Collateral Damage- Impact of Industrialization and Climate Change
– Dhruv Chhajed
“Do not go gentle into that good night, rage against the dying of the good light”
This famous quote stands as a symbol of not losing hope even in the darkest of the hour, but to rage towards the slightest hope visible. The current environment conservationists are indeed the individuals experiencing this phrase. We shall be dealing with the few simple questions of unsustainability in current tools of Economics, a brief history of Industrialization and climate change. What our absence does to the environment and why using the same tools and principles is a bad idea.
The penned piece does not look through the glass of learned scientists who, somehow, could not fully convey the grave consequences of climate change to the world, but rather through the narrow keyhole of economics. Ironically, Principles of Economics are the one that landed us here.
The Double-Edged Sword of Economics
It can be extremely easy to enact and promote sustainable rules and guidelines, but they are not likely to be followed. The reason is simple – ‘Economics’, the tool that guided us to modernization is now pushing us overboard. A businessman’s economics always tends to find efficiency, mainly through lowering cost and increasing supply. All of this can be done very easily by reducing the use of costly and advanced systems, vapour filters and by not building discharge treatment plants and simply dumping it into the rivers. The State’s idea of industrialization cannot be achieved without overconsumption, utilizing more and more resources. Industry shoves down useless products in the throats of the consumer. You cannot blame them because it is their job to bring equality in wage, promote more industry so that everyone sustains and gets a good quality life. However, as we increase our efforts we fail further. As Paul Coller puts it in ‘The Future of Capitalism’, we “the mass contempt in which capitalism is held—as greedy, selfish, corrupt.” The system we built is bound to fail, and we zany folks are again feeding the lion with bare hands, hoping this time he would spare us. When an advanced economy such as America plunges into the highest unemployment rate since the great depression and a major financial crisis every 10 years, it is time we open our eyes.
The Return of Uncle Recidivist
We keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. What are those mistakes? That there is a spike in the global emission rate and an increase in environmental damage every time we tried to scale up and industrialize.
“Evidence supports the fact that human impact on the environment was widespread even before the Industrial Revolution,” says Paolo Gabrielli, a research scientist at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at Ohio State.
Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor at Stanford University, says that ‘We saw the harmful effects of air pollution even in Roman times’. Fast-forward to the period just before Britain’s Industrialisation, when Digby, a notable doctor in 1658, is documented to have suggested patients who had a fat purse – but weak lungs – to avoid London’s air, and travel to Paris where the air was comparatively less polluted to get healthy.
We don’t even need to go too back in time. Just remind yourself about the Sub-prime Mortgage Crisis of 2008, there is enough documented evidence that shows Governments around the world using the same remedies which can found in high school textbooks. The remedy being, pushing the supply chain through increasing the production and propelling themselves out of the financial distress creating a surge in the rate of pollution. Yet to find the economy tanking every ten years.
What does human absence do to the environment?
It would be very inefficient to not show the results of a once in a lifetime event. The event being a near to complete halt in the polluting industries because of the COVID-19 pandemic. China, Italy and a dozen other countries are finding a temporary fall in nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide emission by as much as 40%, resulting into a direct possibility of reducing risks of asthma and heart attacks.
China, the world’s leading generator of carbon, was found to be emitting less by 18% in early February and March, a cut equivalent to 250 million tones. Europe reducing its emission by almost 390 Million Tonnes. Backing my previous contention, it is found that the approx. fall of 40% CO2 emission might be the first fall since the 2008-09 crisis.
Coming to India, metropolitan cities such as Mumbai and Delhi recorded a significant drop in the pollution levels by 40-50%. The level of aerosol particles in north India was found to be the lowest in the past 20 years during the lockdown period.
For those who still have a confusion regarding the concept of climate change or choose to find the increasing temperature not a result of human activity. I for one cannot find a more absolute cause and effect relationship exposing itself stark naked. Here on, it will be obtuse to question the presence of an object with your eyes closed.
Policies abandoned at the first sign of trouble prove them to be Ineffective
India, US, State of New South Wales (Australia) and Brazil are one of the few countries who have no problem turning their back to their environmental clearance and pre-determined policies at the time of its most needs. It is also important to know that the below shown facts are the righteous and most efficient solution beloved economics has bestowed upon them.
In the home of world’s largest rainforest deforestation ravaged an area equivalent to 1.4 million soccer fields between August 2018 and July 2019. We still find some suspicion to the state’s involvement in the recent deadly forest fires in the Amazon but trade deals such as ‘EU and Murcosur’ providing great promotion to Cattle rearers in production and export of meat keeps no iota of doubt. It does not take you long to join the dots that there is indeed an increasing need for land, and, at the same time, the Amazon rainforest is burning. It is indeed a slash and burn job, simple economics.
