Environment is still not an idea whose time has come
Environment is still not an idea whose time has come, notwithstanding the shock value of the latest assessment of nations overshooting and failing to adhere to their emission targets. The report and many reports preceding it including the ground breaking assessment on status of biodiversity by the Inter-governmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) panel point to Earth’s deteriorating health yet unfortunately, as much as many of us like to believe, environment still does not take precedent over many more pressing issues that humankind feels that it needs to solve now. Matters like buying a car, building a house or two and improving their quality of living.
The answer to this admittedly convoluted thinking could lie
somewhere between the personal immediacy and long term impact of these distant
problems. Deforestation in the Amazons – far from home, fire in Siberia –
further away, Climate Change in the Artic – ahh, new shipping routes will open
and closer home, floods in Konkan – Goa vacation needs to be shelved,
landslides in Himachal – thank god, we were not there. Nothing seems to distress
the stoic human soul as long as it does not affect us personally, down to the
household level. For everything else, there is someone else to blame.
And the blame game is still on, even though COVID
almost succeeded in catalyzing what Greta Thunberg could not shame
us into doing. Reduce our energy usage temporarily till we could shrug off
Covid’s impact and return to our usual normal life.
84%
of the worlds energy is still powered by fossil fuels and the rate of growth of
energy consumption keeps on increasing each year. Simply put or rather what
should be apparent to the thickest skull is the fact that inspite of all the
agreements various governments sign, carbon
dioxide emissions keep on increasing year after year. China leads the pack
having revived as early as May 2020 and burning more than 50%
of the world’s coal in 2020, by which time the rest of the world was
hunkering down from the effects of Covid. And as apparent as any data could
afford to be, it is clear that global carbon dioxide emissions have grown by 50%
since the world came together to sign the Kyoto protocol.
India is not far behind. It is estimated that we will soon
become the world’s third
largest energy consumer after China and United States with India likely to claim
a quarter
of the global energy demand between 2019-2040 which will be the highest for any
country. And this is not because we are adopting renewable energy sluggishly,
on the contrary we are ahead of the competition in installing solar
and wind plants at a fiery pace. But our demand for fossil fuels
overshadows all supply and with an estimated five-fold
increase in per capita car ownership adding approximately 300
million vehicles besides galloping industrial development, India is poised
to devour the global energy supply base.
And much of how the kid-glove treatment of ‘economic development’
is the norm in India can be gauged by the daily reportage. The slump in
industrial development caused due to Covid was regarded as a temporary
roadblock and detailed indices now point to the recovery in energy demand and
how increasing consumption will boost economic recovery. The increase in power
consumption in the first week of August is attributed to improved economic
activities.
As we rejoice the upturn in economic activities, simple
warning signs such as the sudden increase in energy demand in July
2021 in the state of Punjab as a result of a now-totally unpredictable monsoon
led to an unsustainable demand for electricity with India’s overall peak
power demand rising to 200570 in July, an increase of over 17% over the
previous year. As fears of civic
unrest grew, industries had to be shut down as energy was diverted for
water guzzling crops grown in these dry regions of India. The fear is that this
sort of power demand may not be anywhere near the peak, expected to arise in
the future.
With improving quality of living, air conditioners in India
along with other energy guzzling equipment’s are expected to rapidly populate
houses across the nation. And much of this energy
is likely to be provided by everyone’s favourite devil’s advocate – coal.
Yet for all the derision coal faces, mining for coal provides a boxful of
wealth to state governments (estimated to be over Rs. 10000
crores each year) ensuring that demand for coal will likely not falter,
inspite of the many dire predictions that several experts routinely advocate. If
coal were a living being, it would say, ‘where is the alternative, my friend’.
The optimism of the fossil fuel sector belies the assertions
that governments appear to posture at periodic intervals. With India’s biggest
oil refiner Indian Oil Corporation embarking on a 13 billion expansion and
international giants steadily gaining a footprint in the fossil fuel sector,
India’s anticipated demand explosion can only be served by an ever-expanding
oil and coal sector. And while the world empathically speaks of “Net Zero”, a
sustained fossil fuel dependency is but a simple correlation between the aspirations
of a billion strong country and the need to provide energy to all or most of
them, a classic case of ‘never the twain shall meet’.
It takes one back to the eternal question perplexing this
generation. Why are we not changing inspite of acknowledging that the earth is
warming. Even the latest assessment report by Inter-governmental Panel on
Climate Change scared readers momentarily on 9th August, 2021 but rapidly
receded from public view with barely a mention across a wide swathe of news
headlines. And the refrain repeats across households who (if they do choose to
talk about the climate) casually ask what difference does 1.5 degrees or 2-degrees
Celsius make. The apathy towards our deteriorating planet makes it a difficult
proposition to imagine a better future.
While biodiversity degradation was a universal blind spot
for years and rarely acknowledged by common citizenry, climate change fares
worse as Amitav Ghosh succinctly points out, “Climate
Change is like death, no one likes to talk about it”. And Indians who breathe
in poisonous air each day in an increasingly ecologically barren land that is
highly prone to climate change and a spectacularly variable monsoon, choose to
talk less about these issues.
This unified silence around earth’s health and climate is
deafening, notwithstanding the current prevailing interest. For the answer that
still blows in the wind is that most of us are using as much energy as is
feasible whilst not just doing enough at an individual level to temper our
habits. And at an international level, the call for reparations by nations
before reducing emissions is akin to self-harm that no right-thinking sentient
being can bring upon himself or herself. As Abhijit Dutta, an environmentalist
puts it starkly, “This catch 22 has few options, we are doomed if we guzzle fuel
and full of drudgery if we abstain from the pleasures of life. Faced with this
choice, most behave like ostriches and choose to let the future generation
pontificate about the world they inherit”.
Yet in a bleak world, the best-case scenario still continues
to strive towards a phased downsizing of dependence upon non-renewable sources
of energy while pushing for low cost, easy to install, decentralized renewable
energy plants. At a policy level, climate reparations must go hand-in-hand with
adoption of climate friendly technologies and not follow the prevalent scenario
of rapid fossil fuel-based development followed by reducing emissions at a
later stage. Small steps of adopting sustainability as a way of life still
holds the key in achieving the greater good.
