FOR THE RECORD MOHAMED NASHEED ‘Climate change will be an election issue in five years’

Young presidents are in vogue. None more so perhaps than Maldives’ 41-year-old president Mohamed Nasheed, who ended dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s threedecade grip on power. Nasheed, who has long prodded the country’s nascent democratic process, has been to prison 16 times, been tortured twice and remains committed to liberal politics. He’s been in office just over a year and is busy trying to build new institutions to last, even as he tries to save his country from disappearing — literally. If global warming proceeds apace, sea levels around the Maldives will rise 60 cm in the next 50 years, swallowing large tracts of the country, says the president. During a visit to Delhi, he talked climate change and constitutional change to Ranjan Roy. Excerpts from the interview

Are you able to adhere to your roadmap of establishing democracy in Maldives?

Our expectations were a little higher than what we are achieving right now. In terms of institution-building, the judiciary lacks the capacity to deliver. With the first multi-party election, we were able to come up with the first fresh executive. With the first parliamentary elections, we were able to come up with a fresh parliament. But we never had anything fresh in the judiciary, so the judicial system is as it was under the dictatorship.

Do you trust the old judiciary?
I trust them, but the thing is, to my mind, they do not know what is going on. They might, on one fine day, ask the president’s office for instructions on asentence. The next judge might do something more ridiculous against the legislature or the executive, another judge might start giving media interviews.

Do you want a liberal judiciary or a bit of shariah?
We don’t want a mixture of shariah. We are looking at a liberal judiciary. But you have to be mindful that Maldives is a Muslim society. So the shariah and the liberal judiciary aren’t contradictory. Shariah can be as liberal as common law or Roman law. The other area is corruption. I can’t expect people to be completely honest the very next day.

You’ve had personal experience of torture?
I was tortured twice but that was long ago. But we do not want to torture our people. But there will always be some people at the penitentiary who’ll do it.

Should the man you ousted, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, be worried?
We don’t think Gayoom should be worried. But he should take responsibility for his portion and say sorry.

How can India help?
India is already helping. The Prime Minister was very quick to give us a soft loan of $100 million — 50 million in grant and 50 million in loan. So, at least I got three months to sort things out. It gave us that breathing space. India is also very willing to invest heavily in lucrative areas like tourism. India can assist us by building capacity in the judiciary. And India can assist us so much by being the huge example that it is. Maybe others misunderstand India but I don’t because maybe I know India.

On climate change, does Maldives get the sinking feeling that no one is really bothered about the victims?
We need shared responsibility. You can’t ask countries like India to stop consumption. We might be the victims but there are millions and billions of others. I shouldn’t be so selfish to push for that. Countries like India should invest heavily in renewable energy and maintain lower emission levels and higher energy consumption. I think the winners of the 21st century will be those who are bold enough to venture into new technology. We are on the verge of a technological breakthrough, a revolution again that would have more impact than the industrial revolution perhaps.

Do politicians worldwide really care about global warming or are they just protecting their turf?
I don’t think people are still that concerned about it. Countries still don’t have climate change as a major election issue. Until it becomes an election issue, politicians aren’t going to take notice. But it will become one in the next five years. There is a new generation of people growing up for whom climate change is a serious problem. Even as early as next summer, you’ll see huge numbers of people out on the streets, in the same fashion they were out in the 1960s, to save the world. There are narratives about the end of the world in every culture and religion, so here is going to be no backlash against the emergence of climate change as the big issue.

DID YOU KNOW?
Maldives gained independence from Britain on July 26, 1965
It’s the smallest Asian country
At just 4 ft 11 in above sea level, it’s the lowest country on the planet
Its original inhabitants were Buddhist; Islam arrived in 1153

Saltwater film in clouds to cool Earth?

Geoengineering Technique Will Help Reflect Back More Sunlight

Washington: Amid growing concern over global warming, scientists have come up with an unique scheme to cool the earth with the help of a geoengineering method that would increase cloud reflectivity over the ocean.

