Paris: Any Hope for Her?

A confused Species in Our Time
from http://www.rockhoundstation1.com/
EARTHWATCH09.html

The Scientific American magazine gave us a grim picture before the advent of summer 2011 (April 29, 2011). The picture itself was older, it was of summer 2008. “This bear swam continuously for 232 hours and 687 km and through waters that were 2-6 degrees C,” reports USGS research zoologist George M. Durner. In two months she had to swim hundreds of miles for food, for some place to rest. “But while the mama bear survived the ordeal, she lost 22 percent of her body fat .... And her cub was not so fortunate.”

Obama opened Arctic for Oil Drill in February 2012. Before that they had to ‘clear’ their way. The scientist who spread the news of danger in front of the polar bears got suspended from his government job for inappropriate conduct in July 2011.

The year 2012 saw the Lowest Arctic Ice sheet ever measured after the advent of satellite imagery. That was September 2012. Friends of that suspended scientist, Charles Monnett, meanwhile got respite as the ‘investigation’ for scientific misconduct could not yield any evidence at all and the government had to reinstate that scientist. [By the way, before that Great Arctic Summer Melting was shocking revealed in September 2012, Bill Mckibben's article "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math" appeared in the Rolling Stone Magazine (August 2, 2012).]

Charles Monnett’s paper first highlighted the sad plight of the Polar Bears way back in 2006. And we saw the curious TIME magazine cover in that year showing a confused Polar Bear. Why not! It was going to be the first showcase victim species of Climate Change (or the ‘extreme climate’ conditions that we are passing through now).

In came 2015. While in the end of September environmentalists were relieved seeing Shell leaving Arctic. No, Shell was not leaving yielding to the demands of environmentalists or accepting that Arctic drill will put further pressure on the endangered species Polar Bear. They were leaving just by their cold business calculations. And they are not going for ever either. By the way, the European Union also shoved off the demand of environmentalists to stop oil exploration in the Arctic way back in 2012, even after the hottest or smallest Arctic year was recorded. And while Shell was pulling its anchors, we saw Indian companies busy in fixing deals with their Russian counterpart. Rosneft bought significant stake in Essar Oil. And then ONGC bought a good percentage of Rosneft. They will explore gas at Arctic Shelf and also oil.

This year saw the fourth lowest ice-cover ever in the Arctic.

Arctic Ice Cover from http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png  at 22:30 hrs Sept 30, 2015

In front of such staunch adversaries, can an endangered species hope something?

PS: October 9, 2015: Now, we are served with a chiller news. "NOAA: Coral bleaching has gone global for the third time ever". Interested readers please go through the news item  "NOAA declares third ever global coral bleaching event, Bleaching intensifies in Hawaii, high ocean temperatures threaten Caribbean corals, October 8, 2015" at http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2015/100815-noaa-declares-third-ever-global-coral-bleaching-event.html

Let us Not Ignore Consequences on Nature while talking Economics

An unthinkable absent-mindedness in Equity Master

On May 7, 2015, the Equity Master introduces us, readers, with Charles Thomas Munger, the celebrated “partner” of Warren Buffet and Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Corporation, in their article "Did Charlie Munger Just Turn India's Economics Upside Down?". Mr Munger is considered to be one of the greatest philanthropists in the USA. In 2014 he donated over $65 million dollars in stocks to UCSB (University of California, Santa Barbara campus) for arranging regular meeting of Physicists, their stay and related expenditures. He considers that if physicists get chances to interact among them science can develop better, new ideas can generate, as happened in some cases 100 years back in West Europe.

But what makes Mr Munger more renowned is something different. Along with Buffet, Mr Munger, popularly known as Charlie, are among the topmost investment wizards of the world with some uncanny senses. Charlie shared some of his ‘secrets’ at the DJCO meeting last March – for example, as Alex Rubalcava informed us by a tweet: "I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span." -- Munger $DJCO 10:53 PM - 25 Mar 2015.

But what is that long attention span? Is that what we call ‘taking the long view’ in common parlance? Strangely the answer is ‘No’, at maximum we can call it a different way of decision making. For example Charlie’s ‘long attention span’ taught him that 'Energy Independence' is one of the dumbest ideas of our times! This bright idea was publicised much about two years ago. (See for example Business Insider, 24 July, 2013.) He says: It is always better to import foreign oil and preserve your country’s own resources.

When Charlie was saying this, that is, in 2013, crude price was sliding from $115 mark to about $95, both OPEC price and US domestic prices like West Texas Immediate. But strangely Equity master is telling this in May 2015 when crude price is just climbing over $60 starting from a more benign $40! What is the reason of recalling this now! Does Equity Master want to advise that even if oil prices soar we should continue import increasingly and restrain domestic production?

India is always dependent on foreign oil, whatever the price is, as the following graphs will prove: (1) Crude oil Import by India (in $ billion) and 

(2) India's Domestic Production and Import of Crude Petroleum in Thousand Barrels/Day or '000 BPD)  

Source: http://marketrealist.com/2014/12/amount-crude-oil-india-produce/

These are obvious that

ü India’s oil use or demand and import are increasing rapidly; in FY 15 already the import is alarmingly high and

ü India’s domestic production of petroleum has not been increasing much since 2010.

So? What point does the Equity Master want to hit?

But nonetheless, what is rather alarming, in the whole discussion the point hovered solely on import vis-à-vis domestic-production of oil substituting import – and not at all on increasing use of petroleum, GHG emission and etc resulting hazards vis-à-vis substituting petroleum or fossil fuels, switching over to renewable and also to low-energy consuming economy reining consumption.

It is indeed strange. After more than 20 years of Rio summit, after more than 35 years of Tbilisi conference on environmental education and awareness can we discuss petroleum import vs. domestic production without mentioning impacts of our overuse of fossil fuels on nature, global warming, the infamous Delhi smog and so on and intention of substituting fossil fuels at all – that too in an article that mentions, in the beginning, about blessings of ‘mother nature’! 

Then, can it be said that the reason of not discussing these salient points is that we cannot expect all articles should be complete and comprehensive? It is up to you, the readers, to decide. But we may share our apprehension. Mr Munger and Mr Buffet are rather climate-deniers. Both in their philosophy and also in their praxis they do not bother about climate change or global warming and related ecological problems. We can just look into two evidences from very recent past, FY 2014-15:

• “I don’t think that when making an investment decision on Berkshire Hathaway, or all companies, that climate change should be a factor in the decision-making process,” Buffett said. [http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2014/05/05/buffett-sounds-off-on-being-put-in-his-place-climate-change-and-more/]
• US and Chinese companies dominate list of most-polluting coal plants | Warren Buffet-owned Berkshire Hathaway on list of top 25 companies with least efficient and oldest ‘sub-critical’ coal power plants | The Guardian [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/13/us-and-chinese-companies-dominate-list-of-most-polluting-coal-plants]

It would indeed be fateful if one of the chief business magazines and business advisors, the Equity Master, with its 1.4 million plus members and millions of readers tilts towards such ungreen business ethics and practices as upheld by Berkshire Hathaway. Let us hope our apprehension is incorrect.  

(A version of this was published in Business Economics, June 1, 2015)    

You cannot outwit nature, cannot escape climate change with oratory or carbon–nationalism

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