With Indian emissions rising three to four times faster than the world average, it is time to end the government policy of hiding behind the poor to defend elites who enjoy Northern levels of consumption.
NOTHING exposes the bankruptcy of “GDP-ism”, or obsession with gross domestic product growth, better than
Thanks to lopsided elite-oriented growth,
This abysmal performance isn’t explained by low incomes.
Poor people in big Southern countries like China (HDI rank 81), Brazil (70), Mexico (52) and Indonesia (107), and even in smaller Malaysia (63), Thailand (78), Sri Lanka (99), Uzbekistan (113) and South Africa (121) have better life-chances than India’s poor. The poor of
Among 100 million-plus-population countries, only
The primary cause is massive (mal)distribution of growth, and deliberate neglect of the underprivileged. We’re condemning a majority to suffer life-long disadvantage. This year’s HDR alarms us for another reason. It’s devoted to climate change, the greatest menace to humanity after mass-destruction weapons. Global warming isn’t an apocalypse waiting to happen. It’s a tangible reality for millions. Between 2000 and 2004, there were an average of 326 “climate shocks” a year. These annually affected some 260 million, more than double the number in the first half of the 1980s. People in the South are 79 times more likely to suffer droughts, floods and storms. Monsoon floods and storms this year displaced 14 million people in
As the world drifts towards a “tipping point”— beyond which corrective action becomes impossible — it will leave hundreds of millions facing malnutrition, water scarcity and livelihood losses. Tragically, the poor, who are least responsible for global warming, are forced to bear its biggest human costs. This is doubly unjust.
Unless arrested, climate change will lead to a breakdown of agricultural systems, with 600 million more people facing malnutrition, an additional 1.8 billion facing water stress, and over 330 million people in coastal areas confronted with displacement.
Climate change is not only depressing crop yields, lowering food security and increasing human distress. It’s also forcing vulnerable people to adopt harmful coping strategies such as cutting back on food intake, withdrawing children from school, and reducing spending on health. Children born in
The HDR stresses the imperative of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degree Celsius over the pre-Industrial Revolution period. It also sharply criticises US and European Union policies on global warming, and argues that they cannot avert dangerous climate change.
The OECD countries are failing to meet even the modest targets for cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Kyoto Protocol: 5.2 per cent reduction over 1990 by 2008-2012. So meagre are these targets that it will take 30 Kyotos to stabilise the global climate.
The worst culprits are the
The Indian and Pakistani governments bristle at the suggestion that they should accept emission cuts because historically, the North’s industrial activities are responsible for global warming.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s maximum offer is to keep
It’s despicable that our governments should hide behind the poor to defend elite interests. Citing per capita emissions makes no sense in our deeply unequal societies where the rich enjoy Northern levels of consumption while the majority lives frugally.
To acquire global credibility and respect,
Global warming calls for new, radical remedies. If the world is to cut overall consumption while improving living standards for the poor, it cannot use current development models and methods, or rules governing trade, technology, investment, and finance.
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