Global Warming: Nero Fiddling

Nagraj Adve

Never has there been a clearer case of Nero fiddling while Rome burnt. Only in the case of global warming, it’s the Earth that’s burning and we are not merely fiddling, we are stoking the flames.

The recently released Summary by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2007, The Physical Science Basis: Summary for Policymakers, makes it clear how bad the situation is and that it will worsen. It says there has been a sharp increase in carbon emissions just in recent times, from 6.4 billion tons per annum in the 1990s to about 7.2 billion tons per annum in the years 2000-2005. This is an increase of 12.5 per cent in just a few years and that too at a time when the Kyoto Protocol was in effect. This has resulted in carbon emissions increasing to 26.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year.

Consequently, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from 280 parts per million (ppm) around the time of the Industrial Revolution to 379 ppm currently. To this if one were to add other greenhouse gases, primarily methane, we reach carbon-equivalent levels of roughly 440 ppm at present. As a result of these greenhouse gases hampering the Earth’s heat from escaping, the average temperature over the Earth has increased by 0.76 degrees celsius.from what it was at the time of the Industrial Revolution.

The Summary also concludes beyond normal doubt that human activity is responsible. This has, incredibly enough, been a bone of contention, with some arguing that changes in solar radiation is primarily responsible, hence any effort to mitigate global warming is not just a waste of time, it is actually detrimental since it would hamper economic growth. But the latest Summary states that the influence of “changes in solar irradiation since 1750 .. are less than half the estimate in the TAR” (the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC published in 2001.)

Based on late 20th century experience and trends, the report says it is ‘virtually certain’ (99 per cent certainty) there will be warmer and more frequent hot days and nights over most land areas. It is ‘very likely’ (90 per cent certainty) there will be heat waves more frequently, and heavier rain as a part of total rainfall in a season. It is ‘likely’ (66 per cent) that intense cyclonic activity will increase as will areas affected by droughts and extreme high sea levels, but excluding tsunamis (p. 7).

Not merely are these changes based on late 20th century trends, many of these observations and freak weather events have become part of people’s regular conversations. What is not part of common sense is that the time to act is very short, a matter of barely a few years, because beyond a certain point, climate change becomes irreversible. One of the reasons for that indifference is not just because most people already have their hands full with immediate problems of sustenance but perhaps because the scientists’ dire predictions seem very far away.

For instance, much of the press reportage, though dire, mentions predictions of 2090-2099, little under a hundred years away. The best case scenario, one that hypothetically includes a population decline after 2050, the wide adoption of clean technologies, and equity in social and economic relations, models an increase of 1.8 degrees over the year 2000 and hence of 2.4 degrees since the Industrial Revolution. A more plausible scenario, and one that has been widely quoted, is what the Summary calls a “best estimate”, an increase of 3 degrees celsius, and “likely to be in the range of 2-4.5 degrees C (p. 9).

Why Acting Now is so Urgent
What’s missing in the press reportage is the damage that will be caused by much lesser levels of warming. The Summary says that effectively a rise of 0.2 degrees per decade is unavoidable. George Monbiot, in his remarkable book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning (Allen Lane, 2006) makes clear what will happen at a rise of 1 degree C: “At less than 1 degree above pre-industrial levels, crop yields begin to decline, droughts spread in the Sahel region of Africa, water quality falls and coral reefs start to die (Heat, p. 15). Since we are already at 0.76 above pre-industrial levels, we should get there in little over a decade. In fact, the IPCC report already states that that “drying has been observed in the Sahel, the Mediterranean, southern Africa and parts of southern Asia”. With 1.4 degrees of warming, the coral reefs in the Indian Ocean may become extinct. Quoting various official reports and peer-reviewed science journals Monbiot writes, “At 1.5 degrees or less, an extra 400 million people are exposed to water stress, 5 million to hunger, 18 per cent of the world’s species will be lost and the onset of complete melting of Greenland ice is triggered.” (Heat, pp. 9,15).

The urgency to act also comes from something else, what the IPCC Summary calls “positive feedbacks”. These work in two simultaneous ways: currently the land and sea absorb at least half the carbon dioxide emissions. As the Earth gets warmer, the capacity of the land and sea to absorb carbon dioxide will reduce, hence more remains in the atmosphere, warming the Earth even further.

