Doing better on climate change

Doing better on climate change

BJRN LOMBORG


TACKLING global warming, we are often told, is the defining task of our age. An army of pundits tells us that we need to cut emissions, and cut them immediately and drastically. But this argument is clearly losing the battle for hearts and minds.
Global warming has now become the lowest-priority policy problem among Americans, according to a new Pew survey. Another Pew survey showed that China, the worlds biggest emitter, cares even less than the US about global warming. Just 24% of Chinese regard global warming as a very serious problem, making China the worlds least concerned country. In the UK, an Opinium survey shows that most voters think green taxes are mainly for raising cash rather than the environment, and seven out of 10 are not willing to pay more in taxes to combat climate change.
At the same time, the proposed solutions for the problem of global warming have been awful. In Rio de Janeiro in 1992, politicians from wealthy countries promised to cut emissions by 2000, but did no such thing. Leaders met again in Kyoto in 1997 and promised even stricter carbon cuts by 2010, yet emissions keep increasing, and Kyoto has done virtually nothing to change that.
What is most tragic is that when leaders meet in Copenhagen this December, they will embrace more of the same solution: promises of even more drastic emission reductions that, once again, are unlikely to be fulfilled. Measures that consistently over-promise and under-achieve at vast cost do not win hearts and minds in the best of times. And this is manifestly not the best of times. Fortunately, we have a much better option, with a much better chance of success: we should make lowcarbon energy sources like solar power become a real, competitive alternative to old energy sources, instead of the preserve of rich people who want to feel greener.
We should therefore invest on an effective scale in inventing new technology. Contrary to what one would imagine, the Kyoto Protocol has not prompted this research. Indeed, research investment has plummeted since the 1980s and has actually not increased since, even among Kyoto-participating countries.
Investing heavily in R&D of low-carbon energy , solar power, or other new technologies would become cheaper than fossil fuels much more quickly. Estimates show that for every $1 spent, we would do $16 worth of good.
Every country should agree to spend 0.05% of its GDP on low-carbon energy R&D . The total global cost would be 15 times higher than current spending on alternative energy research, yet six times lower than the cost of Kyoto. An agreement of this nature could be the new Kyoto treaty for the world the principal difference being that this protocol would actually make a difference and stand a good chance of global acceptance . Why not do both: invest in R&D , but still promise to cut carbon emissions now
Kyoto-style policies can only be an ever expensive distraction from the real business of weaning us off fossil fuels. There are two fundamental reasons why a focus on reducing carbon emissions is the wrong response to global warming. First, using fossil fuels remains the only way out of poverty for developing countries . Coal provides half of the worlds energy . In China and India, it accounts for about 80% of power generation, and is helping Chinese and Indian labourers enjoy a quality of life their parents could barely imagine. Capping emissions means, effectively, ending this success story for hundreds of millions of people . There is no green energy source affordable enough to replace coal in the near future. Instead, our upsized research will make green energy cheaper than fossil fuels by circa 2050.
Second, immediate carbon cuts are expensive and the cost significantly outweighs the benefits. If the Kyoto agreement had been fully implemented throughout this century, it would have cut temperatures only by an insignificant 0.2C (0.3F), at a cost of $180 billion every year. In economic terms, Kyoto only does about 30 cents worth of good for each dollar spent.
And deeper emission cuts like those proposed by the European Union 20% below 1990 levels within 12 years would reduce global temperatures by only one-sixtieth of one degree Celsius (one-thirtieth of one degree Fahrenheit) by 2100, at a cost of $10 trillion. For every dollar spent, we would do just four cents worth of good.
The saddest thing about the global warming debate is that nearly all of the key protagonists politicians, campaigners, and pundits already know that the old-style agreement that is on the table for Copenhagen this December will have a negligible effect on temperatures.
Unless we change direction and make our actions realistic and achievable, it is already clear that the declarations of success in Copenhagen this December will be meaningless . We will make promises. We will not keep them. And we will waste another decade. Instead, we must challenge the orthodoxy of Kyoto. We can do better.


(The author is an adjunct professor at the
Copenhagen Business School)
(C): Project Syndicate, 2009

CO2-eating molecule new tool against warming

CO2-eating molecule new tool against warming

Washington:The accidental discovery of a bowl-shaped molecule that pulls carbon dioxide out of the air paves the way for exciting new possibilities to deal with global warming.
These possibilities include genetically engineering microbes to manufacture those carbon dioxide catchers , said JA Tossell, a Maryland University scientist who led the study. He noted that another scientist discovered the molecule while doing research unrelated to global climate change.
Carbon dioxide was collecting in the molecule, and the scientist realised that it was coming from air in the lab. Tossell recognised that these qualities might make it useful as an industrial absorbent for removing CO2.
Tossells new computer modelling studies found that the molecule might be wellsuited for removing carbon dioxide directly from air, in addition to its previously described potential use as an absorbent for carbon dioxide from electric power plants and other smoke stacks. These findings are slated for publication in the Aug 3 issue of Inorganic Chemistry. IANS

TOILET PAPER

Like A Babys Bottom

Arun Bhatia


As our house guest, at dinner hed had the usual spicy thali meal with us. In the morning, from our guest bedroom , this American friend said: Hmmm. I know now why you people carry water to the toilet. We desis are on the right track. Have been on the right track for a while now by carrying water to the toilet. For, recent findings are that the tender , delicate American buttock is causing more ecological damage than the nations gas-guzzling cars and fast food. Green campaigners are saying that the American public wants extra soft, quilted and multiply products when they go to the bathroom. Says Alan Hershkowitz, scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council: This is a product that we use for less than three seconds and the environmental devastation from manufacturing it from trees is enormous. Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age.
It is made from virgin wood because longer fibres in virgin wood are easier to lay out and fluff up. But it is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution. The chemicals used in pulp manufacture and cutting down forests have a significant impact. In fact, there is a campaign by Greenpeace on raising American consciousness about the costs of their toilet habits. Greenpeace is countering the big ads by the paper industry honchos, who are pushing luxury brands . The majority of the toilet roll sold in the US comes from virgin forests, says Hershkowitz. Not so in Europe and Latin America, where 40 per cent of toilet paper comes from recycled products. Greenpeace says that we have this myth in the US that recycled anything is so low quality, its like cardboard and impossible to use. The big paper product manufacturers use celebrities to push the so-called comforts of luxury brand toilet paper and tissue . These brands put quilting and pockets of air between several layers of paper. They are damaging the environment. A news report suggested that Kimberly-Clark , a paper products major, spent $25 million in the third quarter of 2008 on advertising to persuade Americans against trusting their bottoms to cheaper brands. I couldnt say all this to the American friend. He was a guestatithi devo bhavah and all that.

THE EVILS OF PLASTIC BAGS

Unfriendly Packaging

We must come up with alternatives to plastic


Plastic is convenient. It is cheap, too. So plastic bags are ubiquitous in cities, towns and hill stations. From mega grocery store chains and retail outlets to pushcart vendors , eateries and restaurants, the plastic bag is the wonder solution to storage and cartage. Sadly it also kills hundreds of thousands of birds, whales, seals and turtles every year the world over. In India, discarded plastic bags choke not only drains leading to flooding in cities but cows, too. The animals eat leftover food-filled bags discarded on the roads, and suffer the consequences. Polythene bags are not biodegradable . In landfills, they leach toxic chemicals into the soil, contaminating groundwater. Polythene bags that are of less than 40-micron thickness are more harmful not only to the environment; as popular wraps for takeaway foods, they impact public health as well.
The issue at hand is to work out how we can reduce the risks with better usage and disposal methods as well as eventually replace plastic with safer options. A complete ban might not be the answer. Recycling is an option, and this could apply not only to recycling better quality plastic bags but also waste paper. The advantage of allowing bags that are more than 40 microns thick is that they have some economic value, and thus provide some incentive for recycling . Another option would be a plastic tax, which would lead to greater reuse of plastic as well as a shift towards more ecologically friendly packaging.
Reuse, reduce and recycle the three Rs of polythene use may be a popular mantra among schoolchildren, but we dont take it seriously enough as adults. The throwaway culture is a major reason for increase in toxic garbage and sewage clogging. There are many alternatives to polythene bags. Encourage the use of jute bags and baskets that were used by shoppers before plastics. Use bags made of recycled paper, or else shopping trolleys and rucksacks or backpacks.
Bangladesh banned thin polythene bags in 2002 to solve the problem of blocked drains and flooding and it has worked. Delhi began with a ban early this year but the momentum seems to be petering out. Biodegradable polythene made of starch is another, less affordable option. A total ban on thin polythene bags coupled with practising the three Rs will help us take significant steps towards curbing the plastic menace.

