CHENNAI: When the Tata Nano was unveiled just over a year ago, IPCC chief R.K. Pachauri said the Rs.1 lakh-small car would give him nightmares. Today, with thousands queuing up to book the people’s car, the climate change campaigner is asking prospective car owners to consider how often they need to use it.
“Ratan Tata responded saying that I could sleep soundly since it’s an environment-friendly car. Fine, but does that mean that every car owner needs to use his car all the time? Shouldn’t we be exploring the option of public transport?” asked Dr. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice-President Al Gore.
Delivering the first R. Venkataraman Endowment Lecture at the Madras School of Economics on Friday, Dr. Pachauri said that the government needed to re-orient its public policy to focus on public transport options, rather than indiscriminately providing sops to small cars.
“It is not the size of the car that matters, but the emissions,” he said, adding that the government had adopted some suggestions on tailoring the tax on cars to reward those with lower emissions.
Renewable energy
He suggested that the government needed to promote renewable energy with incentives, subsidies and a large R&D budget, while slapping taxes on polluting industries, including a tax on road space.
Call to industry
Apart from what steps the government takes, however, it is up to industry to see the potential opportunities in building a climate-friendly world. While the Indian government, as representative of a developing nation may not accept emission targets or mitigation commitments at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen later this year, Indian industry “needs to look beyond Copenhagen,” he said. “They need not wait for a government commitment. They should look at the opportunities they will get in five or ten years from now, and make appropriate investments and decisions now.”
Globally, the cost of mitigation would be 3 per cent of the world’s GDP by 2030, said Dr. Pachauri, making it clear that the costs of ignoring the issue would be much greater. In India, wheat yields could fall 5 to 10 per cent for just one degree rise in temperature. A rise in sea-levels by just one metre would inundate 5,763 square km of coastal regions in the country, he said. Unfortunately, “social and environmental issues are often left without effective support when economic growth takes precedence,” he added.
