India, Climate, and the Coal Conundrum
Another in the fruitless rounds of UN climate talks aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions has ended in the same chronic stalemate. The gridlock stems from fundamentally conflicting interests. Author Mark Lynas points to the dilemma of India:
With the US and China now having agreed to limit their emissions — and China committing to peak CO2 releases by 2030 — the biggest unanswered question now in climate change is this: what will India do? India’s leadership responded warily to the China-US deal, and the reason is not hard to fathom. India has immense quantities of coal, and intends to burn much of it over coming decades to accelerate its development….
The costs of poverty — which includes millions of preventable deaths of young children, lack of access to water and sanitation, reduced livelihood prospects, large-scale hunger and malnutrition, and so on… are clearly much greater than the direct costs of coal burning, and this equation probably still holds even when the future damages from climate change are factored in.
The proof of this is right on India’s border in the shape of China’s coal-based development miracle. China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in recent decades, and made such immense strides in its development index that it alone has helped the world achieve most Millennium Development Goals — all based on a manufacturing boom almost entirely fueled by coal.
Lynas’s essential points here are well taken. That is: India’s development needs demand more, not less affordable energy. And for now, that is still coal.
As reported in a New York Times article Lynas cites, India’s government has left no doubt about that:
“India’s development imperatives cannot be sacrificed at the altar of potential climate changes many years in the future,” India’s power minister, Piyush Goyal, said at a recent conference in New Delhi in response to a question. “The West will have to recognize we have the needs of the poor.”
But Lynas suggests that India nevertheless take a more flexible position in climate regotiations:
I hope however that India’s leadership does not become too much of a blocking presence at the UNFCCC international climate negotiations. The principle of fairness — of so-called ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ — is well-enshrined in the process, and no-one is about to force India to shutter its new coal stations at the point of a gun. India’s leadership needs to take a sophisticated position that acknowledges its development needs but remains a partner in the worldwide mitigation effort. This will involve technology-transfer, renewables, nuclear, CCS and anything else we can come up with.
India is a big, important, and sophisticated country that certainly should be involved in developing innovations in energy and other technologies. And it will be. But the more “sophisticated” approach Lynas recommends is not entirely convincing. If anything, the Indian government’s candor is refreshing, and potentially more useful than the kabuki of the UN’s chronically futile quest for a global “climate protection” compact.
China’s more sophisticated approach, in its vacuous climate agreement with the US, comes down to little more substantive than Prince Potemkin’s villages. As Reuters reported: “Throughout, the operative word is ‘intend’ or ‘intention’, which makes clear the statement is not meant to create any new obligations.” The “intentions” China offered were no more than what it already was planning for other reasons — not least, to curb the pall of toxic smog that shrouds Beijing and other cities.
The Equity Problem
Lynas’s otherwise pragmatic argument is handicapped by overly emphasizing a per-capita basis of equity or fairness:
The US-China deal also raises serious problems of equity. India currently emits 1.5 tonnes of CO2 per-capita. China is at 7 tonnes. This deal means China’s will likely peak above 10 tonnes. In this sense, the deal is a “game changer”. It demonstrates just how high the bar is for developing countries. If everyone follows China’s course — and how can we tell them not to? — the norm will now be above 7 tonnes per-capita. And 7 tonnes per-capita is the EU average.
As you say at the end fairness is the key here. If India, China or anyone else makes products for us, we should accept that some of these emissions are ours.
There is an alternative view that “excessive” fertility and population growth themselves unethically burden ecosystems, and hence should not be rewarded with dispensations. Indeed, that is one of the key differences in North versus South views — whether GDP or population is the proper denominator in assessing shared responsibilities for greenhouse gas mitigation — that lies at the heart of UNFCCC perpetual stalemate. (Related to that, another key dispute is whether national responsibility rests more on past or future emissions.)
This is not merely an academic distinction. Much of the developing world, like all of the developed world, has more or less made some of the normal “demographic transition” to lower fertility and thus to reduced or even negative population growth. But in much of Africa fertility remains persistently high. As a result, projections which had foreseen the world’s “peak” human population leveling off somewhere around 10 billion recently have been revised upward toward 12 billion.
Lynas observes correctly that poverty is the most insidious form of pollution — in its destructive effects — and that greater wealth can make countries both cleaner in their environmental impact and more resilient in coping with all kinds of hazards. But a key part of the mitigating effect of national wealth has long been understood to be the demographic transition to low fertility and eventually zero or negative population growth. If that is not part of the equation, then the equity implications of demography loom larger.
The Fix
Regarding the global warming issue, what should be clear from Lynas’s observations is that the only effective solution will come not from the regulatory approach the UN has emphasized but rather from the technical fix: developing breakthrough technologies that can provide clean energy alternatives that are cheaper than coal.
More advanced nuclear power systems may be close to meeting some of that need, but conventional nuclear power still entails collateral hazards that need fixing. And electricity still is only part of the equation; alternatives to liquid and gaseous fossil fuels also are needed.
A number of centers and analysts — the Breakthrough Institute, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, the Center for Clean Energy Innovation, and others — have called for shifting the emphasis away from the regulatory obsessions of the UN, and of too many climate activists, toward what is needed instead: an aggressive effort to accelerate energy innovation.
Moreover, simply throwing more money at conventional R&D programs probably is not the answer. For one thing, a sluggish global economy and government budget constraints are likely to limit what further discretionary funds can be provided.Taxing carbon emissions to fund R&D investments sounds good in theory but is not easy to achieve in practice.
In any case, the technical fix itself sorely needs fixing. The centralized, elitist approach focused on government labs and universities lacks the agility and breadth needed to achieve important innovations at the pace that climate and other energy-related problems demand. My book, Energy Innovation, outlines a “Plan B” alternative, stressing open science, open innovation, and broad trans-national collaboration.*
*Also see “Global Warming Needs Global Technology”
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Originally published at www.linkedin.com on December 11, 2014.
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