Under the scheme, the scientists would increase cloud reflectivity over the ocean by spraying them with an ultra-fine saltwater mist from ships, a report in the Scientific American journal said.

“The clouds, containing more particles, would cast enough sunlight back into space to at least partially offset the warming effects of all that CO ² from burningfossil fuels,” the researchers said.

They added, “After all, clouds already reflect more of the sun’s radiation back into space than the amount trapped by human emissions of CO ² . So why not make them even more effective.”

Stephen Salter, an emeritus professor of engineering design at the University of Edinburgh, who is leading the research said, “marine cloud brightening could be done by populating the world's oceans with up to 1,500 ships of a somewhat exotic design — sometimes known as albedo yachts.”

“Each vessel would be remote-controlled, wind-powered, and capable of generating (via turbines dragged through the water) the electricity required to create a mist of seawater and loft it 1,000 meters into the atmosphere,” he added. Scientists have mixed reactions to the idea, which was first proposed in 1999.

For instance, Andy Jones at the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research thinks if marine cloud brightening were deployed in the Atlantic, it might help turn the Amazon rainforest into a desert by cooling the South Atlantic, which would lead to less evaporation from the ocean, thus reducing rainfall. PTI

Cheap green tech stays elusive Rich Nations Refuse To Budge At Delhi, Copenhagen Climate Deal Hopes Dim TIMES NEWS NETWORK New Delhi: The divide bet

Rich Nations Refuse To Budge At Delhi, Copenhagen Climate Deal Hopes Dim

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi: The divide between rich and developing countries on the prickly issue of intellectual property regimes for green technologies came to the fore on the concluding day of the high-level climate change technology conference in Delhi on Friday.

With a consensus eluding the conference attended by 58 countries, including the US, China, Japan and several key G77 partners, references to the contentious topic were left out of the ‘Delhi Declaration on Global Cooperation on Climate Technology’, released on Friday at the end of the meet.

India, China and other G77 countries have for years demanded that industrialised nations should ease the IPR regime or buy out technologies from private hands to give them to the developing countries. The rich countries, which hold much of the technologies, instead say ‘investment environment’ should be improved for the private sector to bring in green technologies.

While some progress has been made on other elements of what could possibly form a deal on technology diffusion at Copenhagen, IPR remains the most contentitious subject with little breakthrough evident even at the end of the Bangkok round of negotiations concluded in the second week of October.

At the conclusion, the chair, environment minister Jairam Ramesh, noted: “There will be a continued need for further consultation on the role of IPR. We have recognised that there are different views on the issue.” He pointed out that countries had to still discuss how to ensure that “IPRs do not become a barrier to the achievement of common global goals”.

The high-level meeting in Delhi was not part of a formal negotiating process which is undertaken only under the UN but a strong signal from the meet would have influenced the UN talks at Barcelona and Copenhagen later. But at the meeting, several industrialised country representatives argued that the IPR regimes should not be touched.

PM Manmohan Singh, while inaugurating the meet, had said, “Climate friendly and environmentally sound technologies should be viewed as global public goods. This implies that the IPR regime should balance rewards for innovators with the need to promote common good.”

‘Emission more serious than fundamentalism’
New Delhi: The very existence of Maldives is threatened by climate change. So for Mohammed Nasheed, its young president and now the poster boy for climate change advocacy, global warming is a “more serious threat to the international order than Islamic radicalism, piracy or sharing of resources”. Addressing a think-tank on ‘environment and conflict resolution’, Nasheed said India’s position on climate change was acceptable, but appealed that renewable energy be used to provide power to over 300 million people. “Why do you want to go to yesterday’s diesel when you can go for tomorrow’s renewable energy and new technology? The world is on the threshold of new technology and you will be in the forefront if you use them,” he said. Nasheed said climate change was a real threat. “If we believe in science, and two plus two is four, climate change is happening and it is great threat to the world,” he said. TNN

Maldives president Mohd Nasheed

‘Kyoto Protocol murder will kill Copenhagen deal’

Bangkok: The gridlock at Bangkok climate negotiations worsened on Tuesday with key G77 members, including India and China, indicating that the “murder” of Kyoto Protocol could end up killing prospects of a deal at Copenhagen. The Kyoto Protocol converts the principles of “common but differentiated responsibilities” from the mother UN convention into quantified emission reduction targets for industrialised countries. The EU, which till date had been goading the US to put up targets under Kyoto, instead began to sidestep the issue of its own emission reduction targets for the mid term.

