 The COP26 summit is on in Glasgow and a lot of people are confused. This summit is being seen as one of the last major sessions where we can maybe reverse the impact of climate change, where we can maybe substantially do something about it. But a lot of terms are being thrown about. You have net zero, you have numbers such as 1.5 degrees Celsius, 2 degrees Celsius. What exactly do all these numbers mean and what is the impact likely to be? We'll be discussing this on mapping fault lines. We have with us Prabir Pulkastar. And so like I said, a lot of confusion generally about what is a very important issue which all of us have a role to play. So I'm going to actually start by taking one of those terms which has come in the discussions quite often, which is the idea of carbon space itself. So could you maybe start by taking us through what exactly carbon space is and what is the impact actually that it has concretely? Well, you know, it starts from understanding what are the greenhouse gases and when the concentration of greenhouse gases increase in the atmosphere, which are the ones which create maximum amount of impact and how do we actually measure what is the effect it is having on us from the atmosphere and how much time do we have, how do you compute this? So if we look at the various greenhouse gases, methane is one, nitrous oxide is another and of course carbon dioxide, which is the most talked about. The difference between other greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide is a part of the fact it is produced much more than others is the fact it is a long atmospheric life. Now computing this life is a little tricky because it has different ways of removing it. Chemically, it does not decompose into anything further. So it just gets taken out differently. So I am not going to go into that, but this anything between 300 to 500 years is a half life of carbon dioxide according to various experts and if you compare to say methane, it is only about 10 years, which is a half life of methane. That is why we focus on carbon dioxide much more and when you talk of carbon space, it comes from really carbon dioxide because you talk about how much space do we have for emitting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere till we reach a point where a certain number of degrees of Celsius as you said will become inevitable. So right now, we have been talking about limiting it to 1.5 degree centigrade and that 0.5 degree centigrade above pre-industrial levels that increase. Pre-industrial revolution, pre-industrial levels, which means that over the last 100 years we would have seen some increase because already there is an accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and how much more can we afford before. In fact, we have a civilizational impact or a collapse depending on how much it heats up. Now all of these are open to of course debates, but there is no question. We have been seeing a steady rise in average atmospheric, average temperature on the surface of the globe. And that at the moment is visible that our mean temperatures in summer have been rising particularly in certain areas more than others. And if we take all of that, we get also the unfortunate differentiated impact of climate change that the temperature rises in the global south. So to say, which is really the equatorial or tropical regions is probably going to be higher in the colder climates that we have the north and global in a deep south of the near the poles and so on. So the temperate areas may see less of climate change in terms of temperature rise than what we have as a equatorial and tropical areas, which already have high temperatures. Then the temperature is likely rises likely to be even higher. Right, so what we see by these numbers is that we have about by 2021 today we have about I think 14% left if I'm not mistaken. Yes, if we see the graphic which is here, we will see that starting with about X number of greenhouse gases that we could have emitted. We successively as the centuries, I will not say centuries because most of the rise has been really post 1950. If you see that you will see that slowly we have gone up taking out for 1.5 degree centigrade what is the amount of carbon that we had to emit. And if we take that we will see that we have already exhausted the existing carbon space we had say post 1850, 1750 whatever time you take it because those time periods emissions are really small but you will see it accelerates really after 1950. And by now we have only 14% of the carbon space which we had at that time which is available to us that means that whatever we have emitted we can only emit 14% of that today. If we want to stay below 1.5 degree centigrade and with the rate of emissions we are doing that doesn't seem likely at all. The what is called the degree of ambition we have shows that we have almost exhausted our possibility because even if we stop you know everything say with the next five, seven years we'll still probably take up most of that 14%. So what you're really looking at is the fact that 1.5 degree seems to be unrealistic at the moment given the ambitions that the particularly the developed countries have shown trying to you know contain their carbon emissions and we are really looking at a two-degree rise which even if we achieve that would be something which is quite remarkable. The ambitions at the moment do not seem to show that we are going to achieve that. So we might end up by being in the two to three degree range which would really make life or civilization as we know it in the world much more difficult. But in this context there's also been a lot of discussion about methane