Download An India That Can Say Yes - Indian Network on Ethics and Climate

All of you journalists are here on the occasion of the release of the latest book “An India that can say
YES “, and we have Ms.Kalpana Sharma to preside over this session. Before that I would just add two
lines about the CIP- The Citizes Initiative for Peace and the name indicates is here to work for Peace in
this city also in the National and International context. Particularly last year in the after math of the 26/
11, on 12th of December there was a Human Chain organized by the Citizen Initiatives of Peace, since
then it is working in its own way, not at this same tempo but we do various sorts of programs, as a part
of that we are happy to have Mr. Praful Bidwai here; over to Ms.Kalpana Sharma.
Ms.Kalpana Sharma: It is a pleasure to introduce Praful Bidwai; he is no stranger for most of the
Journalist here and there in Mumbai from many years. Some of you, I noticed, are from another
generation, you must have heard his name, probably you don’t know as much about him.
There are many things; Praful Bidwai at the movement is a columnist, he writes very widely, has
written books. But I think as a journalist he is one of those who has been very consistent in the issues
that he has been taking up. And as a person who has worked within mainstream and outside that is not
an easy task I can tell you. The other thing that Praful has managed to do is; he has managed to
combine an understanding of Science, Economics and Politics, so that the issues that is to be tackled
whether it is Bhopal or the Tobacco growing in Andhra and the impact that it had the series of issues
like he has taken up on the Environmental and Developmental plain or in terms of politics and his
whole critic of Hindutva politics, his critic of the Nuclear issues has been one of the path breaking
thing that he has done as a journalist in exposing the Nuclear Establishment in India which is like a top
secret establishment which few can penetrate and yet Praful was one of the first actually who broke
stories about the Nuclear Establishment in India. Sadly that is not the issue that we have enough written
today. So in many ways I think Praful is probably one of the best qualified people to critic the whole
issues of climate change, which we are getting bombarded with in the media from all sides. Some of it
- informed and some of it is uninformed and lot of it is without any kind of perspective so, as a lead
person for instance one day you get news that some scientists had said that Himalayan glaciers are
receding and it is really going lead to catastrophic and the next day you hear that Jayaram Ramesh our
Environment Minister saying that well we don’t really know there is a doubt about it, this has to be
further investigated. One day you hear things about black carbon and how that is going to lead to an
acceleration of the melting of the glaciers; and an another day you will hear climate skeptic saying well
this is not really a proven fact. Every day there is for the fact that is mentioned there is a counterfact,
what do you make of it. In fact Climate change it is now gone up by 2o and 1o - what is the impact?
Are the Oceans really going to rise? Or there it is going to be really floods and cyclones and droughts,
are the poor going to suffer or city is going to be swept out, is the Maldives going to be drowned all
these kind of things that are floating around. There are many sorts of aspects that we have to make
sense of it.
One of course science of it since as a journalist, the challenge really how to explain the science in an
accessible way so, that the people actually can understand what this is about?
Second how do we explain the economic and the impact of this kind of scientific issues that come up?
And third about the politics so, I think Praful in this book which I have looked at and to me it is one of
the first thing that needs to be in an accessible style which is actually goes through all these things in a
way that anybody can pick up and understand has made a very important contribution through the
whole debate on climate change. But more than that I think what he is done which was you know one
was waiting to do explain what is important for India and how we as Indians should respond to this
whole thing. And once again the debate has got located within as an International diplomacy as a more
issues of the rights and the wrong who is to blame and whose to blame for the historical accumulation
of the CO2, in the atmosphere, which is lead to global warming. What should be the developing world
or the third world what should be their position how wrong the northeast or how right we are etc. The
second aspect of it is the whole per capita aspect, which is been discussed. How per capita actually
India’s emissions are very low because of our population is large so, is that the just way we are looking
at the whole issue climate change, each individual’s right to pollute the global carbon, how much can
we pollute? And we have as much right as the American, can we pollute as much as them.
And I think that the third aspect which is hardly get discussed is really what about within Indian, what
about two or three world that co-exist here? what about the extent which there are emissions enquire
but for our own sake should we make some effort to control it, to make some change in manner in
which we that as business? Do we exist of continuing to do with the business to believe that somebody
else to blame what is happening? So what I found most interesting in Praful book about is that he has
dealt with this third aspects in a very clear way, for instance he has blown the bogey of this whole thing
of Nuclear Power been a cleaned alternative which is been talked about which is hardly anybody
questioning but if you read the media we find hardly a single critical piece looking at the whole articles
together a Nuclear power are really to answer for this problem of CO2 emission. He also as brought out
which I personally appreciate very much and I have been writing about is the gender angle. To me, I
find it almost comical like today black Carbon which he talk about has become an issue because it
accelerates the melting the glacier is suddenly there is attention been paid something that has been a
perennial problem billions of women who have been cooking in the stove that burns biomass whose
lungs who’s body systems are getting poison because they are inhaling the smoke. Years and years ago
there was a lot of talk of smokeless choolas they just disappeared and now people are suddenly
discovered that there is a need for smokeless choolas because the think of global warming and I wanted
to argue if you look at justice and equity, poverty as you have and gender then many of these decisions
which we rooted in dealing with those aspect. And as the result of the environmental issues and
economical and political issues of that end and therefore I am glad that you have actually brought up
strongly which I really find an optics, which I generally been missing in the debate.
I have said enough, I would recommended that everybody gets holds of this book and reads it and we
should find ways of getting this debated much more, regardless of what our primary concern is,
ultimately this is a concern that will affect all of us. As citizens who are interested; who want to be
intervene things that are happening in our country with aspects of climate change and India’s positions
and what the Indian government ought to be doing is something that as we ourselves as a citizen are
ought to be informed about and how to find ways out of intervening, and there is a very good way I
think reading something like Praful book and generating debate on it. And the way, which Praful is
going to talk about the issues that he has raised, and then we open it up for discussion.
Praful Bidwai: Thank you very much, it is a great pleasure to be amongst some very old friends and
people whom I have known 30 years or so. It is an issue that I think concerns all of us that needs to be
debated thoroughly, let me just out line the couple of very simple facts about climate change, which has
become a menace; it is a threat not in the future; but is something looking upon us now. There are
erratic patterns of weather everywhere, extreme events like snow in Dubai and so on so forth. And
increase velocity frequency of cyclones and sea storms, very rapid melting of glaciers, and above all
the collapse of arctic ice sheet, the greatest mass of ice and snow on planet Earth, this is actually
coupled with rise in sea levels which is three times higher in the year than it was between the 60s to the
90s. So you have a gathering of all these effects, accelerating at a very rapid trend. This will tell the
scientists to revise their estimates of the likely effects of Green House Gas emissions on the climate
system in the world. Barely 2 years publication of the most authoritative report by the InterGovernmental panel on climate change IPCC. The scientist told us that, most of the worst cases of
phenomenon are likely to be exceeded in the coming decades. For instance what is happening to the
arctic ice sheet is a phenomenon that is compounded by the melting of the ice sheet leading to greater
thermal expansion of water in turn releases more heat then as ice reflects 80 of sunlight back, whereas
the dark ocean water will absorb 95% and release only 5% that adds to the global warming effects. So
you have a compounding, this is called a positive feedback but it should be called negative feedback.
