 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to discuss the COP25 or the environmental discussions on the climate change that has started today in Spain. But this is the COP25, the annual group, annual meeting of the countries regarding the Paris Agreement. Now, we know that the US is walking out of the Paris Agreement. But the focus seems to be if we take the even Secretary General statement regarding the COP25 on big emitters and here it doesn't take into account the fact this big emitters are also some of them are big populations and this seems to be forgetting all about historical emissions or the per capita emissions because ultimately it's people who emit carbon dioxide through their consumptions of different kinds. So this is a huge gap in the current COP25 or the current climate change discussions. Unfortunately, yes. However, this has been or has become the dominant narrative since the Paris Agreement because as we have discussed before the Paris Agreement completely ignores historical emission has deliberately taken on what the Americans and the Paris Agreement call forward-looking perspective. That is, you forget what's happened before. Let's just look at what's ahead. In that scenario then you don't look at historical emissions and even looking forward you are looking only at total national numbers. Per capita comes in if you are emphasizing equity. Since there is no emphasis on equity in the Paris Agreement, either historically or on per capita terms, both these are missed out. So the big names that come up are the US, the EU as a block, China and India. Irrespective of the fact that you would take for instance individual countries like France or England, small populations compared to India and China, but their per capita emissions are something like six times, eight times higher. That's right. And in the US for example, it's about 14 times the per capita consumption of India and the emissions of India. This has been a problem and in fact this has been the aim of the US in steering the climate talks from very early on and leading up to Copenhagen. This is a self-declared objective and in fact Hillary Clinton has even written an op-ed piece at the time of Copenhagen summit saying this was what we had set out to achieve this forward looking perspective and not addressing equity and per capita and we have achieved this. And Trump has said that he's walking out the Paris Agreement because India and China are quote-unquote in this term cheating. That's right. That arguing that the US should also be considered a big editor, which it is. But per capita terms it's a, as you said, 14 times for instance per capita Indian emissions. That's right. Coming back to the issue of the global climate change itself, if we look at the, what would be called the current best case scenario for science, which is looking at carbon budgets. Not looking at CO2 numbers, but looking at the carbon budget and arguing that the carbon budget that is existing is roughly x number of gigatons. And in that, I think the figure changes of course whether it is 1.5 degree centigrade target or 2 degrees centigrade is your target. And of course there is a huge difference. But if we look at what is left of the carbon budget today, it seems that we are eating up this budget much faster than what the commitments were and what the scenario for limiting up to 1.5 degree demands. And even if we look at 2 degree scenario, we seem to be slipping badly. And at this rate, if we look at what was desired of the climate change negotiations, what was the best case scenario for 2 degree centigrade, we are really slipping it to the extent that it seems that we are looking at a 3 degree centigrade by 2100. Absolutely. And this is the one place where what Secretary General Gutierrez has said and what the emissions gap report has said has to be taken at its face value that this is the reality on a global scale. The issues we were talking about is therefore then how do we tackle this and what does each nation do? But if you look at the global picture, it is very clear that the prospect of irreversible climate change is now visible. It has gone beyond the stage where you could say it is further down the line. It may come. Now it is very clear that we are staring at it and in fact we are hurtling towards that phase. And like you said, even if you take all the voluntary pledges made at Paris, the sum of the NDCs leads you to about 3.2 to 3.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise by the end of the century. And the other targets in Paris at the global level were to reach carbon neutrality that is net zero emissions by 2050, which meant that maximum you would have to freeze global emissions right about now for two degrees and in another 10 years for 1.5. We don't seem to be getting there either. I didn't get it. If you say 1.5, we have to freeze emissions later. If we have to limit our emissions for 1.5, when should we stop emitting or reach zero increase? If we are talking about 1.5, we really should have been at a global level at peak emissions roughly about now. And after that cut down and quite steeply. And if you are talking about 1.5 or 2 degrees, you have a 10 year or so before you start cutting down again. So the more you miss these targets, what it means is you have to start cutting even more steeply later. And after 2050, start doing what is called negative emissions, which means you have to suck carbon out of that for which no known technologies exist as of now. Now coming back to the issue that you said about the pledges, these are voluntary pledges. But if you look at the figures that UNEP report has presented for the COP25, that shows that even those pledges are not being ordered. In fact, the rise of carbon emissions goes beyond, forget the pledges, but even beyond the pledges to the extent that these are, we are tending to see a faster rise of carbon emissions right now. Yes. And there unfortunately is where again national performance figures come into play, notably