in fact I think recently there was an agreement that you know there's going to be a cut down on methane emissions so as part of this agree as part of this COP26 of course. So what role exactly does methane play you hinted at it earlier but when compared to carbon dioxide why is there so much focus on methane? Well this seems to have again crept up this was an old well I say red herring that came up in climate change discussions. Methane is a short-lived gas 10 years in decades to carbon dioxide again and this 10 years yes it has a high impact but it doesn't stay in the atmosphere so it gets taken out. So that does not therefore pose the kind of dangers as carbon dioxide does which stays in the atmosphere for much longer periods. Now methane of course is also appearing because you use natural gas some of it is flared some of it is just goes into the atmosphere the leakage is the pipelines and so on but a big part of the methane comes essentially to what are called essentially cows emitting gas you may laugh at it cows farting is essentially the target so feedstock or raising cows for the table and the table is really in the global north while if the cows may be raised in the global south so therefore the global south is being blamed for producing too much of cow emissions and also agriculture particularly rice and paddy cultivation so these are supposed to be also where methane is produced. Now a question again is if we take sum up all of this in terms of the global change in terms of temperature these are not the major factors. So why are the raised because it is a red herring for industrial and or shall we call the developed countries to raise because it is attacking essentially countries like India China and of course those in Latin America which raise a lot of cattle beef and so on so I think this is the way to divert attention from the real responsibilities they have with carbon emissions and trying to therefore sidetrack into something which the IPCC never took as a major target. So Praveer you mentioned of course the responsibility of countries and now that's of course an argument which has been a lot of discussion around that you know there are all these debates about which are the major emitters. So for instance if you look at this map which is 2019 numbers it shows the biggest emitters in the world. Now I think many people especially the global south have argued that this is not really the sort of way to look at emissions and you can't take say one year's emissions or in isolation because it's a much longer process. So could you tell us a bit more about how to understand a map like this when we see okay India for instance major emitter has to do a lot is causing a lot of global warming and climate change how exactly do we understand this? Well there are two access to this discussion as you rightly said one is when you talk about a large emitter are we talking about also the population because ultimately a country which is very small compared to say for instance China or India may appear to be emitting much less. United Kingdom has a population of something like 60-65 million and you talk about 1.5 billion in China 1.3 billion in India and then you say you know India is a very big emitter so it does not really take into account the sizes of the countries and therefore of course if you take European Union which at least has a population which is not as big as India and China's but at least not as small as United Kingdom or France then you will see of course it is also big emitter. Why is it a big emitter? Because the per capita emissions of these countries are relatively high so when you talk about India and you scale it down not to the annual emission but per capita emissions or you take what you said earlier also the cumulative emissions you don't take what we are doing right now because for a long time India and China did not emit too much of carbon dioxide but you take the cumulative emissions then you will see that India and China's proportion as cumulative emissions is much less than that of other countries developed countries like the European Union or like the United States Canada and so on. So I think these are the different things that we have to take into account and I think the most important part of it is why in the Kyoto Protocols it was said we have to take historical emissions into account and therefore there was what is called a different common but differentiated responsibility. Yes all of us put together own have the responsibility for what happens in the in the atmosphere the carbon emissions or greenhouse gases and so on but we have differentiated responsibility because historically we are not the ones who created the problem therefore those historically who have created the major part of the problem and let's face it the major emissions have taken less close to 1950 we are not talking of 1850 we are not talking 1750 but really even if you take 1950 most of these emissions have taken place after 1950 so historically countries who knew jolly well what they were doing should take a bigger part of the responsibility they are also richer therefore their capability of doing it is also more their need therefore to fund those who are coming much later in the development cycle is also more but what we see is a kind of policing approach in which you say no everybody has to bear up the same responsibility irrespective of historical emissions let's only look at what the current emissions are and see what we can do for the future let's not talk about the past so this is of course trying to justify what is called grandfathering you grab property and you sit on it of course in this case what you