Playing tough with ‘west’ at summits is one thing,
but preparing hard for saving people from impending disasters is another. We
cannot and should not expect the armed forces always to bear the burn of
natural disasters and save persons while we continue ad-hoc-ism. Moreover, disasters nowadays are not only
some week-long or month-long episodes of sudden natural calamities and after
effects. We are sinking ourselves in a slow poisoning environment. Let us see.
No
doubt that what the government of India has been saying for years – the developed
countries became developed by certain path that also led to environmental
degradation. When they saw things going out of control they jumped on to make
some hasty deal, as they tried in Kyoto and afterwards: reduce emission to 1990
level and then further down, a thing which they could not yet achieve. Anyway, from
applying carrying–capacity concept only for humans, they landed, reluctantly,
in a situation to admit that there is carrying capacity of consumptions too!
For the developed west the emission target is not unreachable – they now have
technologies and fund that permit alternate energy harvest without as much emission as
may happen in case of fossil-fuel use. These are precisely things that the
developing countries lack. So, for the ‘developing’ countries, the Kyoto order
is equivalent to “go back to 1990” – the ‘End of History’ – a situation when
China, India, Brazil were nowhere near ‘topmost’ in any list other than ‘list
of countries by population’; and powers were all concentrated in a unipolar
‘western’ command. That is unthinkable by the would-be powers, naturally,
except Russia, which was already a superpower, at least militarily. Things in
question were economics and politics, not environmental sciences or public
health.
In the consequent drama of reducing ‘dirty’
carbon, twofold ‘dirty’ scenes emerged – a trade in carbon or buying and
selling of ‘right to pollute’ and a vociferous carbon-nationalism or ‘we too
have right to grow’ (aka right to pollute). So, at these summits what happen
are diplomatic bargains. All these go naturally under the cover of saving
nature, and also properties and people (these being parts of nature). So, when
we read in The Hindu: “If the developed world walks the talk, then we can
certainly achieve the targets that we have set ourselves collectively,” Mr.
Javadekar – we can only say that government of India is continuing the same climate
policy, nothing more. Or when we see Indian PM ‘bunking’ the summit we do not
infer that Government of India is not sincere about climate change.
But what is unpleasant: our leaders are behaving in such a way so as to prove themselves climate-deniers. On the Teachers Day the PM spoke to millions of future citizens and said: climate has not changed, we have. It is interesting to see that our PIL-loving gentry did not jump at this opportunity to file some serious litigation against government for confusing or misleading young minds. Mr Javadekar praised India’s and Gujarat’s environmental performance at the summit when actually we should be ashamed of our lacklustre and disgraceful performance! Indian government is pursuing their 100 smart cities goal by making treaty for 1 smart city (Banaras) in Japan and 3 in USA (Allahabad, Ajmer and Visakhapatnam). Possibly, at this pace, they will complete their target within 30-40 such visits; while 100 or more existing cities will be dying pitifully.
Why should we compete with China or for the matter
with the USA to make places unliveable for a large section of populace? In this
2014, 40% of surface water-bodies in the USA are ‘unswimmable and unfishable’
as the EPA confesses; at least 33% of US people still live in areas that are
Non Attainment Areas with air quality below standard. Mr Modi and Mr Javadekar
surely in their school days did read about Hoang Ho – the River of Sorrow of
China, famous for flood. Now China could manage to dry it, almost! Yangtze is
also dying with pollution.
How is China managing its cities? They are among the most polluted in the world. India may cheer because we are not far behind. Beijing Smog has ‘defeated’ Los Angeles smog. Perhaps Delhi will be able to beat Beijing in near future! One of the 6 most common air-pollutants is called PM10, particles that can directly enter human lungs. We can see a graphical picture of presence of this pollutant in big cities of the world:
PM may teach our kids that there is no climate
change. But any ‘uneducated’ Maharashtra fisherman or Punjab farmer or monk who
stays high up in the Himalayas will say how the climate has changed to the
worse during last 30-40 years. Many of our cities including Mumbai and Kolkata
are in threshold of climate-change related extreme-weather calamities and rise
of sea level. Mumbai, New York, Shanghai, Kolkata feature in all lists showing
top 7 or 10 cities of the world that may get inundated due to climate change.
Maplecroft, a well known UK based risk analyst and advisor has issued their
2014 vulnerability index for climate change related events and a caption there
says: “Most at risk cities Dhaka, Mumbai, Manila, Kolkata, Bangkok – lowest risk in London, Paris”. They have presented a world map of vulnerability too where Gujarat and India as a whole do not look
promising at all.
Anybody concerned with news as regards climate
change knew about warning relating to Kolkata and Mumbai since almost a decade.
But when New York is already on the way of executing some plan to save that
city we are busy with media-covered gatherings, ‘events’, token gestures and at
maximum some adhoc short term measures, while hard labour of scientists
gathered dusts.
Leaders love claps. But when thunderclaps come, applauses get eclipsed. Ecologists can be jeered as ‘doomsayers’; well, but you cannot shrug off climate change warnings given by famous business houses and their risk analysts, not only Maplecroft, but also Allianz, Lloyds, Deutsche Bank or BNP-Paribas; they mean business. Neither can you wish away climate change by demagogy.
published in Business Economics, October 1-15, 2014
the author is a chemical engineer and
environmentalist
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