China and India will have to ‘justify’ watered down coal pledge–Cop26 president

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/china-and-india-will-have-to-justify-watered-down-coal-pledge-cop26-president-1.4728496

by dredmorbius • 5 years ago

46 71 5 years ago

irishtimes.com

Avalaxy• 5 years ago

Mr Sharma told the BBC: “I wouldn’t describe what we did yesterday as a failure – it is a historic achievement.”

I don't know... On one hand; getting so many parties to agree to _something_ is indeed an impressive achievement, but that fact that we have to have discussions for so long and then settle for a lame watered-down pledge that isn't nearly aggressive enough is really sad. Time is running out, we truly can't afford to play petty politics and think about nationalistic goals. Everyone has to do everything they can to stop the climate change. No more discussions and "blah blah" as Greta calls it.

Eelongate• 5 years ago

“But, ultimately, of course, what we need to ensure is that we continue to work on this deal, on these commitments, and on the issue of coal, China and India are going to have to justify to some of the most climate vulnerable countries what happened.”

'Have to', or what? What leverage does he or his organization have over these sovereign nuclear armed nations? If he said 'should' I would not have batted an eye, but talking as though you're in a position of power when you really aren't just makes you seem weak and out of touch.

I think this matters, because we need to be realistic about the limitations of a diplomatic/political approach to solving this problem. I am becoming increasingly convinced that a technological solution is more viable than a diplomatic one. A solar sunshade would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, which is not an insurmountable amount of money given the magnitude of the problem. It would not solve the acidification of our oceans, but it would address rising sea levels and temperature-driven severe weather. It's not a great solution, but it might be the best solution that doesn't hinge on diplomatic impossibilities.

roenxi• 5 years ago

Justification: We have 2 billion people who need energy. They are going to get that energy, whatever it takes, because we want them to have a decent standard of living.

That is easy to see. Nobody should need to spell that out for the COP26 delegates.

cinquemb3• 5 years ago

I'd like to see the Cop26 president go to rural EM's and personally tell the people, where few to none (state run) corps are really looking to build out any infra for anything, green or not, that they cant use things like coal…

Might as well write the eulogy now…

pavlov• 5 years ago

Why the assumption that coal is always the cheapest and most easily available? Modern solar is so affordable, it's probably a much more realistic option for those rural areas.

Jansen3122• 5 years ago

Cop26 people live in high castle. Poor people is an ugly sight to them. To them poor people should be driving Tesla and eat from wholefood. If they can't is because they are lazy.

9999px• 5 years ago

Not to mention a vast percentage of their energy usage is spent on manufacturing for the West. We're essentially off-loading our carbon output to less developed countries then blaming them for it.

rgbrenner• 5 years ago

That was true years ago, but China now imports almost as much as it exports. India is a net importer, because their growth strategy isnt focused on manufacturing.

vimy• 5 years ago

Only 13 % of Chinese emissions are caused by production for other countries. That 13 % isn’t just the West but the whole world.

"Despite the large total of CO2 imports and exports, US emissions are only 6% higher and Chinese emissions are 13% lower when CO2 transfers are taken into account."https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...

Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/145441012620772147...

zionic• 5 years ago

Is that really a “justification”?

“We bred out of control to absolutely bonkers amounts, and taking X% of the earths resources is non-negotiable”?

Imagine if, in the face of climate change, the US response was a movement of 6-8 children per woman. What would that US policy be called?

thunderbong• 5 years ago

That isn't quite correct. A lot of population growth in these two countries has been due to improved medical infrastructure which resulted in reduced deaths, for both infants and adults.

rocknor3• 5 years ago

Idiotic comment.

The proportion of world population from India and China has been almost constant throughout history. They have not "bred more" than the rest of the world.

6-8 children was the norm even in developed countries in the past, economic prosperity and education changed that. European colonization actively prevented both from occurring in these countries, keeping birth rate high.