Good public transport makes for green cities

Dont Miss The Bus

Good public transport makes for green cities

Chhavi Dhingra


If theres one amenity all cities require for better air quality, reduced congestion and noise as well as quicker and safer travel opportunities for all, good and efficient public transport systems would be it. Unfortunately, our cities are centred on the personal vehicle, causing environmental and social damage. Public transport, on its part, has been inadequate . In terms of receiving the governments financial support and priority or general popular acceptance, it has failed miserably. Cities like London, Singapore, Brisbane and Bogota are trying to ensure people abandon personal vehicles and use public transport, at least on weekdays . But we seem to have taken the opposite path, towards the personal two-wheeler or car. No wonder urban transport has become a serious threat to the environment.
Of 4,400 towns and cities in India, less than 15 have government-provided public transport systems. In all other urban locations, public transport is a mix of privately operated formal and informal modes, which function with hardly any regulatory oversight. Though there exists a huge demand for public transport in cities, given the rapid rates of personal motorisation, public transport shares are dwindling in terms of passenger trips and vehicle shares. The share of the public bus reduced from 11 per cent of Indias total vehicle fleet in 1951to 1per cent in 2001. While in 1951, one of every 10 vehicles sold was a bus, today its only one in every 100. The number of registered buses grew at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.6 per cent between 1951 and 2006 while other vehicles registered had a CAGR of almost 11per cent.
According to a TERI study in one of Indias large metropolitan cities, increase in public transports share from 62 per cent to 80 per cent by the year 2020 would lead to a fuel saving of 7,65,320 tonnes of oil equivalent, or about 21per cent of the fuel consumed in the baseline case. In addition, 23 per cent reduction in total vehicles (6,42,328) and road space creation (equivalent to removing 4,18,210 cars off the road) would go along with decreased traffic congestion . Air pollution would also drop significantly : a 40 per cent drop in carbon monoxide, 46 per cent in hydrocarbons, 6 per cent in nitrogen oxides and 29 per cent in particulate matter. Total carbon dioxide mitigation potential for the city over a 15-year period (2005-2020 ) would be 13 per cent. This emphasises the need to bring in more and improved public transport in cities.
Public transport in India involves multiple technical, operational, managerial, financial, institutional and organisational issues. Theres also labour, planning and quality. State and city governments have not done and are still not doing enough to plan and operate attractive transport systems, and unless we as citizens demand action now, we will suffer long vehicle queues, traffic jams on congested roads, dangerous walking conditions and bad air.
With initiatives like the National Urban Transport Policy and the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, public funds have been mobilised to build/acquire requisite public transport infrastructure (BRT, procurement of buses, etc) in 63 mission cities. This is a good move. But what about the remaining 4,000-plus towns and cities Their mobility needs must also be met so that they do not repeat the mistakes of cities that adopted an unsustainable path of personal motorisation thanks to lack of decent public transport.
We need to arrest declining shares of public transport in small and medium cities and preserve and gradually increase them. This does not call for heavy investments or sophisticated infrastructure, only a recognition of the fact that peoples growing mobility needs should be matched by the presence of affordable and attractive public transport. State and city governments will need to ensure this. Providing adequate buses running on schedule, good coverage of routes, safe and easy access to bus stops, basic passenger amenities at waiting areas, comfortable travel environment and good bus headways can go a long way.
Sometimes the most effective solutions are simply good coordination and management. For example , Delhis and Punes BRT and Volvo buses in Bangalore have been in the news for apparently not meeting expectations while systems like shared CNG three-wheelers in Surat and shared Maruti car taxis in Shillong seem to be serving mobility needs, being safe, accessible, affordable and convenient to use. The point being made is each city has unique transportation and traveller characteristics. Especially in small and medium towns where average trip lengths do not exceed 2-3 kms, informal, flexible transport systems should be looked upon as part of the public transport system, not a competition or threat to it. Finally, commitment and will on the part of city authorities are required as demonstrated by cities like London and Bogota. Unfortunately in India, transport does not even feature as a municipal function in most cities, barring a few exceptions.


The writer is associate fellow, transport and urban development, The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi.

Trees made in lab to capture CO2 faster Dont Need Sunlight Or Water To Function

Trees made in lab to capture CO2 faster

Dont Need Sunlight Or Water To Function


T he thought of an artificial tree usually excites memories of building and ornamenting a Christmas centerpiece. But heres an innovation that will put those plastic branches to shame : scientists at Columbia University are developing a structure that can capture carbon 1,000 times faster than a real tree.
Klaus Lackner, a professor of geophysics at the university , has been working on the project since 1998, according to a CNN report, and is optimistic about a near-future application.
Modern improvements in coal-fired power plants have reduced carbon emissions, but Lackner is seeking a different function. The tree would be used to trap carbon that has already been emitted into the air by car gasoline or airplane fuel, CNN reports.
Unlike the real thing, the synthetic tree doesnt need direct sunlight, water, a trunk, or branches to function, as it looks more like a cylinder than a soaring Redwood. The concept, which Lackner says is flexible in size and can be placed nearly anywhere, works by collecting carbon dioxide on a sorbent, cleaning and pressurizing the gas, and releasing it. Similar to the way a sponge collects water, the sorbent would collect carbon dioxide. Resin filters on top would capture CO2 from the ambient air. The CO2 is then removed at the bottom using a series of moisture and compression steps, according to one of the concepts developers.
Each synthetic tree would absorb one ton of carbon dioxide per day, eliminating an amount of gas equivalent to that produced by 20 cars. Lackner is also co-founder and chairman of Tuscon, Arizonabased Global Research Technologies , which is working on the technology.
Although the prospect of this is exciting, manufacturing the structures would be expensive, as each unit would reportedly cost about $30,000 to make.
Nonetheless, Lackner and his team are pushing the project full-force . CNN says he has already met with US energy secretary Steven Chu to discuss the concept, which Lackner says will have a prototype within three years. He is also writing a proposal for the Department of Energy in a continuous effort to raise attention for a concept, which he says is several hundred times more effective than the traditional windmill. AGENCIES

Inequality and global warming

Inequality and global warming

The G-8 failed to develop a consensus to lower carbon emissions not because developing countries, led by China and India, objected to the agreement as the western media would have us believe, says Neeraj Kaushal


