Air Pollution, Clean Energy and Climate Change. Anilla Cherian

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Air Pollution, Clean Energy and Climate Change - Anilla Cherian


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than the cost of the energy transition’ (emphasis included, Shindell 2020).

      The significance of the finding that reducing the severe toxicity of air pollution reduces morbidity, ill‐health burdens and costs that not just offset but are actually far greater than the costs of transitioning to clean energy has paramount importance not just for the US, but for those households, cities and countries faced with exposure to hazardous levels of air pollution. It is now or never for addressing the layering of the double threats – energy related air pollution and climate vulnerabilities – both of which are pressing challenges for the broader UN‐led global sustainable development agenda (SDA).

      Since the adoption of the historic 1992 UNFCCC, which took eleven (11) intergovernmental negotiating sessions to be adopted, more than 25 annual cycles of intergovernmental negotiating meetings have occurred under the aegis of Conference of Parties (COPs) to the UNFCCC (Gupta 2014; Cherian 2012). Notwithstanding the rapid growth in global climate negotiations fora, securing a legally binding global climate change agreement still remains a quixotic goal. There has also been no shortage of policy prognostications and research related to climate negotiations ranging from game theory, regime, institutional governance analysis and climate justice perspectives (Haas et al. 1993; Luterbacher and Sprinz 2001; Giddens 2011; Stern et al. 2014; Bernard and Semmler 2015; Sjöstedt and Penetrante 2015). Robinson and Herbert (2001) outlined the need for integrating climate change early on with sustainable development needs. There is a considerable body of literature on sustainable development negotiations (Sachs 2015; Chasek et al. 2017; Kanie et al. 2017).

      Feigning ignorance regarding carbon inequality is hard to justify. Over five years ago, climate change was inextricably linked inequality in Oxfam’s Report, ‘Extreme Carbon Inequality’. The report estimated ‘carbon inequality’ to be such that ‘the poorest half of the global population – around 3.5 billion people – are responsible for only around 10% of total global emissions attributed to individual consumption, yet live overwhelmingly in countries most vulnerable to climate change. Around 50% of these emissions meanwhile can be attributed to the richest 10% of people around the world, who have average carbon footprints 11 times as high as the poorest half of the population, and 60 times as high as the poorest 10%. The average footprint of the richest 1% of people globally could be 175 times that of the poorest 10%’ (emphasis added, Oxfam 2015, p. 1). Calling attention to the massive scale of loss, devastation and dislocation imposed by climate change, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights pointed out: ‘Perversely, while people in poverty are responsible for just a fraction of global emissions, they will bear the brunt of climate change, and have the least capacity to protect themselves … We risk a “climate apartheid” scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer’(emphasis added, UN News 2019a).

      Another recent example of this ‘climate apartheid’ scenario albeit by the well‐intentioned wealthy was the 2019 convening of a by‐invitation only, celebrity‐focused, three‐day Google camp on climate change. According to an article in Ecowatch, this event which cost upwards of $20 million meant that the Palermo airport had to be readied ‘for the expected arrival of 114 private jets not to mention private helicopters, yachts and limousines used for the transportation of the various guests’. As the article notes, the modalities used to convene this event were in stark contrast to the event’s promised mission, ‘as a flight from New York to Palermo, Sicily, generates around 4.24 metric tons of CO2’, which is ‘a lot of carbon for just a few people. And, that doesn't include the greenhouse gasses emitted by the 2,300 horsepower diesel‐engine private yachts’ that several attendees used (Davidson 2019). The imbalance in per capita GHG emissions is unambiguous across and within countries and cities and makes the dissonance between those who lack access to non‐polluting energy sources yet also contribute the least in term of per capita emissions versus those who proclaim the need for climate activism by jetting around the world harder to ignore.

      IPCC’s AR6 Working Group 1 SPM leaves little room for equivocation or doubt as to the global urgency of climate action.


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