Post independence, both countries have decreased birth rates drastically, India is at replacement and still decreasing, China below replacement.

Stop using that stupid racist argument.

dredmorbius3• 5 years ago

China enacted population controls for most of 40 years that frequently attract sharp criticism.

India has made family planning widely available, through far less harsh measures.

Globally, population growth peaked in 1969, and has fallen fairly consistently since.

The largest population growth presently is in Africa, not Asia. Mostly in countries which are desperately poor and which have low past and present carbon emissions.

And, as noted, India and China's populations have historically been high. As have their relative shares of global GDP prior to the industrialised era (as calculated in reconstructions, largely by Angus Maddison at the University of Gronigen).

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#pastfuture

https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/?lang...

srvmshr4• 5 years ago

Statistically speaking, as of the present, you are more likely to encounter households with 2+ kids in US or UK, as compared to India. China had a one-child policy with draconian penalities so I am not going to harp on it.

India's population grew because of access to healthcare & increasing life expectancy education, quality of life etc. It is a big country but had a stunted growth till 50s because the life expectancy was <40 years & the poverty gave a double whammy. What can you expect of comforts or wastage, if you were going to school to have a decent breakfast, which was otherwise unavailable (case in point: recollections of my parents elementary school years)

Countries go through population cycles i.e rapid growth, stagnation or declines. The US is ticking, at the moment, faster than China for example (birth + immigration). India touched 1 billion when I was 8. I am going to be 40 soon. Since then it has added only 300 million, not doubled. Talking of resources, I am not aware of resource utilization efficiency, but the gross usage of power & commodities is way higher in developed countries as compared to India or China (mainly due to multiple automobiles, enhanced consumerism, HVAC being omnipresent). Can you imagine how much energy will be consumed in US when one day it hits 1 billion people? I hope you reserve this same sentiment for US then.

I have lived in 5 countries including US, India and China & worked close to the energy sector to speak from experience. Right now the developing countries need to bring almost everyone out of poverty & malnutrition. These arent people who have homelessness by choice (drugs, gambling etc) but by lack of resources for generations. These problems needs cheap energy, which either has to come from sources like coal or highly subsidized from West (Note: It isn't).

I would approach this problem with some sensitivity & humanity if I were in your shoes.

nix232• 5 years ago

China is between Sweden and Estonia and India right next to Argentina:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

And yes the well-being of your Citizens is the only justification a Government needs (maybe hard to understand as a US citizen)

Imagine if, in the face of climate change, the US response was a movement of 6-8 children per woman.

Imagine India would have two Cars per household like the US, and at least one of them needs to be a SUV, that's not whataboutism, it about not cleaning our own house before pointing fingers to others.

naruvimama3• 5 years ago

4 out of 6 habitable continents are dominated by western Europeans.

Western Europe is just about the size of India. And had historically low populations because of the harsh winters.

dredmorbius3• 5 years ago

This has been the tenor of international discussions on global limits (initially with a focus on population and resource availability, over the past several decades with an increased focus on environmental impacts, most notably climate change) for the past 50--60 years.

I'm familiar with discussions dating to the 1970s, in which the Global North (then "first world countries) and the Global South ("third-world", "undeveloped", or "developing" countries) battled over where and how sacrifices should be made.

In the interim, China, and to a lesser extent India, have emerged as global economic powers. Both have done so by dramatically increasing their consumption of both energy resources (much of that from coal and other fossil fuels) as well as other natural resources and extreme amounts of ecological disruption and contamination. Much as Western Europe and North America before them.

China and India also have some rather sharp history with the UK specificially, which the president of COP26 hasn't referenced, though I'm fairly certain domestic coverage in both countries will play up.

Questions of ethics, morality, and justice notwithstanding, what remains is quibbling whilst the world burns, literally and metaphorically. And that quibbling's been going on for well over a half-century (again, with different foci).