IT HAS become a fad in Europe and the US to blame China and India for emitting increasing volumes of greenhouse gases, increasing pollution , and contributing to global warming . Last week, at the summit of the exclusive Group of Eight rich industrialised countries in Italy, the G-8 leaders and western media accused China and India for obstructing the G-8 s initiative to reduce carbon emissions and contain the threat of global warming. On July 9, a front page story in the New York Times charged China and India for undercutting the drive to build a global consensus by the end of this year to reverse the threat of climate change.
Whats going on The last time I checked, India had one of the lowest carbon emissions in the world. China was not as good but still many times better than the G-8 member countries. Why would India or China mind the rich exercise some restrain, and clean up some of the pollution they have emitted over the years I checked again this time the data from the US department of energys Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC). According to CDIAC, in 2004, Indias per capita emission of carbon dioxide was 1.2 metric tonnes. The corresponding number was 20.4 metric tonnes for the United States and 20 metric tonnes for its northern neighbour, Canada. For the other six members of the G-8 countries, Japan, Russia, France, Italy, the UK and Germany, the per capita emission of carbon dioxide hovered between six to 10.5 metric tonnes, and for China 3.8 metric tonnes.
The G-8 wants to reduce worldwide emissions by half and emissions in the industrialised countries by 80% by 2050. The G-8 target is indeed ambitious, but vague as well. It is not clear whether the G-8 goal is to reduce the emissions from the current levels or from some historical level. The timeline of the G-8 target is also fuzzy. Would it be a 20% reduction in each decade or a 10% reduction in the first three decades and 50% cut in the last decade or some other combination There are no clear short-term or even medium-term targets.
Even if the developing countries were to trust that the G-8 has every intention of lowering carbon emissions, it does not seem that the poor countries are getting a fair deal. Even by 2050 after reducing emissions by 80% an average American (Canadian) will pollute the world at a level four times higher than an average Indian . If we were to set a carbon emission target on the principle that all human beings have just about equal right to pollute the world, the G-8 nations will have to reduce emissions by more than 80% and much sooner. China has asked the G-8 nations to lower their carbon emissions to 40% below the 1990 levels by 2020. Now thats ambitious too, but at least this is a shorter timeline and reflects a more serious approach towards global warming.
The G-8 failed to develop a consensus to lower carbon emissions not because developing countries, led by China and India, objected to the agreement as the western media would have us believe. It is because the G-8 leaders were not able to reach an accord on short-term targets. The US does not want to commit to any short-term targets. The American Constitution does not give its President the authority to commit to any such targets with foreign countries. Anything that the US President promises will have to be approved by Congress. And if recent policy initiatives are an indication, there is little evidence that legislators in the US will agree to such drastic reduction in carbon gas emissions. Last month, the US House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey Bill that promised to lower carbon emission by 16-17 % by 2020.
EXPERTSthink that the short- to medium-term effect of the Bill on carbon emissions would be nil. The Bill has to go before the US Senate where it is expected to meet stiff resistance. It may be easier for President Obama to convince the G-17 , the group of 17 countries that produce 80% of the worlds pollutants, to consider lowering emissions than to convince the US Congress to impose such targets on American industries and consumers.
Carbon emissions are directly related to a countrys level of economic development . Rich countries consume more energy and have higher emission levels and poor countries consume less and have much modest emissions. It is unlikely that developing countries would agree to absolute cuts in carbon emissions because such cuts would impose limits on their economic growth. They may agree to a somewhat lower increase in future emissions . Clearly, rich industrialised countries have to take the lead on reducing carbon emissions. They also need to provide money to developing countries so that they can pursue economic growth with cleaner sources of energy.
At the summit last week, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown did propose that the rich nations should create a $100 billion fund to help the poor countries deal with climate change. But it seems no one paid any attention to his suggestion. China is pushing for a much higher investment by the richer countries to reverse climate change. If the industrialised countries want to make any progress in reducing carbon emission, they need to have fair and rational goals.
Global warming and climate change are affecting inhabitants in the rich and poor countries. Even though rich countries produce bulk of the pollutants, global warming is hurting people living in the poor countries as well. Take, for instance, global warming which is disrupting the monsoons and causing the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, which may create huge water shortages for India and China. Scientists have been warning for years that the Ganga glacier may melt before the end of the 21st century, because of climate change, affecting the lives of billions. Reduction in emission of greenhouse gases would help not just the rich world, but the poor world as well. Leaders of developing countries, therefore, have to aggressively push the rich countries to lower their carbon emissions, and make sure that they abide by these targets.

The issue of climate change

The issue of climate change

MANOJ PANT


COMEDecember and developed and developing countries will meet in Copenhagen to deliberate the issue of climate change. The issues are also well known. At the base is the Kyoto Protocol under which signatory countries agree to peg their carbon emission levels at or below some historical level, namely, 1990. Almost all the countries are members of the protocol. However, while India and China have ratified the treaty (indicated their acceptance of reduction in emissions) the United States has still not done so. Other developed countries have committed to some target level of emission reduction by 2012 (about 3-8 % of the 1990 level). Finally, developing countries are not bound to any target emission reduction commitments.
There is already a mechanism (called the Clean Development Mechanism) for trading carbon credits so that developed countries (in particular, the EU countries), who have to reduce their emission, can achieve this reduction level by paying for green projects in developing projects. The logic is that it is total global reductions which matter not those in any one country. By sponsoring a green project in a developing country the EU and developed countries are then paying for already having emission levels way above the permissible levels, by helping to keep emission down in developing countries. The US, of course, is not a part of this market for emission reduction as it has not indicated any intention yet of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. The CDM then represents a market solution to global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.
So what will the Copenhagen meeting do First, it has to bring the US on board. As a country which still constitutes about 35% of world consumption and a still larger share of world production, global emission reductions are hardly meaningful without US commitments. Second, the US in particular is probably going to insist that developing countries (the large ones, India and China, in particular) also commit to target emission levels. With Barack Obama not as opposed ratifying the Kyoto Protocol as George Bush was, the Copenhagen meet will really boil down to negotiating the second issue.
The parallels with the Uruguay round trade negotiations under the WTO are quite remarkable. Prior to 1995, developing countries were signatories to GATT but not committed to any tariff reductions (the non-reciprocity clause). Post-1995 the introduction of the single undertaking clause meant that non-reciprocity was history and developing countries had to also commit to tariff reduction levels but to a lesser degree than developing countries. Since 1995, developing countries have argued (rightly so) that developed countries have to show commitment to opening their markets to textile and agricultural exports of developing countries before any new commitments from developing countries.
The similarities are obvious. For the principle that guides negotiations at the WTO is an increase in world trade. At Copenhagen the principle would be reduction in global emissions. Unfortunately, the similarity ends there. WTO is committed to increasing world trade in private goods and services between firms in different countries. In Copenhagen the issue is decrease in world emissions which are in the nature of public goods. The difference needs some elaboration.
It could well be argued that the CDM will achieve a market solution to reduction in global emissions. But scientists argue that this would not be sufficient to achieve the reductions necessary to halt global warming. At the WTO, the current stalemate in the Doha round only postpones trade expansion to a future date: not an earth-shaking event. But failure at Copenhagen would have much more disastrous consequences.
In a fascinating book, Collapse, Jared Diamond has argued that, historically, one root cause of collapse of societies over the last many centuries has been neglect of environmental issues. The main problem seems to be that environmental degradation is often non-reversible . This is particularly true of forests which impact all the other elements , soil, water, oceans, etc. Forests, are also a major defence against excessive carbon emissions.
So what can we do One option is to assume technology will now come to the rescue and/or that global warming is a myth. But what if we are wrong After all, the current technological developments in cooling technology from ammonia to freon gases is one of the root causes of greenhouse gas emission. Can we then proceed as we seem to do today on the basis of a North-South confrontation and tradeoffs calculated from CGE models The latter is an especially dangerous option given the extreme susceptibility of such models to initial assumptions.
Climate change has disastrous consequences and there are no tradeoffs. Maybe this is one issue we should leave to the scientists

PLASTIC BAGS

Environmental bodies feel that plastic bags have to be phased out and that banning them is the only feasible solution as govt failed to keep the menace in check