For the Indian delegation, the Obama administration’s decision to follow the Bush regime and refuse to sign on to Kyoto did not come as a great surprise. But, then came the Uturn by EU — a grouping that has always sought to gain the “leadership” role at climate talks. “The end of Kyoto Protocol is not acceptable to us. It is a legal pact with rights and duties for all member countries. A handful of countries wanting to abrogate their duties cannot kill it on their whim,” said a senior Indian official at Bangkok. TNN

US shirks green duty, turns screws on India

Nitin Sethi | TNN

New Delhi: With seven days of negotiations remaining before Copenhagen, the industrialised countries have still not made a single offer of financial compensation to poor and developing countries for their mitigation actions.

At Bangkok negotiations, the US turned around instead to demand that India and other developing countries put their entire set of emissions reducing actions under international scrutiny. The 192 members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change had in Bali in 2007 agreed that the industrialised countries would undertake a higher level of emission cuts to counter the enhanced risks of climate change. The rest would undertake actions as per their national circumstances. The countries also agreed that the actions that were “enabled” by financial and technical support from the industrialised countries would be scrutinised by the UN process and verified. The logic then was simple, while developing countries were not responsible for the globe reaching a tipping point, it would undertake mitigation actions as long as those responsible for the climate crisis paid the full incremental cost of such actions.

But the US and the European Union, using the recession as a ruse in informal talks, have on several occasions indicated that it would be politically impossible for them to provide money to the “emerging economies”. Now, the US proposal demands that regardless of whether there is any money on the table, the developing countries too put up their actions for international scrutiny.

With just 7 days to Copenhagen meet, the 1st world nations are yet to stick by the 2007 Bali pact and offer financial compensation to developing nations for their mitigating actions for climate change

The Age of Stupid - A must watch Documentary

Park may come up at Gorai dumpyard

Anil Singh I TNN

Mumbai: The BMC hopes that it will earn a total of Rs 73 crore from the closure of Gorai dumping ground and Rs 26 crore earned from carbon credit is essentially for the capture and combustion of methane gas emanating from the dump which results in a substantial reduction of greenhouse emissions.

As heartening as the cashfrom-trash bargain, however, is the transformation of the 50-acre dumping ground, more than twice the size of the Oval Maidan, from a stinking mountain of garbage into a contoured, landscaped hill. The initial plan for a golf course here seems too optimistic but it can surely serve as a public park after three to fours years, by which time the dump will have reached its final shape.

Garbage was being dumped at this plot adjoining the Gorai creek since 1972. Thirty-five years later when the dump was closed in December 2007, it was receiving 2,200 tonnes of refuse a day, and the 2.3 million tonnes of accumulated waste had stacked up to 32 metres, as high as an 11-storey building. By this time, the urban sprawl had reached the edges of the dump and pressure from local residents in the form of agitations and lawsuits played its part in expediting its closure.

The consultants appointed by the municipal corporation, Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd (IL & FS), recommended scientific closure of the dump as it had reached saturation point. The cost of the project, the first of its kind in the country, is Rs 62 crore, which includes post-closure maintenance of 15 years.

“The Gorai experiment succeeded because of proper project development and structuring coupled with unstinted support from the civic authorities,’’ said Chetan Zaveri, vice-president of the environment division of IL & FS, which worked out the carbon advance transaction.

Today, not only is the dumping ground unrecognisable from what it was two years ago, the stench from it has also vanished. In fact, standing atop the 26-metre high plateau on the mound, this correspondent got a breathtaking view of the lazily flowing creek, the lush green mangroves and the soaring Vipassana pagoda in the backdrop.

