Hot Seat on December 17th

Hey all. This is Mahats and, in addition to being IYCN in Delhi’s current token American, I will be your blogger for the day. Hope you are all doing well, are awake, haven’t succumbed completely to cynicism and are ready to begin.

In summary: I am Mahats, not Kabir and I will be blogging from New Delhi.

My views do not reflect those of IYCN. Nor do my spelling and paraphrasing.

3:40 pm

Panel discussion on its way. Projector down temporarily.

Mr. Gopal Krishna from Water Watch Alliance is chairing the discussion and is joined on the panel by IYCN’s very own Kabir and Reva.

GK: Opens with a brief statement on how the talks have stalled. Pessimistic attitude towards everything. US declared its lifestyle non-negotiable. Developing world declared its development non-negotiable. Stalemate because of short term thinking.

3:45

Kabir: Governments being aggressive to crack down on civil society and we should respond. Peaceful protest was stopped. When and if COP15 fails, civil society should have a huge push.

MM: Who constitutes civil society? While I hate the idea of cracking down on protests and will fight to the death to keep the right to protest and free speech alive, vibrant and utilized, one has to ask what do these protestors expect. If there is going to be no deal at this point, short of massive mass mobilization, I doubt these voices are going to have an impact. And, with the security precautions, there was no hope.

As for the second point, we are not dealing with unitary actors. Get two activists in a room and there will be three different opinions. One of them changeable.

3:55

Reva: There are choices within domestic policy. Changing people’s world views is far more difficult than getting a deal. Very few countries will alter their domestic policies. We need to change the mind of the populations.

MM: Right. How?

4:01

GK: There is a need for a new construct not based on nation-states. We need to create some mechanism for dealing with all the non-state actors.

MM: Again, what are the mechanics? Too many voices create a really unpleasant room.

4:10

Question: Separate the rich India from the poor India and then talk about carbon intensity. Why should developed countries fund their eventual competitors?

MM: Interesting. One of my hobby-horses has been how the activist community in India actually seems behind the government and spends most of its time pressuring other countries. While the developing world has a moral responsibility to act, there is no chance a hubbub in India will push the US to do anything. More importantly, the Indian government has not been faultless in negotiation and without domestic pressure has little incentive to moderate their position.

GK: Developing countries have a historic moral responsibility to act.

MM: Yes, but you can’t strong arm the energy lobby because of a historic moral responsibility. Give us something stronger to hit them with.

4:30

GK: There has been a massive misuse of money and resources. There needs to be radical action taken for the Earth.

MM: Presumably everyone in the room agrees. In fact, the presumption is that now even the Obama Administration agrees that there needs to be action. But how do we get over the fact that all politics are domestic? Yes, more leadership on this issue from Washington would be wonderful, but it will be tricky for them to agree to take radical action when a citizen of the US could conceivably keep living their lives in gluttony and peace (although that last bit is doubtful) long after the Maldives are submerged. While putting all the greed-heads up against the wall would be the most just solution, it doesn’t seem practical.

GK: The worse sufferers will be the developed world. That is why they are concerned. It is the corporate governments who brought about these situation.

4:40

Mr. Jay Kumar Gaurav, a consultant for clean development industries, has joined the discussion to contribute the point of view of an eco-friendly corporation in India.

JKG: India as a country should try and find out how the big emitters in India who are making big bucks out of big emissions can contribute to clean environment.

In the business world, it is far less based on ideology or what you feel is right. When the person in charge says something, it is decided.

Everyone has to find a way to adapt. It is upon you. You have your sphere of influence and your sphere of concern. You may care about what the US does, but you can only ask them. You can try your level best, but we should try to find ways to be sustainable on your own.

MM: Maybe it is my latent conservatism, but I agree. We have limited time, energy and ability and should determine what we can accomplish–then shoot for a little more. Activism has a role, but we need more calculation than moral indignation. Anger is good, but only as a tool, not as a policy. For instance, non-violent taking to the streets is useless unless there is a corollary legislative effort. With Gandhi there was Nehru.

4:45

Kabir: How do you account for improper development of projects using CDM [Clean Development Mechanism]?

JKG: CDM has been a force for green development in India. It is the only force. If you scrap CDM, it will result in destruction. Don’t criticize CDM as a mechanism, but attack the faulty projects.

5:00

Questioner: How can carbon trading help in India when you have projects like a dioxin plant polluting in Delhi.

JKG: How can you say one project is enough to scrap a system?

(Shouting)

MM: Here, I am of two minds. I think, specifically that CDM has done some good and is working. The problem lies with the endemic corruption in the implementation and enforcement of the agreement.