So we a have second order effect which is going to accelerate climate change. Two things that matter a
lot – in terms of the effects of the growing concentrations of Green House Gases emissions which we
have to feel which mean the reducing capacity of the nature's sinks. The oceans and forests today
absorb almost more than half of worlds CO2 and also some other GHGs. As the oceans gets acidified,
that you can actually measure the PH value the capacity to absorb CO2 is actually decreasing very
visibly by something like 12% over the past 15 years and this is going to accelerate. Secondly the
forests there are huge important thing to say but would say – as the earth warms up their capacity to
absorb CO2 will decreasing more rapidly than in the case of the Oceans. For instance today the global
temperatures are just 0.8o Celsius above the pre-industrial levels. The rate at which global warming is
taking place they are likely to rise up to 4%. Some scientists are saying 5%, beyond 3% global
warming forests will stop working as sinks of Carbon Dioxide. So you will have compounding of
several events. War, the GHGs being spewed out, fewer fuel being sourced, climate change has to go in
catastrophic changes which are actually going to tell upon each other – you will have a cascading
effect. As the ice plates melt, as glacier will melts, as the sea levels will rise, again you are going to
have displacement. According to estimates already something like 200million people have been badly
affected by climate change and these numbers are likely to triple by 2020 or 2025 or so. Economic
looses are enormous huge, agricultural productivity according to FAO will be very badly effected, to
the extent of the third world loosing something like one forth of its food production due to rainfall,
weather patterns and so on. So it is needless to say that this is going to lead to ecological refugees and
migrant migration of large scale of crises will lead to serious security conflicts in the world. Already
the question of who controls the mountains and who controls the river systems, how do we share river
waters that are common across countries like India and Nepal, India and China and China and Pakistan
have become very contentious issues. Rumors and reports which I need building a dam across the
Brahmaputra, in that case what happens downstream, these are issues that we have ignored for the long
time? They are going to come back to us leading to excess tensions would be between India and
Pakistan; already there are protests over the sharing of Indus waters. These are truly some of the
consequences. The worst consequence will be the human and social consequence – hunger-greater
prevalence of diseases – vectors carrying diseases like the malaria – change in habitat you will have
more and more mosquito breeding in north parts of the world including in parts of India such as the
Himachal Pradesh and the Himalayan States in the north India which was earlier free from malaria will
become the popular area to remix. Then you have the contamination of water, and notorious source of
the highest proportion of deaths in India, it is going to get worse from the climate change. So what it is
meant that is specific about the Indians , why should we concerned –
A) because we are vulnerable – India is highly vulnerable, if you draw a grade, India would be at no 2
and the small island states will be absolutely wiped out- Maldives and so on and those of the pacific
Islands- 43 of these countries of which at least 24 of them could be wiped out in the next 25 years and
this is serious prospects. If sea levels rise by 1 meter, something like 58 Million Bangladeshis will
become refugees – where will they go, perhaps India and of course the Sunder bans – one of the most
vulnerable eco-systems that India and Bangladesh share. We also have low lying deltas, rivers which
are flood-prone, we have erratic monsoons as we could see in this year as there is a 23% deficient
monsoon rainfall and you had simultaneous floods at the same time and droughts in large parts of the
country.
Threat to bio-diversity – forests will disappear much more rapidly, the tree line will go up further up in
mountain ranges, bio-diversity which is already under threat in India will deplete in the coming
decades. These are very serious problems, but I think two most serious and immediate threats in which
are largely in more India in media and in public perception are the rapid melting of the Himalayan
glaciers. This is an in controversial scientific fact. The IPCC report confirmed it in 2007 in fact that
says in 30 or 35 years there will be no Himalayan glaciers left towards the name.
Now what does that mean 7 of Asia's greatest river systems including the Indus the Ganges,
Brahmaputra, the Yangtze, the Mekong etc., are dependent on the Himalayan glacial water as the
principle source. The water initially flows increasingly because of the rapid melting of the glacial you
will have floods gradually you will have droughts till these rivers virtually dry up. Just imagine,
1.3billion people in this part of the world are dependent on the Himalayan eco-system. One of the
principle causes of the melting of the glaciers and the numbers that they are quite solid and been
established 1100 glaciers have retreated by 29% since the early 60s. And the rate is grown, the rate
accelerates big glaciers are breaking up, some are under threat -the Siachen glacial, the longest glaciers
among the Himalayan range that is the site of bitter conflict between India and Pakistan for 25 years.
The debris from war is itself destroying the glacial and breaking it up into smaller bits, it is a very
dangerous phenomenon. But we are ignoring that, the Govt., of India is either remembering or saying
that we have to conduct studies when in fact it is well established not just by international scientific
community but by reputed Indian scientists who have written for peer reviewed international journals.
And yet there is a tiny little lobby within the scientific establishment lead by the Dept., of Science and
Technology which is in quite battle with the Dept of Forests and the Dept of Environment, with the
Dept of Bio-technology, the Meteorological dept, the Geological dept and so on. There is absolutely
disgraceful report by a geologist who really knows nothing about climate science, climate science is
much more than geology, which about forestry, glaciology, it is about oceanography, it is about
understanding of wind patterns at different altitudes etc., This is semi-literate paper with hardly
references from any peer reviewed journals, has been put up on the website. That is a matter of denial
we are practicing, but the second method of denial is also important, which is that may be a third to a
half of the acceleration in the melting of the Himalayan Glacier is taken place as a result of black
carbon - soot and other products of the incomplete combustion of the bio-mass or a coal when you burn
twigs, saw dust, wood and all kinds of vegetable waste in choolas which have an efficiency is 1 to 2%,
you are producing a huge amount of soot, that of course as Kalpana pointed is a poisonous that is
killing 400 thousand of women a year now this is confirmed fact from the WHO. And that’s the kind
of fatality and you know several kinds of this mortality for instance from breast cancer in India. So it is
a fact now phenomenon for women and children who work in a kitchen with these dirty stoves, but the
soot is the major sources that accelerates of melting of the Himalayan glaciers and here unless own up
the problem, and something has to be done about it, we cannot force the poor to burn biomass and all
kinds of waste in dirty choolas, we have got to help them make a transition to either smokeless and
efficient choolas or even better to LPG cooking gas. Give them cooking gas and stoves and little bit of
efficiency of 60% and your problem of black carbon will be solved, you will gain for 30years.
Otherwise you will see the Himalayan glaciers and downstream rivers going under terrible crises,
which we have no control at all. I am proposing in this book that we use the existing kerosene subsidy
of 50000Crore rupees and several other means to actually finance a large subsidy for LPG delivery to
the poor in the rural areas and especially in the hill areas. This is doable, it is practicable but needs a
political will.
