Have you seen dinosaurs addressing the United Nations General Assembly? A well-deserved video message has gone viral just ahead of the CoP-26 conference in Glasgow. The dinosaur tells the gathering: “I have a wild idea! Don’t choose to go extinct!” The reference is to the climate crisis. Dinosaurs were driven to extinction by factors beyond their control, but humanity is intentionally bent on leading itself to it. Videos United Against Fossils Fuel subsidies, which amount to hundreds of billions of dollars annually, contribute to global warming. According to an estimate by the Energy, Environment and Water Council, India’s share on coal, gas and oil alone is subsidy bill was ₹830 billion in 2018-19, or about $11 billion. one more ₹800 billion of the annual subsidy goes to the transmission and distribution of electricity, which is primarily coal-based, and is therefore an indirect fossil-fuel subsidy. This subsidy works through extremely low pricing of electricity. In comparison, our subsidies on renewable energy and electric vehicles till 2018-19 were barely ₹99 billion, that is, about one-seventh of the direct subsidies on fossil fuels. Subsidies have increased due to the rise in global crude oil prices. This scary “extinction” prediction is based on how close we are to crossing the 1.5°C limit on global warming. Beyond 2 °C, we will suffer irreversible changes, which will lead to devastation with weather cycles, sea level rise, submersion. island nation, as well as droughts, floods and food shortages. No amount or net-zero target of greening the economy will help after that. The 1.5°C ‘Lakshman Rekha’ was collectively agreed upon in the Paris Treaty in 2015. Almost all of the 197 parties to the CoP-26 were signatories to that agreement, even the US, which walked out of it this year only to go back in 2020. Each country has contributed to keeping global warming below the danger mark by reducing emissions and cutting fossil fuels. Unless the current accumulation of greenhouse gases stops, we are headed for disaster. The planet has a limited “carbon budget”; That is, how much cumulative carbon dioxide concentration the atmosphere can tolerate and still keep the planet below 2°. Already, our atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration is 420 parts per million, which is 50% higher than pre-industrial levels. Due to this, the planet was about 1.2° hotter in 2020 than in the pre-industrial era. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that the past decade was the warmest in the past 125,000 years. So global warming is real (as if it needs any confirmation). The report also states that CO2 is the highest in two million years. how to reverse it? Solar is a big part of the north. Steep carbon taxes, and not subsidies, can also help. It is not the poor, but the rich, who have resource-intensive lifestyles that need to bear the burden of carbon taxes.
In some ways, India is trying to offset fossil-fuel subsidies with hefty excise duties on petrol and diesel. In the last financial year, due to the pandemic, fuel consumption declined by 9%, but excise duty collection increased by 62%. This year, during the first half, it is another 33% higher. The resulting inflation is a political hot potato and hurts the poor far more. The government has so far resisted the temptation to reduce excise duty. However, these, along with India’s coal cess, are a blunt way to collect carbon taxes. The affluent world including the small section of high and middle income people in developing countries like India really needs to make significant changes in their lifestyles. As Professor Chetan Solanki of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay says, the first law of sustainability is that finite ecological resources must mean limited consumption. Therefore, reduction in consumption may be inevitable. The world celebrates an Earth Overshoot Day, which marks the day when the world began using resources borrowed or stolen from unborn generations. That day fell early this year on July 29. Thus, year after year, we steal tomorrow’s resources. Sustainability is the art and science of maximizing economic well-being today without compromising the ability of tomorrow’s generations to do so. The world is rapidly reducing its carbon budget at the current rate of CO2 emissions. Unless drastic cuts are made, we will finish the budget in just seven or eight years. Solanki explains that an air conditioner running for an hour emits one kilogram of CO2. In a month, a typical high-income family will expel 500 kg of CO2, which is much more harmful to the ecology than all the plastic and other waste that is thrown out. Solanki is an award-winning ambassador for solar energy, founder of the Energy Swaraj Foundation, and is currently on an 11-year bus tour (mostly on solar power) across the country to spread the message of sustainable living far and wide.
India is well ahead in meeting its Paris commitments for renewable-energy capabilities. The recent launch of Mission Green Hydrogen in combination with solar power for electrolysers will go a long way in the country’s decarbonisation journey. But, as Solanki and others have pointed out, our work will remain incomplete until we address the distributional and inequality-generating impact of highly carbon-intensive economic models. If we are to all avoid extinction, as the dinosaurs urged, then today’s wealthy minority will need to leave more elbow space for the vast majority of the poor, so that we can all adjust to the limited carbon space of the future. To be.
Ajit Ranade is the Chief Economist of Aditya Birla Group.
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