have grabbed is atmospheric commons which is the the global commons we have in which you have emitted more carbon dioxide you say hey now it's limiting its is getting to its limit so you guys have to stop we all need to stop but at the same pace but at the same time the ability for each of these countries are very different and even that's not being addressed exactly probably this brings us to the other point which is of course that emissions is one way of seeing it I think like you pointed out earlier but emissions per se don't really make any sense when we don't think of what these emissions are and at the end of the day these emissions are people leading their lives people working people you know commuting people being people so how do we understand this from a concept of energy consumption as well and then see the discussions that are taking place so that's a very important point that you raise when you talk about emissions per capita emissions say then per capita emissions also show or should be related to per capita energy consumption because in most of these cases except hydroelectric energy what you are using is really fossil fuels you are using gas oil or coal all of these are fossil fuels nuclear has become extremely expensive we are not going to get into that today but it's a long-term solution to the problem of energy it certainly does not appear to be in the offing so unless we crack something which is fusion or something else we don't seem to be a nuclear path so given that you're either looking at fossil or renewables now when you talk about fossils what we are saying is of course the fossil fuels are converted to energy now they're concentrated sources of energy that means you can get a lot of energy from a kg of coal or a kg of oil but when you come to solar energy is a much more diffused energy so you need to concentrate it first and that is used to be expensive but with the advances we have made we are our costs have come down but nevertheless there is one big problem that it is not it doesn't depend on us we don't control it the sun comes unfortunately doesn't shine 24 hours and winter and summer also there is a difference wind it doesn't again depend on us Germany this time didn't get proper winds it had to burn more coal so what do we do therefore is because we need energy therefore we have fossil fuel which burned and as you said rightly the issue is not carbon emissions but it's really about energy entitlements and if we want energy entitlements of the people to be met then if we don't allow them to use fossil or we want them to cut down on the fossil fuels we need to have two things one is find an intermediate path which cuts down coal for instance and increases energy consumption but also has some greenhouse emissions Europe said that they did gas for that they are in fact saying gas and oil is our intermediate path but at the same time when it comes to Africa Norway recently recently has moved has moved that financial institutions after 2025 should not give any money to African countries for producing gas because that is a greenhouse issue so here you are that Nordic countries can use gas they in fact want to expand their gas but not Africa so what you are talking about is really taking away people's ability to use energy or generate energy which would have some carbon emissions if it was equitably done those who are rich have already got the benefits of development they have built their infrastructure would spend more money and subsidize also other countries so that at least they could have an intermediate path of using maybe gas and oil like they themselves are claiming for their for their countries on the other hand you have also the United States which when it comes to coal you have recently mentioned who is who say coal so you are seeing that the advanced countries of the developed countries are basically asking others to cut down but are not willing to cut down or follow the same principles themselves what it means is that you want to lock the rest of the world who have not developed as much as you have unlike China which has pulled up quite a bit even countries like India which are still way below in terms of per capita consumption energy locked them in a low development stage India for instance consumes one 12th per capita energy that the United States does so it's a long way off from energy equity and the question of global equity in climate change is also connected to global equity in terms of energy consumptions and I must say one last word before I leave this topic that United States has been historically the biggest emitter and I think takes 20% of the total carbon space that the world has already lost and it is no longer treaty capable you have you had Clinton who signed the Kyoto protocol who agreed to the Kyoto protocol George Bush walked out of it you have after that Obama Paris Agreement Trump walked out of it Biden today who doesn't have probably a majority in the Senate and might lose the Congress if not the presidency again to a Trumpian kind of figure again they'll pull out of the climate change agreement so what we have is while pressure on the other countries monk you have the key culprit if I may say so in climate change does not accept any any agreement and is probably not capable of reaching an agreement so this COP26 that we see after two years what we will see as far as the role of the United States is concerned is very much open to question right Praveen thank you so much for speaking to us we'll come back next week as well with more on this as well as the agreements that were reached and see if our collective futures can be saved keep watching news click bye