Race against time for a workable deal
Friday, 11 December 2009
ALL the world's attention is currently on the Copenhagen summit. Earnest climate change experts and activists are hoping that there would be some kind of global deal on how best to keep carbon emissions down to rescue the planet from the doomsday scenario climate scientists warn against. The world has already been getting a foretaste, in the changing weather patterns everywhere, and the increasing frequency and intensity of natural calamities. If fossil fuel consumption patterns do not change significantly in the near future, global temperatures are bound to shoot up by as much as six degrees centigrade within this very century, triggering mass extinctions of half the world's flora and fauna, desertification and deluge over large swathes of lands, crop failures, disease and displacement of untold millions, with all their attendant miseries.
As a collaborative editorial on the inaugural day of the summit said, ' the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got to limit the damage.' The challenge indeed is, how to get the over-consuming industrialised nations and the rest of the world ---- including rapidly developing giants as well as poor stragglers ---- to acknowledge their rights and responsibilities concerning climate change. Rapid action has to happen, simultaneously, from the global to the local, to cope with, and mitigate its worst effects . But there seems to be far too little on offer regarding the required finance from the biggest emitters. Tentatively, around ten billion dollars a year would be available, whereas the need is for no less than 200 billion, according to one participant on the first day of the conference. When trillions are spent to bail out defaulting fat cats in the greedy world, such a tight fisted response to the dire problems facing all life on planet earth is not only shameful but utterly irresponsible.
Activists worldwide have been making themselves heard about the state of the planet in general and the vulnerabilities of countries like Bangladesh. Indeed, commentators from Copenhagen could not resist pointing out the devastation that Bangladesh's people would be facing from rising seas. The rich world, which has been responsible for most of the carbon burden in the atmosphere since the advent of industrialisation, should take a lead in committing cuts as well as evolving coping and mitigating mechanisms that can be shared by all. It needs reiterating that a viable solution has to be based on the principles of equity and justice. Indeed, the rich nations have debts to repay to the poorer ones for plundering the earth's resources at such speed and throwing Mother Nature literally out of kilter.
Global temperature must not be allowed to rise more than two degrees Celsius -- that is the predominant position. That means cutting global emissions drastically, 40 per cent by 2020, a demand that Bangladesh is voicing, along with other developing countries. Environmental space must also be freed up and adequate resources provided for developing countries to embark upon a growth model without the serious ecological side-effects of the over-exploitative and wasteful kind dominating the past centuries. China, it is reassuring to note -- which has been galloping ahead, emitting huge amounts from its largely coal-based industries -- has been very pro-active about the climate change crisis. This rapidly developing giant and some others have come up with some commitments to emission targets recently. Though nowhere near the minimum requirements, hopefully, more pledges would be forthcoming by the end of the summit -- with serious action taken thereafter -- to salvage this one and only habitat from the precipice of a cataclysmic disaster. As the refrain goes, this summit is an opportunity the world really cannot afford to miss.
As a collaborative editorial on the inaugural day of the summit said, ' the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got to limit the damage.' The challenge indeed is, how to get the over-consuming industrialised nations and the rest of the world ---- including rapidly developing giants as well as poor stragglers ---- to acknowledge their rights and responsibilities concerning climate change. Rapid action has to happen, simultaneously, from the global to the local, to cope with, and mitigate its worst effects . But there seems to be far too little on offer regarding the required finance from the biggest emitters. Tentatively, around ten billion dollars a year would be available, whereas the need is for no less than 200 billion, according to one participant on the first day of the conference. When trillions are spent to bail out defaulting fat cats in the greedy world, such a tight fisted response to the dire problems facing all life on planet earth is not only shameful but utterly irresponsible.
Activists worldwide have been making themselves heard about the state of the planet in general and the vulnerabilities of countries like Bangladesh. Indeed, commentators from Copenhagen could not resist pointing out the devastation that Bangladesh's people would be facing from rising seas. The rich world, which has been responsible for most of the carbon burden in the atmosphere since the advent of industrialisation, should take a lead in committing cuts as well as evolving coping and mitigating mechanisms that can be shared by all. It needs reiterating that a viable solution has to be based on the principles of equity and justice. Indeed, the rich nations have debts to repay to the poorer ones for plundering the earth's resources at such speed and throwing Mother Nature literally out of kilter.
Global temperature must not be allowed to rise more than two degrees Celsius -- that is the predominant position. That means cutting global emissions drastically, 40 per cent by 2020, a demand that Bangladesh is voicing, along with other developing countries. Environmental space must also be freed up and adequate resources provided for developing countries to embark upon a growth model without the serious ecological side-effects of the over-exploitative and wasteful kind dominating the past centuries. China, it is reassuring to note -- which has been galloping ahead, emitting huge amounts from its largely coal-based industries -- has been very pro-active about the climate change crisis. This rapidly developing giant and some others have come up with some commitments to emission targets recently. Though nowhere near the minimum requirements, hopefully, more pledges would be forthcoming by the end of the summit -- with serious action taken thereafter -- to salvage this one and only habitat from the precipice of a cataclysmic disaster. As the refrain goes, this summit is an opportunity the world really cannot afford to miss.