The editorial comment on climate change has got me to think hard on these systems. It has now become imperative for all the governments to realize that keeping mum about the carbon emissions is contributing to the world pollution in much higher amounts than realizing this.
This is similar to the conversation I was having with one of my friend about obesity in India. Although we have been having this problem for sometime, it has not dawned upon us that this was a problem till the west has thrust upon us.
Anyway getting back to the main article of climate control, the two methods as suggested by the editor are taxes and cap and trade emission control. As we would have realized, it is not just the developed countries, taxes are hugely unpopular even in countries like India. So we need a unique solution and although the carbon trading system has its own fallacies it might be a reasonable option for us. As Herbot Simon puts it, a good enough solution or a bounded rationality approach for climate change is Carbon Trading. So what is the problem : first the establishment of the system is quite difficult. England which has been pioneer in the field of carbon trading have been practicing this for sometime ( although it is only practice and not real until now) and this could be a starting point for us.
Some of the questions that need to be answered are:
- Does the government have enough machinery to measure the output and do so in a reasonable manner and within reasonable cost?
- Would the government be able to allocate appropriate amount of carbon points to a particular sector? The experience of EU shows the power sector has received unusually less stricter norms.
- Will the companies that have been doing some work on this be negatively punished. This is similar to the debate going on in terms of the state allocation of funds in India. The development achieved by some souther and western states in population control have worked negatively for fund allocation as the population had weightage in fund allocation. As we would have realized companies like Tata which are socially and environmentally conscious have been taking strides in controlling emission and working towards better environment would find it tough as the allocation is based on previous emissions. Reducing it from this levels to take advantage of carbon trading would be difficult.
- Would all industries be included or in search for the next big industry or the maturity level of industry a concession granted? Doing so would defeat the purpose of this approach.
Also we would have this argument form the industry we have some years left before we can think of environment. It is still our days of indulgence. I guess we cant afford to do this anymore
As India has managed to provide the whole world a new model for communication development in country by skipping the necessity to have land lines everywhere, we might just provide the world with another solution which includes developing with a environmental attitude
P.S. : Mr. Ratan Tata, although I respect you a lot, the 1 lakh car is something which goes the obvious logic keeping the above picture in mind. A Delhi Metro kind of project would help environment and also help Tata to grow profitably.
FT.com / Comment & analysis / Editorial comment - Groundhog Day
Quote of the Day:
Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
--Dr. George Washington Carver
0 comments:
Post a Comment