Aatmanirbharta in climate costs

The Indian Government is looking to boost national coal production. How you see this move depends on your level of privilege, your vested interests and your awareness about the climate crisis.

The exceptionally qualified Member of Parliament Jayant Sinha has, in a recent Opinion piece, enumerated the several benefits of commercial coal mining. This move is expected to reduce our coal imports, provide economic benefits, offer job opportunities and, with a slew of other vague projections, make India "truly globally competitive". The Centre's strategies for economic growth and job creation have left much to citizens' credulity in the recent past. However, I mean to re-direct focus on another critical issue conveniently ignored by the Hon'able MP - the climate crisis and how coal worsens it.

For 3o years now, experts studying climate change have united under the front of the IPCC - the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change - and have sent repeated warnings and requests to governments worldwide to take the crisis seriously. The climate crisis is the result of man's uncontrolled additions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. A leading cause of concern is carbon dioxide or CO₂, emitted by various sectors, especially by the energy sector. Coal is the worst carbon-polluting fuel out there. A world that runs on coal is inherently unsustainable - it harms society more than it benefits us. However, as most readers would likely know, the climate crisis is an inherently unjust crisis. Those who burn coal may not be the ones who face the damage it causes. This rhetoric has been used to death by our own MoEFCC to shirk its responsibility, as well as by the Coal Ministry to encourage more carbon pollution. Neither Ministries seem to have appreciated the important point - that "we" are the greatest victims and matching up to "their" crimes will not help us.

Let me explain by placing this global crisis in India's context. Yes, the world is suffering due to the climate crisis but this suffering is uneven across regions. What suffering can we expect as a nation, due to the climate crisis? A few years back, some researchers looked at what "social costs of carbon" different countries may expect to pay due to this crisis. Canada and Russia stood out as nations with a negative cost - i.e. they could expect to benefit from climate change. This is easy to understand if one thinks of their current climates and the energy costs required to keep their societies running. Unfortunately, India topped the list with an alarming value of $86 per ton. The next contender (the US) was at $48 per ton.

Simply put, this means that irrespective of who emits greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, Indians are expected to suffer the most. Naturally, like all parameters and estimates, the social cost of carbon is not a perfect measure. It only reminds us systematically of the factors that we all see around us - such as our enormous population, our awareness and preparedness for this crisis. In this situation, why would a country with an alarming social cost of carbon seek to "produce 1,500 million tonnes (of coal) per year"? Remember, coal emits the most CO₂ per unit of power it offers. Are "energy security" and "reduction in imports" enough to dismiss the cheaper alternatives that give short term gains, as well as the social cost of carbon that estimates long term losses?

I find it hard to believe that Mr. Sinha is not familiar with all of this. If a well-qualified Member of Parliament ignores the climate crisis in a national policy, it suggests one of the following: either the MP is content with the level of comforts his privilege affords him and his conscience allows him the significant leeway required to dismiss the sufferings the crisis inflicts on numerous under-privileged Indians; or he truly believes that artifices of finance will help man conquer nature in his constituency. As someone who studies climates of the past, I can assure the concerned Ministers that we do not want to mess with the Earth's climate system. Our actions have overshadowed the planet's natural climatic variability. Neither hubris nor electoral buzzwords will take care of this unless we decarbonize.

To provide context to readers for Mr. Sinha's censure of CM Hemant Soren, the move to push coal has been opposed at both State as well as Gram Sabha level in Jharkhand. Of course, it is in vogue to invoke "national interests" against all who dissent. But if one were to keep climate considerations in mind, one may humbly remind the Hon'able MP that perhaps the States understand the crisis, the distresses of their own people and the hollowness of these claims better and it's time the Centre did its bit. There is a larger moral question of whether the Hon'able MP would sacrifice other Indians if the math showed his own constituency would benefit from it. But it is a discussion for another time.

一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一一

To subscribe, enter email address: