The climate change challenge
THOSE who expected the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialised countries and the 17-nation Major Economies Forum (MEF) meetings in Italy to take a big climate-related initiative will be disappointed. This was their last summit before the major climate conference in Copenhagen.
The Northern G-8 countries only pledged to limit the global temperature rise to 20C and reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80% by 2050 -- without stating the base-year. There were no targets for 2020, which are far more important. It's a serious matter. Many industrialised countries won't meet even the modest Kyoto Protocol target of 5% GHG cuts by 2008-12 over 1990. If 2005/2006 is smuggled in as the base, they'll get a licence to emit 15% more.
The North's GHG-reduction plans largely rely more on offsets -- trading carbon credits with the South -- than cutting their own emissions. The United States' new mandates a paltry 17% cut by 2020 (over 2005) and 83% by 2050 -- an unacceptably distant date. This too relies on flawed cap-and-trade systems which gift away 85% of quotas to polluting corporations.
The world needs increasingly deeper GHG cuts -- between now and two to four decades. The globe is racing towards a tipping point beyond which no corrective action will work.
Global climate change leadership isn't coming from the North, thanks to its preoccupation with the grave economic downturn. Nor is it coming from the South. Southern governments are rightly suspicious of the North's seriousness about sacrificing its disproportionate carbon-space. But they're not on a low-carbon path.
China has overtaken the US as the world's largest emitter, and is adding steadily to GHGs by burning coal and building furiously. India is now the world's fourth emitter. India's emissions are rising at twice the global average rate.
Southern governments rightly emphasise the right to development and argue that the North is responsible for the bulk of GHG accumulations and must cut these urgently. It must also help the South financially and technologically to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
But the South is wrong to insist it'll accept no future obligations. By 2020, it'll contribute one-half of all global emissions and by 2030, two-thirds. This does entail an obligation.
India has taken a particularly inflexible stand: it'll accept no GHG obligations, barring that its per capita emissions won't exceed the North's. To fight poverty and provide electricity to its power-deprived 600 million people, India says it must have high GDP growth. If this means large and growing emissions, so be it!
Indian policymakers are paranoid about making even non-binding commitments -- witness the artificial furore over the MEF statement promising an under-2 0C temperature rise. India's position is flawed. Per capita measure are highly misleading in a divided, unequal society like India's with higher-than-Northern income differentials. India's emissions aren't growing because of its poor, but because the rich are consuming voraciously, at rates 5 to 10 times higher than the poor.
The elite hides behind the poor so it can continue its unbridled consumption of air-conditioners, cars and other "luxury" items, as opposed to the "survival" emissions of the poor.
For another, the poverty reduction-high growth link is tenuous. India achieved its highest poverty reductions prior to the 1990s, when GDP growth was under 5%. The past decade saw 7% plus growth, but poverty reduction slowed down: trickle-down doesn't work. For a third, major improvements in the masses' living standards can be achieved without big emission increases.
Today, three-fourths of Indian households use firewood for cooking. Women and children typically spend two hours a day in collecting it -- a terrible drudgery. They burn it in primitive stoves in poorly ventilated kitchens.
The stoves' efficiency is usually under 2%. Their soot and smoke are a health hazard -- besides being black carbon, a potent contributor to the melting of Himalayan glaciers.
If efficient cookstoves were developed, or liquefied petroleum gas replaces firewood and is burned with 50% plus efficiency, there would be a huge reduction in emissions and a substantial improvement in the living standards of the poor. Similarly, solar electricity has already become cost-effective for lighting in villages unconnected to the grid, where people use extremely inefficient kerosene lamps.
Use of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) or light-emitting diodes energised by solar cells would hugely reduce emissions, while extending the working day with a clean lighting source.
India can set a global low-carbon model. Instead, it has adopted a negative approach to climate talks. Indian negotiators behave as if their failure would be preferable to their success, under which India would have GHG-reduction obligations, albeit far lower than the North's. This can only encourage a lose-lose outcome and a more cruel globe in which the poor suffer the most.
However, there are alternatives which emphasise intra-nation equity besides equity between nations. A Greenhouse Development Rights Framework has been proposed, which situates the right to development in a climate-constrained world.
This establishes an income/emission threshold ($20 a day in purchasing-power parity). People below it -- and that's all the poor and much of the lower-middle class -- have no emissions-reduction obligation. Those above the threshold must undertake cuts based on their responsibility (for climate change) and capability (for mitigation and adaptation), and help the South too.
The US has a 33% global share of this responsibility-capability, the European Union 25.7% and China 5.5%. India's share is just 0.5%. Each country can contribute to a global climate fund, or accept GHG obligations, based on its share.
Another alternative identifies 700 million high-emitting individuals, who must be forced to cut emissions by 30 billion tonnes by 2030 across nations. Other proposals focus on the corporations responsible for a large proportion of high-carbon goods. They can be taxed or compelled to cut emissions by a democratic global authority.
We need such innovative ideas so the climate talks get a strong equity dimension. Or else, they will fail. So will the globe.
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