COP21: A Cop Out!

Note: I just deleted the couple of "F" words to sanitize and civilize the discussion. It was improper for me to use them.

Raining on anyone's parade for the signing of 'balanced' and 'ambitious' COP21 is not my intent. But self deception can be deadly and puncturing it is important.

 I write this piece not as the man who long ago traded his Indian citizenship for Canadian; but more as a child who was born to relative poverty in the midnight of India's independence in the country that for a substantial period of my life was called a part of the Third World- the two words that fell on my ears as an epithet setting Asia, Africa and South America apart as not worthy of being included in the One World that I was taught and always thought had been made for you and me.

Let us admit the truth. The West including Canada signed Kyoto, then reneged on it, didn't follow it; and then Kyoto was dead. Now in its place we have the Paris Agreement. Because we killed Kyoto we are now compelled to self deceptively call Paris a new beginning. But sadly nothing of substance in the agreement is legally binding on anyone. The only obligation on a country is to in time produce its emissions reduction targets. It aspires or perhaps 'commits' the world- mind you doesn't bind it - to control/reduce our green house gas emissions to ensure the earth's temperature doesn't rise more than 1.5degrees centigrade above the preindustrial levels; and we are already about 1 degree above those levels - mainly the doing of the affluent parts of the world - so we have given ourselves half a degree worth of leeway to further enfeeble our already beleaguered habitat.

And then we have the gall to smugly talk about the COP21 embodying "ambition" and "climate justice". That 'justice' is supposed to recognise how we and not Asia, Africa and South America have messed up the environment. For that we are prepared to pay a paltry pittance - if pittance can be at all diminished by paltry - one hundred billion dollars to the developing nations- as penalty for what we ourselves tout as our unforgivable sins. 

Note how the affluent nations of the world haven't agreed to quickly and drastically reduce our/their own emissions. In fact because we won't drastically and quickly reduce our per capita energy consumption to contribute to the lowering of the GHG emissions we agree that our poorer world cousins can completely justifiably continue to produce GHG in ever increasing amounts for many more years. When the moment fixed for them to stop spewing more GHGs arrives they must stop. If they don't there is no mechanism in Paris to stop them or punish them. The developing nations won't listen to our "do as we say, not as we did and continue doing". They will continue to do what they need to do to dig their people out of poverty as we did before them. Therefore we have an agreement that is not worth the money we have spent on getting it, hot air (CO2) we have spewed praising it and the paper it is written on.

That is because we refuse to understand the nub of the problem. We keep looking at the total emissions for countries like India and China forgetting that the borders of those two are home to one third of the world's population and majority of their citizens live in poverty. As part of the 'climate justice', all of us can dirty up the earth a little more, a little longer because we won't take measures to drastically slow down and reduce our own energy consumption because our populations, despite their altruistic utterances, won't support it.

China despite being the largest emitter of GHGs has half the per capita emissions of the US. India being the 4th largest emitter has much lower per capita emissions than any of the top 10 emitters. Canada by comparison is one of the largest per capita emitters. Its total GHG emissions are at least as large as 1/3 of the total Indian emissions: thirty five million Canadians pumping 33 tons of emissions into the environment for every 100 tons emitted by 1.2 billion Indians.

The real climate justice would mean taking the top ten emitters of GHGs in the world including China, US, EU, India and Canada and forcing them to lower their per capita emissions to the level of the lowest per capita emitter among themselves. It won't happen because the 'bums' who do it and interfere with our life styles - yours and mine - will be thrown out in the next election.

So let's stop the preaching. Get on with first saving the world from suffocating it with our own emissions. Let us get our own houses in order. In this colossal struggle against the common enemy of climate change our hands are extremely dirty. Let us stop all the self congratulations for Paris and spewing more hot air -CO2. Let us stop the sermons. Let's first do our part and bring our per capita emissions to the lowest in the world. Then we shall have the right to strut on the world stage. Otherwise it is just a charade!