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Logically speaking for India to reduce its total emissions one of two things should happen: a huge number of people in India should die or Indians should consum

Logically speaking for India to reduce its total emissions one of two things should happen: a huge number of people in India should die or Indians should consume almost nothing (everything else being equal.) I don't understand how anyone can fault India for its current stance given that the state we are in was caused by the developed countries. The only way anyone can fault India is by asserting that an Indian life is worth less than a life in a developed country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dio... This is like moving into a new house and being forced to pay for the damage caused by the old tenants. And the old tenants are forcing you to pay for the damage while they live across the street in a brand new house constructed by stealing from the old place.

nickff 13y ago
India has also been given opportunities never available to western countries during their period of industrialization, such as access to a wide variety of medicine and technology. I would just like it to be clear that India is in a different situation than what many others were at comparable levels of development.
- ashray 13y ago
  Those options are expensive. Why should the rich and powerful give up profit margins for better public health and so that other countries don't get typhoons ? Unfortunately, money is much more powerful than any other motivation. The government helps curb such attitudes but the government listens to the people (atleast in theory..), and the people are indifferent.
  - waps 13y ago
    Please note that the relationship between typhoons and climate change is unproven. There is some vague idea that higher average temperature provides more energy to storms, but it's at best an idea. Please note that people aren't indifferent. Without technology and the economy, people in India would starve. I would also suggest that in a less developed economy, people are much more likely to be aware of that. Industry is not bad, it's what humans alive, in the numbers that we have.
    - kaybe 13y ago
      While it's true that the relationship is unproven (the only way to really prove it is to see it happen), it's not just an idea, it's a result of modelling. Now, these models are not entirely correct and still lack elements (climate is a very complex system), but it's not as if no thought had been put into the relationship.
- lake99 13y ago
  I don't see how access to medicine makes any difference to climate change policies. I'll leave that aside. I don't quite get what you mean by "during their period of industrialization". Industrial progress does not work that way. One can't just pick a number (e.g. 25) and say India is 25 years behind the developed countries in its path to industrialization. Some Indians are still living in the stone age [1]. Others, such as the average Indian commenter on HN, is working on technology that we will all use, a couple of years down the line. Whatever the case may be, I think you'd learn a great deal if you stayed in India for a couple of years. The recycling I have seen here is, in some ways, better than anywhere else in the world [2]. A few examples that you'll see commonly here: carry-bags and wrapping paper made of old newspapers, shoes re-soled using worn-out tractor tires, peddlers going door-to-door giving big discounts on new vessels, in exchange for old vessels, etc. People at various economic strata of society squeeze out every little bit of economic worth from every little thing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people [2] On second thought, it's quite likely that many others of the so-called developing countries would recycle about as much as Indians do.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    I don't see how access to medicine makes any difference Look over the history of the Industrial Revolution -- roughly 1750 - 1950. At the start of that we had no real working engines, transportation systems, concept of energy or thermodynamics, understanding of evolution or germ theory, and a whole host of other concepts, as well as practical technologies: steam engines, metalurgy, steel, chemicals, electricity, communications, fertilizers, drugs, information technology. The countries modernizing now do have all of these things, and the possibility of avoiding many of the mistakes which were made by the countries which pioneered the transition (England, the US, Germany, France, and the rest of Western Europe). As late as 1860, cholera epidemics were killing millions of people throughout Europe and tens of thousands in London alone (imported from India, as it happens). Sewerage systems, water treatment, antisceptics, anesthesia, and eventually antibiotics came out of this -- but the first two alone provided the lion's share of life-expectancy gains in England and the US. The other thing we're very well aware of now is that 1) continuing to extract fossil fuel resources at the rates we've been doing will drastically change the climate and living conditions on Earth, possibly irrevocably and fatally to no only the economy but humans and most large animal species, and 2) those fossil resources will be too difficult to find and extract for net energy gain within the forseable future regardless. And those are only two of many impinging constraints humans face. The recycling economy of which you write is only one change which will likely become far more widespread. John Michael Greer's notion of "catabolic collapse" -- which explains both much of the financialization and "software eats everything" aspects of the past two decades -- extends that idea: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/01/onset-of-catabolic-collapse.html http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/01/onset-of-cata... http://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/greer_on_collapse.pdf http://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/greer_on_collapse.pdf Look to your own Indus Valley Civilization for an earlier instance (an no, this time is not different).
- tks2103 13y ago
  India was also colonized. You aren't being unbiased when you point out medicine and technology, but not colonialism.
  - nickff 13y ago
    You are correct that India was colonized by the British, and the Empire extracted wealth from the subcontinent while creating institutions of debatable value; it should also be noted that England was previously within the dominion of Rome, and later France. I was not attempting to fully describe the differing circumstances surrounding industrialization of different states (, as I do not have the knowledge or ability to write a complete account); instead I tried to show that they have experienced different opportunities and circumstances through a limited example.
