts in India are being financed by vested industry interests. Independent thinkers – and I would count myself as one – live a life so starved of resources that I even wonder why I take the trouble of writing right now.

Also its time we stopped calling ourselves a developing country (Tier II industrialized would be my lingo). We should call ourselves so only if we allow the real poor and backward people drive the India negotiations. All the India climate change negotiations are being led by Indians who know English better than the Queen, are more well versed with worldly issues than the average American and yet call themselves developing.

A hard headed way of thinking and approaching an issue is integral to India. You see it everywhere; people can’t do 360 degree thinking, cannot quickly create or respond to new scenarios, think creative solutions, accept mistakes and make amends. The result clearly is that once we take a position we end up we remain wedded to it, for good or worse, mostly worse.

Socialism was failing us by the late 60’s itself but we dragged it for two decades more. The country’s thinking was firmly in the hands of a few hard headed mono-visioned people. The millions (hundreds of) who make up India are like the rats who followed Pied Piper.

Most in India didn’t care much about what was going on which, lead to 1991, did not participate in bring about that change and then hardly blinked an eye lid before a transition and new generation passed the goodies through their digestive tracks. And it is on the strong shoulders of these indifferent people that Ministers stash of billions of dollars to Swiss Bank accounts by just keeping the dope of cricket and cinema flowing liberally. In this dreary desert has my country awoken and tries to lead G-77 on climate change.

The hard headed are generally the best at making coalitions and taking charge and in ensuring resources to feed their operations.

And in the climate change dialogue and in India’s ‘official’  – and more importantly the more vocalized – positions it clearly is not one but a whole troupe of Pied Pipers who are leading millions of rats to heaven. Millions of educated Indians (not those ‘disgusting’ beggarly brown skinned non-english speaking types) are brazenly unaware of what is climate change, those who are aware are no different in initiative from the generation which partnered in India’s downfall during the socialism years.

Millions go about completely unmoved by the need to address the more pressing and immediate issues facing the country. Poverty, the overwhelming corruption, being short-changed at every level of the government. May be that is also an element of the ‘more superior’ Indian intelligence and spiritualism, which understands that one day climate change will anyways square it all of so what is the point of engaging oneself in all these issues.

And it is from such a country that some have the gall to take a moral high ground by saying blatant lies about how India’s development will be affected by emission caps, these pied pipers ask about cash and technology transfers, while home talent is frustrated and denied opportunities to even implement good laws which already exist and are observed more in their neglect.

Some recent interesting international articles I read, which came as a break in the intellectually starved media reports in India.

The lucky country needs to act responsibly on climate

A wonderful dispassionate, objective and ethical look at their own position.

Old King Coal

Lack of global climate deal won’t crush green tech

FRA then Operation Greenhunt – Congress double standards on the tribals issue?

Yesterday I attended a meeting organised by The Committee for the Release of Binayak Sen (CRBS) as recorded right below my post. (interestingly the event doesn’t find feature in the papers today even as far more frivolous news covers the pages.)

I was already aware of the atrocities being carried out by the Indian state in the tribal regions but hearing the account first hand was sad enough.

The one question I raised during the Q&A was about the status as regards the Forest Rights Act, discussion around which was raging during 2005-06

http://forestrightsact.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&layout=item&id=3&Itemid=300038

The FRA then had polarized those in favour of the tribal rights and the environmental community, which feared the worst for the forests in terms of forests ripping away the resources.

Environmentalists also saw this as the worst form of vote bank politics by the UPA – I government.

Now 3 years down the line we see the UPA – II government declaring the tribals and their supporters as terorists and launches Operation Green Hunt. Whats going on?

Votes from the tribals and notes from the industrialists? What can be any other conclusion? As per the FRA the tribals are entitled to 4 hectares of land. Now they are being forced out of their forest homes and being forced to live in designated camps guarded by the police (concentration camps?, genocide?, state sponsored terrorism?). And if they retaliate then they are hunted down, raped, their houses and food stocks burnt.

Is Chidambaram the Gabbar equivalent?