The contractors, United Phosphorus Ltd (UPL) and their joint-venture partners, Vanderwiel Strotgas BV, basically flattened the top of the garbage mound and created gentler slopes after which it was sealed in three layers of dense plastic at varying depths. The plastic sheets prevent the seepage of rainwater and the formation of leachate, a cocktail of highly toxic compounds.

Over the topmost plastic sheet is a two-feet layer of construction rubble topped by one feet of earth which supports foliage in the form of grass, shrubs and small trees with shallow roots.

“An intricate subterranean network of pipes collect the gases, 70% of which is methane, from the rotting garbage and relays it through 40 wells to a chimney where it is flared,’’ explained Sundar Balasubramanian, UPL’s vicepresident, Environment Business. One tonne of methane is equivalent to 21 tonnes of carbon dioxide in terms of global warming potential.

To prevent the leachate from seeping into the creek, a seven-metre deep concrete wall has been built into the edges of the dump. Whatever leachate is formed because of the existing moisture is channelised into a processing tank to neutralise its toxicity.

“Earlier, the mangroves ringing the dump had turned brown because of the water pollution but now they have regenerated,’’ said P S Awate, executive engineer of the civic corporation’s solid waste department, pointing to the dark green foliage on the fringes of the dump.

What are carbon credits
Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from industrial processes have contributed in a big way to global warming. To counter this and get countries to reduce emissions, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), provided for by the Kyoto Protocol, allows a developed country to take up a greenhouse gas reduction project activity in a developing country where the cost of such projects is usually much lower. The developed country will get carbon credits for meeting its emission reduction targets, while the developing country will receive the capital and clean technology to implement the project. One carbon credit equals one tonne of carbon, and these credits are bought and sold on international carbon credit exchanges.

‘Stop making mother earth cry’

Eco-Warrior Asks World Leaders To Make Environment Edu Compulsory

Chidanand Rajghatta | TNN

Washington: A young girl from India’s Gangetic plain, where climate change issues affect everyday life and quotidian tasks such as burning the chulah affect the climate, made a plea for the ages at the United Nations on Tuesday, asking world leaders to show vision and leadership in stopping “those who make mother earth cry.”

Thirteen-year-old Lucknow girl Yugratna Srivatsava, whose first name loosely translates as a precious stone for all times, spoke eloquently about the need for the world to stop pillaging the earth in a speech that was cheered by world leaders, including the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. “Environmental problems to not recognize political boundaries,” the young girl, wearing a green and white jacket, told a packed UN audience that included India’s external affairs minister S M Krishna, environment minister Jairam Ramesh, and senior diplomats Shyam Saran and Nirupama Rao. “We have one mother earth, let us share it.” She wanted world leaders to make environmental education compulsory in schools.

But beyond the UN decision to invite Yugratna to speak as a representative of the world’s youth simmered serious concerns that the climate change issue is heading for a deadlock ahead of the Copenhagen summit in December. Wealthy nations are reluctant to cut enough emissions to take the world out of the danger zone, while poor and developing countries such as India are refusing to commit to binding caps, saying this would prevent them from growing their economies speedily. There was no indicate of any significant change in the positions on Tuesday.

Opening the summit, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said it would “morally inexcusable” not to act, a scolding that prompted both President Obama and China’s Hu Jintao to acknowledge that reaching an agreement is an important goal, although neither committed to any precise numbers. The US and China are the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gas.

Yugratna Srivatsava

Teen eco-warrior to address UN meet

Pravin Kumar | TNN

Lucknow: At around 10:30 am on Tuesday (8pm IST), after Kenyan Nobel laureate Wangari Mathaai finishes her speech at the summit on climate change, to be held at United Nations General Assembly in New York, she will be followed by a 13-year-girl from UP.

