As Copenhagen is near, hopes high

There are high expectations worldwide of a positive outcome at the Copenhagen summit on climate change in early December despite seemingly unsurmountable hurdles due to the position taken by the United States. The President, Mr Barack Obama, is believed to be in favour of joining the rest of the world in fighting global warming but the US Congress and the public are still sceptical. Some activists claim this is because the American people have been fed misinformation by the powerful electricity and coal lobby — who fear, it is said, that if the US accepts a cap on emissions, it would send the price of electricity sky high. Most US power utilities use coal, which is highly polluting. If America joins the global warming protocol, they will have to buy carbon credits. They can still pollute, but the price will get a lot higher. It is estimated the US will have to pay $2 billion to buy carbon credits if it continues to pollute the way it is now — and these will have to be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher power charges, which will hit hard those who are already reeling as a result of inflation and the credit crunch. It is important that Copenhagen succeeds and does not get bogged down in the kind of North-South wrangling that has stalled the Doha Round of WTO talks. In this case, however, both Europe and Japan have gone the extra mile on legally-binding emission quotas. India and China have signed the non-legally binding agreement. The Bric nations — Brazil, Russia, India and China — as well as South Korea and the least developed countries of Asia and Africa believe that the developed countries have, over centuries, polluted the earth, but now want to put the onus on developing countries to start cleaning up. India has one of the lowest carbon emission rates — 1.2 tonnes per person annually, set against 21 tonnes for the US and 24-25 tonnes for China. The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, has made India’s position clear: greenhouse gas emissions must be calculated on a per capita basis to ensure that any climate change agreement is truly equitable. He has even given the developing world an assurance that India will keep its per capita carbon emissions below that of developed nations and would never exceed their average per capita emissions. The US, however, insists that India and China are the two countries which will grow in future, unlike the developed world, and they have to accept a cap on emissions. This is absolutely unacceptable to both India and China, and rightly so. The United States, despite former vice-president Mr Al Gore’s high-voltage campaign against global warming, remains sceptical on whether all the steps taken really help to stem global warming. It is also dead set against strengthening the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and wants its own environment protection agency to monitor carbon emissions. The hopes of India and the developing world are fixed on two key issues in Copenhagen: one, that the US join the global warming protocol; and two, that the developed countries help the developing world with funds and technology to make “green” their industries. China has already said the developed countries should contribute one per cent of their GDP — around $350 billion — to this end.