China, which whose emissions are rising very fast even today. And even on per capita terms, Chinese emissions today on per capita terms are getting pretty close to the European Union's emissions per capita. That is high. And the Chinese at Paris have pledged peaking year for China at 2035, which means you can expect China to continue to grow for at least the next 10 years. If that happens on an absolute basis, you are not going to be able to meet these global targets very effectively. Yeah, but the interesting part is that for instance, now Japan is exceeding whatever it had committed. Yes. Small country compared to China, but still there. Yes. You have European Union, which seems to be half of them seem to be backing off from their promises, except countries like Germany, which has been sticking to basically their targets. And the United States, which is abandoning it anyway, and I said it is going to go over to a carbon rich future because it doesn't believe in global warming. And you have a White House, which says essentially that global warming is a myth. But what you are saying is, these are already visible. But when you talk of these being visible, you mean already the patterns predicted that you will start seeing a change in rainfall patterns. All of this is already starting to happen. And you are getting extreme weather events, which are not directly correlated with, but you can see the rise of such events. And you see also summer temperatures, we are getting hottest summer temperatures ever consistently over the last 10, 15 years. And this has been every year, we seem to be breaking the record. Now, the question about when people talk about 2 to 3 degrees average rise, people tend to think that from 32 average, it will go to 34, that's not such a big deal. But they don't realize the summer peak could go from say 45 in Delhi to 50 degrees. So, we are really talking of extremes of temperature, which would rise by as much as 5 degrees to 6 degrees. That's right. But it's not just the temperature rise, which is going to affect even human beings. If you say our summers are going to get uncomfortably hot, yes they are. But you are also going to see more numbers of and prolonged heat waves, which means persistent temperatures of 49 or thereabouts for a period of 2 weeks, 3 weeks. That's when you will start seeing, as is already started happening in Europe, deaths due to heat stroke, running into the thousands, which Europe is not experienced, is not ready for, affects the elderly and the already infirm, infants and so on. But this is directly as it affects humans biologically. But the effects in terms of extreme weather events, sea level rise, which is going to inundate. I am going to stop you a minute on this. When you talk about the weather, such events, high temperatures 2 to 3 weeks in Europe, well heat waves would also have huge effects on Asia and Africa. Absolutely. Because already we have hundreds of people who died heat waves every year. Absolutely. So these numbers are really going to rise dramatically. Absolutely. And second part of it that's going to happen, also drought drinking water. That's right. And then of course, the change in seasons that we are seeing monsoons come much later every year. Exactly. This whole rainfall pattern is changing and lastly agriculture. Precisely. Because all these are going to impact on agriculture and crops. Even in simple biological terms, more drastically perhaps than they are going to affect you and me. In the sense your wheat crop, for example, is going to start behaving erratically even with 2 degrees Celsius lies in temperature. And it is predicted that India, for example, will have something like a 20% net drop of yields in wheat. Now let's also look at the weather when you say weather pattern is changing. It also the argument is you could also not only will have rise of sea levels but also complete change of the rainfall pattern. Absolutely. And the argument here is the temperate lands will see wetter climate. It will see higher temperature which might be good for the temperate people living in temperate climate. But it will adverse effect what today really are the poorer sections living between the tropics. Exactly. So even the climate change and this could explain why the wealthy nations which effectively are the ones in the temperate climates Europe, United States, etc. They are far less concerned about global warming unless there are countries like Germany which have taken this very seriously. And essentially because the differential impact it is going to impact the global south much more and benefit the global north in some sense. Both the effort to reach parity in development terms means energy consumption which then they have to really forego because this will lead to irreversible climate change. But they are also going to suffer differentially the impact of the climate change. Absolutely. And if one understands that vulnerability to climate is an add-on to pre-existing structural vulnerabilities which are directly correlated with poverty levels. If I am richer I can afford to for example move my residents away from uncomfortably hot or sea level inundated areas move to other locations. I can change what I eat if I am poor I cannot do any of these things. Flexibilities are lower. Thank you very much for being with us. We will watch the COP25 as it unfolds but not much is expected to come of it because essentially the leading figures who can make a difference are not there particularly the United States which is in the mode of withdrawal. There is a year of notice and they already withdrawing out of it. China and India are not represented by high-level delegations so we will have to see whether the COP25 really does anything or not. Looking at it it seems to it will sound more warnings but really not take any decisive steps. That is the way it is looking at the moment. Thank you very much for explaining all this to us. This is all the time we have news click today. Do keep watching news click.