Yugratna Srivastava, a Class IX student of St Fidelis College of the city, is a special invitee of UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon. When she addresses the session about environment conservation, there will be over 100 heads of state, including US President Barack Obama, in the audience.

Yugratna has been spreading awareness about climate change and sustainable development. She is a member of Tarumitra, an NGO which creates awareness about the environment among schoolchildren. The NGO has over 16,000 schools across India as its members.

She was selected to address the UN session last year in Norway, where she had gone to attend the international children’s conference on environment. “Over 1,200 children from all over the world had come to attend the conference,’’ recalls Fr Robert Athickal SJ of Tarumitra, “and so electrifying was her speech there that she was instantly picked up to represent the children of the world at the summit on climate change.’’

“She is amazing and you just have to listen to her to feel the kind of impact she makes through her speeches,’’ says Fr Athickal while talking to TOI from Patna, where the Tarumitra is based. Yugranta, a resident of Muzaffarngaar in western UP, has joined St Fidelis College of the city recently.

“That she was special we all knew and see how soon she has proved us right,” says a teacher of the college. The invite that she has received from Janos Pasztor, director, UN Secretary General’s Climate Change Support Team, recognises her endeavour in generating awareness about environment conservation. “You have been selected to represent the voice of world’s young people at the summit,’’ says the letter.

VOICE OF INDIA
Yugratna Srivastava, a Class IX UP student who has been spreading awareness about climate change, is the special invitee of UN Secy Gen Ban Ki-Moon to address the UN session on environment conservation

THE HEAT IS ON

UN endorses India on climate change

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi: For the first time, a UN agency has endorsed India and developing countries on the climate change front. In its World Economic and Social Survey Report 2009, the UN said rich countries had consumed more than their fair share of carbon space and needed to take deep emission cuts if the new climate agreement was to be equitable.

The survey said investments in energy infrastructure would have to be doubled from the existing $500 billion per year to $1 trillion and there was a need to spend approximately $20 trillion by 2030 to move the world to a low carbon growth path.

The report, released on Wednesday by Sunita Narain, director of Centre for Science and Environment, warned that industrialised countries had already emitted 209 gigatonnes of carbon. If the rise in global temperatures was to be kept below 2°C, industrialised countries would have to reduce their emissions by more than 100% below 1990 levels by 2050.

At present, industrialised countries have not agreed to reduce their emissions by even 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2050.

Releasing the report, Narain said: “The report makes it clear that to avert climate catastrophe, industrialised countries have to take deep emission cuts and the developing countries have to participate. But in this new global deal, the participation has to be conditional on transfer of technology and funding.”

The report, coming months before the critical UN negotiations lead to an agreement in December at Copenhagen, could provide another weapon in the Indian arsenal when it asks the rich nations to bear the burden of their ‘historic responsibility’ in emitting greenhouse gases.

The UN survey pointed out that in a fair deal, industrialised countries should only occupy 21% of the global carbon budget. But it added that even under the most ambitious proposal from the rich nations, they would end up consuming 48% of the budget, at the cost of the poorer nations.

The report also recommended a global clean energy fund, a better carbon trading mechanism and a forestrelated financing mechanism.

Only 20 years left to save green earth

Nitin Sethi | TNN

New Delhi: The world must restrict its carbon emissions to 190 giga tonnes by 2050 if it is to have a chance of escaping the catastrophic consequences of global warming.

These are the latest findings published in the scientific journal Nature. According to the findings, all earlier calculations have been set aside with the warning that the planet can withstand even less of the greenhouse gases than had been envisaged earlier. The warning has never been starker or simpler for everyone to understand.

The latest studies show that there is a 75% chance that the world can escape the danger of global average temperature rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial era if it is able to keep its carbon emissions below 190 giga tonnes (gt) over the next 41 years.

Put simply, 190 giga tonnes is our carbon budget for the period up to 2050. But unlike a financial budget, there is no room for exceeding it. A 75% chance is, in scientific terms, reasonable, and nothing to be ecstatic about—but enough to give hope.

