 Welcome to NewsClick. In today's episode of Talking Science and Tech, we will be talking about the wildfires that are raging in California, climate change and the responsibilities of developing and developed countries in mitigating climate change. And we are joined by Praveer So probably starting with the wildfires it's been recorded as California's worst year of fires and at the same time the same year we see that it's also possibly the highest temperature that's ever been recorded on earth again in California which was last month and at the same time of course we're seeing other extreme weather events be floods or cyclones or hurricanes or droughts. So you know all of this has made it extremely difficult for scientists to now say that this is not linked to climate change. How do you see these developments? Well we have discussed the issue of wildfires earlier as well and as you have said yes wildfires are a phenomena every year but if you look at Brazil, we look at Africa, we look at California now earlier, we have also looked at Australia. The wildfire seems to be getting worse every year. So we are seeing a scenario where it's not just something which is an accident, okay more fires this year, here more fires there which could be normal accidents of events. This fires are not really accidents of nature but really show an underlying cause which in this case is climate change and global warming and it's correlating with global warming very well. So yes I think we are very clear that we are in the phase of change and the phase of change unlike what the United States or perhaps the western rethought who see or who are there in cold countries they would have thought that okay how does it matter if it gets a little warmer here you will have better winter temperatures but what they are seeing is there is a collateral damage here typhoons, hurricanes, wildfires, all of this they have to be taken into account when you compute damage. So it's not just that it's going to be much worse for countries in the global south but it is also going to be worse for what would be called the more cold climate countries where I remember when I was in the United States for some work once when a Canadian friend of mine told me we don't really have much problems with global warming Canada would welcome global warming because you know it's very cold in Canada so it's not going to be that simple. But at the same time we're not really seeing these the leaders of these countries really thinking that you know it's a matter of concern Donald Trump who is continuing to deny that climate change exists and who thinks that it's just a matter of clearing the fuel in the forest and even in Australia it is a similar situation then these are first world countries but even in Brazil here Bolsonaro we have here Bolsonaro who denies that there are even fires in fact. So then where are we on the Paris agreement where all these countries promise that they will take action to mitigate climate change to keep the temperatures low to keep emissions low. How can we then proceed with that that you know even despite all these extreme events we're not really seeing any any kind of alarm. You know there was once I think one of the famous writers who wrote that if your salary depends on saying something then it's very unlikely you will not say it and this is what's beginning to happen there is a vested interest in a certain set of people who would like to deny climate change because accepting climate change means investments of different kinds and they would not like to do that and therefore climate change denial is not just ignorance it's also extreme self-interest which a lot of the leaders of these countries are showing and we'll talk about it just a little later. As a consequence they're saying even if we don't invest in climate change we are going to get less hit than others and we have the economic wealth hall then to fight what the climate change will bring in better than others so even if climate change takes place we are not going to be hit that badly. This is essentially the argument and spending tomorrow as a simple capitalist logic is better than spending today so let's postpone the problem for later so that this is one set of arguments you get and that explains why the United States repeatedly has not negotiated good faith on climate change and even they have negotiated agreements they've either not signed it as George Bush did earlier or walked out of it so we have repeated scenarios in which the United States negotiates climate change, weakens agreement, doesn't sign it or in the Paris Agreement case a weak climate change was agreed to get the United States on board and the United States walked out of it. We've also have the argument that comes again and again that well you know big emitters should take steps now here I would like to show you first how do you look at emission do you look at emission in terms of the total amount being emitted by countries or on a per capita basis the argument here is simple you have a country like China or a country like India which is roughly 1.4 1.5 billion people and you have the entire European Union for instance which is a just about roughly maybe a little more than a third of that now there when you compare say 20 odd countries with nine countries compared to one country India and China you will say look India and China are emitting so much but the question is how its people consumption which finally becomes carbon emission so it's not unrelated to what people consume as electricity and therefore when you look at the emissions we really need to look at what are called the per capita emissions and I'm going to show you what the per capita emissions currently are look at for instance United States this is 2018 figures this is essentially 16.56 tons 16 and a 16 and a half tons per capita now this if you take the global average the global average is roughly about five tons per capita at the moment if you take India it's two tons per capita that means we are way below one eighth of what per capita emission of the United States is if you take China it's about seven tons slowly inching towards eight tons per capita while this also is about half of the American emissions per capita but if you take the total amount then of course India is a large country in terms of population so it might seem India is a big emitter but when you take people into consideration then that's not the picture you get now let's also look at a different picture for instance what's the population of countries now seven and a half billion people US Mexico is by this argument US and Mexico as you can see is a very small fraction of the population of China or India compared to China and India if you put the European Union entire Europe not European Union alone entire European Union USA Mexico and smaller countries which are there for instance you know of course Canada is also there in North America but entire North America entire Europe that would count to something like 1.3 billion people now that is smaller than individually the population of China and India but when you look at their emissions you will find the US, Canada, Mexico and some small islands which really don't count emit as much as China does in fact twice as much as China does if we put Europe together Europe is again almost the same amount as the US plus North America well China and India put together are still much smaller than they this is in terms of global cumulative emissions we're not talking of the emissions that we are emitting currently why am I taking cumulative emissions because when you talk of warming effect of carbon dioxide it is the amount of carbon dioxide that is available in the atmosphere that leads to greenhouse warming and unfortunately carbon dioxide does not get removed from the atmosphere easily so what we have in other words is a scenario in which carbon dioxide emissions accumulate and it's the accumulation of the carbon dioxide the cumulative emissions that really drive temperature change temperature rise so when you talk about global warming talking of only size of countries is not enough you also have to look at the total population of cumulative total population of countries but as well as the cumulative emission of countries to really get the true picture so what we are now seeing is increasingly we are being talked about as countries who are emitters current emitters