    - tks2103 13y ago
      Bullshit, dude. You are being a coward. Does Rome or France conquering England have an effect on the way we should manage global emissions policy or not? Because if it doesn't, why are you mentioning it? Do the different circumstances that India has during industrialization mean they should take a greater role in limiting their emissions or not? Because you mentioned just two items, medicine and technology, which are both positive. And you didn't indicate how they relate to emissions. Instead of slipping in minor irrelevant facts that betray your bias, just state your opinion.
      - adventured 13y ago
        I'm pretty confident you could have expressed what you think is wrong with the parent, without being insulting. "Be civil." http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        tks2103 13y ago
        Absolutely not. "Civility" when discussing colonialism is just stacking the deck in favor of the colonists. Read my post again. What is insulting? Describing behavior as cowardly, and then backing it up with two points that remain unanswered? I could understand if the posts were baseless rants directly insulting the person I replied to with no content whatsoever, but that is not what happened. All of the words in that post were appropriate, given the thesis.
ashray 13y ago
From a climate change perspective, yes. But from just a general air pollution perspective, a lot of effective regulation needs to happen for industries to stop pumping noxious gases into the atmosphere. There are hardly any limits on industries and they can pump whatever they feel like into the air. Catalytic convertors for factories ? Almost non-existent! I know that the discussion of general air pollution is slightly off topic here, but it really is very bad in New Delhi, and eventually does reach the subject of climate change. Another perspective: If India doesn't care about air pollution within India which affects it's own population, it's unlikely they will care about some glaciers melting far away sometime in the future and affecting people in far away countries.
- nickff 13y ago
  Catalytic converters operate at high temperatures, (600 C,) which is much higher than the exhaust temperature of most factory exhausts; thus they would not be compatible. In addition, most emissions from factories are not un-combusted fuels (which CCs process), for a couple of reasons including the simple fact that most industrial processes which emit exhausts are run at steady state, and have been optimized to the point where nearly all the fuel is utilized. Particulate emissions are a real issue, as are dangerous vapors, but these are eliminated by various other remedies (such as filters and other sequestrations).
- demallien 13y ago
  Actually India is going to be hard-hit by climate change on several fronts. Firstly, many parts of southern India are low-lying and will be affected by rising sea levels. Then there's the effect that India is in the tropical zone - they've already experienced devastating monsoons and this is only predicted to get worse (see Typhoon Yolanda) as time goes by. Lastly, those glaciers aren't far away, they're right there in the Himalayas - India can expect to have major problems with drinking water supplies as those glaciers melt. I'm not up with Indian politics, but I rather suspect that the current refusal to deal with emissions is more about climate change denialism mixed in with a sense of anti-colonial defiance than anything else. Don't forget that it's actually easier, politically speaking, for a developing country such as India to adopt renewable energy than it is for the developed world, goodness knows they have the engineers to make it happen! We need baseload power, our society has been constructed expecting it to exist, but as Indian populations get electricity, it's not going to be a major drama if electricity supply is intermittent - that's still way better than no electricity at all.
rodgerd 13y ago
That's certainly true, but assuming the science is correct on this issue, we're squabbling over who gets which bits said of the houses while they're burning down. With us in them.
- waps 13y ago
  I realize you're being metaphorical, but "houses burning down" ? Really ? We'll have to relocate a few cities, or abandon them. Sure, not pleasant, but nobody will be burning.
  - rodgerd 13y ago
    Starving from crop collapses, but I guess that's no biggie.
danmaz74 13y ago
The problem is that climate change could create much more damage to India than to other, more developed countries.
dredmorbius 13y ago
for India to reduce its total emissions one of two things should happen There are two other possibilities you don't consider: 1. India could prevail in negotiating for carbon emission reductions elsewhere (the US, EU, Japan). Technology transfers greatly increasing India's GDP/bbl wouldn't hurt either -- it's presently around $400/bbl, the US sees $1000/bbl, most of Europe is in the $1500-$3000/bbl range. 2. Stunning advances in renewable, sustainable, and/or low-carbon energy technologies could allow for growth in India's standard of living without additional carbon emissions. I put the likelihood of this as low. Long run: there's a balance of population and per-capita resource consumption. The total sustainable rate is fixed. The question is: do you wish for a future with a very high population, or a for one with a high per-capita standard of living? They're at odds.
- cscurmudgeon 13y ago
  I wish for a future where every human being has more or less the same standards of living independent of where they were born. Or at the least, the same "pollution limits" independent of borders. The earth and the climate don't care who pollutes how much. The total amount of pollution matters and there shouldn't be a privileged few consuming magnitudes higher than the rest. Plain and simple.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    I wish for a future where every human being has more or less the same standards of living I suspect we'll get there. What I'm less certain of is what that standard of living will be.
    - cscurmudgeon 13y ago
      So poor people should try getting rich because there is a chance everyone will get poor? (Meanwhile the rich consume as usual.) Don't you see how fucked up that stance is?
      - dredmorbius 13y ago

nickff 13y ago

India has also been given opportunities never available to western countries during their period of industrialization, such as access to a wide variety of medicine and technology. I would just like it to be clear that India is in a different situation than what many others were at comparable levels of development.

