While its totally clear, amazing and wonderful that Bali is bringing nations, regions, and great ideas together, I am sad to see that our generation’s success in international cooperation may not be paralleled by similar progress in the debating chambers. While Grist’s “Blowguns in Bali” was humorously addressing the major issues and conflicts to be addressed in Bali, the subtitle to the article, saying that many nations’ “defenses are up” during the first days of the CoP, became chilling when read in the perspective of Indian newspapers’ coverage of Bali.The Times of India made Bali sound like an island war zone, while describing the “climate meet”:
At Bali, where 190 countries are debating on how to safeguard the future of the Earth, India finds itself under siege. But battling for its right to development, India has found its best friends across the borders - China and Pakistan… For the developing world, India’s battle is to push the idea of per capita emissions as a unit of measurement.
Its true that the idea of using per capita emissions vs. total national or global emissions as an indicator will be a major point of contention between developing and developed countries.But isn’t there a middle ground? Room for both? The whole shared but differentiated responsibility idea?
The article goes on to say that while India has often tense relations (not to mention intense cricket rivalries) with its neighbors, they’ve found a few things they agree on — fighting against the US and developed nations on emissions targets.
But, in a rare demonstration of solidarity, India and China have teamed up and officials of both countries are working together on every issue - from emission reductions to setting targets for energy intensity… The border dispute and other troubles seem far away for officials at the climate change frontlines - their only brief is to ensure that India and China have the space and opportunity to grow unhindered by cuts and targets.
Wait — aren’t the climate change frontlines the melting icecaps and permafrost, the submerging islands of Indonesia itself, the threatened mangroves of India’s Sunderbans, and the people whose livelihoods rely on all of these? Aren’t the climate warriors the political, scientific and activist leaders — in the developing and the developed world — who are coming up with innovative strategies and technologies to combat climate change? Isn’t the battle against inaction, not again each other? I hope that the youth in Bali, representing so many nations of the global North and South, can demonstrate and convince political leaders that the only solution will be working together, both to reduce emissions and to bring millions out of poverty, as sustainably, efficiently, and quickly as possible.
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It’s true that issues such as melting and extinction and rising sea levels should be high in delegates’ minds at Bali, but the truth is that, in these rapidly developing nations like India and China (as well as in the US) there is a strong short-term economic focus. We need to try to get our leaders to look to the long-term as well, but we also have to meet them where they are. David Roberts is finishing up a several-part post sequence on that topic over at http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/3/22320/8954. It is counterproductive to say “But why aren’t you moved by these awful consequences in the future?” It’s important to keep those concerns prominently on the radar, but they’ve not shown themselves to be very good at winning over people not already in the choir. We need to show India, China, and the US how adopting really good climate measures can help them in the short term economically, or at the very least extremely concrete ways such measures can help them economically in the long term. This is the only way we’re going to get the kind of change we need out of India and China and other developing nations.
“Aren’t the climate warriors the political, scientific and activist leaders — in the developing and the developed world — who are coming up with innovative strategies and technologies to combat climate change? “. You don’t see that many of the developed countries are trying to use the issue of climate change to contain the growth of developing countries. India has almost 250 million poor people. Without rapid growth in the economy, these people will die of hunger by the time global warming is brought under control (Probably hypocritical Westerners will be happy to get rid of so many people). Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, all the western countries have been emitting unproportionate amounts of green house gases and polluting the environment. They will HAVE TO pay the price for that. Instead of doing that, they are trying to put all the blame on the developing countries.
BTW, if you knew how people in the developing countries live, you wouldn’t have asked them to reduce their emissions. In most of the cities people have no electricity for many hours of the day. They get water for 1-2 hours a day (they have to collect water and use it for the whole day). How much emission can these people reduce?
There is no common ground for developed countries and developing countries. It is the fundamental right of the developing countries to improve the lives of their people!!!!
It is truly amazing the scale of energy demand the developing world needs. Even if they can function on a quarter of the US per capita electricity (and that is half of the per capita of efficiency stalwarts such as Switzerland), we are talking about an increase of electric capacity on the order of 2-3 times the currenct US electric capacity. It is no wonder that many experts want carbon sequestration and nuclear at least in the discussion.