The second element of positive feedbacks is actually the Earth itself contributing to warming. In 2005, researchers discovered that a vast expanse of ice in Western Siberia was thawing, which could release over time the 70 billion tons of methane in the soil underneath, and methane, mind you, is 23 times more potent as a warming gas than carbon dioxide. In general, as trees burn or plants die, microbes in the soil will process them faster, emitting carbon dioxide rather than soaking it up, One paper has argued that in little over three decades, living systems will actually emit more carbon dioxide than they absorb. At some critical point, warming will trigger off feedback on a huge scale, effectively making global warming irreversible. That point is widely accepted as a 2 degree rise , or just 1.25 degrees from the present. According the recent UK government report authored by Nicholas Stern, that level or even exceeding that could well be reached by 2035. Some put that date as near as 2030

Its Class Effects
The second element missing in much of the coverage is class, of how the effects of climate change will be felt differentially and will exacerbate existing inequalities, and food and water scarcity, particularly in India. Agriculture in India will be hit for a multiplicity of reasons. Rising sea levels due to warming will mean flooding in coastal areas – which are often the most fertile – and over time salty sea water entering groundwater sources, upon which agriculture partially depends. Monsoons will become more intense and heavy rains former a greater proportion of rainfall in a given season, hence affecting agriculture patterns. Dryland farmers will be badly hit. A rise of 2 degrees will result in falling rice yields, says a study by scientists at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute. Also, according to the glaciologist Anil Kulkarni, a study of 466 Himalayan glaciers revealed that their surface area had receded from 2,077 sq km in 1962 to 1,628 sq km at present, a 21 per cent decline. If the recent news report on submissions made by Indian scientists to the IPCC is to be believed, Himalayan glaciers will shrink further to one-fifth their present area, from five lakh sq km to 1,00,000 sq km. This will mean increased water (or even floods) for a while followed by even greater water scarcity than at present. This report suggests that agriculture yields could decline by over a quarter. These levels are projections but the fact of significant decline in yield is not in doubt.

This in a country where thanks to other man-made policies, agriculture is already in deep crisis. Due to the agrarian crisis, operational holdings have declined by 4 million between 1993 and 2003. The number of operational holdings below one acre has lessened by nearly 5 million because for these poor households, it is simply not worth their while. In a country that already has the highest number of malnourished children in the world, in which per capita consumption of food grains has declined in recent years, the impact on the rural poor of agriculture and water supply being hit by climate change can barely be imagined.

Flawed Responses
Yet, the Indian government’s response has been akin to Nero’s. It has merely been saying that the developed world is primarily responsible for global warming and that India will not forsake growth for the environment. As a recent article argued, “Besides activity in the market for ‘clean development mechanism’ projects, which will have little impact on emission trends, India is practically silent on the international stage.” There is no doubt that the First World and capitalism are primarily responsible for the plight we are in – America alone emits almost a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions – but given the little time to act and given that all scientific studies indicate that South Asian and Indian water sources, forests, biodiversity, shorelines, and agriculture, are already getting and going to be get worse hit, the Indian government needs to move fast. Unfortunately – and this is ironically tragic – since issues of survival, employment, food security are so much at stake and on people’s minds, one major cause that will make these more precarious seems a faraway fancy of the environmental fringe, and far removed from immediate concerns. Among many Left friends, mention global warming and one gets a blank look. It’s hardly surprising the government is doing little; there is hardly any popular pressure on it to do so.

There needs to be far more research funding and subsidies for cleaner technologies like wind and solar power. The Indian government has been exploring two avenues, nuclear power and biofuels – more due to concern about the growing demand for power, and the rising prices of conventional fuels rather than to tackle global warming. Both these avenues are being explored outside India even more and both have their associated hazards.

From the current production of merely 2,720 MW, the Indian government is planning 24,000 MW of nuclear power by 2020, and President Kalam has been urging a target of 50,000 MW by 2030. Elsewhere too, governments have begun to look at nuclear power much more fondly. The US, which has not built a nuclear plant for over two decades, is having a rethink. To nudge the construction of new plants, the US Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides tax credits to new potential nuclear plants for the first eight years of their operation. More than 20,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity have become operative globally since 2000, much of it in East Asia.