Environmentalists on Thursday expressed dismay over minister of state for environment and forestss comment that a ban on plastic bags was a bad idea. Bharati Chaturvedi, director of NGO Chintan, said the Centre should in fact be disincentivising plastics and giving fiscal incentives to alternatives. Plastic bags were banned not because the municipality was unable to do its work but because it was a petroleum product. How can plastic be seen out of context Society has come to a consensus that plastic bags have to be phased out to reduce our carbon footprints. The government cant ignore that, she said. Even if one were to go by Rameshs claim that the inability of the civic bodies to handle waste in cities led to such a ban, it is important to note that even if the waste was collected, the country has no mechanism to deal with it. Dikshit accepted that two incineration plants the government was trying to set up had not materialised. Incineration is a highly expensive process. European cities have spent millions of Euros on their plants to ensure emission control. We in India do not have such resources, said Agarwal. Vinod Jain, on whose PIL plastic bags were banned in the city, pointed out that various government agencies had failed completely in monitoring the recycling and manufacturing units, and in the citys context, banning was the only foolproof solution. The plastic industry has failed to take any responsibility for dealing with plastic waste though the court gave it as much as four years. Agreed that plastic on its own might not be hazardous, but what does the minister intend doing with all the waste, he asked.
In Delhi, the implementation of the plastic ban had not been very successful though some indivuduals and market associations have taken the initiative to switch over to alternatives. Thanks to the ban, several small scale units manufacturing cloth and jute bags have also sprung up. Recently, the government announced that it had finally formulated the process under which defaulters will be penalised for using plastic bags in prohibited areas.
neha.lalchandani@timesgroup .com

POINT Counterpoint


Union minister JAIRAM RAMESH says: Switching over to paper bags would lead to cutting down of trees

But...

Recycled paper, being promoted by the Delhi govt, does not entail cutting down of trees. Most low-end paper bag production use old newspapers
Ministerspeak: Plastic is chemically inert and not per-se hazardous to health or environment

But...

PVC in plastic is definitely a cause of concern. India does not have any mechanism for handling the waste in which case plastic can clog drains, water bodies and leach into soil at landfill sites
Ministerspeak: Plastic has been banned only in India and Bangladesh

But...

The list of countries that took action against plastic is long


Bangladesh

| Total ban in 2002


Zanzibar

| Complete ban in 2006


Ireland

| Levying heavy fine since 2006


San Francisco

| Became first US state to ban bags from large stores in 2007


China

| Banned free plastic bags in 2008. Production, sale and use of ultra thin bags are prohibited


Switzerland

| One needs to pay for plastic bags

PLASTIC FACTS

500 billion-1 trillion plastic bags used worldwide each year Use started in department stores in late 1970s They were introduced in supermarket chains in the early 1980s First plastic bags for food appeared in the US in 1957 North America and western Europe account for nearly 80% of world's plastic usage A quarter of plastic bags used in wealthy nations are produced in Asia

RECYCLING OF WASTE PLASTIC

No of people associated directly in Delhi | 2 lakh Places where recyling is taking place | Mongolpuri, Seelampur, Narela, Bawana, Mundka

RECYCLING BAGS



1

Plastic waste and scraps collected by ragpickers taken to the scrap markets

2

Scrap sorted out and sold to pellet (danna) manufacturers

3

Waste shredded, washed, treated and melted into pellets

4

Pellets sold to manufacturers who process it into polythene bags

BAN THE BAG



We want to encourage Delhiites to get rid of plastic bags completely. In place of plastics, we are actively encouraging jute and recycled paper

Sheila Dikshit CHIEF MINISTER, DELHI



It makes sense to ban plastic bags if there are alternatives available. And in this case, alternatives are present. This will reduce the load of non-biodegradable waste at the landfills

Kushal Yadav CO-ORDINATOR , TOXINS CAMPAIGN, CSE



Failure to manage waste is not entirely the municipality's fault. The Centre
also needs to take an initiative to formulate a plastic waste management policy

Ravi Agarwal DIRECTOR, TOXICSLINK



There is societal consensus on the fact that use of plastic has to be brought
down. The ban was not about plastic as much as about not using a petroleum product

Bharati Chaturvedi DIRECTOR, CHINTAN



The country has no mechanism to handle plastic waste at present.
Will the minister give a personal undertaking for plastic waste management if he doesn't want a ban on it

Vinod Jain DIRECTOR, TAPAS

G8 climate talks divide rich and poor countries

G8 climate talks divide rich and poor countries

10 Jul, 2009 0640hrs IST AP

L'AQUILA (Italy): The chasm between rich and poor on how to address climate change burst into the open at the G8 summit on Thursday, showing how difficult it will be to persuade the world to make lifestyle and economic sacrifices needed to save the planet from global warming.

President Barack Obama urged emerging economies to do more to curb global warming, while the UN chief demanded developed countries set an example and take more concrete steps to reduce pollution.

Especially reluctant to commit to change were two budding powers that are just now getting comfortable economically: India and China.

Obama said industrialized countries, the United States included, had a ``historic responsibility'' to take the lead in emissions reduction efforts because they have a larger carbon footprint than developing nations.

``And I know that in the past, the United States has sometimes fallen short of meeting our responsibilities. So, let me be clear: Those days are over,'' he said.

But he said developing nations have to do their part, as well. ``With most of the growth in projected emissions coming from these countries, their active participation is a prerequisite for a solution,'' Obama said.

Two days of negotiations between the world's major industrial polluters and developing nations failed to make any major breakthrough on firm commitments to reduce carbon emissions. While both sides said for the first time that global average temperatures shouldn't rise over 2 degrees Celsius, they didn't set any joint targets to reach that goal.

And significantly, the Group of Eight industrialized nations made no firm commitment to help developing countries financially cope with the effects of rising seas, increased droughts and floods, or provide the technology to make their carbon-heavy economies more climate friendly.

The results indicate how difficult it will be to craft a new climate change treaty by December, when nations from around the world will gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, to negotiate a successor to the 1987 Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.

``That leaves us with quite a lot of work to do,'' said the chief U.N. climate change negotiator, Yvo de Boer.

The comments came at the conclusion of a meeting of the 17-nation Major Economies Forum, which includes the G8 - Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan and the United States - and other emerging countries: China, which has overtaken the U.S. as the world's biggest polluter, and India, which is close behind. Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Australia, South Korea and the European Union also are in that club of the world's major polluters.

The G8 did set a long-term commitment to reduce their carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. But they made no shorter-term target, despite warnings from a U.N. panel that they must cut emissions between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020 to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels 150 years ago.

Most scientists agree that even a slight increase in average temperatures would wreak havoc on farmers around the globe, as seasons shift, crops fail and storms and droughts ravage fields.

Countries like China and India - the next generation of big polluters - want the industrial countries to commit to reducing carbon emissions by 40 percent over the next decade before they commit to any reductions of their own. Without that commitment from the G8, they refused to make any targets of their own.

``The ground for a breakthrough can only be prepared if the G8 leaders reach consensus on the midterm binding goals of cutting greenhouse emission and stop asking the developing nations to act first as an excuse for their not committing to the binding goals,'' China's official Xinhua News Agency said in a commentary earlier this week.

The failures earned the G8 a sharp rebuke from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

``The policies that they have stated so far are not enough, not sufficient enough,'' Ban said Thursday. ``This is the science. We must work according to the science. This is politically and morally imperative and a historic responsibility for the leaders for the future of humanity, even for the future of planet Earth.''

Obama did announce Thursday that the Group of 20 major economies would take up the climate financing issue at their meeting in September in Pittsburgh - a move environmentalists said could help break the logjam while sending developing countries a signal that the G8 is serious about financing.

``To get the finance ministers focused on this topic is a useful way of pushing forward one of the key agenda items,'' de Boer said.

He stressed that it was perfectly understandable for developing countries to refuse to commit to reduction targets when they have no idea how they're going to pay for them or what industrialized countries are going to commit to in the short term.

That failure of the G8 ``made it very much a black box for the developing countries ... because if you don't know what the industrial countries are going to commit to by 2020 and you don't know what financing is going to be on the table for developing countries, it becomes very much a leap of faith.''

Annie Petsonk, lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund, said that the outcome of the talks were natural given that there are five months to go before the Copenhagen treaty summit.

``It's no surprise if developing nations aren't rushing in to sign up for new goals and targets right away,'' she said. ``This is a negotiation after all. But the starting gun has sounded and everyone knows they need to go home and start thinking seriously about what they can bring to the table.''

