Dimapur, July 3 (MExN): Discourse during the seminar on Climate Change in St. Joseph’s College on July 2 has emphasized that the fight for and conserving the planet needs a goal – not so much a wanton fight.
Director of Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, Sunita Narain said that Climate Change “definitely the biggest story of the 21st century” needs a “sufficiency goal”. Narain explained: “If we look at the various options countries have to cut emissions, there are three broad categories – based on what these will cost and availability of technology. The first are the those things that countries can and should do because they will cost little or even if the initial capital cost is high, pay back is quick – negative cost options. These include everything nice from changing incandescent light bulbs to CFL or LED, to tightening standards for appliances we use in homes, to retrofitting homes to make sure they are insulated and of course all other actions to improve efficiency in industry and transport.”
She said the sheer complexity and urgency of Climate Change is defeating the world. “For the past 19 years – the first intergovernmental negotiation took place in Washington in early 1991 – the world has argued about what it knows but doesn’t accept. It has been desperately seeking every excuse not to act, even as science has confirmed and reconfirmed that climate change is real: it is related to carbon dioxide and other emissions, in turn related to economic growth and wealth in the world. In other words, it is human-made and can devastate the world, as we know it.”
The inconvenient truth is not that climate change is real, she said. “…but that climate change is about sharing that growth between nations and people,” Narain said.
She said that the rich must reduce ‘so that the poor can grow.’ “This was the basis of the climate agreement the world signed in Rio. This was the basis of the Kyoto Protocol, which committed the industrialized world to reduce its emissions by roughly 6 per cent over 1990 levels by 2008-2012,” the director of Centre for Science and Environment said. According to Narain, ‘the world has never been serious about this agreement.’
Between 1990 and 2006, she said, carbon dioxide emissions of the industrialized rich countries have increased by 14.5 per cent. Furthermore, emissions from the growth-related energy sector have increased by 15 per cent. “This is unacceptable,” Narain said.
On the “sufficiency goal” she advocated, Narain said it will cost less than US$ 30 (Rs 1500) per tonne of carbon saved category are largely found in the land related sectors – from stopping deforestation to planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide. “But the third set of actions, which are really the ones that can reinvent the energy system and combat climate change come also with a big ticket price – anywhere between US$ 50-150 (Rs 4000-7000) per tonne of carbon saved.”
“The world must seriously consider the concept of equal per capita emission entitlements so that the rich reduce and the poor do not go beyond their climate quota. We need climate responsible action. We need effective action,” she said.
