Emissions are locale specific. India should also tackle vehicle emission and not succumb to western pressures
The greenhouse gas global warming and climate change are being used by green lobbies that have turned it into big business, raking in bigger profits in the West. Climate change is a regular geophysical phenomenon and nobody has ever been able to stop it, and India has taken the most sensitive stand of ‘phasing down’ coal that needs to be extended to the entire climate concern at COP27 at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.
Emissions are locale specific. The Climate Accountability Institute of UK’s Carbon Majors study finds that only 100 companies have contributed 72 per cent or one trillion tonnes of emissions globally since 1988. At the COP26, India was among the nations which insisted that in the Glasgow Climate Pact coal be “phased down” and not “phased out”, citing the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities when tackling climate change. In a similar vein, India should also tackle vehicle emission and not succumb to western pressures.
India is right but it can go further to state that man is too weak to change the global climate. Yes, warming of the environment has been largely a western propagation. The natural factors are constant. Even glaciers directly affect the landscape in many ways, shaping and reshaping earth’s surface. Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav says he would stress on $100 billion yearly assistance to developing countries to meet climate targets as insisted by the West.
Geological records show that there have been a number of variations in the earth’s climate. There are many natural factors, including the changes in sun, emissions from volcanoes, variation in earth’s orbit and level of carbon dioxide. It is changed by volcanic eruptions, variability in the orbit of the earth and shifts in earth’s crust or plate tectonics. Every volcanic eruption emits millions of tons of pollutants. Not just ash and dust but also carbon dioxide: one of the strongest greenhouse gases on our planet. In the largest cases, a single volcanic plume, lasting only hours, might add many millions of tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Individual volcanoes add more carbon dioxide to our atmosphere than human activity.
The unprecedented drought in Europe and parts of America that dried up major rivers is a natural phenomenon and no man, even without lighting up a single fire could have stopped it. Had it been so there would not have been Manu or Noah’s ark in the face of the great flooding.
A new report ‘The Big Con’, compiled by Global Forest Coalition and Friends of the Earth International and Corporate Accountability, outlines a disturbing collusion between polluters and policy makers. The emerging reality is that green-house gases are nothing compared to the natural causes for heating up the earth. The worst sufferers are the 46 least developing countries (LDC), says the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development.
The West has a different approach. It says global warming is the long-term heating of Earth’s surface observed since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in earth’s atmosphere. It does not want this term replaced with “climate change”.
There are known such phenomena in seven different glacial and interglacial ages. Even renewable energy, the latest fad, is known to cause tremendous pollution whether wind, solar or hydro. Renewable energy often requires more land than fossil fuel production, with infrastructure fragmenting or even eliminating high-quality wildlife habitat, according to Christopher E Moorman, professor of fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology at South Carolina University.
Solar is supposed to generate 34600 tonnes of junk every year by 2030 in India alone, according to the National Solar Energy Federation of India. The global volume of wind blade waste will be a million tonnes by 2035 from 30,000 tons in 2021, according to Bloomberg. It is partly recyclable at a high cost. But wind panels made of composites are neither biodegradable nor can be recycled. As per a US study by 2050 it would be cumulative 2.2 million tons and occupy one per cent of the landfill area. Hydro has several hazards, including the water being turned turbid, sinking a large area and weight that slows down the earth rotation as the ‘China’s Three Gorges Dam’.
Lithium-ion batteries contain metals such as cobalt, nickel, and manganese, which are toxic and can contaminate water supplies and ecosystems if they leach out of landfills apart from fires. The lithium itself is hazardous. Climate change and warming are much wider issues beyond the scope of the COP, which should have gone into the core to save the earth instead of superficially treating it. Or it can also mull if there is a repeat of Noah’s great flood that would be due to manmade gases or climatic factors. Let it not be a business proposition at the graveyard.
(The author is a policy analyst)