I'm digging through an excellent 1970s treatment of the general issue, William Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity*. The international dimension begins at roughly page 200. The book as a whole is excellent, as are many of the author's subsequent works, exquisitely researched, argued, written, and referenced. Ophuls's bibliographic notes are a treasure unto themselves.

The work is available for purchase, or at the Internet Archive. I recommend it strongly. Originally published in 1977 it was updated in 1994. I somewhat prefer the original in that the track record of its predictions and observations can be checked against a longer span of subsequent history, and with formidable accuracy.

https://archive.org/search.php?query=ecology+politics+scarci...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-of-s...

http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=ophuls+ecology+politics+scar...

The author maintains a website at which he's published numerous more recent essays directly:

https://ophuls.org/

NikolaeVarius• 5 years ago

I find it very hard to shame China over this considering they have one of the most aggressive rollouts of Solar and Nuclear energy in the world, while the US sits around with its thumbs up our collective butts.

jdhn• 5 years ago

No they won't. Does anybody think that the West can shame China into doing anything? India may be more receptive to overtures, but China does its own thing, and at this point doesn't care what the West thinks.

koolba• 5 years ago

… and at this point doesn't care what the West thinks.

China has never cared what the west has thought of them beyond analyzing them like an opponent in a poker game. They can’t be shamed any more than you could shame a man mud wrestling with a pig.

dqpb• 5 years ago

Here’s my concern - if you believe that people are a real critical ecological threat, then there are exactly two options: coordinated behavior change, or less people.

If there is no hope for behavior change, then that means there’s an upside to people dying. Generally, bad things happen when there is an implicit upside to death.

Jansen3122• 5 years ago

China is a unique case. Shaming do work because of the "face culture". Based on current behavior governing elite in China, I would conclude, it is working to some extend.

HKH23• 5 years ago

Here's a real example in China: local governments providing a variety of recycling bins, and it all getting thrown into general waste regardless. Does 'saving face' work in that example?

How about exporting recycling to China and letting them bury it? You feel good and they earn money. Does it fix anything though?

When you get caught, pick a fall guy and continue on your merry way. That's how China has been operating for quite a while.

rahulgoel• 5 years ago

Indian politicians who don’t deliver basic, essential energy will be voted out.

FridayoLeary• 5 years ago

Cop26 president is justifying his title. I imagine this issue is keeping all the world leaders up at night.

adtac3• 5 years ago

I think it's unfair that countries with relatively little cumulative emissions historically (India, China) are made to comply with the same restrictions as countries that have already built a lot of infrastructure with emissions over the past 150 years (e.g. Europe and North America). I know nature doesn't give a fuck about borders and what's fair, and that everyone on this planet is fighting against the same threat, so I don't know what the solution is. I just know this is a problem.

rp12• 5 years ago

Using the energy to build infrastructure is just the finders fee. Doesn’t make sense to keep doing something known to be unsustainable. That’s a tragedy of the commons

adtac3• 5 years ago

I don't disagree, but I just wish there was a solution that's both fair and, you know, won't cause mass extinction. Maybe that's just not possible.

rocknor3• 5 years ago

For people wondering what the numbers on cumulative emissions look like:

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

akvadrako• 5 years ago

Interesting, but that only goes to 2018. Emissions on the USA have been trending down since then and probably up in China.

_-david-_• 5 years ago

It feels like the West is basically saying well we can move to cleaner energy so everybody should regardless of how developed they are. If they can't move to cleaner energy then they should just go without. It would be great if every country could move to clean energy, but some can't.

aravindet• 5 years ago

I think the solution is for historical emitters to pay the rest to forgo fossil-fuel based economic growth.

Obviously, this would not happen: historical emitters also have the most political power.

The US and EU's success at killing the "loss and damages" mechanism is an example of this dynamic at play. (This was supported by countries representing 85% of the world's population.)

rsj_hn2• 5 years ago

The problem with these UN agreements promising money is that the leaders still have to go home and get those appropriations passed.

So even if 85% of the world's population wants to get money, whether or not the money is provided will depend on the 15% that has to pay. It's not a situation where you can take a vote and majority rules.