Breaking the climate deadlock

Breaking the climate deadlock

If we focus on clear, practical and achievable goals, major reductions in carbon emissions can be made so as to ensure that the world will fashion a radical new approach to climate change within a manageable time frame, says Tony Blair

TODAY, JULY 9, THE leaders of the worlds largest economies are meeting in LAquila , Italy, at the Major Economies Forum (MEF) to discuss progress towards a new global climate agreement. In six months, a deal is supposed to be struck in Copenhagen , so the MEF meeting comes at a vital moment. When many of the same leaders met in April to address the economic crisis, they rightly pledged to do whatever is necessary. The same spirit needs to animate the LAquila meeting.
There is enormous good will to do so. The new US administration is supporting strong American action. China is setting ambitious targets for reducing energy intensity and making massive investments in renewable energy. India has put forward its own action plan. Europe has set a goal of cutting emissions by 30% below 1990 levels by 2020 if there is an ambitious global agreement. Japan has published its proposals for major carbon reductions. Across the world, commitments are forthcoming.
But practical challenges remain. What is being asked is that global emissions be less than half their 1990 levels by 2050, having peaked before 2020. Since emissions from the developing countries are on the whole lower than those of the developed world and will need to continue to rise in the short-term as they maintain economic growth and address poverty it has been proposed that developed countries cut emissions by at least 80% relative to 1990 by 2050, with major steps towards this goal over the next decade.
Developing countries will also need to play their part, significantly slowing and peaking emissions growth in the coming decades . For the US, such commitments would mean cutting emissions to around onetenth of todays per capita level, while for China itd mean creating a new low-carbon model of economic development. For all countries, this is a major challenge a revolution that implies a huge shift in policy.
The good news is that if we focus on clear, practical, and achievable goals, major reductions can be made in order to ensure that, whatever the precise interim target, the world will fashion a radical new approach within a manageable time frame. A new report from the Breaking the Climate Deadlock project, a strategic partnership between my office and The Climate Group, shows how major reductions even by 2020 are achievable if we focus action on certain key technologies, deploy policies that have been proven to work, and invest now in developing those future technologies that will take time to mature.
Perhaps the most interesting fact to emerge is that fully 70% of the reductions needed by 2020 can be achieved by investing in three areas: increasing energy efficiency, reducing deforestation, and use of lower-carbon energy sources, including nuclear and renewables. Implementing just seven proven policies renewable energy standards (e.g., feed-in tariffs or renewable portfolio standards); industry efficiency measures; building codes; vehicle efficiency standards; fuel carbon content standards; appliance standards , and policies for reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) can deliver these reductions.
All seven policies have already been successfully implemented in countries around the world, but they need scaling up. While cap-and-trade systems or other means of pricing carbon emissions can help provide incentives for businesses to invest in lowcarbon solutions, in the short term at least, these seven policy measures and direct action and investment by governments are needed to achieve the targets.
IN THE longer term, we also need technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), expanded nuclear power, and new generations of solar energy, together with the development of technologies whose potential or even existence is still unknown . The important thing for Copenhagen is that decisions are taken now for investments that will yield benefits later.
For example, the overwhelming majority of new power stations in China and India necessary to drive the industrialisation that will lift hundreds of millions out of poverty will be coal-fired . That is just a fact. So developing CCS or an alternative that allows coal to become clean energy is essential for meeting the 2050 goal. But we need to invest now, seriously and through global collaboration, so that by 2020 we are in a position to scale up CCS or be ready to deploy other alternatives.
Renaissance of nuclear power will require a big expansion of qualified scientists and engineers. Electric vehicles will need large adjustments to infrastructure. Smart grid systems can enable big savings in emissions, but require a plan for putting them into effect. These measures will take time, but require investment now. Meanwhile , in the short term, low energy lighting and efficient industrial motors may sound obvious, but we are nowhere near using them as extensively as we could.
So we know what we need to do, and we have tools available to achieve our goals. MEF leaders can, therefore, have confidence in adopting the interim and longterm targets recommended by the scientific community: keeping warming to below two degrees celsius; peaking emissions within the next decade; and at least halving global emissions by 2050 versus 1990.
Developed countries will be able to commit to reducing their emissions by 80% versus 1990 by mid-century , as many have already done, and provide the necessary financial and technology support for developing countries adaptation and mitigation efforts. With that support, developing countries in turn will need to design and implement Low-Carbon Growth Plans that significantly slow and eventually peak their emissions growth. By making these commitments, the MEF leaders, whose countries account for more than threequarters of global emissions, would lay a firm foundation for success in Copenhagen.
Between LAquila and Copenhagen, there will undoubtedly be difficult discussions over interim targets for developed countries. While such targets are important , what matters most is agreement on the measures that ultimately will set the world on a new path to a low carbon future.
For years, the emphasis has rightly been on persuading people that there must be sufficient will to tackle climate change. But leaders, struggling to cope with this challenge even amidst economic crisis, need to know that there is also a way. Only by combining the two will we succeed. Fortunately , such a way immensely challenging but nonetheless feasible exists.

CO2 EMISSIONS

World Bank report backs Indias stand

New Delhi: India, for decades, has demanded at the UN climate negotiations that it must be given a greater carbon space in the atmosphere to allow its 600 million poor access to electricity. The industrialized nations have argued that if India grows and powers its poor, the already limited space left in the atmosphere to spew out GHG gases would lead to irreversible and dangerous climate change. The World Bank report , to be released in September, has now backed the Indian stance that the high-income countries have contributed a disproportionate share of the worlds carbon emissions and still continue to do so.
India and other developing countries have long contended that the massive emissions from the rich nations since the industrialization era have choked up the atmosphere and left little space for other nations emerging late on the economic growth pathway to increase their power production.
Earlier studies have shown that historical emissions amount to about 1,100 tonnes of CO2 per capita for the UK and the US, compared with 66 tonnes for China and 23 tonnes for India. Since 1840, seven out of every 10 tonnes of CO2 emitted has come from the rich countries.

Where are the global problem solvers

Where are the global problem solvers

We need to think hard, and collaboratively, about the worlds real technological options, and then pursue a common global framework that allows us to move into a new era, one based on sustainable technologies, says Jeffrey D Sachs