Whereas nuclear power certainly deals with the problem of carbon emissions, it is deeply flawed for three obvious reasons. One, the lack of safety associated with generating nuclear power (the effects of Chernobyl are still being felt as far afield as Western Europe). Two, the problem of storing spent fuel and as Deutch and Moniz have argued, “no country in the world has yet implemented a system for permanently disposing of the spent fuel and other radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants”. Given that nuclear waste remains hazardous for several millennia, current practices seem not very convincing. Additionally, plutonium leaks both accidental and intentional, have been unearthed in England and in Scotland; whether companies will be any more careful in the Third World where regulation tends to be less carefully ensured is anybody’s guess. As it is, these are considered security matters in India and out of the domain of public knowledge. Three, the question of linkages between nuclear power and nuclear arms and the possible dual uses of enriched uranium. The greater spread of nuclear fuel simply means the greater possibility of nuclear arms proliferation.

Regarding biofuels, the planting of jatropha has begun in many Indian states. Ethanol, made from corn, has been blended with petrol and the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation recently announced a new plan to blend ethanol with diesel. Biodiesel-run buses ply in Haryana and Pune as well. In the US, companies sold 16 billion litres of ethanol in 2005, But this again can do more harm than good. One, because of the environmental impact of fertilizer used, its gains regarding global warming are suspect. Daniel Kammen, Distinguished Professor of Energy at the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that ethanol may reduce US dependence on foreign oil, but “it will probably not do much to slow global warming unless the production of the biofuel becomes cleaner”. Second, biofuels have actually contributed to global warming by forests being felled to grow palm oil instead in Malaysia and Indonesia, and ethanol in Brazil. Palm oil plantations were responsible for 87 per cent of the deforestation in Malaysia between 1985 and 2000. The cutting of rainforest to grow palm has led to forest fires in Indonesia that released enormous carbon emissions.

Third, above all else, though state governments in India claim that biofuels will be grown on ‘wasteland’, it will impact livelihoods adversely. There have been bitter protests recently in Rajasthan against transferring land to companies for planting jatropha. These ‘wastelands’, people say, are used by communities for fuel and fodder, and as catchment areas for water bodies. Additionally, some amount of irrigation is needed for biofuels when grown on a large scale, and there is the danger of using forestland or land that could potentially be used for foodcrops. Already, according to the FAO website, the growth of biofuels has led to a rise in the prices of essential food items. Rather than having fewer cars, we are now actually taking over vast tracts of land to grow cleaner fuels for them! This in a country where already, according to Utsa Patnaik, per capita calorie intake is declining among rural households in most states and where an average family of five consumed 114 kgs less of foodgrains in 2001 than it did in the early 1990s, This is bizarre, but as long as cars proliferate at the rate they are and markets are allowed to dictate what is grown, this will only unfold and intensify.

There needs to be the understanding that the problem lies with unchecked capitalism. It’s not for nothing that in IPCC’s reports and other literature carbon emission values are presented relative to what they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution. In passing, much of the recent alarm over China contributing to global warming omits to consider that it is capitalism’s drive for cheap production that has contributed to so much manufacturing shifting to China.

Whether sustainable solutions can be found under capitalism is moot, and some have persuasively argued that “a plethora of blueprints for an ecologically sustainable world fail … because they do not accept that capitalism is incapable of bringing them into being.” There’s a problem though. Even if we disregard Left experience of the 20th century – which was scarcely inspiring in this respect – the fact of the matter is that socialism on a meaningful scale to be able to tackle climate change is nowhere on the horizon and even small levels of warming from the present will have huge impacts. Since greenhouses gases stay in the atmosphere for decades, what we do now will be felt decades into the future, and differences of degree, say through the wide promotion of clean technologies, would buy us time. But the window of opportunity before climate change becomes a runaway process is closing fast. That urgency of climate change needs to be underlined, governments pressured to act to mitigate some of its impacts, even as we incorporate the inevitable environmental destruction that capitalism causes in our understanding and our quest for a sane society.

This article was first published in the Economic and Political Weekly, 24-30 March 2007. The author can be contacted at naga2@vsnl.com

The Urgency of Global Warming

Why we should all worry about global warming?
Global warming will worsen the huge inequalities that already exist, within our society, and globally. We already have a troubling relationship with Nature and recent human activity is changing whatever harmony exists in an unprecedented, and soon, irreversible way.
Some of the things we have always taken for granted, such as the availability of water, and human habitation along the coast, along much of India, is very likely to be impacted severely. As a consequence, we will be able to grow lesser essential foods such as rice and wheat, and millions of people will get displaced from coastal areas. There will be greater deaths and spread of disease due to greater warming. Tens of thousands of other species are expected to become extinct. The extent to which all this will happen depends on the choices we make.