If you think 190 gt is a huge amount of carbon to throw up in the air, read this—last year alone, the world emitted more than nine giga tonnes of carbon by burning fossil fuels.

‘West must cut emissions drastically’
New Delhi: The world emitted over nine giga tonnes of carbon by burning fossil fuels in the last year and the rate is increasing by 3% every year. We must restrict the carbon emission to save the world from illeffects global warming, say latest findings published in scientific journal Nature.

If humanity continues to burn fossil fuels and gases unhindered at the same rate, the world will have consumed the entire carbon budget available to us—190 giga tonnes—by 2029. Every single tonne of carbon after that will progressively reduce our chances of not letting temperatures increase above the 2 degree Celsius mark over the pre-industrialised era and consequently cause havoc. For those who may have forgotten the warning put out in 2007 by scientists under the UN’s panel on climate change, here it is again—if global average temperatures ever rise more than 2 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial era, the world will see the irreversible and catastrophic impact of climate change.

Two studies published in the latest edition of Nature warn world leaders that they are failing their people, and failing miserably. Both studies use a common principle.

Both warn it’s not just the emissions at present but the total accumulated emissions since the industrial era that will determine how much time we have to avert a crisis.

The world must cut emissions faster and deeper. The carbon budget is like a cake, much of which has been eaten by the developed world. For the budget to be adhered to, industrialised countries have to lower emissions dramatically. TNN

‘We can reverse poverty, but not global warming’

Q& A

Paris-based political scientist Susan George, one of Europe’s best-known public intellectuals, spoke to Pamela Philipose during her recent visit to Delhi:

Would you change the argument you made in your first book of the 1970s, ‘How The Other Half Dies’?
No. Unfortunately. Of course, there have been changes in the scope of hunger and where it’s most prevalent. Another big change is the fact that the food riots of last spring were global in scope. That’s a world first: earlier they were either local or national. It’s obvious now that neo-liberal answers to the crisis are discredited. Meanwhile, millions of small farmers have been ruined. They have been dispossessed of any possibility of either growing their food or buying it because they don’t have jobs. Governments, if they continue like this, are playing with fire because they are not only contributing to destroying the base of food security, they are creating conditions for future social upheaval. So, it seems to me that this is a time when one can advocate different policies and hope governments listen.

Women seem to be among the worst affected in such times.
In most societies, women are the first victims of hunger. I was shocked to read that nine out of 10 pregnant women in India are getting less than 80 per cent of the necessary caloric and protein supply. Women are very often food producers but are not in control of its marketing and, therefore, the resultant income. This is an ongoing problem. It has nothing to do with the actual amount of food available. Cultural and anthropological factors determine how food is distributed — inside families, communities, countries.

What do you see as the big crisis facing the world?
There are so many that you can talk about them in many plurals. The social crisis of poverty is getting worse: the rich are getting richer, the poor, poorer. There’s no hope of ever reaching the Millennium Development Goals. The social crisis is aggravated by the food crisis. There’s a water crisis, which means increasing numbers won’t have access to sanitation and drinking water, which in turn means a health crisis. Then, of course, recently, we had the financial crisis, which affects everybody even if they don’t have a rupee in the stock market because it impacts the real economy.

But the most serious crisis of all is the ecological crisis. We can reverse poverty today, but not global warming. Once it’s off the charts, it’s off the charts. It’s going to make the lives of poor people unbearable in large swathes of the world. This process is happening faster than scientists had predicted. We haven’t even begun to measure the impacts of this crisis. So that’s the one that keeps me awake.

Women’s Feature Service

Web searches wreck the environment

Two Google Searches Generate The Same Amount Of CO ² As Boiling A Kettle For A Cup Of Tea: Researchers

Jonathan Leake & Richard Woods

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

While millions of people tap into Google without a thought for the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of carbon dioxide. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g.

“Google operates huge data centers around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”

Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its dozens of data centers.

However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally every day, the level of electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern.

A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines — about 2% of global CO ² emissions. “Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power both to run and cool them.