Moving towards New South Wales, where the officials of the State found it way to easy to roll back a policy building process that had involved more than 5 years solely meant for improvement of the air quality. It was titled as ‘Vital-steps towards a 10-year plan’ The country officials find that it would be better to tackle the environmental crisis with ad hoc multiple industrial policies and not just a single policy map. One must remember, too many cooks spoil the broth, but in this case, too many self-interested political cooks poison the broth.
In the land of the free, it is now a crime to protest against the use of fossil fuels in 3 states namely Kentucky, Virginia and South Dakota. During this pandemic, legislators in the US have silently enacted laws that now criminalise the act of protesting against the use of fossil fuel. They have craftily enacted a statute that holds fossil fuel as a key infrastructure asset. No doubt there is a clear sign of an attempt to sustain the petroleum industry.
With India, the Honourable Environment Ministry has gotten too charged up with the plan of a self-sustained Indian Economy. In some ways, it seems the Environment Ministry acts as a sub-portfolio to the Finance and Commerce Ministries. A draft EIA 2020 Notification has been put in the public domain for opinion. What this notification provides is an exemption to few prescribed ‘Strategic Projects’ from:
- the Public Consultation Process in offshores project, Category B2 Projects, border pipeline projects etc.;
- Prior Environment Clearance for solar projects, extraction of the earth for specific projects, coal and non-mineral prospecting.
This notification provides a mere bypass to the previous mandatory clearance process, with the element of no oversight it is bound to cause damage. Draft Notification EIA 2020 in a sense is the Hemlock of moral obligation towards the Environment, only this time the one drinking it is the entire of Athens and not the Socrates.
Keep going on this road AND soon there will be no road
With the upcoming World Sustainable Submit 2020, two questions seek immediate attention: Is the current economic growth sustainable? And, if not, then what are the consequences?
To address the first question, let me take the example of air pollution
There is no doubt that the Trump administration is deep in waters, with elections coming up he has made the last resort measure of sending strong signals to the industries that his administration can handle the revival of the Economy. Long since the administration has been very efficient in removing or undoing up to 100 Environment regulations most of which were made during the climate-conscious Obama administration. Currently, to promote auto industry, President Trump is calling auto manufacturers to rapidly increase production. It is a very prudent macroeconomic decision. India might soon do the same. The economics that we have understood provides us with our immediate wants that does not seem sustainable . The only feasible idea on any scale base economy is when we find ourselves in the saturation of either supply or demand, we need to fire charge the other. In this particular case of the auto industry, the policy single-handedly reverses Obama’s goal of fuel efficiency standards. This might not sound like much but this standalone would cause an increase emission of 1 billion Tonnes of Carbon Dioxide. Only that this time, this new push to the economy is going to be even worse than ever before as studies find that COVID-19 patients with increasing exposure to air pollution have a higher fatality rate.
It is almost too frightening to imagine the scale of just a single economic decision taken by a developed economy, and if at their current rate of per capita income, they are so badly concerned about their growth then why would the other 194 nations hold back. To break it short, there is a fundamental defect in the idea of current economic growth and the idea of sustainable life.
Second and lastly, “Consequences”. I feel sympathetic for the innocent species of Bat being cursed at by nearly 7 billion souls. Ironically it was humans making delicacies out of them. There is increasing research showing that the increase in the rate of human interference with wildlife are multiplying the frequencies of viruses and diseases.
In the light of the ‘Tipping Theory’, where the tipping points are tiny changes that can push the eco-system into a completely new state, we stand on thin ice. If one follows through, they can find that the tipping theory can become ugly in a hurry, if few ecological thresholds start tipping over a certain point (point of no-return), then just like the 2008-09 economic crisis it shall turn itself into a contagion.
In simpler terms, the dominos of other triggers to tipping points can start simultaneously, for e.g. increase carbon emission, leading to increased melting of polar caps, leading to the complete destruction of the coral reefs that is said to begin after the water reaches a certain temperature and solubility and on and on.
DO or DIE
The clock is ticking, the wait has been long and nature has been far too forgiving. Human’s greatest strength, his logic combined with the tools of economics are just helping us dig the grave faster and in a sense more efficiently. There is no chance for allowing the capitalized hands to phase us out of this crisis, the sense of moral obligation has to find order. The solution is not just as simple as adding an extra lens of conservatism in every new policy. Rather we need to confront the problem head-on, for a start by tightening the existing regulations and reducing the trends of increasing consumption.
We are all raging towards the hope that someone will kill the engine while we are comfortably sitting inside a car in a closed garage. We have to shut it for our self before we drift off into an unconscious no point of return.
This article is authored by Dhruv Chhajed. He is a student of law at Gujarat National Law University.