So if you are running the conference and deciding to make a decision based on a vote, then your choice is to promise money and then not deliver or not promise. The former destroys the credibility of the conference, and that's an important consideration for why conferences aren't run by rules in which countries can vote themselves aid from other nations.

TedShiller• 5 years ago

It’s easy to compel those countries: just stop importing from them

srvmshr4• 5 years ago

There will be a major supply chain crisis if you stop importing from China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh & Indonesia.

It amazes me how even a bar of quality soap comes imported from China nowadays.

vnchr• 5 years ago

They can’t do that. They signed the Paris Accords.

srvmshr4• 5 years ago

I hope this answer was a sarcasm or that I misread it.

A poor man looking for his next meal will not know anything about Paris accords. He will not certainly elect a leader who will starve them to death over sticking to environment commitments by people living in a high castle.

When it comes to developing countries like India, China and Bangladesh - it is a question of subsistence, not comforts. They need rapid growth and cheap energy to come out of poverty and ensure basic quality of life to everyone. Part of the reason, why they can't commit to eliminating coal this fast - without obvious helping-hands from richer countries.

naruvimama3• 5 years ago

Among the G20 India is the only country to exceed it's commitments. Having already exceed it's renewable energy targets and setting new ambitious targets.

InTheArena• 5 years ago

At some point - it's simple. Just pass on a carbon tax on any good, regardless of which country it is created on. Taxed in the country of destination.

If India and China decide - last minute - to hold international agreements back - rather then water down agreements just agree it without them, and let them continue to repeat to the rest of the world how "unrespected" they are.

To anyone who thinks that this is due just to "fairness" and India's and China's due - go to India. Fly from Bangelore to Hydrabad - a distance of 714 kilometers.

It is pea-soup pollution the entire way. Pollution so think it seems like you could dish it up in a bowl. And it's that way at 30,000 ft, in a plane, flying between the two points.

narayanbs• 5 years ago

Pollution so think it seems like you could dish it up in a bowl. And it's that way at 30,000 ft, in a plane, flying between the two points.

What a load of bullc$ap. Even greta thunberg wouldn't make up things like this.

srvmshr4• 5 years ago

Part of the reason developing countries are forced to deal with such pollution is because developed countries have offloaded the manufacturing on markets with cheaper capital investments. London had its peasoupers as recently as late 40s, when it was still in the business of making goods.

I find making fun of have-nots from a highcastle of righteousness somewhat disappointing, when its bricks were baked in the homes of these poor gentry.

rsj_hn2• 5 years ago

At some point - it's simple. Just pass on a carbon tax on any good, regardless of which country it is created on. Taxed in the country of destination.

I don't think it's so simple, actually. My experience is that when people declare big sweeping "simple" solutions to global problems, those solutions tend to backfire and make things worse.

Determining how much CO2 was emitted during the production of any particular good is quite difficult to do. Are you going to parachute some UN Carbon Inspection Team to investigate the BOM for every manufactured good and add up some carbon tally? How will they know whether some wire was made in a solar powered factory or a coal powered factory? And what about the inputs to those factories, etc? And why would China allow such inspectors?

You will not be able to get that type of per-item granularity.

But you can get general info about countries. OK, what do you do with the general info? Apply the same tax on all goods, or just invent some hypothetical carbon burden for each good produced in a given country? That's a great strategy for getting producers to reclassify goods -- e.g. from passenger cars to personal utility vehicles, or for diverting goods from one country to another.

Moreover here, you've switched from trying to use the market to incentivize behavior to collective punishment of producers, where producers who use green energy sources are also forced to pay the tax.

But then why would other producers change behavior? Moreover by adding these extra tariff costs, you are going to be driving producers to look for even cheaper inputs, and that means more fossil fuels.

Moreover, that's just going to result in counter-tariffs and punishment in the reverse direction.

