India Ready To Cut Coal Usage For Climate Cash

Paris isn’t full of scientists, engineers or even economists.

The questions appear to have been referred to DECC, who said of the scrapping of CCS funding: “Government has not taken this decision lightly”.

He argues that the cost of solar, which has declined by 75% in 4 years, is still double the cost of coal.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech on the first day of the summit said the world needs to look beyond climate change and focus on climate justice which is the need of the hour. Fossil fuel consumption and production have risen steadily since. India, however, should strongly reflect the views of the poor in all the developing countries who are bearing the brunt of climate change.

He says “we must speed the process up because we have much work to do… compromise solutions must be found as soon as possible”. But WHO climate change and health team leader Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum defended them, saying they were “highly conservative”.

One thing is for sure, it did not take 40,000 delegates to rescue the banking system.

As the banks fell, and public cash was flying, no one knew “with certainty” that anything would work, and no one stopped to ask what the “fair share” of effort for Bangladesh would be. Their argument is that many advanced emerging economies – such as the petro states and countries like China – are now wealthy enough to help out. They just wanted to avoid catastrophe, so they acted. “We will need to see some real leadership from the developed world and more leadership from China, which has been notable for its backseat position”, an observer said. This was dismissed in some quarters as early talks positioning.

At the Paris talks, the Indian delegation is pushing for developed countries to provide billions in aid for a clean energy transition. But that’s life in the United Nations climate negotiations. But small island states at risk of disappearing beneath the waves as warming raises sea levels don’t buy that.

While most of the countries that have signed on to the new India-led International Agency for Solar Technologies and Applications (Iasta) are situated in the tropics, a number of European countries have also joined, including France, whose president said the idea was to use finances from the world’s richest countries to bring energy to the world’s poorest and most remote communities. More than 120 countries already have recognized that this could be a way out of the quagmire we face today. Ministers from around the world will descend on Paris on Monday to try to transform the blueprint into a binding deal that can cap the rampant emissions of greenhouse gases and slow global warming.

“We don’t want to lock people into perpetual energy poverty and income poverty… How do we help India achieve that target?” We wish them success. In the hard lines drawn between developed and developing nations, India’s position that a deal be equitable and framed under the UN convention’s common but differentiated responsibilities, is being portrayed as a problem.

“So we need balancing power which can come on instantly and which is affordable”. But it is not a done deal because the world is divided between the industrialized countries and the industrializing ones. That being Modi’s raison d’etre, it’s likely that India will not want to rock the boat in Paris. He specializes in climate policy. Kiribati President Anote Tong’s call for a moratorium on new coal mines is diplomatically disruptive because it is simple, immediate and concrete.

Tim Ward is the author of The Master Communicator’s Handbook, a guidebook for thought leaders and changemakers: “Communication is not about output; it’s about impact”. It is only decisive action like this that can prevent the disaster in Chennai from becoming the new normal. But when the stakes are high, history suggests we can do things that aren’t easy. Development is all very well, but if you can’t breathe, you water is polluted and the forests are gone, what then?

When the cards have been stacked against you it makes more sense to tip over the table than to bet all your chips. Developmental plans and economic prosperity has to be safeguarded through adequate adaptation measures and ambitious climate action in the country.

Developing nations have expressed anger in Paris that structure has but to be put in place to ensure these funds.