Ravi S. Narasimhan

Change climate change

By Ravis Narasimhan (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-02-10 07:00

Time magazine famously had YOU as the Person of the Year for 2006 essentially for being interactive.

According to the (official) citation: It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

My bet is on an encore this year: YOU essentially for being overactive. And inactive.

My (unofficial) citation will read: It's about a few wresting power from the many, and instead of helping each other for nothing to change the world, changed the way the world changes.

Yes, the UN report on global climate change is a damning indictment of the rich nations and developing countries like China and India which want to join that league and a grim foreboding of the future.

This year will be the tipping point for addressing global warming, not least because last Friday's report was just one of four to be presented this year I doubt the other three will bring any tidings of cheer.

It will be a tipping point because the report wasn't some doomsday scenario based on crackpot theories; it was a consensus reached, among others, by government scientists from all over the world.

It will be a tipping point because of public interest the report was not buried in the inside pages of newspapers, as they usually are, but got prominent headline coverage around the world. Suddenly, the idea of all the islands in the Maldives literally drowning is not the stuff of science fiction it could happen in our lifetimes, not several thousand millennia later.

This tipping point hasn't had a defining moment it has been gathering force and if the United States the biggest culprit on global warming were not on board, it would not get there.

Even before the UN report was issued, US President George W. Bush till then not a big believer, at least in public, in greenhouse gases acknowledged climate change for the first time in his State of the Union address.

But then, Bush has developed a knack for acknowledging the obvious: We are not winning the war in Iraq, for example, he said in the same address.

Remember Al Gore and the environment? Only a few years ago, quite a few in the American establishment considered him a worse liability to his president than the charming Dan Quayle, whose embarrassment was limited to spelling.

Today, the former vice-president is an (indirect) nominee for an Oscar for his hit documentary; and there is talk about a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize.

The Chinese government was among the first in the world to respond to the UN report with a pledge to curb the use of fossil fuels and raise the ratio of clean energy to total energy.

Qin Dahe, China's top meteorologist and co-chair of the working group which issued the report, said in no uncertain terms: "The (climate) assessment report has gripped the attention of the government, the public and scientists in China."

China has set an ambitious goal, again among the first in the world, of reducing energy use by 20 percent per unit of GDP by 2010.

Beijing could set another precedent: a quantifiable target to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. And you could play a big role in myriad of ways, such as, for instance, using cars (not revert to bicycles) more efficiently and using more fuel-efficient cars.

Maybe then Time might pick YOU for: Not only changing the world, but also changing the way the world changes. As well as changing climate change.

E-mail: ravi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 02/10/2007 page4)