What is global warming?
For millions of years, the Sun’s energy has nourished the Earth, generating and sustaining all plant and animal life on the planet. A large amount of that energy bounces back into space and some of it is captured by the atmosphere, maintaining warmth and natural balance.
That harmony has been unbalanced by human beings. Our consumption of coal, petrol, diesel, etc, and other human activity such as mining, clearing forests for wood, even agriculture, generates carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and other greenhouse gases. CO2 levels in the atmosphere have gone up from 280 parts per million at the time of the Industrial Revolution to about 380 ppm currently. Other gases emitted raise this figure to an equivalent of 440 ppm. These gases don’t allow the Sun’s heat to escape sufficiently, hence warming the planet, the atmosphere, the land, even the deep oceans. As a consequence, on an average, the Earth is at least 0.76 degrees centigrade (1.4 degrees F) warmer than it was at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Much of this has happened in the last few decades.

0.76 degrees C does not seem like very much …
Already, as a consequence, permafrost – ice that has remained frozen since the last Ice Age – is melting. Droughts in the Horn of Africa are more frequent, affecting the poor there. More intense rainfalls (such as the one that hit Bombay two years ago, in which a thousand people were killed) are getting more common, as are intense cyclones, such as Hurricane Katrina.
Islands are drowning and people losing their land and livelihoods, such as in the Sunderbans as the sea level slowly gets higher and eats away at low-lying lands; Himalayan glaciers, including the source of the river Ganga, are receding. The crazy weather is already there for all to see – floods in Rajasthan, drought in Cherrapunji, snow in Dubai … it’s strange and it’s all related to global warming. It’s been estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO) that 1,50,000 additional people are dying each year from diseases, which spread more widely due to warming.
And 0.76 degrees is only an average. Some areas are warming more. In India for instance it is expected that North India will warm more than other regions. Also, further warming is unavoidable because the gases mentioned above stay in the atmosphere long after they are emitted. Hence the gases we emit now will continue to warm the Earth for generations in the future.

What kinds of human activity cause global warming?
Much of it began with the Industrial Revolution, is closely associated with accelerated use of energy through fossil fuels, and has been much sharper in recent decades. Each year, humans emit over 26 billion tons of CO2, 28% more than we used to in 1990. The chief sources of emissions are electrical power (24%), land use (18%), transport (14%), industry (14%) and agriculture (another 14%). But bear in mind that human & animal intensive agriculture, in countries such as ours, not only provides food but supports the bulk of our populations. It is essential to human existence, cars and planes are not.
Emissions have been growing sharply due to reckless mining, deforestation, wasteful production and consumption of coal and oil. Modern warfare, so dependent upon planes, fuel and minerals, has also been much to blame. Globalization – with its faster and wider movement of goods and people – is a major factor. It has not helped that consumption has become a thing to be proud about. Anyone who can afford it now drives a car, and cars emit a kilo of carbon dioxide every 6 kms. Hence a car-ride say from Delhi University to CP would emit 2 kilos of CO2. Flights are much cheaper than they used to be. More electrical gadgets at home mean more use of power, directly and indirectly. After all, there is a direct link between how much we earn and consume, and global warming.

What impact will be felt in the near future?
Even small degrees of further warming will have huge consequences, on human beings, and also on innumerable other species. Less than 1.5 degrees of warming will affect coral reefs in the Indian Ocean and essential species lower down in the sea food chain. At about 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, yields of wheat, rice and other crops will decline in India, and droughts become much more widespread. The recent summary ‘Climate Change Impacts’ by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) bluntly states that 20-30% of plant and animal species face increased risk of extinction!
The poor get more badly hit. Though all countries are going to get affected in different ways, the poorer tropical countries in Asia and Africa are going to get worst hit. In some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could halve by 2020. And the poor within these countries are less equipped to deal with further stress. Global warming will worsen already existing inequalities between rich and poor as resources, particularly water, get scarcer, and as agriculture becomes more difficult to carry on.

