Most current climate-sinners have committed too little to fixing economies for a different tomorrow.
The global meltdown has led to an air of expectation that governments would use the stimulus money to reinvent economies for climate change. Such expectations are now belied. The British pink daily Financial Times’ analysis of the green bailout plans of different countries finds, other than China and South Korea, all current climate-sinners have committed too little to fixing economies for a different tomorrow. Japan will spend as little as 3 per cent of its bailout on a green stimulus, whereas Canada and Australia will spend 8 and 9 per cent, respectively. Remember, all these are countries with high, and growing, greenhouse gas emissions; they really need to cut back.
Even for the US, where President Barack Obama promised a green jobs’ package for a green economy, the score card is dismal. The country will spend roughly 12 per cent of its almost $1,000 billion package on green stuff. It seems substantial spending — $112 billion, divided among investment in smart grids, energy efficiency, renewable energy tax credits, public transport and high-speed rail ($9 billion). But the fact remains the US, like the other countries, will spend the bulk of the bailout creating more problems and more emissions. The little it is spending to clean up the environment is just not good enough.
It is peanuts in a scenario in which these countries have to cut, over 1990-levels, greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30 per cent by 2020 and over 80 per cent by 2050. If we accept that most of these countries — the US, Australia, Japan and Canada to name a few — have increased their emissions by 20-40 per cent between 1990 and 2006, we are literally talking of reinventing economies at a massive scale. Such restructuring is far from being done.
In fact, it is countries like South Korea and China that are taking to change seriously. According to the Financial Times, China will spend almost 40 per cent of its $516 billion, and South Korea as much as 80 per cent of its stimulus, on green projects. China will invest the bulk in building railways and projects for energy efficiency and low-carbon vehicles. The relatively small country, South Korea, will spend an amount equivalent to the continent-sized US on public transport.
The world’s green preacher, the European Union, has decided to spend safely in ways in which it can be green but still benefit its powerful automobile lobby. The bulk of its green stimulus will go into ‘scrappage bonus’ — paying people money to get rid of their old cars and replace them with newer, more fuel-efficient vehicles. But the fact is that this would mean more cars have to be manufactured, more material used, more energy consumed: Good news for the economy, but bad for the environment. Furthermore, there is yet no evidence to prove more efficient cars lead to lower emissions on the whole. In fact, all surveys have found that even as vehicles become more fuel- and emission-efficient, the total greenhouse gas emissions increase, for people buy more and drive more. Thus, old-style stimulation is bound to fail.
The other biggie is, of course, energy. Here, too, little big-ticket change is anticipated. The US is the leader in energy flab. It will spend on modernising its electricity grid, shaping up supply and on energy efficiency in various forms: ‘Weatherise’ homes of more than one million families by better insulation, from double-glazing to better doors; refurbish federal buildings to a higher standard of energy; train workers to install insulation and other energy-efficient material.
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The European Commission, perhaps because it has less energy flab, has different plans. It will spend the bulk of its green stimulus on an experimental technology — carbon capture and storage [Carbon capture and storage (CCS), trap carbon emissions from power plants and bury it underground]. But as it is not clear whether this burial will work, the obituary can be written.
What is most disturbing is that investment in renewable energy remains a small part of the package. The US has perhaps the biggest, yet the smallest, bailout — some $6 billion for new loan guarantees and tax credits for wind, solar and geo-thermal, including the cost of building new transmission lines to connect wind farms. So much for the so-called sunrise sector of our new dawn, that can provide green jobs — millions of them in building wind, photovoltaic solar and solar thermal systems across the world — and the real answers to our fossilised energy systems. Admittedly, with the price of oil going down, these new energy sources are even more uncompetitive and more costly. But what happened to ‘this is the future’ call?
So, forget a green tomorrow. We will re-build it ourselves and make it the same dirty-rich economy. We will consume, to be happy, and will be happy. The climate change question can wait another day.