From the first hand accounts it is very clear that the media is completely suppressing the real events taking place  in the interiors of the country. It will be upto a few right minded citizens in the city to make up their mind about how far will they let the situation deteriorate before it becomes all out war. The tribals are very determined and dont seem to be in a mood to take things lying down.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

The Committee for the Release of Binayak Sen (CRBS)

invites you to a press conference to be addressed by

two prominent personalities from Chhattisgarh

Himanshu Kumar – noted Gandhian who has been running the Vanvasi Chtena Ashram for more than 15 years in Dantewada in Chhattisgarh

Advocate Sudha Bhardwaj — leading member of the Chhattisgarh Mines Mazdoor Sangh that was set up by legendary trade unionist Shankar Guha Niyogi; executive committee member of Chhattisgarh PUCL; and Dr Binayak Sen’s lawyer

Thick in the field of action in the tribal areas of Bastar, Himanshu Kumar and advocate Sudha Bhardwaj have witnessed the effects of the “development” efforts on the adivasis of Bastar by successive governments. They have experienced first-hand the fallout of the government’s anti-Naxalite movement, the Salwa Judum.

In May, Himanshu Kumar’s Vanvasi Chetna Ashram was demolished by the Chhattisgarh government because he was trying to rehabilitate the Adivasis displaced by Salwa Judum. Kumar has tried to file FIRs against every offence committed against the adivasis, but to no avail.

With the Centre all set to launch “Operation Greenhunt” against the Naxalites in the tribal belt that runs across seven states, Himanshu Kumar and advocate Bhardwaj are best placed to enlighten those living far away from Bastar about the actual situation there.

Will “Operation Greenhunt” destroy or strengthen the Naxalites’ influence?
Who will be the “hunted” – the armed Naxalites or the unarmed tribals?
Whose purposes will “Operation Greenhunt” serve – those of the tribals who have lived there for centuries, or the companies eyeing the resources in the region?
Can peace ever be brought to this rich region?
What is the context of State violence and Naxalite violence in Chhattisgarh?

For answers to these and other questions, please do attend the press conference and talk on

Saturday, Oct 31, 3 pm -5 pm, Mumbai Press Club, CST

Those wanting to stay on to discuss the situation can join us after the press conference at

Saturday, Oct 31, 6 pm, Shramik Hall, Dadar

Its all about jobs silly!

I read the following story at the Guardian, and couldnt help feeling a bit amused

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/27/economy-recession-car-industry-bankers

Till when will this charade go on? Lets accept it that our current developmental models are just not sustainable. Forget sustainability from the environmental perspective. They are just not sustainable from a very fundamental human need point of you itself. People are being given incentive to scrap even perfectly running cars to buy new ones just so that the companies sustain themselves so that employees are not laid of so that the employees have some income which they can then spend in the market and keep some body else in their job.

What is being missed out is that the employee of the car company is already aware that this could be temporary and sooner or later the hammer will hit again and therefore is very cautious in his spending, preferring to save for a time when his job might inevitably go.

And at what costs other than the immediate market stimulus does all this consumption come at?

In our own country iron ore and bauxite mines which provide the ore for steel and aluminum which goes into making these cars is stripped from fertile forest lands. Complete forests are destroyed and tribal communities murdered and raped if they refuse to leave their forests.

And then we talk about encouraging low carbon footprints? Tribals with zero carbon footprints get punished and some stupid Londoner (or Bombay-ite) who spends half his life in a pub drinking beer and engaging in stupid gossip gets rewarded? Forests which are the mother lode of all life, harboring biodiversity which makes possible strong nutritious fruit and cereal species besides originating life giving rivers are stripped apart to be able to give sterile metal which can only give rides to people, most of which might anyways be unnecessary?

Is this the development being talked about and spoken so gloriously by those who chide environmentalists to be anti-development.

While I read this I also remembered an excellent video I saw in June about the Cuban economic crisis and what they did to tide over the same.

http://www.livevideo.com/video/mercofspeech/CD893609A0CB495D9A9CF04AC9E4AEFF/power-of-community-how-cuba-.aspx

Also in a corner of the same Guardian article I saw and article for the films below -

http://www.guardianoffers.co.uk/mall/productpage.cfm/GuardianOffers/_17284/-/Classic-French-cinema%3A-Gloire-de-mon-Pere-%26amp%3B-Chateau-de-Ma-Mere

Maybe its time we moved away from an extremely centralised form of living which seems forever incapable of standing on its own feet without some support or the other. Maybe people need to move closer to the soil, which shows an infinite capacity to sustain everybody without any sops and stimuli.

Maybe those who have lost their jobs should consider it a god send and move to become masters of their destiny without relying on their corporate slave drivers for an identity.