This is a chart for arms sales by country in 2005. USA is currently tops by far, but if you read the accompanying Boston Globe article from last year, Russia’s trying very hard to catch up.
This is the oxygen that keeps conflicts going a lot longer than they should, and also make them so much more destructive. Remember this when your favorite government (they’re all to blame here, no singling one country out) starts talking about “peace”.
Happy Friday!!
I grew up in Chennai, proudly known as the automotive capital of India and home to Standard Motors. While it makes me very happy to see Chennai back on the automotive map, it also points me to the fact that India needs to be involved in the long-term reduction of heat-trapping emissions. This is not going to help…
BBC NEWS | Business | India eyes 25 million automotive jobs
India’s labour intensive car industry has become a tremendous job creator and as such a crucial driver of economic growth.
Already, some 10 million people are working in factories across India – making cars and motorcycles, tractors and trucks – or in sales and service centres.
And their numbers are set to swell.
By 2016, the automotive industry should have created employment for 25 million people in India, according to government predictions, set out in its Automotive Mission Plan.
I realize that India has a loooooooooooooong way to go before it catches up with the US and the rest of the developed world as far as per capita heat-trapping emissions are concerned. I also admit that infrastructure development, job creation, manufacturing prowess, etc., are critical for India in order to mitigate its soul crushingly large poverty and development issues. But, by putting so much emphasis on conventional car technology, and putting so many more CO2 emitting monsters on the road, India is putting itself in a position of playing the development vs. environment game.
Is it necessary that India and China tread the same path as the U.S and Europe? Does India have to make and use cars that are built using technology developed prior to our knowledge of global warming? The same company that gets cautious praise from the Union of Concerned Scientists for its “leadership” role in global warming will turn around and build factories in India that carry the status quo forward for another 30 years. When you’re starting from the foundation, and you know that the plans provided to you will lead to your house crumbling in 20 years, would you use the plans anyway because your contractor provides you with no alternative? The logical answer seems to be no, but is this process logic driven, or enforced by the existing power structure?
The vehicle industry is entrenched in the US and therefore, resistant to change. It is understandable, not optimal, not desirable, shortsighted, etc., but understandable. Change requires effort, and a lot of the time, the effort is motivated by external factors, such as strict regulation. Without these external factors, it is very easy to keep chugging along merrily.
But, does India have to make the same mistakes? Does India have a choice here? I am afraid not. The pressure to build infrastructure quickly leads India to seek foreign investment and the investment will only come in the way of companies like Ford. And Ford will do exactly what it needs to do to make money in the short term (apparently, they’re not very good at that either!).
What is the answer? The developed countries have to pass legislation that pretty much forces the car companies’ hand. Strict increases in fuel economy standards, tightening of loopholes, and strict enforcement are all required. As this UCS report shows, fuel efficiency improvements of up to 40% are possible using run of the mill technology (as in, no hybrids, no electrics, nothing). But this is not sufficient. While the US market is focused enough that the highest regulation (California) pretty much drives the market, will car companies simply make a set of third world cars and a set of first world cars?
There’s clearly another piece to the puzzle, encouraging technology transfer of the most carbon efficient technologies to emerging markets so that they can build infrastructure correctly, using current knowledge instead of following the only blueprint currently available to them. Yes, this hits upon intellectual property issues at times, but when your village is being submerged by the sea, intellectual property needs to take a back seat. This technology transfer needs to happen either through incentives (tax breaks, non-profit/UN funding), or disincentives (carbon taxes, etc.). the Kyoto Protocol does have some technology transfer programs built in, but without the participation of the US, the protocol is not going to work.
Do I see any of this happening? Not really, so I guess we’re stuck with recycled global warming denialism like this one from one of India’s prominent columnists.
Almost as soon as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming came into effect on February 15, Kashmir suffered the highest snowfall in three decades with over 150 killed, and Mumbai recorded the lowest temperature in 40 years. Had temperatures been the highest for decades, newspapers would have declared this was proof of global warming. But whenever temperatures drop, the press keeps quiet.
Yes, the country that produces great intellectuals has come down to this. But, this is the prevailing wind in India. As a country, it has swallowed the American line on development being at odds with the environment. As a country, it is poised to greatly increase its heat-trapping emissions and fight vigorously, any efforts to restrict its emissions. India is right in most ways, its per capita energy consumption is miniscule. It already only uses half the energy per dollar of GDP that the US uses (of course, this is at the expense of quality of life for millions). So, any attempts at pointing fingers at China and India are irresponsible. But, that is the past. Looking forward, every country needs to use the most efficient technologies possible, and this Ford factory driven development model ain’t gonna work.
I leave you with the energy intensity chart…
Bhutan is a small country nestled in the Himalayas, breathtakingly beautiful and “quaint”. Unfortunately, it’s about to be hit by a truck!
Reuters AlertNet – FEATURE-Bhutan to pay for others climate sins
The retreat of Bhutan’s glaciers presents an even more formidable and fundamental challenge to a nation of around 600,000 people, nearly 80 percent of whom live by farming.
Bhutan’s rivers sustain not only the country’s farmers, but also the country’s main industry and export earner — hydro-electric power, mostly sold to neighbouring India.
