Climate change's various faces

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/climate-changes-various-faces/1276079.aspx

SUNITA NARAIN
18/09/2008 10:49:00 AM
For the past 16 years the first intergovernmental negotiation took place in Washington DC in early 1991 the world has been haggling about what it knows about climate change but does not want to accept. It has been desperately seeking every excuse not to act, even as science has confirmed and reconfirmed the fact that climate change is real, it is related to carbon dioxide and other emissions, the emissions are related to economic growth and wealth in the world. In other words, it is human made and it can devastate the world as we know it.
The fact is that science is not just certain but unequivocal that climate change and its devastation are now inevitable. But along with understanding the still obtuse science we must begin to put a human face to the climate change that is beginning all around us. We must see climate change in the faces of the millions who have lost their homes in the Sidr or Nargis cyclones, which ripped through Bangladesh and then Myanmar. After all, science has clearly established that intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones will increase as the Earth heats up. We need to see climate change in the faces of those who lost everything in the floods caused by intense rainfall events. We need to know that the thousands of people who died in these events did so, because the rich have failed to contain emissions necessary for their growth.

When I say this, I know, climate-sceptics and purist-scientists will combine to argue that it is difficult to prove cause and effect. After all we cannot say that this cyclone in Bangladesh is related to climate change. It is a natural disaster, not a human-made crime. Climate complexity is clearly at the edge of chaos here. When the world is unequally divided between the polluters and the victims, clearly prevarication and denial will be the name of the game.

As the call for action is becoming more strident and urgent (as it must), the world is looking for small answers and petty responses. On the one hand, there is a well-orchestrated media and civil society campaign to paint the Chinese and Indian as the dirty villains on the block. If they ''cry'' about their need to develop, the response is to tell them that they are most vulnerable.

We cannot afford to waste time in the blame-game. Even if in the past, the western world created the problem, you must in your interest take the lead in reparations.

The west's hysteria is growing. But so is their inaction. The irony is that these countries had agreed in 1997 to make a small cut in their gargantuan emissions, in the interest of us all. These emission cuts were nowhere close to what was needed, then or now to avert climate change. The fact (which is mostly unsaid) is that these countries have done nothing to contain emissions. Between 1990 and 2005, when they agreed to cut emissions, rich country emissions have gone up by 11 per cent; emissions from the growth-related energy sector increased by 15 per cent. They have let us all down.

It is the world's need for energy that is the cause of climate pain. The fact also is that after years of talk no country has been able to de-link its growth with the growth of carbon dioxide emissions. No country has shown how to build a low-carbon economy.

This then is the challenge. The proportion of new renewable energy wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels comprises just about 1 per cent of the world's primary energy supply. It is misleading to say that renewable sources add more electricity than nuclear power. It is old renewable hydroelectric power which makes the world light up.

What is tragic is that the world is hiding behind the poverty of its people to fudge its climate maths.

What then is the way ahead?

The rich world must reduce emissions drastically. There is a stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, built up over centuries in the process of creating nations wealth. It is a natural debt. This has already made climate unstable. Poorer nations will now add to this stock through their drive for economic growth. But that is not an excuse for the rich world not to take on tough and deep-binding emission reduction

targets. The principle has to be, they must reduce so we can grow.

The second part of this agreement is that poor and emerging rich countries's engagement will not be legally binding but based on national targets and programs. The question is to find low-carbon growth strategies for emerging countries, without compromising their right to develop.

Sunita Narain is the director of the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi. This is an edited extract of the K.R.Narayanan Oration ''Why environment needs equity: Learning from the environmentalism of the poor to build our common future'', she delivered at the Australian National University on Tuesday night.

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