So you will be punching China and getting an equal punch back at you, and none of that will do anything to reduce CO2. All it will accomplish is a lot of punching in all directions -- e.g this is a tantrum-based approach to CO2 policy.

nroets• 5 years ago

Yes, pass a tax. Not just on goods but also services: Flights, heating, taxi rides, bus tickets, food delivery etc.

Before the US consumer can claim any kind of leadership, it they must make some real sacrifices.

pkphilip• 5 years ago

How does carbon tax solve anything? It is far better to plant trees and find measures to decrease pollution instead of bringing in another tax which will help some company get rich

SinParadise• 5 years ago

They create incentives to transition away from carbon emission.

It would have to be global. It would be deeply unpopular to the targeted countries which may start trade wars. It would still realign incentives.

celloductor3• 5 years ago

well it's not simple, because that would mean more taxes for the rich developed countries.

their whole agenda is to deflect blame and costs to developing countries.

qolop• 5 years ago

Please don't conflate carbon emissions with air quality. Poor air quality (as measured by AQI) is not caused by high CO2 emissions, even if there's a correlation.

Indian cities do have an air quality problem, but there are other factors at play here. The most densely populated cities in India are landlocked, which means very little wind and no way for suspended particles to disperse. This coupled with practices like crop-burning are what cause "pollution". It has nothing to do with carbon emissions. India doesn't even come close to the per capita carbon emissions of a country like the United States.

aww_dang• 5 years ago

I find it an interesting contrast of contradictory themes.

On one hand there are progressive voices demanding climate action and sustainable development. What is sustainable development in real terms and where does it differ from just plain development? I think you'll find that the real difference is the cost of whatever is being promoted as "development" is much higher or more scarce under the so called, "sustainable" model.

Paying climate reparations to the regressive government institutions which hinder development, probably isn't a good strategy if development is the goal. Of course, it is always worth considering if anyone actually cares about development, sustainable or otherwise. Perhaps it is all a song and dance for ulterior motives.

Then further down the line, we might ask how this compares to other themes which have been tabooed in the modern age. Take the entire premise of western institutions dictating energy policy to less developed countries. How does that contrast to the theme of colonialism we've been taught to hate so well? What about carbon credits, how does 'global' institution appoint itself as arbiter of carbon consumption and demand payment worldwide? Again, how is this different from the colonialism we've been taught to hate so well?

Finally, consider the demonized Christian proselytizers. They are disdained by the secular West and hated by the religious East. These people make the mistake of putting children in school, building homes and bringing aid directly to people in poverty. If only they had chosen to believe in a cult of climate apocalypse and sent funds to government bureaucrats instead...

dirtyid• 5 years ago

Wealthy countries can start by justifying not delivering on the 100B in climate finance first.

celloductor3• 5 years ago

it's just a few weeks of leaders making soft promises to save the environment so they can tick off a box and not have to deal with it the next few years. i think everyone is over the charade.

darepublic• 5 years ago

Phase out vs phase down is kind of irrelevant. Hides how vague the phrase "phase out" is in the first place.

amriksohata• 5 years ago

Justification: India was one of the richest countries in the world before the industrial revolution. After years of invasion and loot it was left as one of the poorest. Western countries have built their economies on coal for over 100 years and got rich and still use per head more than India. EU/UK/US carbon output per person is still much higher. Now when India is growing others are telling it needs to change. Well you thrust it upon them, now we can fix this if you fund Indias change and invest to change, otherwise it can't.

More info: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-india-59049691

naruvimama3• 5 years ago

Even affluent Indians drink boiled/filtered water drawn from wells.

It was a surprise to me that in many European countries one could drink straight from the tap. A even bigger shocker was to know that the same water is used for flushing toilets.

Treating water to make it drinkable is extremely energy intensive.

Making small tweaks to our current setup without a discernable lowering of quality of life is just not comparable to making access to drinking water more expensive.

China and India will have to ‘justify’ watered down coal pledge–Cop26 president

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