ONE odd and disturbing aspect of global politics today is the confusion between negotiations and problem-solving . According to a timetable agreed in December 2007, we have six months to reach a global agreement on climate change in Copenhagen. Governments are engaged in a massive negotiation, but they are not engaged in a massive effort at problemsolving . Each country asks itself, How do I do the least and get the other countries to do the most, when they should be asking instead, How do we cooperate to achieve our shared goals at minimum cost and maximum benefit
These might sound like the same thing, but they are not. Addressing the problem of climate change requires reducing emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, which in turn involves choices in technology , some of which already exists and much of which needs to be developed. For example, coal plants, if they are to remain a major part of the energy mix, will need to capture and store their CO2, a process called carbon capture and sequestration , or CCS for short. Yet this technology remains unproved.
Similarly, we will need renewed public confidence in a new generation of nuclear power, with plants that are safe and reliably monitored. We will need new technologies to mobilise large-scale solar power, wind power, and geothermal power. We might try to tap bio-fuels , but only in forms that do not compete with food supplies or with precious environmental assets.
The list goes on. We will need improved energy efficiency, through green buildings and more efficient appliances. We will need to switch from cars with internal-combustion engines to hybrids, plug-in hybrids, battery-powered , and fuel-cell-powered vehicles.
Achieving a new generation of electric vehicles will require a decade of public and private partnership to achieve basic technological development (such as improved batteries), a more robust electric grid, new infrastructure for re-charging the automobiles, and much more. Similarly , it will take a decade of public and private investments to demonstrate the feasibility of coal-fired plants that capture their carbon dioxide.
The switchover to new technologies is not mainly a matter of negotiation but of engineering, planning, financing, and incentives . How can the world most effectively develop, demonstrate, and then spread these new technologies Where the benefits are unlikely to accrue to private investors, who should pay for the early demonstration models, which will require billions of dollars How should we preserve private incentives for research and development while committing to transfer successful technologies to developing countries
These are pressing, unsolved questions. Yet the global negotiations on climate change are focusing on a different set of questions. The negotiations are mainly about which groups of countries should cut their emissions, by how much, how fast, and relative to which baseline year. Countries are being pressed to cut emissions by 2020 by certain percentage targets , without much serious discussion about how the cuts can be achieved. The answers depend, of course, on which lowemission technologies will be available, and on how fast they can be deployed.
CONSIDER the United States. To cut emissions sharply, the US will need to switch over this decade to a new fleet of automobiles, powered increasingly by electricity. The US will also have to decide on the renewal and expansion of its nuclear power plants, and on the use of public lands to build new renewable energy plants, especially using solar power. And the US will need a new power grid to carry renewable energy from low-density population sites such as the southwestern deserts for solar power and the northern plains for wind power to the highdensity populations of the coasts. Yet all of this requires a national plan, not simply a numerical target for emissions reduction.
Similarly, China, like the US, can reduce CO2 emissions through increased energy efficiency and a new fleet of electric vehicles. But China must consider the question from the vantage point of a coal-dependent economy. Chinas future choices depend on whether clean coal can really work effectively and on a large scale. Thus, Chinas emissions path depends crucially on early testing of the CCS technologies.
A true global brainstorming approach would first discuss the best technological and economic options available, and how to improve these options through targeted research and development and better economic incentives. The negotiations would discuss the range of options open to each country and region from CCS to solar, wind, and nuclear power and would sketch a timetable for a new generation of low-emission automobiles, recognising that market competition as well as public financing will set the actual pace.
Based on these building blocks, the world could agree on allocating the costs for speeding the development and spread of new low-emission technologies. This global framework would underpin national and global targets for emissions control and for monitoring the progress of the technological overhaul. As new technologies are proven, the targets would become more stringent. Of course, part of the strategy would be to create market incentives for new low-emission technologies , so that inventors could develop their own ideas with the prospect of large profits if those ideas are right.
My plea to discuss plans and strategies alongside specific emissions targets might seem to risk impeding the negotiations. But if we dont have a strategy to accompany our targets, the worlds governments might not accept such targets in the first place, or might accept them cynically, without any intention of actually meeting them.
We need to think hard, and collaboratively , about the worlds real technological options, and then pursue a common global framework that allows us to move into a new era, one based on feasible and sustainable technologies for energy, transport, industry, and buildings.

Dutch twosome pedals rickshaw culture home

Dutch twosome pedals rickshaw culture home

Anindya Chattopadhyay | TNN

New Delhi: The humble cycle-rickshaw just got a leg-up .
One of its league is on its way to Holland thanks to the fascination of two Dutch University students who were so much impressed by the unique three-wheeler that they bought one from Pahargunj on Tuesday and got it shipped to their homeland.
Michael Dordrecht (18) Peter-Paul Vossepoea (20) have just finished school and are on a tour of India. The duo is ecstatic about their new buy and cant wait to wheel it to the university when they join it on returning home. But they are aware that their unusual vehicle that cost them a measly Rs 8,000, adding to its many attractions may suffer from a scarcity of spares back home, so they have also bought eight tyres, a couple of tubes and some nuts and bolts for their new acquisition.
Said Peter: There is a preoccupation with eco-friendly transport in Dutch campuses . So, we have to cycle a lot but that is not always comfortable because of the sun. This is a unique mode of transport because you can take passengers, it has a hood and is perfectly eco-friendly .
But their transport needed some modifications for its Dutch sojourn. The hood had to be readjusted to suit the Dutch height. On an average , we are six feet so this was a little small. We have taken care of that too. Getting a permit will not be an issue, said Michael, adding that the rickshaw will make for a comfortable ride from their home in Rioustraat to the university . The rickshaw has been done up too on either side of it are the names of its two owners Michael and Peter, written in Hindi. At the centre is the registration number of the rickshaw DL-0909 .
The sight of two firangs on a rickshaw one as passenger and the other as the rickshaw-puller caused much mirth in the crowded lanes of Pahargunj. Peter also obliged some of his amused onlookers by giving three passengers free rides.
Proud of how they are transporting the great Indian culture to Holland, Michael said: If some day rickshaws are abolished in India, there will always be a small city in Holland which will have one.
anindya.chattopadhyay

GREENHOUSE GASES DUE TO AIRCONDITIONING

Gas that saved ozone layer making world warmer

Research Shows Replacements Of Ozone-Destroying CFCs Are Powerful Greenhouse Gases


The green movements greatest triumph the abolition of ozone-destroying CFC gases in the 1980s may become its biggest embarrassment after research showing that their replacements are sharply accelerating global warming.
CFC, or chlorofluorocarbon , gases were widely deployed in air-conditioning and refrigeration units before they were found to destroy the ozone layer and banned under the 1987 Montreal Protocol. They were replaced by HFCs hydrofluorocarbons gases which have far less effect on ozone but which have since been revealed as extremely powerful greenhouse gases. A tonne of HFC-23 used in refrigeration has the same global warming potential as 14,800 tonnes of CO2. A tonne of HFC-134 a, widely used in vehicle air-conditioning units, is equivalent to 1,430 tonnes of CO2. The problem has been increased by the rising demand for refrigeration and air-conditioning because of economic expansion and population growth in Asia.
A study out this week will warn that, by 2050, HFCs could account for up to 19% of global warming. By 2050, the contribution of HFCs to global warming will be more than that of current global CO2 emissions from houses and office buildings, said Guus Velders of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, who did the research.
The contribution of HFCs to global warming is currently small, but can increase to between 9% and 19% of the total CO2 contribution by 2050.
He found that by 2050 the demand for HFCs was likely to have increased by 800% compared with todays figures.
A separate study conducted by the Environmental Investigation Agency, a campaign group, found the biggest source of HFC emissions was air-conditioning in vehicles.

SPIRITUAL BY NATURE

SPIRITUAL BY NATURE

Once upon a time, we knew how to live amicably with nature, in a spirit of give and take. We need to go back to the future and redefine development, says Narayani Ganesh

