Dear Jairam Ramesh: Paris! Climate! Carbon! – Yaawn!
- In Society
- 12:13 PM, Dec 17, 2015
- Lakshmi Visvanathan
The UN only in the way it can, clumsily by committee, has been facilitating a series of snore-worthy meetings since 1992 to “do” climate change. The latest UN organized Climate Snoozefest – COP21 Pareee – will pass like the ones before, all the way back to the Rio 1992 conference. The latest conference is the 21st in an annual series going all the way back to COP1 1995 Berlin! There’s been even one in India – I found much to my amusement – COP8 2002 New Delhi (did you know that?) where participants “called for efforts by developed countries to transfer technology and minimize the impact of climate change on developing countries”
National economies and the global economy are way too complicated for any organization to modulate. There’s too much of trade and exchange in commodities, goods and services, to even draft local regulation, leave alone, national and international. But these COP dronefests feature plenty of policy makers from the Hi Emission countries, who in turn can use compromised local political malcontents to show something is being done. And when lofty leaders begin to see an opportunity for a legacy from these ridiculous rituals, a hostile foreign press can play the agony aunt and concerned troll. It does no credit to a Jairam Ramesh to preen himself for the NYT and spout his inanities.
Back in the 80s, it was all about CFCs and the ever growing ozone hole. Our “eco enviro experts” abandoned all reason and screamed hoarse “Freon! Freon!” The late Dr. Rashmi Mayur, the only reasonable environmentalist we’ve ever had, debunked the hype, to little avail. It was absurd then in an India where barely 50% enjoyed any electricity, leave alone fridges and ACs! Dr. Mayur's advocacy of well-planned and dense urban clusters, echoing the progressive Ambedkarite Urban Vision found little purchase in the ideosphere.
But the CFC Ozone frenzy, soaring around the time of the Bhopal disaster, created a new class of Indian eco-enviro-vultures. EEVs or EEKs? Living off climate alarm, our EEVs are a kind of the many parasitical clubs that have held cheapened Indian policymaking for decades. Unlike the other parasites – the Lutyens Elite, Durbar Types, Adarsh Libs, Award Wapsis and assorted clubs – the EEV has escaped critical scrutiny, as some of them sport – some – at least a cloak of science. But then science isn't merely a few laws. Parroting them in bits and pieces only makes the loudmouths look stupid. It makes as much sense as repeating Boyle’s Law while ignoring the larger theory of thermodynamics.
What we now know beyond doubt is we’ve been pumping a lot of CO2 over the last 200 years, way more than we have in entire preceding human history. The climate is getting warmer. And though there’s some question how much human factors are responsible, that’s a sideshow. The real question, going ahead, is economics. And why? Simply because we live longer, much longer.
Life expectancy has zoomed for all economic classes from around 30 years, at birth, for millions of years, to the present 70-80 since 1950. Today we live longer, have more time on our hands. Human groups, whether as states or societies (or even EEKs Lutyens Clubs) must find a way to keep their people, happy and hopeful. Early health interventions – pre-natal, infancy and childhood – aren’t enough. The Gandhian ideal of a low impact lifestyle, may help with these early interventions, but can’t help beyond that. India needs economic growth, an expanding infrastructure, and rising consumption for at least another 30 years.
We know this much about the equation of economic activity and the climate. There are wealthy countries that are high aggregate, and per capita emitters – the Hi-Hi. And then there’s China – high in the aggregate and not so high per capita – the Hi-Med. Then there is India – rising aggregate and low per capita – the Hi-Lo. The Hi-Hi are way too powerful geopolitically and will continue to drive policy and the pace of change. The Hi-Med is already at the table, calling to order, while the Hi-Lo wants to make the best of its Hi’s to raise its Lo’s. Then there are Lo-Hi’s (Montserrat, UAE) and then the Lo-Lo’s. No one cares about them. Much is already known on the numbers to bear repeating here. Even the scientifically (and factually) challenged) NYT all but admits that India’s per capita emissions and energy availability are so low that is stretching it to demand India hit the brakes. But what few know is how low India’s numbers are. Over 40 years ago China’s per capita emissions were already over 2.5X India’s and are now 4.5X. While per capita emissions in the US and EU have declined since 1970, China’s has soared and almost matches the EU’s! More interestingly so do China’s and Hong Kong’s!
China may be in a position to continue transforming its manufacturing mix towards lower volumes and higher value, increasing internal consumption, thus holding on as a Hi-Med emitter, and even announcing grandiose renewable energy targets. India isn’t there, not by a long shot. No conditions of efficient green energy usage can raise our per capita energy consumption by 2-3X to match China. The best heroic assumption we can make is reducing our energy gap with China and the US from the current 4-5X to about 2-3X, and to hope we do not increase our per capita emission beyond 1/2X of China’s.
Remember, never forget - life spans will continue to increase and people will continue to seek hope and happiness.
It is irresponsible of our EEVs and EEKs who live in urban comfort to wish dark misery upon their fellow citizens. It’s interesting to read the late Praful Bidwai, pioneering EEK, dubbed “Sardar Bidwai” for his fondness for the good life, on NYT’s latest native informant Jairam Ramesh. Praful never took kindly to the peacock preens of the Congress – Shashi Tharoor and Jairam Ramesh. In 2011 following the Copenhagen and preceding the Durban COP circus, Praful in Frontline, commenting on Ramesh’s reshuffle exit, hinted slyly that the fop was flexible, almost on demand, willing to bend any ruling, make any exception. But then even that wasn’t enough for Manmohan Singh, who replaced Jairam with Jayanthi Natarajan, leading to further retardation of economic activity.
Our EEKs lack the honesty of their Vishwaguru Noam Chomsky who in 2006 was reported to have set up a trust fund, transferred his copyrights to it, and was found to be charging a fee for his speeches! When political reporter Peter Schweizer confronted Chomsky on the blatant divergence from his capitalophobia, Chomsky is said to have retorted “Should I live in a cabin in Montana?”
Comments