For a few years, Bhutan’s farmers and its hydro power plants might have more summer melt water than they can use. One day, though, the glaciers may be gone, and the “white gold” upon which the economy depends may dry up.
The threat led the government’s National Environment Commission to a stark conclusion.
“Not only human lives and livelihoods are at risk, but the very backbone of the nation’s economy is at the mercy of climate change hazards,” it wrote in a recent report.
Scientists admit they have little solid data on how Bhutan’s climate is already changing, but say weather patterns are becoming increasingly unpredictable.
Well, as I keep saying, Americans and Europeans will be incovenienced by global climate change, Asians and Africans will die. I don’t have an answer, though, which is depressing on this gray and cloudy Friday morning…
Beware the dangers of the overhyped press release machine (or sciencedaily, pick your poison). All Farouk El-Baz saw when he did the radar study was a giant depression. It is TBD whether there’s water in them thar holes!’
BBC NEWS | Africa | Ancient Darfur lake is dried up
Alain Gachet, who used satellite images and radar in his research, said the area received too little rain and had the wrong rock types for water storage. But the French geologist said there was enough water elsewhere in Darfur to end the fighting and rebuild the economy.
On Wednesday, Boston Universitys Farouk El-Baz said he had received the backing of Sudans government to begin drilling for water in the newly-discovered lake, in North Darfur.
No wonder they say that water is the 21st century oil. This guy’s going to be drilling for water (also known as well digging!).
Warning that the threat of climate change was real, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said future of people will be at peril if they do not change their lifestyles.
Singh’s warning came on a day when he constituted a high level advisory group to help the government take pro-active measures to deal with global warming.
“The threat of climate change is real and unless we alter our lifestyles and pursue a sustainable model of development, our future will be at peril”, he said in a message on the occasion of World Environment Day.
So, what exactly is the Indian position on climate change, something that threatens its coastlines, will put entire villages under water in the Ganga delta, screw around with the monsoon, and accelerate glacier melting in the Himalayas (among many other effects?)
Here’s India’s position from the talks with Brazil last week…
“We are willing to work in partnership in this process to cut emissions but we cannot accept equal responsibility (for the global mess caused by the industrialised nations),” an Indian official said.
The country’s top environmental official, Pradipto Ghosh, said yesterday that “legally mandated measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are likely to have significant adverse effects on the GDP growth of developing countries, including India”.
Yes, obviously. The world is in desperate need of a framework to make development and poverty alleviation happen without burning too much coal. But, as long as the leader of the free world vacillates, obfuscates and procrastinates, not much will happen.
Eminent domain is the concept that governments can acquire private land for “improvement” and “development” purposes. But what happens when you combine
Well, in India, people die.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | ‘Seven die’ in India farm clash
At least seven people are reported to have died after police fired on farmers protesting at the acquisition of farmland for industry in eastern India. The clash happened in Nandigram in West Bengal state where thousands of riot police have been sent to quell protests against a planned chemical hub. Police say they met fierce resistance from thousands of villagers. Police say two people have died, but doctors in a local hospital say five more men have died of bullet wounds. ‘Land grab’ Farmers in Nandigram have been resisting the West Bengal government’s plan to acquire farms for setting up a hub for chemical industries by an Indonesian company.
As India’s manufacturing infrastructure and increasingly rapid industrialization starts to catch up with its already booming software economy, watch for these tensions to get worse. Indian governments are not used to handling issues like these in an equitable fashion. Hopefully, the sacrifices of these people will change something, but I am not optimistic. Lives are cheap in India. Nobody’s going to write a song about these 7 dead.
Meanwhile, in the other India, people still poop outdoors…
Using shame to change sanitary habits – Los Angeles Times
Every morning before sunrise, Ravi Shankar Singh, a cheerful man known to his neighbors as “Luv” Singh, sets out to patrol the potholed roads and rice fields of this north Indian village. He carries a whistle and a flashlight. He sings while he walks. The village’s self-appointed sanitation guardian, Singh is on the lookout for anyone squatting in the fields or alleys, using the cover of darkness to do what millions of people have always done across India: defecate outdoors. After years of programs to increase the number of latrines in villages, the government still has not managed to eradicate a practice that is cited in the spread of water-borne illnesses and parasites, such as diarrhea and hookworms. Critics say the obstacle is not so much the shortage of latrines, though that, too, remains a problem for nearly half of India’s rural population. The main challenge is getting people to use the facilities they have. Singh says he’s found a way. When he spots someone squatting, he lets loose with a blast on his whistle. Or shines his light on the offender. Or both.
This is clearly a serious public health issue and one that is linked to many avoidable deaths from disease. I am not sure if blowing whistles at people is an ethical way to do it. In a country where actual toilet facilities are still rare, and the people who grew up in this scarcity have internalized the fact that they have to “externalize” their poop, just providing facilities and shaming them is not enough.
Just as with most things in India, no easy answers, I guess the right combination of education (especially targeting the young), enforcement through fines, and most importantly, saturation coverage of clean and easily available toilets would eventually work. But it will take time, and of course, public urination is a completely different beast!