ashray 13y ago
Those options are expensive. Why should the rich and powerful give up profit margins for better public health and so that other countries don't get typhoons ? Unfortunately, money is much more powerful than any other motivation. The government helps curb such attitudes but the government listens to the people (atleast in theory..), and the people are indifferent.
- waps 13y ago
  Please note that the relationship between typhoons and climate change is unproven. There is some vague idea that higher average temperature provides more energy to storms, but it's at best an idea. Please note that people aren't indifferent. Without technology and the economy, people in India would starve. I would also suggest that in a less developed economy, people are much more likely to be aware of that. Industry is not bad, it's what humans alive, in the numbers that we have.
  - kaybe 13y ago
    While it's true that the relationship is unproven (the only way to really prove it is to see it happen), it's not just an idea, it's a result of modelling. Now, these models are not entirely correct and still lack elements (climate is a very complex system), but it's not as if no thought had been put into the relationship.
lake99 13y ago
I don't see how access to medicine makes any difference to climate change policies. I'll leave that aside. I don't quite get what you mean by "during their period of industrialization". Industrial progress does not work that way. One can't just pick a number (e.g. 25) and say India is 25 years behind the developed countries in its path to industrialization. Some Indians are still living in the stone age [1]. Others, such as the average Indian commenter on HN, is working on technology that we will all use, a couple of years down the line. Whatever the case may be, I think you'd learn a great deal if you stayed in India for a couple of years. The recycling I have seen here is, in some ways, better than anywhere else in the world [2]. A few examples that you'll see commonly here: carry-bags and wrapping paper made of old newspapers, shoes re-soled using worn-out tractor tires, peddlers going door-to-door giving big discounts on new vessels, in exchange for old vessels, etc. People at various economic strata of society squeeze out every little bit of economic worth from every little thing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people [2] On second thought, it's quite likely that many others of the so-called developing countries would recycle about as much as Indians do.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  I don't see how access to medicine makes any difference Look over the history of the Industrial Revolution -- roughly 1750 - 1950. At the start of that we had no real working engines, transportation systems, concept of energy or thermodynamics, understanding of evolution or germ theory, and a whole host of other concepts, as well as practical technologies: steam engines, metalurgy, steel, chemicals, electricity, communications, fertilizers, drugs, information technology. The countries modernizing now do have all of these things, and the possibility of avoiding many of the mistakes which were made by the countries which pioneered the transition (England, the US, Germany, France, and the rest of Western Europe). As late as 1860, cholera epidemics were killing millions of people throughout Europe and tens of thousands in London alone (imported from India, as it happens). Sewerage systems, water treatment, antisceptics, anesthesia, and eventually antibiotics came out of this -- but the first two alone provided the lion's share of life-expectancy gains in England and the US. The other thing we're very well aware of now is that 1) continuing to extract fossil fuel resources at the rates we've been doing will drastically change the climate and living conditions on Earth, possibly irrevocably and fatally to no only the economy but humans and most large animal species, and 2) those fossil resources will be too difficult to find and extract for net energy gain within the forseable future regardless. And those are only two of many impinging constraints humans face. The recycling economy of which you write is only one change which will likely become far more widespread. John Michael Greer's notion of "catabolic collapse" -- which explains both much of the financialization and "software eats everything" aspects of the past two decades -- extends that idea: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/01/onset-of-catabolic-collapse.html http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/01/onset-of-cata... http://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/greer_on_collapse.pdf http://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/greer_on_collapse.pdf Look to your own Indus Valley Civilization for an earlier instance (an no, this time is not different).
tks2103 13y ago
India was also colonized. You aren't being unbiased when you point out medicine and technology, but not colonialism.
- nickff 13y ago
  You are correct that India was colonized by the British, and the Empire extracted wealth from the subcontinent while creating institutions of debatable value; it should also be noted that England was previously within the dominion of Rome, and later France. I was not attempting to fully describe the differing circumstances surrounding industrialization of different states (, as I do not have the knowledge or ability to write a complete account); instead I tried to show that they have experienced different opportunities and circumstances through a limited example.
  - tks2103 13y ago
    Bullshit, dude. You are being a coward. Does Rome or France conquering England have an effect on the way we should manage global emissions policy or not? Because if it doesn't, why are you mentioning it? Do the different circumstances that India has during industrialization mean they should take a greater role in limiting their emissions or not? Because you mentioned just two items, medicine and technology, which are both positive. And you didn't indicate how they relate to emissions. Instead of slipping in minor irrelevant facts that betray your bias, just state your opinion.
    - adventured 13y ago
      I'm pretty confident you could have expressed what you think is wrong with the parent, without being insulting. "Be civil." http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - tks2103 13y ago
        Absolutely not. "Civility" when discussing colonialism is just stacking the deck in favor of the colonists. Read my post again. What is insulting? Describing behavior as cowardly, and then backing it up with two points that remain unanswered? I could understand if the posts were baseless rants directly insulting the person I replied to with no content whatsoever, but that is not what happened. All of the words in that post were appropriate, given the thesis.