A second important aspect is the over-exploitation of the ground water, which is called the grassresource. The best thing to do is to conserve it and to stop it where it pours – rainwater harvesting,
small storages, trap the water where it is used for agriculture instead of building large dams which have
proved inefficient – 64% of the large dams in India have failed to deliver even 50% of water supply or
even electricity. Now this looks pretty sad and we continue to build large dams, but if you had smaller
reservoirs and systems of water harvesting which we have known for a long time whether we have dug
wells, built percolation tanks or building bunds or temple tanks where water is conserved. The rich
body of knowledge that already exists and yet we are not controlling the over-use. The first thing
anyone does is to sink a tube-well which is no longer 200ft in depth – but 5 to 6 hundred feet, even the
pristine aquifers and this groundwater is actually going to hit us very badly which is not reported in the
Indian media or published in scientific journals.
Half of the groundwater if it is not recharged is raising is going to discharge into the sea – 25 trillion
liters a year from the South Asian land maps and that is why we have rise in sea levels and is
potentially of the same portal and the rise in the seas that cause of melting glaciers. I was talking about
10 to 15cms every decade and this is going to complicate matters enormously for the people who live
on the coastal areas – on the entire 7500kms of coastline, the entire fishing economy – and the complex
eco-system which people have learnt to live with in great harmony. Yet we are doing very little – India's
emissions measured in 1994 which is the last official reports of the Govt of India, is around 1.3 billion
tonnes – but if you look at it now, it will probably running at 2 billion tonnes a year a very large
increase which is about 70% increase over the last decade. Our emissions are increasing at 3 and a half
% a year – twice the global rate. The principle cause for this acceleration of increase in emissions is the
consumption of the top10% of the population, this is the consuming upper middle class of the society is
on top the creamy layer at the top which is consuming like never before it is just buying up things,
buying cars – you must have seen that in November India's sale of cars was 60% higher than in October
and 46% higher than a year ago. The average vehicle population has been 12 to 14% from past 2
decades and additional devices like the refrigerators, washing machines. Agricultural commodities have
been traveling long distances adding to the food miles adding to the Green House Gas Emissions and
the Carbon Footprints and this consumerist class has a voracious appetite – virtually insatiable appetite
who don’t believe anything to remit its consumptions, where it has been deprived, they have got little
money they have got to spend that. The fundamental driver of India’s climate policy is the elite and
those who want to guard its privileges and that’s why we are non-policy on climate issues.
A cyclone like the Aila this year and floods that displace 8 million people like Andhra Pradesh and
parts of Karnataka which are arid area that are known for droughts. There are 2 and half lakh people
displaced from the Sunderbans who are waiting to go back. This is the kind of effect of cyclone Aila
which is going to affect, worsen and more ferocious and yet we are doing nothing. To put it very
simply the Indian policymaking elite sees Climate Change not as a matter of lives and death as a
concern to the poor people especially a vunerable able poor majority of the population but as a geopolitical threat. There are two terms that work of the elite or the policy makers of the anywhere.
If you are at a party you get immediate attention if you utter the word “Nuclear Disarmament” or some
variant with CTBT and whatever it is and Climate Change. Somebody is trying to extract something
out of us. They are depriving us of the right to share the global commons that is the atmosphere, the
resources and so and so forth.
It is exactly the same argument used in respect of the nuclear weapons. This is why we didn’t sign the
CTBT, why we didn’t sign the NBT and so on. We have a right to nuclear weapons. On one hand India
kept saying nobody should have nuclear weapons. The Nuclear weapons don’t give you security they
are morally obscene. On the other hand we actually have built our nuclear weapons capability program
and in 1988 crossed the threshold and as Jaswant Singh put it it’s the right of one –sixth of humanity to
security and the same people who don’t grant that one –sixth of humanity the right to food, and to clean
drinking water for survival .We have a state of permanent famine in this country. Then I was thinking
there was a brilliant talk yesterday where you it gives you WHO have a new definition of famine. In
any country where the proportional population which has the body mass index of less than 18.5 is
actually undernourished and exceeds 40% that area should be regarded as under famine and more than
half the country has that characteristic, almost all the tribals too that the situation.
There is a paranoid perception of Climate change, and the negotiations and equally paranoid because
every single step India has taken has been in response to real or anticipated pressure from the
International communities. For instance we didn’t discuss climate policy in the Parliament before the
National Climate Action Plan was announced. Before the Prime ministers council on climate change
the highest advisory body was constituted? The Prime Ministers council was constituted in June 2007 a
week before the G8 summit, to which India was invited in Germany. The Climate action plan and the 8
missions under it were announced in mid 2008 less than a week before the G8 summit in Japan. Before
the Pittsburgh summit the Prime minister was eager to launch one of the 8 missions and that’s the solar
mission. This is announced and revised quite extensively without consulting the Prime ministers
council. The Prime minister’s council was actually promised that it would get the final revised copy of
the draft. So eager was Dr. Manmohan Singh before announcing he met Obama and other G8 leaders in
Washington and Pittsburg. Then he did so bypassing the council.
In my view this is the people work in the way we have formulate and developed our climate policy we
have been done in a completely cloistered, Isolated Ivory towered context, by a handful of people, 4-5
you can name who were all bureaucrats who had absolutely no contact with the masses, the population
who have never worked in a rural area, who don’t know about the energy needs of the poor. Who don’t
know anything about what potential exists to save energy and how we can go to a low carbon path,
what India can realistically do with renewable energy and so on. They worked with tired old cliché
formulas. They see the effect must be accounted, how they account it?
By saying India is a poor country .You guys have conducted the policies for this country from 60 years
perpetuated poverty and they you say we are a poor country our emissions are very low just, about 1.2
tons whereas the US are 20tons and the Chinese are 5tons, the EU are 12tons so give us time, this is
actually hiding behind the poor. Its not the poor who are causing these increases in the green house gas
emissions it is the rich. If we go about the emission differential between us and the Northern countries
the development what about our own internal emissions, they are higher. For instance the highest
emitting states in India and the lowest emitting states have a difference of 16 to 1 in their per capita
emissions. The rich in India the top 5% probably consume 50 times more. All kinds of energy and so
on, leading to high carbon footprint and emissions than the very poor, for instance the bulk of the poor
actually have probably no contribution at all of green house gases to emissions. Tribals 8% of the
population probably make a positive contribution or a negative contribution into Green House Gas
Emissions. The rag pickers, the Raddi walas recyclers of the waste actually reduce carbon emission
very consequently. 45% of the population of this country does not have electricity any connection.
There is no way they can raise their consumption of electricity, which is one of the highest source of
emissions in this country. So 40% of the population has insignificant or negligible contribution interms
of Carbon Footprint the elite that done, it is the elite that drives in the climate policy of the country and
so we have formulated all these plans. There are about eight of these missions they are about solar
power, the increasing energy efficiency, they are about sustainable agriculture, they are about forestry
etc. They are all defined in the website of the PM office the Climate action plan is a public document.
This is when you respond to pressure and your heart is not in the issue you will make bad formulations
and you continue to live with them and these are the examples of precisely those sort of documents.
