Sorry for the long silence in the blog space. But I was fatigued and rather frustrated with the same old arguments and going-nowhere debates. So in the last few months we have been busy with new research to bring different perspectives to the old problems -- how will we share the increasingly scarce budget in an increasingly at-risk carbon constrained world.
The last two years have seen a flurry of reports that have projected the long-term greenhouse gas emissions trajectory of India, and how the country can go low-carbon and help solve the climate change crisis.
India (letter dated January 30, 2010, National Focal Point to Yvo de Boer) Late Saturday night (around 9.30 pm reportedly from the media release), the Indian government sent a letter to the UNFCCC secretariat in Bonn.
By now, Australia, US, China and EU have all sent their letters to UNFCCC secretariat regarding their ‘willingness to support’ the Copenhagen Accord or not. It is interestingly to break down the communication and to read between the lines.
Somebody recently asked me why India supported the Copenhagen Accord. It is correct to say that the proposed accord has no meaningful targets for emission reduction from Annex 1 (industrialized countries). Global emissions will increase or reduce at best marginally. So it will be bad for the world’s efforts to combat climate change. We are victims of climate change.
Monday, December 14, 2009: Standing in line in the freezing cold, waiting to be registered to the conference of parties to the climate change convention being held in Copenhagen, I have strange sense of foreboding that this will be an eventful but disappointing week.
For two years the world has negotiated for an equitable, ambitious and legally binding climate agreement on basis of the Bali Action Plan. And now we are being told that a legally binding agreement is not possible and that we should be happy with a political agreement/ statement at Copenhagen.
Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator of the United States Environment Protection Agency (USEPA), on December 7, 2009 announced to the world that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten the public health and welfare of the American people, and therefore, can be considered an air pollutant under the US’s Clean Air Act. The US is now the first country in the world to call GHGs air pollutants.