ashray 13y ago

From a climate change perspective, yes. But from just a general air pollution perspective, a lot of effective regulation needs to happen for industries to stop pumping noxious gases into the atmosphere. There are hardly any limits on industries and they can pump whatever they feel like into the air. Catalytic convertors for factories ? Almost non-existent! I know that the discussion of general air pollution is slightly off topic here, but it really is very bad in New Delhi, and eventually does reach the subject of climate change. Another perspective: If India doesn't care about air pollution within India which affects it's own population, it's unlikely they will care about some glaciers melting far away sometime in the future and affecting people in far away countries.

nickff 13y ago
Catalytic converters operate at high temperatures, (600 C,) which is much higher than the exhaust temperature of most factory exhausts; thus they would not be compatible. In addition, most emissions from factories are not un-combusted fuels (which CCs process), for a couple of reasons including the simple fact that most industrial processes which emit exhausts are run at steady state, and have been optimized to the point where nearly all the fuel is utilized. Particulate emissions are a real issue, as are dangerous vapors, but these are eliminated by various other remedies (such as filters and other sequestrations).
demallien 13y ago
Actually India is going to be hard-hit by climate change on several fronts. Firstly, many parts of southern India are low-lying and will be affected by rising sea levels. Then there's the effect that India is in the tropical zone - they've already experienced devastating monsoons and this is only predicted to get worse (see Typhoon Yolanda) as time goes by. Lastly, those glaciers aren't far away, they're right there in the Himalayas - India can expect to have major problems with drinking water supplies as those glaciers melt. I'm not up with Indian politics, but I rather suspect that the current refusal to deal with emissions is more about climate change denialism mixed in with a sense of anti-colonial defiance than anything else. Don't forget that it's actually easier, politically speaking, for a developing country such as India to adopt renewable energy than it is for the developed world, goodness knows they have the engineers to make it happen! We need baseload power, our society has been constructed expecting it to exist, but as Indian populations get electricity, it's not going to be a major drama if electricity supply is intermittent - that's still way better than no electricity at all.

rodgerd 13y ago

That's certainly true, but assuming the science is correct on this issue, we're squabbling over who gets which bits said of the houses while they're burning down. With us in them.

waps 13y ago
I realize you're being metaphorical, but "houses burning down" ? Really ? We'll have to relocate a few cities, or abandon them. Sure, not pleasant, but nobody will be burning.
- rodgerd 13y ago
  Starving from crop collapses, but I guess that's no biggie.

danmaz74 13y ago

The problem is that climate change could create much more damage to India than to other, more developed countries.

dredmorbius 13y ago

for India to reduce its total emissions one of two things should happen There are two other possibilities you don't consider: 1. India could prevail in negotiating for carbon emission reductions elsewhere (the US, EU, Japan). Technology transfers greatly increasing India's GDP/bbl wouldn't hurt either -- it's presently around $400/bbl, the US sees $1000/bbl, most of Europe is in the $1500-$3000/bbl range. 2. Stunning advances in renewable, sustainable, and/or low-carbon energy technologies could allow for growth in India's standard of living without additional carbon emissions. I put the likelihood of this as low. Long run: there's a balance of population and per-capita resource consumption. The total sustainable rate is fixed. The question is: do you wish for a future with a very high population, or a for one with a high per-capita standard of living? They're at odds.

cscurmudgeon 13y ago
I wish for a future where every human being has more or less the same standards of living independent of where they were born. Or at the least, the same "pollution limits" independent of borders. The earth and the climate don't care who pollutes how much. The total amount of pollution matters and there shouldn't be a privileged few consuming magnitudes higher than the rest. Plain and simple.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  I wish for a future where every human being has more or less the same standards of living I suspect we'll get there. What I'm less certain of is what that standard of living will be.
  - cscurmudgeon 13y ago
    So poor people should try getting rich because there is a chance everyone will get poor? (Meanwhile the rich consume as usual.) Don't you see how fucked up that stance is?
    - dredmorbius 13y ago