The National Action Plan fudges the issue. Its Alpha and Omega is about defending high GDP growth;
the real challenge or supreme priority is how to defend this high GDP growth. The assumption being
that high GDP will allow you to cut poverty, and reach development the population that lacks basic
services is not food secure water secure, employment secure and so and so forth the plain reality is this
is not true after three decades of relatively high growth and this is what any decent economist will
admit whether it is right or left of the situation. Poverty ratios are declining at very marginally and
that’s alarming people even in the planning commission. There is something wrong with the whole
growth process, because it is not leading to jobs, it is not leading to higher income, and some of the
growth is fictitious. Yet we stick to the GDP the religion and the dogma and you pursue that by
ignoring every thing else. You can do independently what the rest of the world is doing about climate
change. You know I think because of the High GDP growth
To some extent emissions can be allowed to rise so far as they rise on account of the poor
increasing their consumption but that’s not the situation at all in India. So that’s why our talk of
accepting no other limits that our per capita emissions does not increase than that of the North. It
is completely hypocritical; it is infact hiding behind the poor. The Americans are trying to hide
behind the rich in China and India. Look you have your Ambani’s and you have your dollar
billionaires who are equal in number to those in Germany, although India’s GDP is not even in
absolute terms a forth of Germany’s GDP, so what about them? What about bringing them into the
net of obligations for climate change limitations, mitigation, and adaptations and so on so forth.
That’s the arguments goes on and, its precisely because India’s entire approach is rooted in its
coherence and in Paradigm and we don’t have a clear in our position, in our response, we only
react. And that reaction is has been profoundly irrational. It is lead to the eight missions that you
are talking about are drafted to continue with the present business and views in a scenario. There
no major change there is no admission.
There is something wrong that the now emissions are double the global rate obviously we are on
unsustainable growth path. We have done something wrong to curb the luxury consumption of the
rich, and provoked the human development with dignity for the population. There is no recognition
that any of the and we need a change in direction. The Climate action plan starts with lofty
statements .It did not changes in lifestyles, of the rich of the affluent across the world it does not
say the world changing lifestyle of the affluent in India. You can quote unquote Gandhiji’s and work
noble ideas. There is enough for everybody’s need but not even for a single persons greed. You
don’t apply their ideas to what’s happening in India. You have these plans not on paper. The
mission documents recycle existing programs, they lie, they tell half the stories they use market
based solutions, and completely bankrupt and discredited ideas. I just want to spend two minutes on
the whole question of market-based solutions.
It is universally recognized that climate change is the greatest failure of market in human history no
less than Nicholas Stern who is the conservative Chief economist in the World Bank and the author
of the Stern View highly publicized thoughtful document. I am no believer in market research here I
accept defeat this is the serious failures of the market. All the solutions that are being located
within the Kyoto protocol framework, at Copenhagen and so on are about emissions trading, are
about buying and selling, Carbon credits and so on.
And now you have market based solutions and what is happening to that market is that it is a huge
market and it is growing doubling every year. The emissions market, idea about emissions is
northern polluters who are under the obligations to cut their emissions need not do so, but instead
buy credits from third world projects. Which are supposed to promote green development and
reduce emissions so on and so forth and they keep trading, then there is speculative trading in
markets, you trade for future credits, forward credits, you can buy credits for 2024 on 7th of Dec
today. This is what exactly happened to the financial markets. That’s prime lending you are lending
to people who are not likely to repay your loans there is no guarantee, there is no way of evaluating
their credit worthiness. You keep lending, since you lent more you need to lend more and more. At
one point of time the whole thing begins to collapse. You combine all these bad and junk credits and
good credits and bundle them up.
This is called securitisation there is a complete lapse and you never know. This is an historic event.
Unless we haven’t learn’t anything, today the carbon markets are led by carbon market trading,
because of the recession the primary market with price of carbon per ton, fell from $24 to $7 to $4.
Per ton. It is a huge decrease.
The carbon market boomed it growed more than double because in the secondary market in the
speculative market it actually increased 5/4. What we are doing through these markets is we are
making solutions to something invaluable that we have. You are making it venerable to highly failure
prone speculative process, which recently caused destruction in the global financial market. Exactly
that with the climate. If banks collapse you can actually revive them. If climate collapses there is
nothing that we can do. Yet the world which spends trillions and trillions of dollars in rescuing
private banks is refusing to make minimum commitments on climate change. Through mitigation by
using machines or through adaptation by making people change the way they live and to change
the way they practice agriculture. In protecting them from hurricanes, cyclones, etc etc building sea
walls. Limiting actually banning projects that lead to destruction of mangroves along the coastlines.
These are huge programmes according to me they need 200-300 billion dollars a year. Yet not even
1/1000 is put on the table by the rich countries.
We know from climate science that until the world reduces global greenhouse gases by 50% by
2050 there will be irreversible damage. We also know from Climate science that carbon dioxide, a
very long lived substance which will remain in the atmosphere thousands of years even if no further
emissions take place. So what will be pumped out will continue to play havoc for a very long lime so
if we continue .All scientific papers show that if all carbon dioxide emissions cease tomorrow, even a
thousand years from now temperatures will not stabilize, at least a quarter of that carbon dioxide
will be in the atmosphere 100 years from now. These are horrendous, frightening figures the world is
refusing to take necessary action. Two words on the North South differences. Historically it is the
northern countries with capitalistic is responsible for Climate Change. So the proposition is that
they must accept the prime responsibility of emitting or fighting it with mitigation services. The
world evolved with a rough formula which is flawed in many ways. The rich countries must cut its
emissions by 40% by 2020 and it is under the obligation to do so. They don’t want the Kyoto
protocol which was meant to lead to a reduction just by 5.2 % by 2012. The actual reduction will be
by 3%. So the north in perspective of numbers is largely on account of carbon trading and the US is
refusing to accept this and the second part is that when the south undertakes voluntary mitigation
by reducing green house gas emissions the north should finance the efforts and should also help us
in developing technologies appropriate for low carbon development in the future. It has not put that
money on the table. The 300 billion that is talked about. Instead of that the EU is offering 2.3
billion and the US is offering 10 billion so that’s the kind of meanness that the north is showing this
complicates the picture a lot. On the one hand you can pause saying that it is not enough that the
north alone cuts its emissions. Of the larger developing countries like China, India, Mexico, South
Africa are growing very rapidly 2-3 times faster than the rest of the world. These are fast economies
with greater capabilities .. So they must also accept some carbon emission reduction obligations may
be not hard like the Kyoto2 but the softer one, like voluntary cuts or deviation from business as
usual. Business as usual means that if your emission will increase by 40% in the next 2 decades at
least make them increase by only 10%.
That way you have a 30% reduction The south has be reluctant to accept that because the north is
acting in bad faith. It wants to demolish the entire process of differentiation of policies between the
North and the south. It wants that everybody to accept some obligations maybe some less and some
more When the US is itself not willing to make any deep cuts the highest it is offering is 7%
emissions by 2020 when you need 40%. There is no relationship there is only one country Scotland
which makes a 40% offer there is no other country, the European Union says 20% off but that to is
hedge in with the demand that they be allowed to fulfill half of that 20% through carbon trade.
