Man-made global warming

The recent G8 summit at Gleneagles has sounded a deathknell for Kyoto protocol on climate change. Tony Blair's confession that Without the presence of US it would be very difficult to achieve the Kyoto targets, tells the sad story. It's amazing that how quickly things could change from euphoria to scepticism. Only on Feb 16 2005 the entire world, of course except the US and Australia, was celebrating the ratification of Kyoto protocol. But before the celebrations died down, Kyoto is ready to be killed and buried.

It shows how the whole world is precariously placed at the whip of a single nation. This is not the first time and will not be the last either. I think, the global institutions like UN, WTO and Kyoto protocol are becoming increasingly irrelevant and unsustainable in this unipolar world. We would be commiting a moral blunder to our younger generations if we do not care for this planet and its clean environment. Therefore, Kyoto should be implemented at any cost.

We need to analyse the issue in totality. To begin with, the developed countries with their early and rapid adoption of industrial revolution continue to pound the earth with every concievable emissions that caused global warming and the consequent climate change. While the developing countries, most of them were once colonised by the rich nations, were late to pick up the industrial revolution and are still many years behind the developed countries in terms of per capita economic growth and development.

Though these economies are rapidly growing and are waving on the IT revolution, to ask them to cut down their emissions would amount to stall their economic progression. Besides, the carbon emissions from these countries come mainly from agriculture and livestock on which around 70 % of the population depend upon for their livelihood. Asking them to cut down emissions would create huge food crisis.

It's a known fact that poor and the devloping countires in Africa and Asia are the ones that would take the brunt of climate change in the form of more droughts, floods and infectious diseases, for no fault of their own. Developed countries have more responsiblity and capability to cut down emissions. This fact is recognised by most of these countries, otherwise Kyoto would not have become a reality. US and Australia have worried about their economic growth and also are raising questions about the human involvement in climate change. But there are plenty of scientific reports referring to the incresed CO2 concentration have confirmed the human induced climate change.

The major problem with this climate change and clean environment issues can be attributed to 'public good' nature of them. Global climate and clean environment are, like public goods, mutually exclusive and have free rider properties. Everyone gets affected if one does not comply and nobody gets penalised or incentives for compliance. So everyone wants to be a free rider.