have to be put on the same plane forget about history historical emissions are not the issue and you have to reduce all your emissions now that means countries like India for instance have to reduce emissions when their populations are much bigger so per capita is also not to be taken into account historical emissions are not to be taken into account we should reduce for size of the country which means if India was broken into say 30 odd countries as Europe is then we would not have had any problems but they just act that we are one country or China is one country we are being looked upon as big emitters so that is one paradox no historical emissions to be taken into account only big emitters as countries without size of the population this as somebody said is like saying India is eating too much because it consumes so much food grains and each person therefore should conceive consume much lower amounts in order to meet the global country wise size of what they should actually eat so this are some of the bogus considerations being put to put here because obviously a country with large population will have emissions larger than country with a small population that's obvious and as the same argument I said that North American population is not my country it's really by size of the countries in terms of population the US emits much more than for instance other countries it's also a bigger population apart from per capita emission also being higher but if we put all of that together the picture we begin to get is for the currently is forget historical emissions forget per capita emissions just let us catch each country by the size of emissions and say they have to do something and by that what is being argued India with a per capita emission which is one eighth that of the United States which is half that of the average emissions of in terms of per capita emissions of the world if you divide the entire emissions today by the total population we are half of that so we are actually below that China is well above that at the moment so yes China has certainly more responsibility than India if we do all of that then the argument is India should cut emissions so don't grow your emissions you should cut like any advanced country you should cut because you're a big emitter so one major issue is the big emitter tag that we have got because of our size of our population and which the secretary general of the United Nations recently said India should actually stop increasing its emission by 2030 by a certain 2050 it should in fact meet the targets of the developing developed countries by 2030 is what he said and we should also forget about coal not increase our coal consumption all of the arguments which finally leads to the position that all countries who are big emitters in terms of size have the same responsibility and therefore India has the same responsibility as for instance the United States now this is of course we've also said in the context when the US has walked out of the climate change agreement so because we haven't walked out we are saying we will participate and all countries should participate there is an impact of what we do business as usual that will be on all of us including of course countries like India so we are being then lectured about what we should do the same lecture is not being given to countries who are not accepting their responsibility now obviously there is impact on countries are also going to be differentiated a three degree rise or the four degree rise in North India is different from a three four degree rise say in Iceland so obviously there are implications for different countries and this is one of the paradox of the situation those who have created but not created the problem they are going to bear the brunt of this and this in fact is the United States game that then others solve the problem we will live off the benefit because others will lower emissions because they are affected more of course the picture is not that simple calculations models show that every country is going to have impact and it's also clear Hurricanes fires all of this is showing the impact is there on the United States as well but there is another issue that comes up the countries who switch later they in fact will benefit why because technology investments as it increases bring doubts per unit cost so the unit cost of renewable energies is going to be reduced in the future as it reduces the countries who come in later don't make any investments now will benefit because of lower cost at that point of time so richer countries would like to postpone if possible all the investments required for this change over because their consumptions are higher so obviously they would like to make those investments later well countries which are lower in the economic total pool so to say they have to make their investments up front right now when the cost of renewables are still higher of course the cost of renewables are coming down rapidly so there is an economic advantage at some point switching over and a lot of the switch over now globally is taking place because of that so this is the US plan and last the last point I have on this is there is a capitalist logic of this that if we don't invest today but invest five years later then in terms of the way capital calculates cost this is actually investment in the future is for the same of the same amount is better than investment today because five years I have held the money I can invest it in other things I'll get my returns my five billion dollars which I might require to invest will then become probably five and a half billion dollars so I still save half a billion dollars this is unfortunately the logic of the capital and therefore the capitalist logic embeds in it everybody does not anything that benefits everybody is not in the interest of capital what is in the interest of capital is purely self-interest and this does not does not behave well when it comes to large-skinned societal targets and unless society has a way of imposing this will on big capital capital by itself will not invest in climate change and aversion strategies and that is the crisis we see today it's a crisis of capital it's a crisis of capitalism which believes that they do not have the responsibility to anybody in the world except the shareholders and the shareholders responsibilities fulfilled by earning as much as they can today so if you put all of that together that means climate change is not their priority unless they are dragged kicking and screaming to fulfill their responsibilities to society and this can only happen if there is political change unfortunately the political change we see is more to the right and the US you've already talked about has various people now who have been put into position as the chief technical officer chief scientific officer in various capacities all of whom are climate change deniers so we have a very peculiar situation the biggest country in terms of responsibility who has the maximum amount of carbon emissions historical emissions in the atmosphere which is about 29 percent and europe is followed by that i think they have about 23 percent so 53 53 53 53 percent is these two continents which have what 18 percent of the world's population so they are at the moment the ones who are denying climate change of course we also have Bolsonaro of course if you have certain european countries who are saying that no climate change is an issue and we should do something about it but by and large they're being led by the united states in different arenas and therefore the globe coming together uniting against the united states does not look a likely scenario at the moment with all kinds of other strategic geostrategic issues in the balance the war trade war against china the isolation of russia trying to get the european union to side with the united states on these issues i don't think we have a conducive global climate where the those who are the out outlaws in terms of climate change can be forced to fulfill their responsibilities and it has a very very heavy consequences for the world as we are already beginning to see and just in the post-covid world during the recovery when probably the regulations would even be less for economies to recover we're going to witness us even more so thank you probably for joining us today on this issue that's all the time we have keep watching you stick