Rome: One hundred legislators from across the world converged here to participate in the G8+5 Legislators Forum on Climate Change ahead of next months G-8 Summit in the Italian city of LAquila . Add two-dozen journalists and pundits and our guilt quotient shoots up with our expanding carbon footprint. But as the conference wore on, my thoughts began to wander
As a little girl, I would often tour the garden with my grandmother. She would gently pluck leaves off the Tulsi plant for her daily puja. She would first circumambulate the plant three times, chanting a shloka, asking it seemed, permission to take a few leaves. Then she would offer water to the plant, seeking its blessings. Sometimes when she felt tired, she would ask me to get the leaves for her, while she bathed little images of gods and goddesses in her sacred alcove . One evening I decided to be better organized. So off I went after dinner , plucked the Tulsi, carefully wrapped the leaves and left them in the refrigerator, pulling them out triumphantly in the morning, very pleased with myself.
The normally sweet-tempered grandmother was livid. Dont you know that you should never pluck leaves and flowers at night When I asked her why, she answered that nocturnal insects and bugs might bite you. More important, she said, the plants are asleep at night, so it was insensitive to disturb them. The real reason was probably more scientific. There is no photosynthetic activity at night, so plants tend to release more carbon dioxide than oxygen. The converse would be true during the day. If you wander around a garden full of trees and plants at night, you might end up inhaling more carbon dioxide . You might also tread upon and kill garden insects or startle them, inviting an attack.
Whatever the reason, Indic tradition was environmentally sensitive ; anything that was an integral part of nature was considered sacred . Children were given lots of ecofriendly advice dont throw garbage in the river; dont tug at leaves and branches, treat them gently ; dont desecrate river banks; dont sleep under trees at night; wash regularly . The reasons given were and still are probably because I say so or otherwise God will punish you! But, these practices surely evolved out of a need to live amicably with ones natural surroundings, in a spirit of give and take.
Ecological sanctity is something that is common to traditional systems across the world. It is not unusual for almost every culture to praise the sun, offer thanks to water bodies and plants, conserve water, leave some land fallow to enable rejuvenation , forbid fishing or tree-cutting for certain periods of the year when its the breeding season for fish or growing time for plants.
So how and when did the regression begin, leading us to the brink of a planetary-scale catastrophe How did the climate change scenario get played out, with us as villains, spewing pollution into the air and disgorging the bowels of the earth, destroying forests and species and accelerating global warming What if glacial melting causes sea levels to rise too fast for us to adapt to face the challenges and mitigate the threat
As hunter-gatherers , we might have gone hungry if we killed too many animals, upset the food chain, natural balance and flora and fauna. We would have killed the goose that laid the golden egg. When we learnt to cultivate the land, we settled down to an agricultural way of life. Yet we were careful not to overdo it, for we would have sucked all the nutrients out. But with industrialization , things changed.
Most would say thats about the time when industrialization enabled us to produce more than we needed our relationship with other constituents of Planet Earth began to flounder. So the regression began when currency and trade expanded and flourished in place of the barter system. When faster, higher, stronger no longer referred only to the aspirations of Olympics contestants but translated as the way to achieve steadily increasing rates of economic growth measured in terms of Gross National Product (GNP). When the worth of a country came to be measured by how much it produced and consumed rather than how much it conserved. When people bought products and services even when they didnt really need them.
Instead of living off the land, we began to exploit it. The baseline was no longer peaceful coexistence with nature. The Judeo-Christian tradition was misinterpreted as unbridled licence to humans to exploit natural resources in the belief that man was created to have dominion over all other species: And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth
The Talmud and rabbis who interpret scripture stress that dominion did not mean making everything else subservient to man, but acting responsibly for yourself and others. It certainly does not sanction the unlimited right to use and abuse animals, minerals and fossil fuels. We just need to know when to stop extracting stuff. As in any other relationship, balance and harmony are all about reciprocity and mutual respect.
Subjective though they are, annual opinion polls gauging a peoples happiness show that there is really no direct correlation between a countrys GNP and its happiness quotient. Perhaps this is because GNP thrives on expansion of consumption and the production of goods and services but happiness is determined by contentment. This is not to say the world needs immediately to revert to the barter system, shut down all factories, dump motorized transport and start walking.
Obviously, we cannot go back to the pre-industrial era, throwing away the benefits of medical cures, easy transport, instant communication, access to knowledge and skills. But we do need to redefine development and its objectives so that they are more sustainable not by eschewing technology but by embracing it to enable a life of harmony and sustainability , care and compassion, mutual benefit and contentment.

Scared silly about global warming

Scared silly about global warming 

BJRN LOMBORG 


THE continuous presentation of scary stories about global warming in the popular media makes us unnecessarily frightened. Even worse, it terrifies our kids. 
Al Gore famously depicted how a sea-level rise of 20 feet (six metres) would almost completely flood Florida, New York, Holland, Bangladesh and Shanghai, even though the UN estimates that sea levels will rise 20 times less than that, and do no such thing. When confronted with these exaggerations, some of us say that they are for a good cause, and surely there is no harm done if the result is that we focus even more on tackling climate change. A similar argument was used when George W Bushs administration overstated the terror threat from Saddam Husseins Iraq. 
But this argument is astonishingly wrong. Such exaggerations do plenty of harm. Worrying excessively about global warming means that we worry less about other things. We focus , for example, on global warmings impact on malaria instead of tackling the half-billion people suffering from malaria today with prevention and treatment policies that are much cheaper and dramatically more effective than carbon reduction would be. 
Exaggeration also wears out the publics willingness to tackle global warming. If the planet is doomed, people wonder, why do anything A record 54% of US voters now believe the news media make global warming appear worse than it really is. A majority of people now believes incorrectly that global warming is not even caused by humans. In the UK, 40% believe that global warming is exaggerated and 60% doubt that it is man-made . 
But the worst cost of exaggeration is the unnecessary alarm that it causes particularly among children. Recently, I discussed climate change with a group of Danish teenagers. One of them worried that global warming would cause the planet to explode and all the others had similar fears. 
In the US, the ABC television network recently reported that psychologists are starting to see more neuroses in people anxious about climate change. An article in The Washington Post cited nine-year-old Alyssa, who cries about the possibility of mass animal extinctions from global warming. In her words: I dont like global warming because it kills animals , and I like animals. From a child who is yet to lose all her baby teeth: I worry about [global warming] because I dont want to die. 
The newspaper also reported that parents are searching for productive outlets for their eight-year-olds obsessions with dying polar bears. They might be better off educating them and letting them know that, contrary to common belief, the global polar bear population has doubled and perhaps even quadrupled over the past half-century , to about 22,000. Despite diminishing and eventually disappearing summer Arctic ice, polar bears will not become extinct. After all, in the first part of the current interglacial period, glaciers were almost entirely absent in the northern hemisphere , and the Arctic was probably ice-free for 1,000 years, yet polar bears are still with us. 
Another nine-year old showed The Washington Post his drawing of a global warming timeline. Thats the Earth now, Alex says, pointing to a dark shape at the bottom. And then its just starting to fade away. Looking up to make sure his mother is following along, he taps the end of the drawing: In 20 years, theres no oxygen. Then, to dramatise the point, he collapses, dead, to the floor. 
And these are not just two freak stories. In a new survey of 500 US pre-teens , it was found that one in three children aged 6-11 feared the earth would not exist when they reach adulthood because of environmental threats. An unbelievable one-third of our children believe that they dont have a future because of scary global warming stories. We see the same pattern in the UK, where a survey showed that half of children aged 7-11 are anxious about the effects of global warming, often losing sleep. This is grotesquely harmful. 
And let us be honest. This scare was intended . Children believe that global warming will destroy the planet before they grow up because adults are telling them that. When every prediction about global warming is scarier than the last one, and the scariest predictions often not backed up by peer-reviewed science get the most airtime, it is little wonder that children are worried. 
Nowhere is this deliberate fear mongering more obvious than in Al Gores Inconvenient Truth, a film marketed as by far the most terrifying film you will ever see. Take a look at the trailer for this movie on YouTube. Notice the imagery of chilling, larger-than-life forces evaporating our future. The commentary tells us that this film has shocked audiences everywhere , and that nothing is scarier than what Gore is about to tell us. Notice how the trailer even includes a nuclear explosion. 
The current debate about global warming is clearly harmful. It is time we demanded that the media stop scaring us and our kids silly. We deserve a more reasoned, more constructive, and less frightening dialogue. 

