Environmental fundamentalism
If the west does not want India to use coal, it must compensate India for using other clean fuel-fired electricity. Is the west willing to pay such costs to India and other developing economies like China, asks M K Venu.
ACLIMATE of intolerance, indeed a new environmental fundamentalism, is developing among the western elite over the climate change debate as governments around the world prepare for a new consensus on emission reductions at Copenhagen, end-2009. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has said those who oppose the new climate change Bill in the United States are committing treason against the planet. Other less reputed academics have said irresponsible environment policies must be treated as crime against humanity. Some are saying there is too much democracy which is preventing a firm decision on emission cuts to be undertaken by all countries.
In principle one agrees that all nations must be sensitive to global warming and its disastrous impact on the world at large. However, one is not sure whether it is good to become fundamentalist about issues relating to climate change.
For instance, a call has been given by Al Gore that there should be an immediate moratorium on coal-fired power plants. Look at how this will impact India. More than half of the 8,00,000 mega watts of power India plans to produce by 2030 are to come from coal-fired plants. Simply because India has abundant coal resources.
What most western analysts dont realise is nearly 550 million Indians do not have formal access to any source of electricity. To draw a comparison, it is a bit like the entire US population and half of the European Union living without any regular access to electricity. Can you estimate the enormity of this problem? This is what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told former US President George Bush at the G-8 summit in Japan last year when the US tried to force India to commit carbon emission cuts. India merely said it would keep its per capita emissions at below the developed world average.
Indias per capita annual emission (PCE) is about 1.1 tonne. The United States per capita carbon emission is over 18 tonnes and the world PCE average is around five tonnes. So India still has scope to increase its per capita emissions by about four times and yet remain below the current world average.
However, the western governments are in no mood to allow India go up to the world average level of emissions, and they want caps on emissions put in a manner that it will become difficult for India to meet the basic energy needs of the people using local resources.
For instance, Indias per capita annual electricity consumption is only 500 units compared to 8,000-10,000 units per capita consumed by the western societies. Look at the yawning gap. It is morally shocking. Also, nearly 800 million Indians must be consuming less than 100 units per capita every year.
This is simply because in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, with populations of over 300 million, there is no electricity on average for 8 to 10 hours a day, apart from a large number of villages all over which are not connected to the grid at all.
So it is quite reasonable to expect that Indias per capita electricity consumption will go up from the present 500 units to at least 3,000 units in the next 10 years. But India will still consume less than half of the present per capita electricity consumed by the west. This difference of magnitude is what the west needs to appreciate.
NOW much of the incremental electricity has to be coal-fired because India has over 250 billion tonnes of coal reserves. If the west does not want India to use coal, it must compensate India for using other clean fuel-fired electricity. If compensation is determined on this basis, the west may have to pay India over $130 billion every year as additional cost of substituting coal with other clean fuels. Is the west willing to pay such costs to India and other developing economies like China? If this aspect of the climate change debate is ignored, then the Copenhagen consensus will be seen by the developing world as an instrument of power being wielded by the west to control trade, investment and technology flows in the emerging globalisation sweepstakes.
The G-8 is currently talking about two broad parameters which are likely to become the basis of undertaking emission cuts by all countries. One, overall emissions must be reduced by 50% from current levels by the year 2050. Two, the world must limit the global warming up to 2 degrees from pre-industrial levels. However, according to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), only an 85% reduction in emissions (from 2,000 levels) can possibly prevent a global warming of 2 degree and more.
According to a rough calculation by a member of the prime ministers advisory panel on climate change, an 85% reduction in the overall global emissions would mean that the world per capita emissions should fall from about five tonnes at present to 0.75 tonnes in 2050. This has major implications for the developed economies. The per capita average emission for developed economies is about 10 tonnes at present. So if the developed world is to move from a per capita emission of 10 tonnes at present to 0.75 tonnes in 2050, it would be tantamount to a reduction of about 93% in per capita emission. Western societies are unlikely to undertake such a dramatic cut in per capita emissions. Even an overall 50% reduction in global emissions by 2050 will require each person in the developed world to cut his/her carbon footprint by over 70% over the next four decades. This will be possible only if the developed world actually embarks on a radically new consumption path.
Cutting per capita carbon emissions by 80-90% will not happen through such mechanisms as carbon trading and technology transfers. In short, climate change cannot be seen as another instrument for enhancing global trade in new, low carbon technologies, desirable as they may be, per se. For a real solution, we may have to go back to Gandhis position that the world has enough to satisfy everybodys need, but not enough for anyones greed. At a moral level, which is also ecologically compatible, each individual will have to examine his/her carbon footprint and each country its development model for any meaningful consensus to evolve on the climate change debate. This is too critical to be left merely to global diplomacy!