Climate change: Why India must practice at home what it preaches abroad

In the last two months, the Supreme Court has issued directives prohibiting entry of non-Delhi bound heavy commercial vehicles into Delhi through entry points at National Highway 1,2, 8,10, 58 and State Highway 57. The trucks will have to take a longer route and hence will burn more fuel and cause more pollution. The three-judge bench wrote in their order,

“We are not concerned with any other aspect. We are only concerned with the environment.”

What the court does not seem to have taken into account is that states surrounding Delhi also have environments. Pollution that Delhi will avoid will be extra pollution that Uttar Pradesh and Haryana will suffer. This order doesn’t put any restriction on Delhi residents who have heavy polluting luxury diesel vehicles to go on recreational – and polluting – long drives into Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

The life-style of the middle-class and upper-middle class residents of Delhi or their right to spread their pollution to areas beyond Delhi is non-negotiable. What greater common good is served by expanding India’s energy production at huge cost to environment if it disproportionately serves the consumer lifestyle of minuscule proportion of the population which owns air-conditioners and personal cars? A report by The Energy and Resources Institute in 2014 pointed out:

“AC use is already the largest component of overall residential power consumption and the largest peak demand use of electricity in many Indian cities.”

Stance abroad

The government of India presents a united front about its carbon footprint in international environmental fora and negotiations. The huge inequities that exist within India in terms of per capita carbon footprint are never highlighted. Estimates of state level per capita carbon dioxide emissions for a 20 year period (1980-2000) shows that per capita emission of Delhi was double that of West Bengal and seven times that of Kerala. The greater polluting life-style of Delhi hasn’t resulted in government policy that penalises Delhi or rewards West Bengal or Kerala.

When the government of India jockeys at the international level for concessions from historically high per capita polluters and also wants that these per-capita pollution giants give funds to bear various costs of “greening” energy production modes in India and elsewhere in the southern world, does it bother to ever spell out how it intends to distribute the funds or other benefits if such a deal is reached? It won’t for we all know that these funds will primarily end up in the same areas where polluters live. Cynical games of the Delhi elite and their network of trans-regional agents are a curse on the subcontinent’s environment and any sense of distributive justice.

With this in mind, the government’s hypocritical international posturing becomes clear. India’s per capita carbon dioxide emission dwarfs in front of the United States of America or Canada. In 1990, per capita emissions of India, USA and Canada were 800, 19,300 and 15,700 tonnes respectively. In 2013, they were 1,700, 16,600 and 15,700 tonnes. The “go-green” Germany was at a highly polluting 10,200 in 2013. According to estimates, between 1850 to 2011, USA and Europe accounted for 27% and 25% of all carbon dioxide emissions. China and the Indian subcontinent accounted for 11% and 3% respectively. The world has been the dumping ground for white people’s trash for long – including their ideologies and carbon emissions.

There can be no doubt that for the future survival of the planet, the Euro-American way of life has to be severely rolled back. This is India’s stance at international negotiations, where it fancies itself as a spokesperson for all decolonised people (including Kashmir!). But India’s internal pollution inequality data shows that the Indian government’s anti-colonial, holier-than-thou international stance, based on the irrefutable logic of historical and distributive justice, is a fig-leaf for perpetuation of Euro-American-level per capita pollution lifestyles practised by the thin layer of metropolitan Indian elite. India’s holier-than-thou-ness at international climate jamborees is orchestrated in the name of the brown billion, without consultation, without any pretence of justice domestically.

Reality at home

What has the Indian government done to correct this distributive injustice where industrial development and expansion of high pollution lifestyle has happened disproportionately in some states while all others are shouldering the pollution burden, since pollution is not something that respects state boundaries and spills over? Why is it that India’s high per capita polluters, be it states or socio-economic groups, are also recipients of highest subsidies and public amenities funded largely by the billion-plus?

For a just future, the principle of equality in terms of per capita carbon emission and that the high polluters need to pay up to low polluters for their self-serving actions has to be the starting point of any negotiation internationally. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If there’s any principle behind the government’s stance internationally, it should be applicable within India too. Since the government doesn’t allow states to negotiate internationally, the states of the Indian Union need a federal treaty, where high per capita polluter states need to be penalised or disadvantaged in some concrete way and conversely, the low per capita polluter states need to be rewarded.

It’s more obscene than hypocritical that the class that represents India at international climate change conferences and other crucial international environment negotiations are also those whose per capita carbon footprint is higher than that of the billion they ostensibly represent.

The anti-imperialist green posturing of Indian government representatives at international fora is a thin cover for perpetuating this fuel guzzling, private-car owning lifestyle while doing various self-delusional “green” public relations stunts to feel self-righteous. That fact that they can get away points to the deep democratic deficit and the lack of any real concern for federal principles in the government of India’s functioning.

For the sake of the subcontinent and the world, something’s got to give.