Climate Change Conference At Crossroads

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The Climate Change Conference at Cancun Mexico is due to start in November on a low key. After the failure of the Copenhagen Conference last year when a major bid to place joint responsibility of Climate Change on all nations was averted with the failure of the Danish draft, this year has been a year of reconsiderations.



Europe's much touted leadership in implementing Carbon reduction had been challenged when the true face of its Carbon trading economy was exposed as a money spinning racket for the oil industry. The fact that it resulted only in a shift of usage from Coal to Oil, and the Oil cartel took advantage of the scene and raised the price of Brent Oil to hurt consumers jolted the public opinion in Europe itself. That dented Europe's aggro to force the other nations to accept Carbon Trading as an primary vehicle to reduce Carbon.

The Obama Basic Draft that put the Oil industry on the backfoot with its changed orientation was cobbled up in a hurry during the closing stages of the Copenhagen conference. That the Draft was not accepted as an accord because it got vetoed by OPEC nations Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, shows that it was anti fossil fuel document in its true sense. The paper will now be merely "noted" by the conference, as a understanding stripping it of any legal force.

Climate Change Conference is not about legal force. The failure of most nations to conform and meet the stipulations of the 1997 Kyoto protocol shows that even a legally binding document has no teeth because you cannot penalise nations who don't meet the stipulations. As a matter of fact, you cannot ever force a treaty between nations on issues beyond their control. The rich nations have been used to consume more energy than required and cannot overnight cut their energy needs. The poor nations with growing needs cannot curb their desire to grow and bring prosperity by increasing their energy footprint. For after all it is a fundamental right of man kind, even if not recognised formally, to have adequate energy to meet their basic necessities.

The unfortunate BP Gulf Oil spill also went a long way to build public opinion against unsafe drilling conditions and the result of indiscriminate use of oil by the US that led to the world's largest environmental disaster. This should help in the US looking at solutions of non-conventional energy afresh and towards reducing its $32 billion yearly subsidies to the Oil industry. Even other nations should reduce their subsidies given to the oil industry as natural price rise in fossil fuels leads to curtailed consumption. India has already taken the lead and has terminated subsidies on gasoline that will bring the desired results. In a years time per capita consumption which is already very low is expected to drop further, as price rise is a natural deterrent to consumption

The only way out to stop climate change is to develop positive solutions to substitute coal and oil. Large scalable solutions that can be disruptive and bring down prices of alternative energy solutions crashing to match the prices of coal and oil. With most major alternative energy manufacturers starting operations in the energy deficient large volume markets of China and India that is bound to happen in the next five years. Till that happens Climate change conferences are likely to yield no results and only create high decible chatter at billion dollar jamborees across the world.