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.
