Bring Down The Heat

Today Climate Change is for real.  A report by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, Washington DC clearly points out that there is a growing and well-documented body of evidence regarding observed changes in the climate system and impacts that can be attributed to human-induced climate change. As the earth is getting warmer due to increase in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission. India’s aggregate greenhouse gas emissions have increased from 1.2 billion tons CO₂e in 1994 to 1.7 billion tons CO₂e in 2007, a compound annual growth rate of 2.9%, earning India 5th spot in aggregate GHG emissions in the world (Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment, 2010). Although, per capita GHG emissions remain low at around 1.7 tons/person in 2007 compared to a global average of about 4.3 tons/person in the same period. This is likely to change drastically due to increase in our population and shifting population from rural area to cities. The increase in population will further put pressure on existing resources and energy demand. 

The common folks are witnessing change everywhere. We are getting rain in western part of India, where it was once desert.  The eastern part of India has been witnessing increased intensity of cyclone at frequent interval.  We have also witnessed increase in span of summer days in a year with extreme high temperature reported at most of the places. The northern plain has become scene of frequent flood every year resulting in displacement of people from those area. There is danger that part of our long coastline will get submerged due to increased sea level. Therefore, India is susceptible to suffer in more than one way due to long term impact of climate change. This will further get amplified due to our low level of income.  

There is scientific evidence to suggest that increase in dry spell is likely to create reduction in agricultural production. The reduction in food productions, due to increased dry spell months would take away livelihood of many people in those areas, as they are solely dependent on their agricultural produce. In absence of livelihood, they might move to city in search of livelihood and it would create other socio-economic issues associated with migration.  Some of our people living on island would be worst affected due to increase is sea level.  One of our islands situated in Bay of Bengal is famous for coral reefs and attracts lots of tourists. With increase in acidity of ocean above 350 ppm of CO2, coral reef would go and so would revenue coming from tourist business. Therefore, I would say climate change would take away our financial resources in mitigation and adaptation of climate change impact that could have used for poverty reduction and other developmental effort.

The expenditure that is likely to occur on adapting and mitigating climate change impacts could have been used to promote other developmental challenges. The government is spending considerable amount on cyclone preparedness and mitigation. These resources could have been used for other developmental activities, which are badly needed in India. Commodity prices have been rising and climate change could be one of the reasons for such increase. Though, India has not witnessed reduction in agricultural productions, rise in commodity price could be due to interlinked world. Recently we witnessed sudden jump in price of milk and milk products though population of milk-giving animals has gone up. This could possibly be due to reduction in milk production due to increase in dry weather months. The expenditure on mitigation and adaptation of climate change impacts is going to increase in business-as-usual scenario. This would definitely reduce our ability to undertake developmental works such as increasing health coverage, poverty reduction, expenditure on education etc. This will have cascading effects on other sectors too.

The climate change awareness is not very common in this country because focus till now have been on economic development. But slowly people are becoming aware and I count myself, one of them. I have become very conscious of electricity and water consumption. Now I use bucket and mug for taking bath instead of shower. My children have also become conscious of these changes and they are taking this course too. I prefer to use metro, instead of car now, if place to be visited is nearby metro station. But acting individually will not help this cause because there is no time. Whatever development gain we have made in last couple of decade will get lost unless we act pretty fast. 

This calls for urgent actions at personal, community, national and global level. Individually one can make a difference by taking positive, sustainable action to change his/her lifestyle and behavior. That climate change is occurring as a result of our actions, and that it is bringing serious dangers, urgently calls for us, as a society, to change our behavior. This is easy to say but harder to do.  But we need strategies to motivate individuals to combat climate change.  When each person sees his or her own actions as part of a broader community effort they make a commitment for effective action to mitigate climate change. At national level, governments need to make strategy to curtail current subsidy on fossil fuel based energy that only help further increasing GHG emission. Finally at global level, governments across the world should put their differences aside and focus on forging a global agreement to cut down on emission, which is the root cause of climate change. So let us take a pledge to make small differences in our life to prevent our earth getting warmer!

I think at local level, we need to focus of increasing awareness so that our people could become aware of climate changes consequences. Once people become aware, I think, government would naturally be forced to address their concerns and take action to reduce GHG emissions by adopting available clean technology. At national level, government shall focus on enacting policies that at one hand promote renewable energy and on other remove/reduce subsidy on fossil fuels so that true cost of using fossil fuel becomes evident to consumers. On global level, governments around world need to put their head together and arrive on global consensus to cut down their emission. One of the reasons why people are not switching to public transport is due to strange notions of social status attached with kind of transportation mode he/she uses. Our people want bigger and bigger car. This is true both for educated and non-educated class. It would led us to think that education is not a solution to change one's behaviour. Probably when people would become more aware of climate change impacts, they would think of changing behavior. Therefore, we need to continue educating our people.

Government of India is very serious on this issue and India has national action plan of climate change. There are eight task forces focusing on eight different themes. India has also declared voluntary commitment to reduce GHG emission by 20%-25% by 2020. India has also started certain schemes, other than regulation, that looks very promising. India has a scheme called “Perform, Achieve and Trade” designed on similar fashion as “Cap and Trade”. It does give incentive to industry to reduce GHG emission and that way it is very progressive regulation in the sense government is not here to regulate but just to facilitate carbon credit market. I think more market based scheme that promote efficiency is required. 


I think countries will have to come on board to fight climate change mitigation action. One of things, which is promoting use of fossils fuel in various form is amount of inbuilt subsidy that makes cleaner fuel expensive. According to one estimate, governments around the world subsidise fossil fuel by about $1.9 trillion! Unless we remove this subsidy, shifting to cleaner fuel appears impossible. Further we need to invest in cleaner technology that again need money. We require huge resources to fight climate change but it is only about 2%-3% of world GDP. From where would money come? But this is much less than what we are spending on procuring arms and ammunition to fight each other. Given the will, we can certainly spend this money on clean technology to help mitigate climate change. I think current level of global commitment is going to lead us nowhere and it is downright insufficient to stop temperature rise by 4 C by the end of this century. The governments cannot stick to their position for long if they are really interested in cutting down emission and save future generation from its consequences. Let us join hands and fight climate change .