Burning up the future: the climate crisis

This Friday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is all set to release a massive document detailing the climate crisis that we have unleashed on ourselves, and which is likely to ruin the future of generations to come.

It is of course a pity that India and China, two of the most populous and ambitious countries on the planet today are contributing actively to accelerate the pace at which such disaster will overtake the earth.

Both countries have huge populations that are now discovering prosperity levels that were unknown a century ago. Their newly affluent citizens are being actively wooed by the global automotive industry to sell cheap, low-performing, gas guzzling and unsafe cars and two-wheelers.

Strangely, the Communist parties in India have also got the wrong end of the stick and are calling for reduction in petroleum prices, as a panacea to the problems affecting mobility. This is a warped argument, although there seems to be a hidden agenda to support Indian capitalists who are riding the boom in the automotive sector. It is completely topsy-turvy because mass mobility can never be achieved through personal transportation, and the Communists are seen harping on individual mobility and freedom, which is a conservative, Right-wing approach to the issue, far removed from the traditional precincts of the Left.

The wheel seems to be turning full circle in the land of profligate consumption: America.

Look at what one of their conservative journals has said now, as the world prepares to hear the bad news from the UN.

(From a blog on The Huffington Post)

Even in the conservative American Spectator today, William Tucker made serious mention of some of the causes of this impending catastrophe (probably written before the UN news made the wire). Among a lot of analysis of the president's energy plan, Tucker acknowledged the following:

"In 1976 we burned 500 million tons of coal a year. Today we burn more than a billion. There are 90 more coal plants being built right now. The Department of Energy points out that -- because of various loopholes in the law -- 80 per cent of these plants still use the same old-fashioned dirty technology."
And...

"A carbon tax would truly drive Americans toward conserving gasoline. Everybody agrees it's wasteful to be splurging on SUVs and Hummers, but people will do it as long as gas is $2 a gallon. The real danger is that we're going to start running up against world supply limits, particularly if China and India go car-happy. As long as we've got the carbon excuse, why not start easing into a situation of scarcity with some kind of carbon levy?"

What is happening to the world? Right is Left and Left is Right!
More on this when the UN report is out.

Expect Ford to step on the gas in India

Ford, the iconic American car company that symbolised consumer utopia by mass manufacturing vehicles for the common man early in the 20th century has hit another massive speed breaker with a fourth quarter loss of 5.8 billion dollars and an annual loss of 12.7 billion dollars for 2006 (reports Reuters).

This is, according to the agency, the worst year in the 103-year history of the company. Last year, heavy job cuts sounded the alarm that Ford is running out of fuel (as the auto industry generally is bound to be in the developed world).

The question that should interest us Indians is the response from loss-ridden international automakers to the emerging scenario of global warming, costlier fuel and supply lines that are linked to the vagaries of geopolitics and the general unsustainability of motorisation in the developing world, of which China and India are the prime examples.

It is fairly certain that the losing carmakers will compete more aggressively in the developing markets; price cuts, cheaper (and unsafe) models, petrol/diesel guzzlers, higher emission engines and a tacit campaign against public transport are all being witnessed even today; we will see more of it.

The positive feature is that the frenzy of car sales has a GLOBAL climate impact, which is likely to send more Katrinas hammering the US coastline, as much as the typhoons in South East Asia and the seemingly unending monsoon downpour in Mumbai, all of these being very lethal weather phenomena.

If Indians are concerned about the future of the planet, and, that of their children, they should persuade the Manmohan-Chidambaram-Ahluwalia caucus against encouraging fuel-guzzlers from hitting Indian roads, whether they are from loss-ridden Ford, Chevrolet, Skoda, Hyundai, Suzuki, Toyota, Mercedes, Tata...

We need cheaper, modern buses that are rolled out on Indian roads by the tens of thousands each month. Why, if cars can be imported and sold (to supplement domestic manufacture), why not buses? And trains? and trams?

If the automakers are going to try to press the pedal further, we may have nowhere to run for cover.

Let us remember what Andre Gorz said long ago. It is simply impossible for everyone to want to buy a part of the beach, because that would give each person a few inches of beachfront; that cannot be used by the owner in any practical way. Ditto for the car. If all of us had a car each, none of us would be able to use them!