India's Climate Change Choices (k)

The Times of India (New Delhi) , Saturday, January 07, 2012
Correspondent : Kanti Bajpai
The greatest problem facing India is global warming. War, internal subversion and a global economic meltdown are all very serious threats, but they can be stopped or contained. Global warming, on the other hand, seems unstoppable and uncontainable. The outcome of the Durban summit on climate change suggests it is already too late to prevent the two degrees Celsius temperature increase that scientists say is the maximum tolerable.

Indians have scarcely understood the magnitude of the problem. With global warming, sea levels will rise, submerging habitations, small and big. Fertile areas will become deserts. Rivers and underground water will dry up. Rainfall patterns will change and glaciers will melt, at first causing floods, later causing rivers to die. The rising heat and lack of water will cause an agricultural catastrophe.

People will be displaced in search of safety, cooler climes, water, better soil, food, and security from others. Social amenities will deteriorate, disease will spread, frictions will bubble to the surface and our political order could collapse altogether. Since the problem of global warming will be as acute if not worse in Bangladesh and Pakistan, our crisis will be even greater than we think. Desperate people will cross the border into India in search of sanctuary.

What, then, are the choices before us?

One choice is to insist that the solution lies with the western countries. This is a drum we have beaten since 1972 but is increasingly futile. Apart from the fact that western governments do not have the courage to make tough decisions now and for the foreseeable future, there are two reasons why it is futile to beat this drum so loudly. First, the West inhabits cool, temperate zones with a good supply of water. It is therefore the least affected by global warming. Second, the West is richer and technologically more advanced and will adapt to climate change best. If push comes to shove, westerners will dig in their heels. Confrontation has its limits therefore.

A second solution is for governments and markets to encourage the rich everywhere, including India, to change their greedy ways. The prices of goods, services and energy might be made so high that consumers will be forced to live more frugally. This, of course, is the ideal solution. Unfortunately, governments do not have the will to intervene ambitiously against consumers, particularly in bad economic times - and market mechanisms seem helpless in the face of huge inequalities. The rich, who consume so massively, will remain largely unaffected by price tampering.

A third possibility is that a new form of clean energy - which is cheap, plentiful and usable for everything from industrial to household use - will save us. The other technological trick that might save us is 'geo-engineering'; that is, fiddling with the planetary biosphere to cause carbon to degrade and temperatures to moderate. Wonderful stuff, except that no such hydrocarbon substitute is anywhere in sight, and geo-engineering is so young a science that it may well be too late, if it is not too dangerous, to unleash on the problem.

Fourth, we may finally cooperate internationally to dramatically reduce planetary emissions in the wake of an environmental cataclysm. History suggests that this solution is by no means assured. Civilisations have encountered catastrophic events andfutures, failed to change quickly enough, and disappeared.

Finally, there is adaptation. This is the view that emission reductions are now too little too late, and the only recourse is to create material and social systems that will lessen the pain - hardly an ideal solution but increasingly the only credible one. The risk here is that many will face great hardship. Many more, though, will be saved. Perhaps by buying time through adaptation, we may come closer to a political and technological solution that will stop and reverse global warming. Adaptation policies also risk the 'moral hazard' problem: those who consume disproportionately may well conclude that if adaptation is the future, there is no need for them to change their habits.

Our government does not utter the word adaptation for fear that it will weaken India's bargaining position. Yet, to neglect adaptation is folly. India must hope and work for the best but prepare for the worst.

 
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