Copenhagen is caught in some dividing line. There is the north south dividing line. Some of the
countries like the north and India, South Africa and Brazil, which will form the BASIC group. In turn
the really poor countries like North Africa and the island states do not trust the BASIC group. The
AOC, which is the first island state to walk out and yesterday, the African countries walked out.
You guys at least have some resource we are bankrupt. So the disrupt and this is what in game
theory is called the social Dilemma. Every player in this game will gain by playing in good faith, by
cutting his or her emissions through a cooperative initiate, but every player also will try to say that
I will maximize my short-term game. Then everybody will end up losing. One possibility is that you
will have a collapse of the negotiations. The second possibility is that you have ambitious very
powerful forcible lead where the north actually makes the 40% commitments. The southern countries
make generous commitments.
The third possibility is that you will have a political agreement which doesn’t led to a full fledge
legal binding, at least have a consensus that you must negotiate it next year and the forth possibility
is that you will have a bad deal.
The north doesn’t go more than 20%. The south doesn’t feel confident enough to make voluntary
commitments all that we end up is a lousy agreement, which is not enforceable. And then you get
locked up into a high emission trajectory.
I would prefer that the climate talks collapse than we have a bad agreement that binds us to a long
accord.
Let me just conclude by saying that there is lot
accepts a politically sound position where the
between the rich and poor That’s the reason
mitigation obligations. There is no reason why
that India can do. At the international level it really
division is not made between north and south but
why India’s rich should be bought into the net of
India should not build some confidence building by
doing some generous assistance to the AOC; the small island states the poorest of the African
states. If India and China were to create a fund, which has predictable amounts of assistance, and
technology developing plans for the poorest of the island states. It can do a lot by maintaining the
solidarity of the south with the north. Also pushing the North to do more .It has a fair amount of
leverage, which it is not using, like pushing the US to take tougher positions and deeper cuts. India
announced the cut in the emission intensity of its GDP, means your GDP continues to increase,
your emissions continue to increase per capita or dollar of GDP your are burning less carbon and
producing less green house gases.
India’s potential for cutting is 40-45 %, but we are still hesitating we will never go to 40% we are
still saying 20-25%. India actually has actually failed to do enough at the international level it is seen
as an obstructionist, a denial of its obligation. It is seen as a denial of the glacial melting issue.
The scope for energy saving in this country is enormous. For example if you were to match the
rating of the agricultural pump set and the motors that is used you would say that 30% of the
electricity is used in agriculture. If you were to improve the energy efficiency of big industries like
steel and aluminum, glass, cement the scope is 30-40%.
Take coal-fired power stations it produces more than 70% of our power. Today efficiency of
combustion coal is only 29% only 29% heat generated of the coal burnt in power station is actually
converted into electricity. Today you have technology available in the market, which can raise this
efficiency to 30 to 40%. We have to ban any power station that has less than 42% efficiency. Coal
alone accounts for 40% of our emissions.
If you cut coal use by 50% you already have achieved a great deal and if you do this without a very
high cost. A comprehensive switch from florescent lamps to compact fluorescent lamps and LED’s
are longer lasting than CFL’s. We will give you a payback period of 4-6 months and then recover
your investment in no time. You add fans the existing fans can be improved for efficiency by 30-40%.
Tube lights change the panels. 55% of electricity using motors.
You should compel industry to undertake this process; you will end up saving a huge amount of
electricity. Saving 1/5th of our electricity capacity you will be able to wipe out
The basic deficit. These are methods that we are not exploring. Take agriculture, it takes some
thing like 10 thousand liters of water to give you one kilo of rice. Thrice as much of water that
China uses or Brazil uses to produce the same quantity. Get some knowledge you have something
called SRI – System Rice Intensification. The whole process of plantation saves water usage by 80%
and also avoids methane emissions 20 thousand times more powerful than CO2 as a green house gas
Reach more energy needs of the poor who lack it. One section of the system is used for solar to
give electricity for 4-5 hours. It makes a big difference to children who can study extend their work.
These are not expensive processes. India can do a lot they need a radical processes. It has to redo
its climate policy.
As I said the climate policy is done by a handful of people. The Prime Ministers council on climate
change advisory body has 26 people. In this country of 1.1 billion 25 -26are from Delhi or Gurgaon
.Can you believe it, it is a mockery there are no independents there is one NGO there are no
scientists. They are all bureaucrats, ex-bureaucrats.
Bureaucrats who see climate change as a threat and must combat it. Its absence will increase the
burden among the poorest and the most vulnerable people including India.
Will not do anything on its own it will have to be pushed by social movements. By NGO’s
Nishay Agarwal:- Thanks for sending the invite out or I wouldn’t have known at all. My name is
Nishay Agarwal associated with a number of causes in the society and two days later we are going to
meet, we have filed a PIL against one of the biggest dumping grounds in Mumbai at Deonar. It has a
big climate change impact. About which some of us has been crying hoarse. Couple of points I will
try to keep myself short.
Early this year I had a very strong argument with Sunita Narain over her editorial in February,
where she used a particular line.” Our constraint in combating Climate Change is the making of the
west “ to which I had strong objections to.
Over the past 5 years I have had strong objections to the climate change position of India and on
my blog what I wrote was India’s super –stupid position on climate change and I gave her a strong
piece of my mind. Where I was clearly of the opinion that this was one opportunity where we could
take such a strong leader ship position and this whole notion of a developing country is something
we like to take on selectively. There is one side of the super elite middle class who on one side likes
to talk about how many of us Indians are in Obama’s prime cabinet how we guide the information
policy and health policy and that same nation when it becomes convenient wants to become a very
poor nation and wants to run around with begging bowls in Geneva, the World bank and so on. My
thing was the whole thing of fund transfer and technology transfer is completely bogie. Again it is
the same vested interest where it wants to somehow extract its own pound of flesh under the shield
of poor people. And as you just pointed out there are 100 of ways where we can reduce our
emissions.
The PIL that we had filed is basically about how a project which would not have costed 200 crores
ended up becoming 400 crores and then the BMC the Municipal Council of Mumbai thinks of giving
that project to a private operator for 4000-5000 crores. And that same private operator is not
taking any change in Ahmedabad etc
If we were to take you 10 years time frame behind the BMC had annihilated, not just sabotage any
decentralized waste management system in the city. From Decentralized dry waste gathering
centers, to composting etc the undisputed secret that the municipal authorities also jokingly share
is that if your project is thousands of lakhs it really doesn’t sell in the corporation matter, it should
be starting from 10 crores, and now the benchmark has gone way ahead and that’s why we are going
to the courts. Now projects have to be nothing less than 500 crores. You need to have enough to
share with somebody. Somebody who is a rag picker, composter who is asking that if you give me 50
thousand rupees it is sufficient to run it then the answer you get is that then what is in it for me.
How does that justify me having an account in the Swiss bank when I have to put just 15 thousand
rupees in it?
