Beyond Kyoto

It is now well known that the world’s climate has begun to alter in a direction that can only spell disaster for mankind, perhaps even before this century runs out. The latest warning has been sounded by the concluding part of a series of reports on the subject by the UN Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, which focuses on the consequences for human civilisation if urgent action is not taken to curb the release of carbon emissions. As the UN Secretary-General , Mr Ban Ki-Moon, said in Valencia recently, there are now no reasons for the world’s politicians not to act — not just to save their own nations but the planet itself from the extinction of human life.

The situation, in fact, is so precarious that the natural outcomes of the planet’s warming are already at work, which means that whatever steps are taken in the next two decades or so will only prevent a worsening of these consequences. Among others, the chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning UN Panel, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has made it clear that a rise in sea levels is certain, the report stating that “the average (rise) will be 1.4 metres higher than pre-industrial levels, even if factories are shut down and cars taken off the road”. Unless the international community gets together to tackle the carbon emission problem head-on, the result, among others, will be a massive relocation of populations living in low-lying coastal areas. Inexplicably, despite this grim scenario, countries with the economic muscle to contribute effectively to the global effort, are still hesitating to do so on the ground that heavily-populated countries such as India and China, no doubt, big polluters in absolute terms, have not been asked to contribute proportionately to the effort. This is unreasonable, because economies such as the US and Australia far outstrip China and India in terms of the per capita emission of carbon gases. Not surprisingly, Washington and Canberra have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to get 36 of the most industrialised economies to cut greenhouse gas-emissions by an average of five per cent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Clearly, even in the face of impending environmental disaster, there is little uncertainty that economic growth must continue unabated for people everywhere to live a better life. The only way out of this dichotomy seems to be a step-up in production efficiency, which means the induction of costlier technologies, to start with. Who else can help the developing economies (including India and China) sustain higher growth and a cleaner atmosphere but countries with a much higher per capita income, which can set aside more funds for the “global” effort without harming their growth profile? It is to be hoped that the UN-sponsored December Bali meeting on climate change will do some spadework for an effective international treaty (as a follow-up to Kyoto) that will help check the pace of climate change.

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