Having been subjected to
the rigmarole of watching former US vice president
Al Gore pontificating on the future of the planet
in the film An Inconvenient Truth [1] and
reading the gloomy projections for carbon
emissions in Scientific American, I had an
alternative view when reviewing the current
electrified situation of Muslims against Catholics
that arose from Pope Benedict XVI's recent
remarks.
My view is that terrorism could
actually play a large part in reducing the world's
carbon emissions, and that alone should make Osama
bin Laden and his ilk the new poster-boys of the
ecological (green) movement.
Facts and friction SciAm [2]
reports that the 1 billion people living across
North America, Europe (including Russia), Japan,
Australia and New Zealand together contribute some
62% of carbon emissions. India, China and
peripheral countries contribute a grand total of
25%, despite accounting for well over half the
world's population.
The article goes on to
extrapolate from today's growth trajectories to an
awful future where the contributions of India and
China rise sharply from today's levels while the
proportion (not the nominal amount) of emissions
from the first group reduces by 2056. In the
interest of space, I will desist from repeating
the statistics any further.
The major
implication of the grand standing by US Democrats
and the scientific community would be that a
regime change in the White House in 2008 could
well produce accelerated plans for cutting carbon
emissions, with the US leading the way.
US
government involvement would likely be through the
favored regime of taxes on emissions, echoing
European suggestions. The price is likely to be a
minimum of US$100 per ton of carbon, which works
out to about $12 per barrel of oil (or 25 cents a
gallon - 6.6 cents a liter - of gasoline) and $60
per ton of coal (or 2 cents per kilowatt-hour of
electricity derived from coal-fired plants). This
may appear small from a purely Western
perspective, but it is certainly no laughing
matter for the likes of India and China that
depend increasingly on fossil fuels to drive their
growth.
The secondary effects of these
policies would be manifold, by definition. A
number of positive results could emerge, such as
improved technology in sustainable power sources
such as solar cells and fuel cells, with
applications focused almost entirely around power
generation and transportation. This would imply
adopting specific technologies such as solar-cell
arrays for power generation, and fuel cells for
transport to provide the optimal mix of mobility
and environmental friendliness.
There are
other, secondary effects, though, that are less
salutary. The West (with Japan) will not make
concessions without demanding some compromises
from China and India. In effect, this translates
to protectionism that just happens to come about
at an opportune time for US and European
manufacturers. [3] The system as envisaged above
would involve a trading mechanism for carbon
credits, with a view to charging incremental
offenders on an escalating scale. Demographically,
this suits the West with its stable or declining
population, but certainly does nothing for the
likes of China and India.
Additionally,
carbon-emission limits must consider the average
emissions per person, which are substantially
lower than those in the West, but are unlikely to
do so because affording Chinese and Indians the
same emissions per person would in essence derail
the whole project, if you did the math.
Under this scenario, China and other
exporting economies would need to buy carbon
credits to gain export growth. Given current
global overcapacity in most industries, the
obvious implication would be a transfer of profits
from developing Asia to the United States and
Europe, which is presumably recycled into
energy-saving technologies. "Presumably", because
the current track record of technologies produced
by government assistance in the US and Europe is a
null list. For example, the US Freedom Car
project, which absorbs some $150 million to $200
million every year, has failed to produce any
discernible improvements in US production engine
technology for the past eight years.
A
convenient falsehood As I noted in
previous articles, the US has lost its
manufacturing edge and finds itself unable to
produce much of anything that the rest of the
world wants to buy. Rather than quietly giving up
the ghost, the United States is likely to fight
for its right to maintain the status quo. This
inevitably entails keeping the country's oil
dependency near current levels, and continuing
with wasteful ways such as consumers changing
their cars every three years.
The scenario
described above could produce pernicious results.
For example, a future US government or private
company could logically combine the carbon credits
earned on exporting gas-guzzlers with falling
second-hand prices of cars. They could then
export, say, a million US cars every year to the
likes of China and South Korea (about a quarter of
current annual sales in these countries), which
would themselves "need" the additional bodies,
having run out of their own carbon credits
allowing production beforehand.
