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India’s role
Aditya Ghosh, Guardian
Aditya Ghosh argues that India must address its failure to tackle climate change before it finds itself top of the C02 emission’s table
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India’s position on climate change must come under scrutiny now. Despite the government’s propaganda about a low per capita emission, the country could soon find itself top of CO2 emission chart.
National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), India’s largest public sector power company, is the third highest polluter in its category in the world. Electricity production in India is already extremely carbon intensive, emitting more then twice as much CO2 per kilowatt-hour than in the EU.
Overall, India is the sixth largest polluter and perhaps the only country, which has not drawn a blueprint to tackle climate change, neither ensured green technology in its industries.
The country, with 800 million poor people, will also be hit the hardest with climate change which has already started affecting various regions and there seems to be no plan how these people, living in the vulnerable areas, can be saved.
It is still 10 years behind Europe on emission norms of automobiles.
(6 December 2007)
Poor Countries Must Also Curtail Carbon Emissions
Haider Rizvi, One World via Common Dreams
Rising carbon emissions from developing countries would threaten the world with severe climate change within a single generation, even if rich countries were to stop their own greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, according to new study by an independent think tank.1206 07
The study’s findings challenge the notion that the rich countries mainly responsible for carbon emissions can tackle the problem of global warming by themselves, and that as a result, poor countries can develop along a carbon-intensive path until they are much richer.
The new research by the Washington, DC-based Center for Global Development (CGD) shows that fossil-fueled growth in emerging economies could lead to a climate crisis long before incomes reach rich-country levels.
(6 December 2007)
Down Under Revolution (audio)
Mike Tidwell, Earthbeat (WPFD)
Sweeping political changes in Australia resulted in a new leader – a new country signing up to Kyoto – and a brave new world where climate change is a major political issue.
Joining host Mike Tidwell to discuss the groundbreaking Aussie election is for the entire hour is Australia journalist Wilson da Silva. He’s the editor-in-chief of the Australian magazines Cosmos and G: The Green Lifestyle Magazine.
They’re joined throughout the hour by Cathy Zoi, the CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection; Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union for Concerned Scientists; and Joe Romm of the website Climate Progress.
Music for this edition of Earthbeat is ‘Beds are Burning’ and ‘Power and the Passion’ by Midnight Oil. The lead singer, Peter Garrett, is now Australia’s environment minister.
Download this edition of Earthbeat.
(4 December 2007)
Carbon-Taxing the Rich
Joseph Stiglitz, The Guardian/UK
The Bali summit: Countries generating emissions must pay the cost, and the fairest and simplest way of forcing them to do so is through tax
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This month’s international meeting in Bali will set a framework that will attempt to prevent the impending disaster of global warming/climate change. There is now little doubt that greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, are leading to significant changes in climate. Nor is there doubt that these changes will impose huge costs. The question is no longer whether we can afford to do something, but rather how to control emissions in an equitable and effective way.The Kyoto protocol was a major achievement, yet it left out 75% of the sources of emissions: the US, the largest polluter, refused to sign. (With Australia’s new government now having signed the protocol, America is now the sole holdout among the advanced industrial countries.) No requirements were put on developing countries, yet within the not-too-distant future, they will contribute half or more of emissions. And nothing was done about deforestation, which is contributing almost as much to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations as the US.
The US and China are in a race to be the world’s worst polluter; America has long won the contest, but in the next few years, China will claim that dubious honor. But Indonesia is number three, owing to its rapid deforestation.
One concrete action that should be taken at Bali is support for the initiative of the Rainforest Coalition, a group of developing countries that want help to maintain their forests. These countries are providing environmental services for which they have not been compensated. They need the resources, and the incentives, to maintain their forests. The global benefits of supporting them far outweigh the costs.
(7 December 2007)
Also posted at Common Dreams.
We would be fools to banish global business from the great climate battle
Jonathan Freedland, Guardian
Capitalism alone won’t save the planet, but it has a critical, innovative role to play. The alternative is to rely on a revolution
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Think about climate change long enough and you soon realise that it’s more than our lightbulbs that we’re going to have to change. Colleagues have already argued on these pages this week, as delegates gather in Bali to hammer out a global accord to avert this catastrophe, that a much more fundamental overhaul will be required, a war on carbon as fierce as the 1940s war on fascism. Madeleine Bunting suggested a return to wartime rationing, in order to curb a hyper-consumerism that is palpably unsustainable.
One could go further, arguing that it is not just excessive consumerism but capitalism’s very nature that makes it incompatible with the survival of our planet. For capitalism requires constant economic growth, yet the Earth’s resources are finite. Capitalist logic says we must buy, sell and consume more and more each year. Nature’s logic says we can’t.
Two possible political consequences flow from this, pointing in opposite directions. One scenario would see a reopening of an ideological debate that has remained all but dormant, at least in the west, for nearly two decades. Since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the prevailing assumption has been that capitalism faces no serious rival; no viable alternative system is on offer. Even self-described progressives have been wary of challenging the core tenets of free market economics for fear of looking like outdated leftovers from the socialist past. But now, armed with a plea not only to combat grotesque inequality but to save the human race’s only home, progressives could start making the fundamental case against capitalism anew.
The other scenario is that capitalism could fight back, containing not, as the Marxists predicted, the seeds of its own destruction, but perhaps the seeds of its own – and therefore the Earth’s – salvation.
That’s certainly the impression the capitalists themselves are keen to project.
(5 December 2007)
Open Europe’s O’Brien calls E.U.’s CO2 program ‘failure,’ suggests different steps for U.S. (video and transcript)
Monica Trauzzi, OnPoint (E&E TV)
Three years ago, the European Union implemented an emissions trading scheme that ties in with Kyoto’s credit system. Has the scheme provided any emissions reductions for the region? What lessons can the United States learn from the European Union as it tries to create its own domestic climate policy? During today’s OnPoint, Neil O’Brien, director of Open Europe, a London-based think tank, explains why he believes the European Union’s emissions program has been a total failure. He cautions that the Lieberman-Warner bill could provide similar results and recommends the United States take a different approach to reducing emissions. O’Brien, author of the report, “Europe’s Dirty Secret: Why the E.U. Emissions Trading Scheme Isn’t Working” also explains why he believes a cap-and-trade program could interfere with technological innovations.
(5 December 2007)
RFF’s Billy Pizer discusses new report assessing U.S. climate policy options (video)
Monica Trauzzi, OnPoint (E&E TV)
In May, 2006, Resources for the Future organized the U.S. Climate Policy Forum in which business leaders, researchers and representatives from 23 different U.S. companies teamed up to discuss the United States’ climate policy options. The results of the discussion are included in the new report, “Assessing U.S. Climate Policy Options: A report summarizing work at RFF as part of the inter-industry U.S. Climate Policy Forum.” During today’s OnPoint, Billy Pizer, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future and co-author of the report, discusses what some of the implications of various policy options would be. He explains how an emissions price goal may be a better short-term option for the United States than an emissions reduction goal. Pizer also explains how certain elements of an energy policy could interfere with the goals of a climate policy.
(6 December 2007)
According to SourceWatch, Resources for the Future has Matthew Simmons on its board.