These are the kind of places and we can go on and on but what I would like to leave as a thought is
that how do we empower ourselves. The fact of the matter is that the super elite is looking it as a
fighting game where you have to guard your GDP growth and your super lifestyle has enough at its
disposal to put the resources, to meet at a fortnightly basis to come with a strategy. But people like
you and me are completely poor, and cannot afford to meet you in Delhi and have the resources to
network with people and come out with solutions etc.
Maybe we need to lot more network with ourselves to come to a position to impact. Otherwise in
our only sealed holes I have been reading your articles and identified with you, but I had never
known that you are working with climate change also. That’s the degree of in the age of Internet
that we are separated from each other. The super elite is completely in touch. I have somebody who
is boasting that one of the climate change negotiators is known to me and that he is going to fight
for Carbon credits for me etc.
Mr. Godbole: - I just want to ask you about solar energy; I have knowledge about solar energy
being very expensive. Where are we in terms of research and are we likely to get there.
Mr. Mustafa: - I am working as an NGO. I would like to know what you visualize as you mentioned
in your talks 3 million people will be refugees in Bangladesh because of this Climate Change. I heard
that in Garfu, Sudan the case was directly related to climate change. I would like to know that
people are talking at micro level. The first world countries the .. of bio-fuels created .. in the
rainforest which is know as carbon sink. And also increasing the food price, which is related to
hunger
43 million people would be refugees in Bangladesh because of Climate change and I heard that
narkud kodan the case was directly related to climate change where there was migration and a real
inhuman situation was created – In this context I would like to talk about the macro level where we
can bring about a lot of change but at micro-level people ..................If you see the first world
countries that created the syndrome of bio-fuels has created a lot of deforestation in the rain
forests which were very much known as carbon-sinks in South Asia and also jacking of the food
prices to at least 35% - so climate change and poverty are very much related. I saw the UNO
representative saying that this is a crime in itself, that 30% food is transformed for the production of
bio-fuels.
Mr. Shukla Sen:- Let me congratulate on my behalf and citizens initiative for Peace for Praful’s
brilliant presentation and particularly for taking the Indian elites Ideology what can be called as
eco-chauvinism out try , I don’t think it can be called even eco-nationalism . I believe when we talk
about climate change and global warming we tend to miss out on a more fundamental concept, which
may look irrelevant in the immediate context of Copenhagen
If we look at ecology and it discharges two functions as a large resource pool it also functions as a
huge sink and Earth ecology has got a self-regenerating property particularly distinct. Particularly
from the early century the second wave of industrial revolution, Global economy grows at a
compound rate at the rate of the geometric progression. Whereas in the pre-modern days it used to
grow at simple rate or arithmetic progression. That’s the game change here over the few years the
global economy growing at the rate of 3% per annum on an average. It means that the economy
doubles in 25 years. It grows 4 times in 50 years. . It grows 16 times in 100 years. It grows 256
times in 200 years. That’s also linked with our trail of resources goes up. Our dumping of waste
material, gaseous liquid and solid goes up. That sort of growth is way beyond our ecology
Regenerating capacity.
Heinrich Boll Foundation
C-20, F F, Qutub Institutional Area,
New Delhi 1100 016
Tel No -011-2685- 4405
Heinrich Boll Foundation is based Delhi thats the address to write to them, or call them, they will
send you the copies free. I am going to revise it in a little while, after the outcome of the
Copenhagen conference becomes clear, and then the commercial publisher hopefully in more than
one language will publish it in a proper book format. Of course this format will be the old one.
Three four responses, I think to start with you are absolutely right about the kind of the
growth about the model as upraised over the past three decades particular with the Neo-Liberal
Globalising growth model that has led to enormous increases in the extraction of the sources, which
is completely unsustainable, and very high increase in consumption and high increase in waste well
beyond earth's capacity. We know the standard models and the biggest economies in the world
including the United States and much improvement in the China, India following it is essentially an
imitation of the whole Northern model, we know we want to reach the America standard of life, all
these is a terrible waste.
We need five planets Earth, we have only one, so it is completely unsustainable, that’s why
we need to move away very decisively from the model, that is well-taken, the question is how do we
do it. And we really have to I think we should work the system model very seriously, we can’t allow
the market to determine investment flows and allocations of the resources rather than the peoples
needs, if you do that there is no alternative to go in exactly that normal way. So we are looking at
people’s need which means doing integrated resources planning, it means redesigning your energy
sources, it means promoting public transport, it means minimizing the use of water, it means
conserving and recycling water, it means discouraging construction which is highly emission
intensive, it means returning that is where these fancy schemes that the government has announced
and it is the part of the Climate Action Plan of promoting LEAD- this is a rating system developed
by the American cement industry, construction industries where you have extremely highly emission
intensive, energy intensive building and you treat it, to make it a little less, for instance you have
open detectors - say if there is no one in the rooms, the light will go off. But to install all that it is
highly air-conditioned and it is vertical and because you are really doing something as somebody
said. Gandhiji’s ashram in Vardha wouldn’t have passed the LEAD test, it would have got rejected
outright, and it is one of the most sound-ecological building, but frudel ways of living, managing
space with ventilation of using the direction of the sun creating new a very little small inject a very
small bits of moistures in the very hottest months and so on so forth, we too have these
alternatives, with lots of people working with need. But it means doing all of that, it means, I think
taking some very harsh steps.
Raising taxation on cars, banning SUVs – just don’t allow them, and we don’t need them,
and these have truck level emissions, you know it is obscene, it is morally intolerable. The
government has subsidised cars over the years and it reduced excise duties on component of cars
itselves, under the guise of wealth, it is been promoting the small cars, and to reduce the excise
from 12% to 4% to benefit the TATA’s, just 2 years ago in the budget. The NANO will be
absolutely a disaster for our city, it is going to congest us, it is going to smoke us out completely.
That car is a very polluting car with the kind of low level technology that is gone it to it and the
safety compromises and which will not meet Euro IV standards, which are going to be enforced from
April next year 2010 and without the price of the car as going of as something like 40% so. Mr. Tata
take it from me the laws and the postponements of the that deadline so that NANO can be ready to
meet Euro four standard rather than the Euro three. But what had happened you know because of
these excise duty reduction and so on, of course growing volumes today the Maruthi 800 costs
absolutely less than what they did fifteen years ago. The price of wheat has increased by 210%, it is
almost triple, so that’s where our priorities are. It means we are already imposing a burden on
people who are malnourished - 48% of the children and 33% of adults in India and you are subsidizing
rich over buying cars and so on, that has to stop. And I think those decisions are very difficult for
the government that believes the growth at GDPs all that’s the real principle normal. And I think
this is going to be very hard to do this by normal means you need radical rethinking with certain
kinds of steps for instance, Urban Waste Management, we need to prepare a plan, other wise they
are going to go the corporate way, they are going to kill the raddiwalas, and they are going to have
the fake projects and it is going to lead to greater pollution. Infact all these bio-machination for
incidentally it is just a page about the Clean Development Mechanism; it is promoted nothing like
Clean Development in the Third World.