Though Google says it is in the forefront of green computing, its search engine generates high levels of CO ² because of the way it operates. When you type in a Google search for, say, “energy saving tips”, your request doesn’t go to just one server. It goes to several competing against each other.

It may even be sent to servers thousands of miles apart. Google’s infrastructure sends you data from whichever produces the answer fastest. The system minimizes delays but raises energy consumption. Google has servers in the US, Europe, Japan and China.

Wissner-Gross has also calculated the CO ² emissions caused by individual use of the internet. His research indicates that viewing a simple website page generates about 0.02g of CO ² per second. This rises about tenfold to about 0.2g of CO ² a second when viewing a website with complex images, animations or videos.

A separate estimate from John Buckley, managing director of carbonfootprint.com, a British environmental consultancy, puts the CO ² emissions of a Google search at between 1g and 10g, depending on whether you have to start your PC or not. Simply running a PC generates between 40g and 80g of CO ² per hour, he says. SUNDAY TIMES

TOP OF THE MIND

Let’s light up the lives of India’s poor millions

R K PACHAURI

One important message that the voters have given, in states where elections were held recently, is a clear preference for performance and development. India’s place in global affairs has been enhanced substantially in recent years, largely because of impressive economic growth. The strength of this country and the influence it is able to exert in global affairs would depend essentially on India’s place as a global economic power. Political leaders, therefore, must not only live up to the expectations of their individual constituencies but ensure the growing economic strength of India. And also see to it that the benefits reach out to every citizen of the country.

Against this background, policy makers must show extreme sensitivity, particularly as we move along the New Year, to ensure reducing disparities between the rich and poor This can happen only if opportunities are created for the poor, and if government expenditure is utilized effectively. Development continues to be lopsided in the country.

India has miles to go in improving human development indicators. For instance, of the nearly four million deaths of new-born children globally in 2007, 28% occurred in India. Despite massive efforts towards immunization, 40% of all the world’s children who are not immunized live in India After 61 years as an independent nation, over half of India’s population practices open defecation. Similarly, despite efforts to universalize primary education, more than one in every five of all primary age children out of school, are in India. It is not as though government funding for programs in the country has been deficient in these areas, but there is clearly a lack of effectiveness in the manner in which programs are delivered.

Officialdom in this country re quires urgent overhaul, and to this extent the latest report of the Administrative Reforms Commission has some far-reaching recommendations, which should be given urgent attention. It is necessary to initiate a countrywide public debate on some of these recommendations in which all stakeholders, including government, businessmen, various professionals and civil society must take part actively. Also, given the growth of entrepreneurial capabilities across the entire spectrum of Indian society, there is a need for closer partnerships between government and the private sector. Indeed, in some areas this has worked well already, where government has wisely vacated the field for private sector operators, for example in the case of mobile telephones. A revolutionary change of similar character is required in the field of renewable energy generation as well, which would bring substantial benefits to some of the poorest citizens living in rural India. The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) has launched a program called Lighting a Billion Lives, which ad dresses the sad situation of 1.6 billion people globally who have no access to electricity. Unfortunately, 25% of these — 400 million — live in India. Yet, this problem can be ad dressed and solved within a year, if required, through provision of solar lanterns which in the aggregate would cost less than the subsidy provided on kerosene. It is well known, based on studies by respectable organizations, that over 40% of this subsidy goes to benefit those who are in the business of adulteration of other petroleum products. Yet, a rational shift of this nature is obstructed largely by political considerations.

As the country gears up for the general elections and while we are at this exciting juncture of carving out new opportunities for the people of India two lessons are important for political leaders to reflect on. First, some of the basic problems associated with poor human development need urgent readdress. This would happen only if a major overhaul of the government machinery was to take place. Secondly there is a need for rationalizing subsidies and prices that often pervert the very purpose for which they are designed. One hopes that this year will see some new thinking on these critical issues and a change in direction for the benefit of the Indian society.

The writer is chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)