How will it affect people in India?
It is expected that the land that glaciers cover will decrease to one-fifth in some years. This will mean more floods at first and then less water for people as rivers dry. For the first time in history, the Ganga and Brahmaputra are expected to dry up in summer, becoming seasonal rivers. As water sources dry up and ground water falls further, access to water for drinking, for general use and for agriculture will become even more difficult than at present. Crop yields in South Asia, says the IPCC report, “could decline by 30% by mid-century”. Mind you, all this in a country in which agriculture is already in crisis and which has the greatest number of malnutritioned children in the world.
Unseasonal rains and heavy rains (such as the one that hit Mumbai) will become more common, particularly over the western coast. North India will get even warmer, where already hundreds die each year of heat stroke due to malnutrition and poor housing and shelter.
Rising sea levels will affect millions of people along India’s vast coastline. A large chunk of India’s population lives within 50 kilometres of its coastline. Many of them grow crops, which will be hit by storms, floods, rising sea levels and saline water entering groundwater sources. Fishing communities will be hit as will millions who live in cities on the coast. There will be a vast influx into existing spaces. This is a disaster on a massive scale with so many aspects, some signs of which are already visible.

Why is it so urgent to act?
We are not too far away from a critical point at which global warming becomes irreversible. Currently, the land, forests and oceans absorb half our carbon dioxide emissions. As the Earth gets warmer, the capacity of the land and sea to absorb carbon dioxide will reduce – it is already reducing – hence more remains in the atmosphere, warming the Earth further. And as Arctic and Antartic ice melts faster, less heat gets reflected back, warming the oceans and causing further melting.
Second, the Earth itself would start contributing to warming. A vast expanse of ice in Western Siberia is melting, which could release over time 70 billion tons of methane in the soil underneath (methane is 23 times more potent as a warming gas than carbon dioxide). As trees burn or rot due to warming, further carbon dioxide gets released. When soils warm up, microbes in the soil will process them faster, emitting carbon dioxide rather than absorbing it. Essentially, in some years, living systems on Earth will begin to emit more carbon dioxide than they absorb.
That critical point at which global warming becomes irreversible is widely accepted as a 2 degree rise, or just 1.25 degrees C from the present. We will reach that point in about 20-25 years. That might seem like ample time to act, but remember that CO2’s warming effects persist years after it is emitted. Hence to avoid reaching tipping point, we need to not just maintain current levels, we need to ensure drastic cuts in carbon emissions. In short, we have to act with great urgency. Before it is too late.

What is the Indian government’s response?
The Indian government has been saying that US and other first world countries are mainly responsible – here they are right – so they ought to take steps before India does; in this they are wrong. Such a position is shortsighted because it ignores the fact that India will be hugely affected. India ought to take the lead in promoting clean technologies and sources of power such as wind and solar energy and put pressure on other countries to do the same. But to the contrary, the Indian government has been promoting cheap cars, cheap flights, malls and the consumption culture, and is permitting mining in many states, all of which will be disastrous. We simply cannot ignore the fact that the time to act is running out fast.

What can all of us do about it?
We need to do three things: influence government policy framework and choices, struggle for greater equity of all kinds, and reduce consumption to what is absolutely necessary, particularly by the affluent, so that there is room for growth for the under-consumers of today and future generations.
We need to pressurize the Indian government to put more priority on conservation, generate more of its electricity from cleaner sources like wind power and solar power instead of coal, and to promote buses, metros and cycle paths in cities instead of cheap cars.
We also need to consume less in the relatively well-off urban areas. This is not easy because we are all used to certain levels of comfort that rise all the time. Consuming less could mean taking the bus instead of a car or auto, trains instead of cheap flights, making do with less electricity, fewer gadgets and less in general. It does not help to use CFL lights at home, feel nice about it and then take a car to college. All of this is not easy when it is 40 degrees in summer. But bear in mind we have no options left.
Even if you are convinced, one would face a feeling of helplessness: what’s the use of my consuming less if everyone else is carrying on happily driving around and not changing their lifestyle. However, there has been a much greater awareness of global warming in India in recent months and movements for change sometimes start with a few people. Things have been changing even in the US, the worst offender. On 14 April earlier this year, 1,100 groups in numerous cities organized to pressurize the US Congress to tackle global warming.
We also need to push for more sustainable and equitable development, because long-term solutions to global warming can only lie in greater equity. But because of the urgency of the situation, we have to combine all possible strategies, short-term and long-term, individual and collective. Nature as we have known it and the planet itself is at stake. As someone said, it’s the only one we’ve got.
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