Opinion: Need vs. Greed- The Indian climate dilemma

Though developing countries claim their ‘right to pollute’ for the sake of development, it is also important to understand that infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet. New age development needs to be based on sustainable and efficient planning.

Today one of the major issues controlling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions causing climate change through global warming  is the reluctance of developing countries – in particular India and China –to ratify negotiations and treaties seeking to curb dangerous emissions. In 1992 President Bush (senior) signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to set up an international process to stabilize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but by 1997 the policy had changed under the Clinton administration when America refused to sign the UNFCCC. America has been the world’s greatest cumulative GHG polluter with two centuries of growing emissions and will remain so until 2050, yet it refuses to commit to emission cuts unless the developing countries – particularly China and India – provide a similar commitment. All sorts of spurious scientific statistics are presented to generate skepticism on the current urgency - some scientists held that it was safe to pollute the atmosphere up to 550ppm (parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide) when today it is scientifically established that the global temperature increase at that level of CO2 will be past 5C!

China and India, being newly industrialized countries are more recent polluters, and so claim their ‘right to pollute’ to develop at par with developed countries. Given the size of their populations, this stance is clearly dangerous and detrimental to the global cause. We are reminded of Gandhi’s words, “There is enough for every man’s need, but not for every man’s greed”. If the temperature rises by 5 degrees  the ice-melt in the north and south poles will raise the sea to an estimated 80 feet! China and India need to realize they do not have the authority to destroy the human future in their race to develop industrially and economically in an industrialized world. They still have moral obligations to the human race and the planet we share. Unchecked greenhouse gas emissions from China have now exceeded America’s CO2 emissions of 7017 million tonnes (Source: United Nations Statistics Division). Future generations are in peril and depend upon how we act today.

India is continuing to authorize new coal mines, and recently the government announced that over thirty new strip mines in the upper Damodar valley in North Karanpura in Jharkhand will go ahead despite the INTACH campaign to stop these coal mines ( www.karanpuracampaign.com). “There is no is no escaping the fact that coal plays an important role in supporting India’s energy plans and also that energy is a critical input for our economic growth.”(Letter from C.Balakrishnan, Secretary, Govt. of India Ministry of Coal, dated 23rd September, 2009, to S.K.Misra, Chairman, INTACH). There was no reference to global warming being caused by coal emissions which had been stated explicitly in INTACH’s petition to the Minister for Coal.

Legislators and administrators absolve themselves of all moral liabilities for their actions and as if by remote control the planet’s resources are being administrated. Nobody is keen to hear the arguments of serious environmentalists warning that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are making the atmosphere go past a tipping point when the carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere will suddenly bring about a 2-5C spike. India uses the old argument of having a right to pollute the atmosphere because developed countries have done so for nearly three centuries from the start of the industrial revolution in England from the beginning of the 18th century. Today we have to realize that any further pollution of the atmosphere will one day be judged as a crime against humanity even as there have been war crimes against humanity.

Modern Indians like myself who were the first generation of Independent India  were brought up on the Nehruvian myth of western industrial-type development for modern India, which believed that greater the industrial development the better regardless of the costs of displacement of rural societies or damage to natural heritage. No doubt this was the great industrial British-American myth of progress through industrialization which destroyed early industrial England. It also largely destroyed pre Columbian North American heritage. It brought railroads and war and violation of indigenous rights.. The striking thing is that the policy of the government even today is chasing western-style industrial development with dirty-coal technology. There has been no sophistication of idealism, no real improvement to the nation. The natural resources have been exploited, the population has grown three times, and all we have gained is the title of third economic power in Asia.

However, more people live below the poverty line, sixty millions of the poorest of the poor displaced by development projects like big dams which have silted up, huge mines that are now empty, no real achievement except obscene growth in the cities and unbelievable poverty in the countryside. The image of the working-class in England in the 18th century is before our eyes in mining and industrial areas, and the huge slums of our biggest cities where ten percent earn less than six hundred rupees a month. We have failed to design low-energy cities or reduce energy consumption. Development is judged by the amount of money or power used up. Growth and development do not define themselves through actual progress, only massive waste of money and resources. India rejects clean development and is a member of the Asia-Pacific partnership on Clean Development and Climate, whose members include USA, Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and India, which explicitly rejects all mandatory efforts to reduce emissions.

Today India is still one of the poorest nations in the world. It has tried to place itself in the foreground on the basis of its exploitation of resources and dirty-coal emissions. These are not markers of achievement but waste. The second most populated nation on earth both in numbers and density is continuing on its perilous course of dirty-coal industrial development, it is a nation of famine and parched fields, floods and failed monsoons, awaiting enormous sea-rise damage to its coastal populations and cities due to sea-rise but it still has not become alert to the national security threat posed by global warming.

How long it will continue with its blinkered vision development priding itself on larger and larger dirty-coal projects nobody can tell. If the effects of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have a local environmental effect then it is doomed even as its Himalayan rivers dry up due to glacial ice-melt, agriculture fails due to change in monsoon, and it will face a bleak future like Bangladesh which faces massive flooding. Growth itself can never be an indicator of progress even as obesity can never be an indicator of good health. It is about time India’s leaders wake up to the call of campaigns of 350.org which the youth endorse and understand, because it is their future we are talking about. Urban development is facing the catastrophe of falling water levels, increasing heat, increasing need for energy for cooling, failing food supply, and greater need for energy sources. What is needed is conservation in design and planning, cool environments and human development of urban and industrial areas, better planning and energy efficient architecture. Renewables must top the list where energy is concerned. Rural India, meanwhile, awaits the threat of another failed monsoon season, drying fields or salination due to floods. We have to be careful and listen to sound advice.

Bulu Imam is the Director of the Sanskriti Research Center in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. He coordinates the Karanpura Campaign, a 23 year old campaign he founded to prevent 31 new proposed and 3 operative opencast coal mines which is entering into its final stages now and still operates under his guidance. He is also serving as the as convener of India National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).

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Hi Pandian
Freefotouk
Joseph W Carrillo
350.org