(The author is adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School) (C): Project Syndicate, 2009 

Can India really afford cheap cars

IN PRINCIPLE
Can India really afford cheap cars 

MARTIN WRIGHT 


The news that GM India is poised to launch a twolakh car took me back to an incident in Lucknow in March last year. 
I had almost tripped over a scooter lying on its side in the dust, its front wheel still spinning . Moments before it had been carrying a family of four, plus chicken. Now, they were all on the ground, except the chicken which had run away. 
You cant travel long on Indias crowded roads without stumbling on a crash of some sort. This Lucknow family just lost a chicken. About 90,000 people lose their lives on the roads every year and only 5% of them are in cars. 
Hence, of course, the appeal of the one-lakh Nano, and of GMs slightly pricier competitor , promising as they do to put relatively safe motoring within reach of tens of millions of ordinary families. 
Less appealing, of course, is the projected surge in pollution. If these cars sell in anything like the numbers their manufacturers hope, they will catapult India into the premier league of carbon emitters casting doubt on the countrys new-found commitment to tackle global warming. 
Once the climate cost is factored in, theres no such thing as a cheap car. India is acutely vulnerable to climate chaos, and some of the very same people wholl benefit from the Nano will also lose out as wild weather wreaks havoc on the countrys agriculture. 
Does safer, smoother travel for middle-income Indian families have to come at the price of the planet Do we always have to choose between protecting the environment and lifting people out of poverty Not a bit of it. Theres growing evidence that smart innovation can make life sweeter as well as more sustainable. Forwardlooking think tanks like Malini Mehras Centre for Social Markets, or Forum for the Future in the UK, argue that the best hope to win public support in the fight against climate change is to focus on this opportunity agenda . 
So, how could this apply to the Nano Petrol-powered , its a great social revolution, yes but an electric Nano could be all of that and an environmental one, too. It would be ideally suited to the sort of short, urban hops that will constitute the vast majority of its use, so its limited range wouldnt be a problem. It could be recharged by solar power while its owner is at work or even out in the fields. Standing idle, the Nanos battery could trickle power into the grid helping to smooth out the networks notorious instability. 
And the innovation doesnt have to stop there. You might not be able to afford an electric Nano but why own something that you dont use every day So what about a state-sponsored Tata Zero Carbon Car Club, of the sort springing up across European neighbourhoods , giving people the benefits of using a vehicle when they need it, without the hassle and cost of owning one when they dont It could help cut congestion , too: all the evidence suggests that car club members drive less than private car owners because they dont feel they have to justify their hefty investment in their vehicle by using it in preference to the bus or metro. 
But surely all this simply wouldnt be affordable Well, not necessarily not if the government grasped the nettle of subsidy reductions on the one hand, and carbon trading on the other. 
The government spends billions of dollars a year on fuel subsidies effectively making pollution cheap. If some of that went instead to developing 21st century clean transport both personal and mass transit it could bring dividends. After all, as the age of cheap easy oil stutters to a close, investing heavily in fossil-fuelled infrastructure now is about as visionary as sinking your fortune into sailing ships 100 years or so back. 
The dawn of a worldwide carbon market really cant come too soon for India. With its per capita emissions a fraction of those of the West and even China the country could expect to earn billions from selling carbon credits. That could be another source of revenue for cleantech R&D and another source of opportunity for Indian business, as it fights to compete in a low-carbon global economy. 
It all calls for fresh, not to say courageous, thinking always a rarity in politics. But the Nano might help here, albeit in unintended ways. If a swarm of the one lakh miracles slows the pace of the capitals traffic from sluggish to stationary, it might convince even the most sceptical minister that there has, surely , to be a better way. 


The writer is editor-in-chief 
of Green Futures magazine 

Meltdown will trigger Himalayan crisis

Meltdown will trigger Himalayan crisis

Meltdown will trigger Himalayan crisis 

Glacial Thaw Will Lead To Massive Migration In India: Report

London: The melting of Himalayan glaciers due to global warming will lead to massive human migration in India which is dependent on river systems generated by these glaciers, said a report released on Wednesday. 
The report claims the melting of the glaciers, also known as Water Towers of Asia will bring perils to poor section of the populations dependent on the river systems in India, China, Pakistan and other Asian countries by the year 2050. To Hindus the Ganges is sacred and is personified in Mother Ganga, representative of life giving maternal waters . Changes in the rivers and livelihoods dependent on them could bring profound economic, cultural and demographic impacts , the report warns. 
Titled In Search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement , the report announced in Bonn, Germany, says ongoing melting of the glaciers will devastate heavily irrigated farmlands of Asia by increasing floods and decreasing long-term water supplies. 
The glacier-fed basins of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irawaddy , Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Yellow rivers now support over 1.4 billion people in India, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries . The report is based on a first global survey of environmental change and migration 
The report is the collaborative effort of Columbia Universitys Center for International Earth Science Information Network , the United Nations University and CARE International. It says breakdown of ecosystembased economies subsistence herding, farming and fishing, like in India will be the dominant driver of forced migration.

Three In One Solution

Three In One Solution 

Act simultaneously on economy, poverty and environment

Vinod Thomas & Mohan Munasinghe 

The economic crisis has quickly relegated global warming and global poverty once reliable headline generators down the list of priorities . But it is a mistake to think that governments should triage, that is, deal with poverty and the environment only after they have put the financial crisis behind us. 
The reason is that we actually face a threefold global crisis: the economic downturn, rise in poverty and climate change. We cannot escape one without addressing the others . In the absence of a return to high growth, it is hard to see how poverty will be lessened or environmental actions will be financed. Equally, unless carbon emissions are cut and poverty reduced while reviving the economy, further growth prospects will be doomed. 
The truth is that poverty and climate change are no longer distant threats to progress. Carbon dioxide concentration in the air has already exceeded 385 parts per million perilously close to the 400-450 level that would put us on an irreversible path to an icefree world where sea levels would have risen several meters. The consequences of this scenario for natural disasters alone will dwarf the subprime meltdown. 
Similarly, allowing poverty to balloon runs the risk that political stability will be undermined and continuation of growth itself hampered , increasing the prevalence of failed states and making the world less safe for investment and trade. Some 150 million more people slipped into poverty worldwide during 2007-08 and a further 50 million this year. 
This threefold conundrum presents especially significant challenges for the large nations, be they emerging economies such as China and India or Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries such as the United States and Japan. Their response will crucially affect the prospects for their own population as well as the direction for global development. 
Yet for any one of these countries, it is unquestionably tough to attack the three heads of the hydra simultaneously. But remarkably, the current crisis offers some unique opportunities that can be seized. There are policies, investments and deals that can help these nations separately and collectively to confront two if not all three of theses dangers with a single swipe. Heres how. 
First, this is the time for nations to reverse policies that sacrifice the climate in the name of immediate growth. The most egregious example is energy subsidies, which cost almost a third of a trillion dollars in 2007 worldwide. These are frequently justified as protecting the vulnerable but the bulk of subsidies does not reach the poor. They also encourage energy waste and drain fiscal resources. 
Another dual-purpose policy is to set up robust social safety nets, providing a boost to consumption while lifting millions out of poverty. Conditional cash transfers in Brazil and Mexico are examples of efforts to both reduce poverty today and, by tying them to childrens education and health, also boost future growth. Outlays amounting to just about 1 per cent of GDP can make the difference. 
Second, this is the chance for countries to invest a sizable share of the stimulus packages in energy efficiency. This was a core feature of Barack Obamas election pitch. Government funding for green and carbon-saving technologies , as in the US or China, could not be better timed. Taking advantage of declining capital costs of hydro, wind, geothermal and solar, it would pay to invest in these technologies now, anticipating the resurgence of fossil fuel prices. 
Such investments would help sever a link that has long been the bane of anti-poverty campaigners. No country has managed to lift living standards without increasing its carbon footprint. But under the vastly changed global environment today, it is essential that they do so. Global warming hurts the poor the most. Climate change is causing a spike in natural disasters as well as gobbling up arable land and reducing water availability in critical areas. 
Third, this is the moment to make deals leading to a surge in financing for development and its effective use. You only have to look at global projections to see that the boost to growth from the fiscal stimulus is envisaged to be greater in developing countries. That is because infrastructural investments or policy improvements can deliver sharper increases in growth in these economies compared to the more affluent ones. 
Hard though it may be to sell to this idea in rich nations, their governments might consider proactive actions that promote capital flows to emerging economies as well as augment development assistance in lowincome settings. When the world is increasingly dependent on developing economies to re-energise the failing global economic system, support for such financial flows would be an important aspect of the global stimulus. 
Policies aimed at immediate growth at the expense of social safety nets or greener investments will be suicidal. Economic, social and environmental dimensions of the recovery are no longer distinct goals with phased solutions . They are part of the same package of needed actions.