Archive for the ‘climate crisis’ Category

Review of: ‘Global Warming In India: Science, Impacts and Politics’, Nagaraj Adve, Eklavya, 2022.

Monday, March 4th, 2024

[Published in November 2022, volume 46, No 11 of The Book Review India]

Nagaraj Adve’s Global Warming In India is a brief and practical guide that enables the reader to engage with the discussions, debates and actions about the most pressing social and moral issue before our generation. It is written with a sense of hope and compassion for the “ordinary people” that is largely missing in similar and popular books, which tend to focus more on the specialist and technocratic solutions handed over from above and to which most of us are expected to assent to and participate merely as a consumer or observer. The first chapter about the science of global warming is presented without unnecessary jargons and covers all the concepts necessary to clearly grasp the phenomenon. But where this books differs the most from other popular climate change books is in Chapter 2 where the author identifies the “systematic drivers” of the crisis.

The root cause of climate change is capitalism’s DNA, argues Nagaraj. A society which organizes its most important tasks and goals around the maximization of profits cannot address the needs of the ecosystems or its poor and working people. It produces more and more goods by degrading quality of work and the environment through cost cuttings in pollution prevention and casualizing jobs. Lets recount two (out of many) recent incidents that support this claim. One day after Putin invaded Ukraine the LNG Allies a oil and gas lobbying association wrote an open letter to Joe Biden asking him to expand the fossil fuel infrastructure to fill the export gap in Europe created by the war and also by the sanctions against Russia1. And as a result new gas and oil pipelines have been sanctioned along with $300 million in funding by the US government for the new fossil fuel infrastructure.2 And in India, the Economic Times reported that, “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has opened arbitrage opportunities so enticing that Reliance Industries Ltd deferred maintenance work at the world’s biggest oil refining complex to churn out more diesel and naphtha after prices surged.”3

It is often claimed that it is taking us so much time to switch from fossil fuels to greener sources of energy because of all the inertia built in from previous decades of planning. But as these cases illustrate the cause of delay is not only past inertia but active investment and development for more fossil fuel dependence in present and for future.

Also, related to this is the Indian government’s policy positions on climate change. The Indian NDCs for the Paris Agreement almost entirely depend on reducing the share of fossil fuel in the energy mix. Nagaraj addresses with the deficiency of such approach in the later chapters. He points out that for actual and meaningful reduction of greenhouse gas emissions the fossil fuels must drop in absolute terms. But this demand is rejected by the Indian government and also by much of the liberal and left critics and environmentalist. They object that why should India, a “developing” nation give up on its opportunity “to grow” for mitigating a crisis created by the richer nations? One answer is being provided by the leaders of the most venerable and island nations. They have been repeatedly saying that India and China are among the top emitters and emerging economies and “while they (India and China) develop; we die; and why should we accept this?”4 The self-image of India created by the Indian intellectuals is very self serving, shifting from a “powerful” nation to “developing poor” nation as the needs of the business and political elites demand. India is the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and when it claims its right to more “carbon space” to develop at the cost of islands and coastal communities then, how different is the notion of “carbon space” from Nazi “living space”?

Moreover, as Nagaraj distinctly points out the policies that lead to climate crisis have also led to unparalleled inequality both globally and in India. The NCRB 2021 report reveals that in 2021, 1,64,033 people committed suicide in India, including 5 daily wage earners every hour.5 While, “during the pandemic (since March 2020, through to November 30th, 2021) the wealth of billionaires increased from INR 23.14 lakh crore (USD 313 billion) to INR 53.16 lakh crore (USD 719 billion). More than 4.6 crore Indians meanwhile are estimated to have fallen into extreme poverty in 2020 (nearly half of the global new poor according to the United Nations.) The stark wealth inequality in India is a result of an economic system rigged in favour of the super-rich over the poor and marginalised.”6 So how justified can a business as usual let-India-develop position be when only development seems to be of the top 1% and top 10% of Indians.

The final chapter on solution is filled with thought provoking ideas that are just the right balance of specific and general to help come up with concrete plans while allowing creativity and local needs to be assimilated. But, the solutions have to acknowledge and recognize the faces and the forces responsible for the economic and climate crisis: the billionaires and their corporations.

This book is an essential reading for anyone who wants to make sense of the changes taking place before us and to be a positive part of it.

1https://lngallies.com/energy-security/

2‘How the gas industry used the Ukraine war to secure new fossil fuel infrastructure’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

3‘Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s refinery makes millions from war windfall’ Economic Times, May 09 2022

4Quoted in Karin Bäckstrand, Ole Elgström (2013) ‘The EU’s role in climate change negotiations: from leader to ‘leadiator’, Journal of European Public Policy, 20:10, 1369-1386, DOI:10.1080/13501763.2013.781781

5https://frontline.thehindu.com/social-issues/ncrb-2021-report-dying-young-and-jobless-in-india/article65894493.ece

6https://www.oxfamindia.org/press-release/inequality-kills-india-supplement-2022

The new-old boogies of oil and gas industry

Tuesday, December 7th, 2021

World Petroleum Congress was held in Houston, Texas on 06.12.2021. Where “executives from Saudi Aramco, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron, speaking at the World Petroleum Congress in Houston on Monday, blamed demand for renewables and lack of investment in fossil fuels for recent fuel shortages and price volatility.”

The things that need more attention according to the oil and gas giants are “”Energy security, economic development and affordability are clearly not receiving enough attention.” Energy security and economic development on a dead planet? The economic development of the last century – especially since the neoliberal period has been that of massive concentration of wealth and power and people losing access to essential energy needs. And the worry about affordability once again shows how the state and its subsidies and fundings are essentially what makes a technology, sector, or industry feasible under contemporary capitalism.

