Trump Cards
See a need to have your nation's perspective well understood and very well represented by a world body? Simple. Elect to the ultimate position of influence one of your nation's presumably most eminent authorities in a most particular and of-the-moment question, who will slavishly pursue the national interests while portending to portray the image of a dedicated and completely neutral advocate for the good of the world at large.The developed nations of the world are stridently divided on the issue of whether or not to involve the developing nations in the plans to ramp down emissions of carbon dioxide that the United Nations Climate Change Plan places sole responsibility on developed nations toward, for implementing arrests on global warming. The world's greatest creators of environmental degradation through carbon emissions are China, the U.S.A. and India.
China and India are seen as emerging economies, the U.S.A. as a successfully developed, technologically advanced power. It is the United States, along with all the developed countries of the world who are expected to batten down the development hatches, leaving the field open to developing economies to pursue their agendas unhampered by an eye on the environmental mess they're spewing into the atmosphere.
India's Rajendra Pachauri is the chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the world's senior climate change official. He, along with his colleagues, have been adamant that the world must act to prevent a climate change catastrophe. And it must act now, and act determinedly, and responsibly. The world, in effect, being restricted to those countries which have traditionally besmirched the atmosphere by anthropogenic-caused change.
Countries like Canada, feeling the pinch of remedial action which its political elite is divided on, are loathe to act and in the process potentially rein in their economies without an assurance that action will be global, not exempting developing countries' participation. Canada's carbon-dioxide footprint, for example, represents something like 2% of the world's output, and the economic cost to the country of ameliorating legislation will be immense.
Canada's prime minister insists that China and India, those emerging economic giants with their huge populations, also be counted into the global effort to stall global warming. On the other hand, the European Union, is in support of relieving China and India of an obligation they feel should rest solely on the economic-development shoulders of developed countries. The EU's own carbon footprint is modest; it imports most of its power.
Understandably, China and India are content to be left out of the healing equation on the basis that they haven't had the opportunity to gain a leg up on development yet, and that their national economies should not be made to suffer in that up until now it has been the developed countries which have spewed out environmental waste seen to be responsible for the current crisis.
India has placidly proceeded with plans to continue building hundreds of new coal-fired power plants. More or less echoing exactly what China has been doing, and will continue to do. The cheapest, most currently-reliable energy source for both countries continues to be coal-fired furnaces. Which use results in gross particulate matter circulating in the atmosphere, and which carbon dioxide output has gifted both countries with a truly soiled environment.
Adding to the world's burden of environmental degradation. And the world isn't that large a place, after all. Prevailing winds bring foul pollution far from their source in India and China. The coastline of North America has been known to become the unwilling recipient of pollution from as far afield as China, depositing nasty tidbits where it's least wanted, in countries far from their origin.
In any event, both India and China are more than pleased with the current position of the UN. The government of India has enacted a "National Action Plan on Climate Change", and their pre-eminent authority who also happens to be head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, kindly helped to craft it. India's National Action Plan acknowledges that it has been forgiven from implementing any action to ameliorate its own carbon dioxide footprint.
Developing countries are not required to side-line their economic interests by diverting resources from their priorities in development, through the implementation of climate-related projects which would involve additional, hurtful costs to their economy. India, therefore, feels fully justified in forging full steam ahead with its economic development plans. Greenhouse gas emissions clean-ups are clearly an imperative to be solved by others.
To validate their position, India's National Action Plan, commissioned by its prime minister and chaired by him, has issued a report affirming that "no firm link between the changes they describe with respect to changes seen in the country itself, and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet to be established" internally. Much as, in other words, that while some portions of the environmental scientific community feels catastrophe is imminent, another does not.
And India places itself firmly in the "does not" camp. While climate change may eventually prove itself the dreaded threat many assume it to be, it has not yet done so in the case of human-caused degradation, to the satisfaction of many climate scientists. So take a deep breath, and just settle down to make the most of the opportunities available for continued development. And no need to fund unneeded remedies, for the time being.
That's a truly ta-dum! rationale, a solution for all seasons and a sole reason. And more power to them. From whatever source.
Labels: Environment, Political Realities, Technology
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, July 27, 2008
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