‘Global approach to deal with climate change flawed’
The current global approach to dealing with climate change is flawed because it doesn’t recognise trade-offs to climate action, the Economic Survey for 2023-24 released July 22 said, underlining that developed countries should take the lead in countering climate change and be accountable in providing climate finance.
“The current approach to dealing with climate change is flawed for one very simple reason. It continues to ignore trade-offs. But practical men and women have been unable to avoid recognising trade-offs. Countries had to push back their own timelines,” the survey said, giving examples of the UK which postponed its decision to ban the sale of vehicles that run on petrol and diesel for five years from 2030 to 2035 and Germany had to dilute its rules for banning boilers running on fossil fuels before they could be passed. The rise of alternative political parties in developed nations is attributed to the public’s resistance to climate-related rules that are perceived as unfairly targeting the poor .
“Alternative energy sources require fiscal subsidies to be affordable. However, most governments worldwide are fiscally stretched, especially after dealing with the economic and health dislocations caused by the pandemic. Many countries also tax fossil fuels heavily. By clamping down on their usage, governments will lose those revenues,” the report said, flagging that China has kind of monopoly on materials required for transition to certain renewable sources.
“Geopolitically, the thrust on renewable energy and electric vehicles has set off a race to secure critical minerals and rare earths. China has positioned itself as an indispensable source of several of these materials. Securing supply in crunch times is a matter of concern. Nuclear energy is the cleanest and safest option. However, some nations are reluctant to consider it given that their public overestimates probabilities of rare events…Three Mile island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, loom large in people’s minds.”
“It is morally wrong to tell developing countries to abandon their aspirations for better living standards so that developed countries can maintain their ways of living in cleaner environments and cooler climates,” the Survey said. It added that developing countries have to downgrade their development goals to contain global emissions but are now being threatened with a carbon tax at borders “in full negation of the spirit of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective national capabilities that was supposed to have undergirded the Paris Agreement.”
The survey also points out that rich countries are ramping up energy infrastructure especially for artificial intelligence (AI). As machine learning models have become more advanced, the computational power required to develop them has doubled every five to six months since 2010 according to the International Energy Agency.
“Even as developed nations prepare to impose a carbon tax at the border on imports coming into their countries laden with carbon, they are ramping up energy demand like never before, thanks to their obsession with letting Artificial Intelligence (AI) guide, take over and dominate natural intelligence. One of the leading global technology companies promised to achieve Net Zero by 2030 at the turn of the decade. But, the race to dominate the emerging technology of Artificial Intelligence has caused its emissions to be higher by 30% by 2023,” the survey said.
India’s climate stand
Despite the impact on economy, India achieved most targets of its first nationally determined contribution (NDC) well in advance, the survey said. For instance, the country achieved 40% cumulative electrical power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy sources in 2021 and reduced the emission intensity of India’s GDP from 2005 levels by 33% in 2019– nine and 11 years before the target year of 2030, respectively. The NDC was further updated in August 2022. As of 31 May 2024, the share of non-fossil sources in the installed electricity generation capacity has reached 45.4 %.
India has proposed that the global movement on climate change must be accommodative of sovereign choices and economic needs, but centred on individual behaviour, in line with Lifestyle for Environment movement that it has proposed.
“Before compelling poorer nations to change their developmental journey, it’s necessary for individuals, especially in the developed world, to alter their lifestyle in favour of simple behavioural changes, all of which directly contribute to mitigation efforts,” the Survey said. It gave the example of India’s Green Credit Programme — a market-based mechanism aimed at encouraging individuals, communities, private sector industries, and companies to engage in environmental actions such as plantations, through the issuance of green credits.
The last part of the introduction to the climate chapter appeared intriguing to many including experts. “Fittingly, the last word of this introductory section should be left to Mike Hulme, who has been studying the phenomenon for more than four decades” the survey said adding Hulme’s quote: “Climate change isn’t everything. It is quite easy to imagine future worlds in which global temperature exceeds 2°C warming which are ‘better’ for human well-being, political stability and ecological integrity, for example, than other worlds in which – by all means and at all costs – global temperature was stabilised at 1.5°C.”
Hulme is Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge.
“While the economic survey highlights many positives in terms of India’s climate action ambition, it does convey a sense of contradictions in the overall messaging. It emphasises that there is clear evidence that the developing world is more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, yet it quotes Hulme to say that a 2Deg C world might be better than a 1.5 DegC world! It rightly points out in the conclusion that ‘while uncertainties loom, they present avenues for innovation, adaptation and growth for India’ , but fails to see that innovation happens only when the policy signal is clear and credible. Otherwise why would it contradict India’s formal agreement with the Paris Accord which emphasises the criticality of ‘pursue(ing) efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius’?” asked Vaibhav Chaturvedi, fellow, Council on Energy, Environment and Water.