The industry is also raising the boogieman of inflation and social unrest. Which are not unlikely but not inevitable and both are guaranteed in a scenario where the world enters irreversible cascading climate collapse.

Some corporate-climate-green-washing myth busting.

Tuesday, December 7th, 2021

A new report by T&E shows that the new “green” hydrogen fuels – which are made by turning electricity into hydrogen which when combined with CO2 produces a liquid fuel similar to petrol or diesel – are as, or maybe more polluting than existing fossil fuels. But the oil and gas and the automobile industry is pushing hard for these fuels. India under Modi has initiated a National Hydrogen Mission which is supposed to be a major part of the net-zero effort. Although the sector is waiting for the policy document to come and “a strong regulatory framework to be created keeping the interest of investors in mind.”

The level of NOx pollutants is equal to conventional fuels while CO (carbon monoxide) toxic production was higher in e-fuel tests.

India will soon be responsible for 3rd of the world’s air conditioning demands given the rise in extreme heat events in the region. But the ability to purchase and make billing investments is within a very small section of the population – my educated guess would be that it is roughly equal to the population owning private cars, i.e. around 2% of the national population.

Once again the only hope out of this entangled situation is the state sector coming to help the market -agencies like Energy Efficiency Services Limited will have to produce cheaper and more efficient air conditioners for the masses.

Meanwhile, European Environmental Bureau released a report on the repairability and replaceability of batteries in consumer electronics. Most new electronic gadgets do not allow for repair or replaceability of batteries creating more pollution, waste, overproduction, and burden of costs.

Climate considerations in contemporary public work tenders

Sunday, September 12th, 2021

 

 

The current pre-tender public works procedure looks something like this: a primary investigation by the concerned department is undertaken to assess the financial and technical feasibility of the proposed project with approximate estimates, which when gets the consent of the department goes for a detailed investigation that if gets the technical approval comes out as the document for tender and work contract – including drawings, bill of quantities and specifications.

Nowhere in this two-stage investigation and approval process, ecological feasibility is examined as an independent factor in the work project. But this stage is quite crucial as the project once notified for tender almost never gets terminated and extensively revised for environmental reasons. Which is understandable because at this stage a lot of material resource, manpower, and political calculas has already been mobilized. Therefore, climate and environmental activists should focus on the policy framework determining the initial approval of public infrastructure projects.

Such a framework must become the law of the land – like the Climate Change Act 2008 in the UK. But given the fact that India is reluctant to even revise its climate goals that is a very difficult task. And even such a law with strict emission targets will not be sufficient to govern particular projects because the impact of a single work, especially small projects like single lane roads, is usually very low even over the infrastructure’s lifetime. But the cumulative effect of all projects in a region or of a megaproject with various sub-projects – like Sagar Mala do have a massive greenhouse impact.

Hence the need for planning. Planning will not only make the ecological assessment and hence the construction of a range of public infrastructure (and possibly private infrastructure) within the biophysical limits of the planet but also give the opportunity to make more just and equitable infrastructure – where the relationships of various projects and their relationship with society and classes within it is better scrutinized.

Climate Crisis: Some Relevant Graphs for India

Friday, October 11th, 2019

Part of my presentation on climate law at some university:

Saturday, July 27th, 2019

A question has been bothering me for quite some time now. The question is, whether it is better to do something – something that gives only an illusion of reaching a solution to a problem or, to do nothing about it? The paper was an attempt to clarify some issues around this problem.

What do I mean by actions “that only gives an illusion of reaching a solution” – by vacuous actions? I believe any solution that does not incorporate and take into account the core of the problem can never meaningfully solve the problem and hence are only empty posturing.

In case of climate change then, what are the core issues that any meaningful action must incorporate? There are several, but here I have only focused on four – three general and one India specific (but a derivative of a general issue).

The first one has to do with total global carbon budget. To keep global mean temperature below the catastrophic threshold of 2°C there is only a limited amount of greenhouse gases we can emitte. The global carbon budget for 2°C according to IPCC Working Group I is less than 700 GtCO2 and for 1.5°C is around 400 GtCO2.

But the divergence from this fact and core issue starts to appear in the IPCC itself when the Working Group III in it’s modeling assumes that we have a budget of around 1600 GtCO2 – almost three times the actual. All actions to mitigate climate catastrophe must take this fact into account.

The second part of the core of the climate problem has to do with carbon removal technologies. There are many variants of these technologies and the scientific community has been telling us again and again that none of them exist . Atleast they can not be deployed in the scale required in given time. But the IPCC Working Group I assumes these technologies in its modeling – this brings our global carbon budget significantly further down. This fact must also be taken into account in any set of meaningful actions.

Third, the recent IPCC special report on 1.5°C says that what is now required to avoid the worst possible catastrophe is a “rapid and far reaching transition in all aspects lf human activity” which is “unprecedented in human history”. It doesn’t recommend patching up older actions, policies and legislation.

And sadly, I haven’t came across any discussion of these issues in last two days in the conference. There is a limit to hiding behind the language of differentiated responsibility after which it morphs into irresponsibility.

The fourth point – about India. Using some older model I have tried to show in the paper that even in best case scenario, India has the carbon budget of around 40 GtCO2. Which means even if USA and the EU decarbonise rapidly and reach net-zero around 2040, to avoid climate cascade into an inhabitable planet India can only emit for 10 more years at current rate.

Any meaningful action in India must take this into account – otherwise it’s just a masquerade for business as usual.

What I have been trying to say is that we cannot negotiate with or fool laws of physics. And if we cannot do that, the only options we have are to either follow IPCCs recommendation of rapid and unprecedented transition in all aspects of human life or to embrace extinction.