EDITORIAL: Post-Copenhagen Conference, The Farce Continues on Climate Change

Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is now deeply red-faced by the exposures of its lies about its profound claims on the 'disappearance' of Himalayan Glaciers and occurrence of extreme weather conditions related to global warming. IPCC has now admitted that these are not based on any scientific evidence. The Copenhagen meet, as expected, achieved nothing to protect our planet instead caused huge spending of natural resources.

The IPCC has never addressed the real issue of the lavish life-styles of the rich people and the rich nations as reflected by their per-capita CO2 emissions. The IPCC, dictated by USA, refuses to accept per-capita CO2 emission as the yardstick and continues to use per-country CO2 emission instead, which shifts the blame to China and India, who emit substantial amount of CO2 simply because of their large populations. Thus India and China are squarely blamed for their large populations. This however is not true.

NSM has computed the climate-normalized per-capita CO2 emission ratios of various countries vis-à-vis India (using average annual mean temperature). The figures are quite revealing: Australia is the worst offender (the ratio is 11.1) followed by Saudi Arabia (7.8), USA (6.7), Canada (3.8), and Japan (3.5). European Union has modest ratio of 2.6 followed by Russia (2.5), Brazil (1.2), China (1.2) and India (1.0).

Per-capita release of CO2 of USA is 6.7/2.6 = 2.6 times that of European Union (by our method)! Question is why should the IPCC not take cognizance of this fact and demand that USA's per-capita CO2 emission be reduced to match that of EU at least? (This means reduction in emission of 3.7 Billion tons of CO2 per year alone from USA). Much of the problem will be taken care of even at the current rate of emission of CO2. But since the expense of IPCC and other UN bodies is mainly borne by the USA how can they take such a correct stand? As the saying goes do not bite the hand that feeds.

The greatest pity is that the Minister for environment, Jairam Ramesh himself rejects the per-capita yardstick and supports the per-country cap that will only help the rich nations. We want to ask Mr. Jairam Ramesh, the IPCC and others, two questions: (1) is the food intake for proper diet is based on per-capita or per-country basis? If it is by per country, then average Indian will eat only once per day compared to three times of EU and 6 times that of USA. (2) Is the CO2 emitted by breathing human beings based on per-capita or per-country basis? If it is by per-country basis, then every two Indians out of three have to be choked to death to fulfill the wishes of the IPCC, USA and other rich nations.

NSM states that climate-normalized per-capita CO2 emission can be the only basis for computation of emission norms. This value for the European Union should be taken as standard (with a prescribed capping factor); this will cap that of USA and other wasteful countries while allowing India, China etc to improve the living standard of their citizens. Of course, new technologies must be developed and used to improve the efficiency of use of energy and material in all aspects of our life, which will reduce the emission.