Most of the projects that are earning credits were planned and under the construction even
before the CDM came into force in 2005. 96% of the dams of the world, for which credits have been
claimed, were already complete all under constructions, by 2005. Two thirds of all the credits of
India which has the largest number of CDM projects in the world, interms of this credits
volumes/values its share is smaller than China but 2/3 of the all credits of the India came by just
two companies, among these companies, which is raised as well they produced extremely potent
Green House Gas that is called as HFC 23 which is a refrigerant gas and they then burn it and to
destroy it they get Carbon Credit, I am not joking, 470 times of volumes of investment they have
made. You have forestry projects, which are non-existing, which are claiming carbon credits you
have certifying agencies, which have faked the results, three of them are already blacklisted,
You have projects in Waste incineration leading to power generation in cities. Now
incinerators are something you cannot build in a OECD country – they hate it, the University
evoked protests – they are hazardous producing all kinds of toxins affecting local communities. Here
they earn carbon credits per Kilowatt-hour of power generated, thirty times higher than high wind
energy. The full system is rigged in favor of bad profits.
The CDM system has to go – it is a gigantic fraud in the world in the name of environmental
protection. You have ways of securing similar transfers through direct transfers of financing from the
north to the south created by the Global Adaptation fund, Global Mitigation fund, Global
Technology Transfer fund. You don’t need to have emissions trading as the only way in securing
that transfer of funds. The middlemen, the brokers, these are all dark suited bankers whose
language you cannot understand. I subscribe to a news letter, it is not believable and these are the
kind of people who are looking for shortcuts, words like “Carbon Capture and Storage”, “Carbon
sequestration”, “Nuclear power”, “Bio-engineering” - you shoot rockets containing sulphur into
the atmosphere, you have one trillion mirrors reflecting sunlight back from space. There are
governments investing in these. India got involved in one these geo-engineering projects called
LOHAG earlier this year lead by Indian scientists to sow iron particles into South Atlantic Ocean in
the hope that these would produce an algal bloom (algae are known to absorb a lot of carbon) which
under go bloom and take the carbon and sink to the floor and so you sequester the carbon. But
actually what happened in itself is that this algae became a prime delicacy for other organisms which
fed on them, so they did not go to the bottom of the sea. These mad experiments are not a way
forward.
The way is you have to take radical measure which help the local populations need and technological
capabilities, and these are quiet considerable – just the question of solar energy, today solar energy
is of the order of 15 to 17 rupees per unit, Today you have a scheme, if you are a solar generator
you can buy electricity from the grid at 3 rupees and sell it back for 12 rupees, you get a large
subsidy. There are other ways of handling these; if you find ways of financing the investment in such
a way that people can afford it in small installments then you can meet part of the financing
problem. There is a man called Harish Hande in Bangalore of the SELCO (a company making all
kinds of solar equipment), he got in touch with people who use lanterns, looked at his/her needs
e.g., fish vendors, veg vendors, women who roll agarbathis and tries to design a lighting system. He
finds a rural bank who can finance them or he has agents who charge them and provide these lamps
and take them back four hours later, with rent at a charge of 10RS. That person is able to recover
and is willing to buy. He has something like 15000 customers. My friend Jaggi told me about an
entrepreneur in Bombay who is making solar lanterns for 1600rs, you put the batteries in the sun for
four hours – it is a simple LED lamp – 1.5 watts of power which is half of this much of light and he
can charge his cell phone battery. I have been using it six hours a day. There is another company
which makes device literally a biscuit size cells – 500rs – you get enough light to read a book, this
is viable. Innovations like this need investment in solar R&D and that is where country like India
has failed. Let me tell you, I looked at this 20 years ago, I wrote a series of 6 articles - Technology
for the poor. At that time there were at least 30 different groups of scientists and engineers working
on solar cells, today they are not even 10(???), we are starving them of investment, we are not
putting money where it is needed, we are not doing a front end research of ultra thin solar energy
cells and we have this National Solar mission announced, which says 20000MW of power to be fed to
the grid, which means huge subsidies of 90000Crores. You can use the same money to promote the
same objective. You have a bunch of bureaucrats who comprehensively mismanage the global energy
programme. Smokeless choolas were talked about 20 years ago, biogas – China has 3 million biogas
plants, which are working, the micro-hydels – we are just ignoring all these. This is where you need
investment. Why are smokeless choolas not promoted? Different people having different food habits
need different designs – get the local mason, the local housewife to design – so this is not a modular
solution. It is better if we give people LPG at a highly subsidised price, but you have to move in
that direction. We don’t have road maps, we just announced these missions. Rural electrification
set up 40 years ago and still we have 1 lakh villages that are not connected out of the 6 lakh
villages. Of the remaining villages that are connected, more than half the populations are not
connected because they cannot afford to it. Electrification is defined as having one large irrigation
pump set and 7% of the population connected, what kind of equalities are we talking about. There is
a huge disparity.
Even in Climate Science in India, out of the 500 elite Climate Scientists, of the 4000 scientists who
contributed to the IPCC report just 15 were Indians. We are not investing is glaciology,
meteorology, forestry, but we have a bunch of science bureaucrats who from these management
institutions. We need that investment.
Rajni Bakshi: Praful, are you following the climate gate scandal? The timing of it is quiet amazing. It
is like the repeat of the Tobacco story.
Praful: I don’t think so, any other questions (19.00)
Rajni : One more question
My name is Jannadatri, All these you have sort of touched the solar energy and gone away at least
to my mind, what10-12 years back they had actually developed the solar Generator and the
intervening 10-12 years like find themselves cost of the panel it is not really reduced in the
proportion to the drop of cost of electronics. Ultimate this is silicon and that is silicon, here we
have Rocket, which goes up to the moon, but we don’t have enough research where we could have
put our fate on a solar panel, it should take the cost of electrification by way of the hardware,
transformers and cables and what have you and then add it and amortize into work it 15 and 20
years? I would like to know if there is a government agency, which is applying its mind to this.
Jaggi Malkhani: Just a quick one, you know Swaminathan Iyer wrote a piece this Sunday about this
whole enforceability and policing thing even in all various scenarios you painted where actually as
long as these politically expedient and it makes political and economic sense it is all very well throw
this numbers of 40% and 25% etc, but as soon as starts becoming economically unviable like he gave
the example of mastrict where all those cleared defined inflation and economic numbers and we are
all thrown out of when it didn’t suit them, and even this threatens to be something like this right all
this numbers and targets that will be thrown up in places like COPENHAGEN and KYOTO so what
your views on that?
Sahan : My name is Sahan I am a student, actually I heard the American Secretary of Energy Steven
Chu who talk about this. And what he spoke about this lot of solutions were, the solutions are
actually cost positive in the sense that within a limited time frame half a year to a year they were
actually giving you a return, but there its energy efficient building of what painting roads white like
that, so how many of these solutions that you have been talking about, actually give those sort of
returns and could be implemented immediately with positive results. So there is no real reason
apart from the political will why they have not been implemented already?
