Tuesday 5 January 2016

GREEN AND GROWTH – A VERY TURBULENT PARTNERSHIP!




Whether it is the disappearing winter days in North India or the scary floods in Tamilnadu, or it is the cyclone tormenting coastal Odisha and Seemandhra we have been putting the blame on ‘global warming’, but do we really understand this much used term? Global Warming is the increase of Earth's average surface temperature due to effect of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, which trap heat that would otherwise escape from Earth. This in turn results in a type of greenhouse effect. Greenhouse gases, which include water vapor and carbon dioxide, absorb heat in the lower atmosphere and reflect it back to the Earth, thus heating it up.

The most significant greenhouse gas is actually water vapor, not something produced directly by humankind in significant amounts. Water vapor can easily condense or evaporate, depending on local conditions and do not bother us. The second greenhouse gas is Carbon dioxide (CO2) and even slight increases in atmospheric levels of CO2 can cause a substantial increase in temperature. Trees utilize CO2 and deforestation further adds on to the total CO2 pool, which tends to remain in the atmosphere for a very long time (time scales in the hundreds of years). Human beings have increased the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by about thirty percent, which is an extremely significant increase, even on inter-glacial timescales. This we have done by burning fossil fuel for electricity generation, transportation, and heating, and also the manufacture of cement and a host of other products essential for development. The total worldwide emission of about 22 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year is alarming. About a third of this comes from electricity generation, and another third from transportation, and a third from all other sources. Before the late 18th century, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million and currently, it’s approximately 390 parts per million. And this is causing global warming.

Naturally the next question is what does the global warming do to us and our planet. Many of the following "harbingers" and "fingerprints" of global warming are now well under way:
1.      Rising Seas - inundation of fresh water marshlands (the everglades), low-lying cities, and islands with seawater.
2.      Changes in rainfall patterns - droughts and fires in some areas, flooding in other areas.
3.      Increased likelihood of extreme events - such as flooding, hurricanes, etc.
4.      Melting of the ice caps - loss of habitat near the poles. Polar bears are now thought to be greatly endangered by the shortening of their feeding season due to dwindling ice packs.
5.      Melting glaciers - significant melting of old glaciers is already observed.
6.      Widespread vanishing of animal populations – following widespread habitat loss.
7.      Spread of disease - migration of diseases such as malaria to new, now warmer, regions.
8.      Bleaching of Coral Reefs due to warming seas and acidification due to carbonic acid formation - One third of coral reefs now appear to have been severely damaged by warming seas.
9.      Loss of Plankton due to warming seas - The enormous (900 mile long) Aleutian island ecosystems of orcas (killer whales), sea lions, sea otters, sea urchins, kelp beds, and fish populations, appears to have collapsed due to loss of plankton, leading to loss of sea lions, leading orcas to eat too many sea otters, leading to urchin explosions, leading to loss of kelp beds and their associated fish populations.

So does that mean that Greenhouse gases are out and out bad? On the contrary Greenhouse gases are important. Without them, the Earth would lose heat too quickly and life as we know it would be impossible to sustain. But too much of them would heat up the earth and cause the same effect. So a delicate balance needs to be maintained.


Now that the Earth is heating up is there any way of reducing global warming? The problem is so big that there is no one technological silver bullet for fixing things. We must reduce our energy usage, increase the efficiency of the energy we do use, look for alternate source of energy other than fossil fuel and look at solutions like carbon capture and storage. We are currently investigating the safety and viability of capturing CO2 emissions from power plants and storing them deep underground as this is one of the only options that would allow us to continue using fossil fuels. Solar energy, Wind energy, and Nuclear energy are costly alternatives of fossil fuel energy, but time has come to bite the bullet and take stock of the ‘cost’ holistically and not simply in terms of Rupees, Dollars, Pounds and Yen.

Clearly, a coal-based development strategy, that has helped the industry rich western world to get rich all these years, is incompatible with the green growth agenda. Today they are prepared to change course to a costlier energy model and they expect the developing world to do the same. This is where the two worlds do not see eye to eye. Those responsible for polluting the atmosphere are today preaching developing nations to go green, when it is the latter’s turn to get developed. Why should villages in the developing world remain dark without electricity, when they now have an opportunity to brighten up their lives? The developed world must recognize that they have to atone for the historical carbon emissions that they have been putting out in the atmosphere for over 150 years in their search for prosperity. The entire prosperity of the world has been built on cheap energy. And suddenly we are being forced into higher cost energy. That's grossly unfair. India has been insisting on a common but differentiated responsibility based on equity that calls upon developed nations to scale up mitigation and allow developing nations to grow. The demand of developing nations is for an equitable and balanced agreement that takes into account their huge development needs including access to funds and technology. This is the only way to ‘Climate justice’.

India is expected to grow at such a rapid rate over the next two decades that it could build approximately 80 percent of the physical assets—including infrastructure, commercial and residential real estate, vehicle stock, and industrial capacity—that will constitute the India of 2030. Growth of this magnitude will bring tremendous benefits, but it also poses many challenges, particularly regarding sustainability. We will need to expand our capacity to generate electricity to meet increasing industrial and residential demand, which will impel a corresponding increase in greenhouse-gas emissions. Renewable energy sources are more expensive than coal and so moving away from coal-fired electricity will incur both economic costs, and political resistance.

India’s remarkable growth record, so far, has already been clouded by a degrading environment and growing scarcity of natural resources. Mirroring the size and diversity of our economy, environmental risks are wide ranging and are driven by both prosperity and poverty. 13 of the 20 most polluted cities are in India with a wide range of health hazards for its citizens. Simultaneously, poverty remains both a cause and consequence of resource degradation: agricultural yields are lower on degraded lands, and forests and grasslands are depleted as livelihood resources decline. To subsist, the poor are compelled to mine and overuse the limited resources available to them, creating a downward spiral of impoverishment and environmental degradation.

With cost of environmental degradation, environment could become a major constraint in sustaining future economic growth. Further, it may be impossible or prohibitively expensive to clean up later. So, though we have to chart a much more difficult and costly development model than our western counterparts, climate justice demands that our path to progress is aided by the true polluters of this Earth. We, on our part should not consider this challenge as a handicap but an opportunity to innovate and become a world leader in alternate sources of energy.



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