The Hindu Business Line : Nobel focus on climate

The Nobel Peace Prize for the former US Vice-President and “climate campaigner”, Mr Al Gore, and the UN Climate Panel (headed by Mr R. K. Pachauri) has once more helped to focus attention on a phenomenon which may, ultimately, lead to the end of life as we know it on our planet. True, worldwide efforts are on to control climate-change induced by human activity, and there are figures to suggest that some progress has in fact been made in this direction. But, at the same time, it is also clear that unless mankind decides to tackle the problem unitedly, and sooner rather than later, there will be no respite in the ongoing organic changes to the world’s climate, which is bound to lead to the extinction of life in the “long run”.

Climate change

Of course, it remains to be seen whether the Nobel Committee’s indirect contribution to the campaign to halt climate change will bear any fruit because events throughout human history have shown more than adequately that Man is far too preoccupied with his own immediate temporal and spatial interests than with what can be described as “global” issues, even if the latter, unattended, threaten to impact adversely the prospects of his very existence on the planet.

Take, for instance, climate change. The argument would probably run as follows: Who cares whether the Arctic ice cap has shrunk appreciably this year suggesting a self-sustaining warming of the climate which may lead to ultimate flooding of low-lying areas all over the world, displacing millions of people? More important would be the task of pumping in hundreds of billions of dollars to control (“clean up”) a foreign nation if only to make sure (an impossibility given the lessons of human history) that those who will run the nation concerned in future will be a “friendly” lot.

Or, it is much more sensible to stir up a “disturbance” along the border with a neighbour in an attempt to put that neighbour in its place in the world’s eyes than engage in cooperation with it to reduce carbon emissions for the sake of the continued existence of mankind a thousand years from now.

US to blame

As we all know, the US is responsible for nearly 25 per cent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions and still refuses to join the international community in a global effort to control such emissions on the ground that it would like countries like India and China to pitch in with their contributions, which should take into account the fact that they are liable to become the biggest polluters of the atmosphere if they continue with their present growth rates.

Washington is looking ahead, and it can perhaps be argued that sometime in the future its argument of today could become quite sensible. But the point is that the situation today is entirely different, and everyone will agree that the state of the climate at this juncture of the Earth’s history is the direct result of the atmospheric pollution that has been discharged by the industrialised countries over the past 150 years, a scenario in which neither China nor India figures.

What makes the US stand positively weak is that, being accountable for just three per cent of the world’s population, its per capita contribution to atmospheric pollution far outstrips that of these two rapidly developing economies.

The inference to be drawn from this is that the US has to accept a big responsibility for the adverse climate-change occurring today and should, therefore, be prepared to foot a proportionately large part of the expenses to be incurred in controlling carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Earlier this year, the Germans had a specific plan to fight climate change when they suggested that all leading world economies (including the “tigers”) should commit themselves to a programme which would limit the rise in worldwide temperatures to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and reduce, by 2050, global greenhouse gas emissions to 50 per cent below 1990 levels.

Predictably, the US did not back the move, referring to the argument that unless the fast-growing economies were brought into the climate-control fold (specifically in terms of resource contribution), it would consider itself to be unfairly penalised just because it was the planet’s most developed country.

Chief polluter to pay more

The point can even be made that Washington (and other “old” developed economies) should not only contribute on a pro rata basis, the base perhaps being the per capita carbon-emission levels (a point espoused ably by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh), it should set aside a proportionately higher level of resources for the climate programme because of its affluence level.

After all, for the greater good of society at large, the rich are taxed at a higher level than the poor on the assumption that they have a higher level of surplus resources.

This apart, as has been mentioned earlier, the state of the climate today is the result of pollution accummulating over the past decades when the chief contributors have been the developed economies themselves.

So it will not be unfair to suggest that the chief polluters of yesteryear (who have the ability to make higher contributions today) should pay more than those countries which are today doing nothing more than engaging in an activity which their developed counterparts engaged in earlier (at a time when there was no hue and cry over climate change).

A big boost

It would, however, be naïve to expect those who are resisting the UN’s current efforts to slow down climate change to alter their stand in the wake of the Nobel award. Indeed, if nothing else, the winning of the Peace Prize by the UN Climate Panel can be seen to be a big boost for its image.

Conversely, it can be interpreted as a signal that the world should concentrate solely on this specific effort rather than coalesce around other attempts in the same direction, which are in the works.

One is, of course, referring to the recent meeting in Washington of the world’s major contributors to atmospheric pollution, convened by President Bush, where the broad hint was dropped ever so gently that the US could take the lead in the campaign to control adverse climate change as opposed to the ongoing UN effort, the next important landmark of which is the Bali conference slated to be held in December.

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