This sale
of second-hand cars would allow US car makers to
produce even more cars, while increasing the
pricing and profitability pressures on Asian
exporters. At about $5,000 per vehicle, the plan
would only cost $5 billion, which is quite small
by the standards of the US Congress. It also gives
a new twist to US complaints about "dumping",
while costing a lot less than alternative
emissions-reduction technologies.
I could
provide a number of other examples where carbon
credits would produce the opposite of intended
results, but the central premise that limiting
carbon emissions would end up hurting Asian
economies stands under each one. The basic outcome
of such moves would be severely to limit growth in
China and India, and to perpetuate the poverty in
these countries for another 50 years.
Off the charts In the spirit of
solving the world's carbon-emissions problem using
fresh thinking, we could then consider truly
different alternatives. The first facet would
automatically involve the "why" rather than the
"how" of modern emissions.
In addition to
explaining that members of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development contribute
five times the pollution per capita, the SciAm
article referenced above calculates the mix of
carbon emissions at 66% for transport, of which
land transport for people stands at 55% (or 36% of
the gross figure). The development of Western
society has contributed to this startling figure,
which alone covers the total emissions of China
and India.
In particular, a large part of
this land transport involves the movement of
people from suburban living areas to concentrated
urban spaces. The "why" behind this statistic is
that organizations have historically clustered
their resources in closed spaces to allow for
better management and personnel utilization. This
dynamic depends on the ability of organizations to
attract talented people to their premises, and
therein hangs a tale.
Terrorism, by
targeting the self-same urban centers, can produce
a visible difference to the scenarios envisaged by
the SciAm writers. More atrocities on the lines of
New York, Madrid or London would likely induce a
gradual shift away from concentrated urban centers
such as Manhattan to satellite locations that have
affordable residential accommodation in close
proximity. In turn, this would allow many
mass-transit systems to reduce their operations
while also reducing the annual distance traveled
by Americans and Europeans by 20-40%.
Additionally, currently available technologies
such as telecommuting would likely accelerate in
this scenario, producing even more energy savings.
The secondary impact of religiously
motivated terrorism would be to reduce the growth
potential of Islamic countries. In the SciAm
survey, the Middle East made barely a ripple in
the calculations, as in essence the total
industrial output of many Arab countries stands at
negligible levels. Other than oil, a declining
West would find few things to buy from such
countries should terrorism escalate in coming
years.
The scenario would likely make for
glad reading among environmentalists, who have
desperately searched for alternatives that could
reduce global emissions drastically. This is why I
stated at the beginning of the article that
eco-warriors could well find common cause with
Islamic terrorists. For bin Laden and his ilk,
this presents an opportunity for an image
makeover. Just as George W Bush claims to be
waging a war for the future of Western
civilization, bin Laden could claim to be fighting
for the future of the world itself.
Conclusion I wrote in a
previous article, [4] "I predict that future
generations of Indians and Chinese will literally
worship [George W Bush and bin Laden] for having
pushed the West into a disastrous conflict with
Islam." By adopting a gradualist policy on carbon
emissions, rejecting the Kyoto Protocol for
example, Bush has intensified America's strategic
struggle for oil. For his part, bin Laden sees the
oil dependency of the West on Islamic countries as
a lever with which to derail those economies.
As I wrote in the same article, neither
India nor China will adopt an activist stance in
this battle, even if their strategic interests
call for the battle to proceed. The Buddhist
underpinnings of Chinese and Indian societies
prevent the possibility of their governments
encouraging terrorist tactics, or indeed even
celebrating the trend. It could well prove
fortuitous that bin Laden and his ilk aren't
standing around awaiting their approval.
Notes [1] An
Inconvenient Truth, Paramount Classics and
Participant Productions, 2006. [2] "Energy's
Future: Beyond Carbon", Scientific American,
September 2006. [3] See Garfield with guns , Asia
Times Online, September 2, 2006. [4] See China and India in World War
III, Asia Times Online, July 26, 2006.
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