Praful Bidwai: Well the climate game business is of course extremely unfortunate and I think the
fact that some these scientist, I mean its bad that it was stolen and it is bad that stolen by that
Climate change denials and so on it is also true with the certain angle, but some of the mails that
they wrote are definitely open to the interpretations, that they were doctoring the data or tilting it
just so that it fits in. That’s bad science, and I think they should be deeply apologetic for that and I
think no one is trying to make excuse that and so on. This is bad science and we should not do it
this way.
But similar results and infact even more stringent very far more result have been applied by
scientists working exactly on same things of the same place of the different countries. So you might
have heard about climate modeling which accounts for the certain periods, which seems normal
where it is some little cooling. Then I think that the honest question that scientists asking why it is
happening? Not why it is not , Then why that is happening at present that is just what is happening
with the Karakoram Range in the entire greater Himalayan Mountains from the Hindu Kush to the
Indian Himalayans, from the Nepal Himalayas through the Tibetan Plateau, there is only one range
which has shown the slow melting or no recession of a glacial and that’s the Karakoram Range. And
there is a lively discussion in the scientific media on why, what explanation is there is this altitude,
or is it particular interaction of the gases, that height, is it topography, is it moisture, is it big
pattern and so on and those are the questions to ask. But then I think, we will get good answers and
then nobody is in denial that the Karakoram anomaly exists, it is an exceptions.
Well I think similar things have been said about many other phenomenons for instance aero-zones
can have a cooling effects as well as a warming one depending on where they at how much the
positions takes place on ice or on clouds but they get deposited on the clouds actually to act as
cooling agent. Now clouds don’t get formed because of whatever the climatic process then they
would have very good effects. You have to make these points distinction as scientists are doing
now. So I think this does not take away from the basic proposition and I think that the science is of
course probabilistic nobody knows for sure that of a most responsible scientist will give you a range.
This is can we say that 50% of confidence level that arise in temperature about 2 oC intolerable for
this on climate. Ok we start at 95% confidence that 4% is simply intolerable why? But that
confidence level remains but it may or may not rectify this way it, and you know science cannot be
the better than that. Science as different as science can be in or as provoked is thats now society to
act and politicians to act.
Rajni Bakshi: My interest Praful was that are they denials are not backed by very powerful vested
interests and does this incidents shows that they are may be a little more on the ascendant than
they have been on there from the last four five years.
Praful Bidwai: Yes it is very much, infact we know the exposures of that cases of big oil companies
financing the fake NGOs which are very attractive environmentally friendly names which are actually
Cocoptic data and so on so. You know the Iron run followers they are all into this. You can go to
their sites and see, all of them are saying the same thing, that growth is better than the climate
change repudiation leave the climate alone, growth will solve all your problems. They are all
financed by these cooperation and funds and so on so, you also have astrosurfing now, you create a
fake NGO they have any number of websites, they pour resources into them and falsify data and say
that whatever has been written in the IPCC is lot of junk and those are powerful vested interests
And I think there now are new books which are re-published on this whole corporate business of
deny and how is North just this rational system of thought . I mean just to say that we have our
own climate change which denies too. I mean the climate change is happening in the world but it is
not just because of us. We don’t have to do with it anything. We have people who is interested to
deny very eventually some of these will be exposed, and I think the climate change deny anomaly
just like comparing to the Tobacco industry.
You know that incidentally that Swaminathan is. ……climate change---27:30 guy and he is looking
for why things will not fit in, you know what is the things he actually wrote in the science is very
tentative where is pop journalism of course he is exception for pop journalism, it may have black and
white figures and science has no black and white figure and there are no wills of course there are will
in the Climate so, of course is this North is historically very much responsible, of course China and
India are going to become culprits to all, of course both the poor of us, there is no ambiguity about
that and it reaches the conclusion that if you have low probability event and you take the
insurance policy, why not have insurance in climate change, you can’t insurance the Earth for God
sake so, the whole argument is fake.
It is the problem of enforceability, one of the weakest of the Kyoto Protocol is that it did not have
clear penal clauses. Monetary clauses or Penalty clauses for the country not fulfilling its
obligations, where as Canada it is going to exceed its Kyoto Protocol by 30% and it is ashamed for
the country of growth vast resources, is now a days going to shells and most fragile ecosystems to
get oil. I mean they proven among them to do and then said, we are at fault we will carry over of all
burden to the next commitment period and don’t penalize us. And there is no clause that you can
actually involve down the lane. Kyoto was negotiated on a hurry, in fact they came out of the very
vast and impossible and most people had given up hope and suddenly realize lots of gaps and clause
are still remains including verification, enforceability and creation of adaptation, adaptation if there
is a fund who is going to manage, which is the global environmental facility, which is brought by the
World Bank, which is not accountable to the nations of the world or the people of the world unlike
since UN which is far more comfortable non of these issues are come up. But hopefully the whole
idea is Copenhagen could, by the way 8 years of Kyoto coming to defense, negotiated in 1997 it
came into effect only in 2005 so all these things were debated and discussed in and so on there was
not on results, there was hope that the Bali Action Plan which is negotiated in two years ago, which
was like political will now create a framework for a comprehensive even this year in Copenhagen and
that is not happening so, that’s the unfortunate part. The final thing yes I think they are roughly
3-4 categories of the things changes that you can say next without.
One is very low cost I think the pay back period is small where the cost of the change is less than
10$ of tones of carbon, those are, that’s the low hanging prove , that’s not low hanging prove when
you are saying there is huge amount of low hanging prove and I don’t know Steven Chu chosen
painting road white , why can’t the American family use one car less, even if you know just
switching off these entire devices, LEDs on you Microwave oven and Television cells will save your
2000megha Watts. It is like two power plants, that kind of stuff, that you can do a hell of a lot even
within that very low.
The second range is 10-13 but it does not stop at that, but you have to go for the long term, you
have to take the return which we know but we pay it back, in terms of making that decisive
transition through a low carbon economy, where we use less and less plastic, less and less metals
and your traveling less etc.
You live in ecologically sounding buildings, changing to public transport, you are cutting down the
cars is not enough, you need very good public transport. And we have to promote that; in fact we
know that public transport is more than 30 years now. But we have lack of political will. I mean in
Delhi they have not gone beyond this 5km or half km traveling by the bus, because this opposition
we can’t now, the whole media is responsible for all these projects, because, all these are badly
planned, I mean people have to be educated in general… and we see there opinion, but you leave it
to contractor, the contractors and the bureaucracy they will execute the project at that way it is
really got to involve the people implemented the people that way, Grass roots groups, and citizens
association and so on , even educate car owners to take the bus, so it is really much faster, I mean
really miss a lot of things, means we need this is not just a question of cost, it is a question also of
governing and doing things differently, or involving people to initiating a policy, where political
economy issues, and class issues, that are more important and the technology issues.
We have to conclude because I think we run out of the time, we can all stand out side and continue
talking. Let me thank Praful I think its been a fascinating almost 2 hours, that you can probably
continue for another hour with all these issues that you said out for us, and please take that address and
get a free copy one when you can, because after that it will be priced