Questioner: What about the historical debt? What about countries bypassing the burden by cap-and-trade?

JKG: Historical debt is a concept that the development world has agreed to, but are providing it within a certain space.

Cap-and-trade is a concept of reducing the price of emitting carbon. Otherwise India will go back to burning coal. The problem lies with uninformed criticism of the system.

You can talk about the fossilized attitude of the US, but what works is what works.

MM: At the end of the day, he is right. Talking about a problem is only the first step to solving it. And while radicals in the wings gives those willing to compromise room to move, when the people on the other side have to turn around and sell their idea to their constituents, the impression of their opponents being shrill and unreasonable makes the whole thing much more difficult.

5:10
(The projector is up. Multiple voices. Shouting.)

Kabir: Every point of view needs to be listened to. We need to follow the Middle Path.

(More shouting.)

Kabir: Let’s wrap up the session and thank our speaker.

5:30

We have been joined by Vijay Menon, a representative from Moserbaer.

5:58

MM: Much of this discussion has been in Hindi and I have lost my lovely translator Sreepriya and in any event, most of it has been centered on Moserbaer, so my commentary is rather useless.

VM: Decentralized energy production is going to be quite useful to India.

MM: This I did find interesting. Energy deregulation has been disastrous in the West and China’s centralized energy development has been one of the driving forces of their blistering growth. More importantly for this type of discussion, it has also allowed the PRC to invest a ton of money in green and nuclear technology.

Kabir: Is decentralized energy cost-effective.

VM: That is hard to say, but effectiveness is more important.

MM: Very interesting. He honestly answers a question that I thought would be easy for him to play off. One of the main arguments that advocates of decentralization use is that energy will then becomes play to market forces and is therefore more cost-effective. The corollary is that it then becomes less effective to do the type of quick implementation that makes China’s model so attractive. To say the reverse is perhaps a testament to how terribly slowly the National Thermal Power Company functions.

6:11

We are now joined by our partners in Copenhagen giving us an update on the bleakness of the situation.

MM: Since they do their own blogging on this website, I am perfectly useless. I will continue with commentary when we move on.

6:15

Vimal Bhai, from the Matu People’s Organization is now in the Hot Seat.

VB: I don’t expect too much from Copenhagen. The West is too energy dependent to give up their lifestyle. We don’t have to beg for money from them when we have our own solutions. However, domestically we are adopting these flawed and faulty designs from the West.

MM: Yup. But who doesn’t want a date with Justin Timberlake?

6:30

PV: Before even talking about international treaties, we should look internally and deal with all the people who are displaced or otherwise hurt by climate change.

MM: Who says you can’t do both? I suspect the solution lies in not looking for panaceas, working bit-by-bit, but also engaging with everyone in order to lift ourselves out of this massive mess.

PV: We need to focus on jal, jungle and jameen. [Water, jungle and land].

(Amir is summing up. Look to the website for a day-by-day summary.)

MM: There you have it–December 17th. If you pardon the natural ego of a blogger, please allow me to conclude with my thoughts on the developing-developed world dichotomy (a convenient oversimplification).

There is the contention in this room that the developed world’s conduct is embarrassing. Yes. It has been abhorrent. I am deeply embarrassed by my country’s greed, gluttony and arrogance. But India is hardly blameless ( href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/science/earth/17climate.html?_r=1&ref=energy-environment”>joining with China and the G77 to use procedural tools to delay debate ) and, more importantly, railing against Western society’s level of indulgence does nothing. When the West is looking at the future and seeing these emerging economies equal their greed and still developing–knowing full well they are hurting us all–it makes the anti-West screeds harder to bear.

Kabir just mentioned that the developing world needs to take the climate debt back from the developed world. That is impossible. Why should the developed world care? Our lifestyles aren’t going to be the first ones affected. By demanding something that you have no possible leverage over is silly at best and detrimental to our mutual goal of reducing climate change at worst.

We have a day left to make a deal. If the parties were serious, it would be time to stop the posturing. The G77 won’t get the US to agree to Kyoto. The developing world has to accept the basic premise of the Annex 1 agreements, or this treaty won’t happen and that will hurt the developing world far more than the developed world. You can get it to negotiate over numbers (how much carbon, how much technology support and how much $$$), so lets talk numbers and hammer this thing out.

Nationalist nonsense, on both sides, is what is making an agreement in Copenhagen impossible. Perhaps making this process less democratic and more technical is the only way to get something done. Or we can try it all again in Mexico.