Global Warning

REPARATIONS IS A WORD Western leaders dread. But reparations for what, exactly? For the centuries-long transatlantic slave trade? For colonial plunder? For global pollution?

All three, but the most recent call for reparations relates to the West’s role in causing the climate crisis. Between 1750 and 2000, Europe and North America spewed into the atmo­sphere 90 per cent of the 1.5 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) which has led to today’s climate crisis: global warm­ing, floods, droughts and rising water levels that threaten to submerge several island-nations.

How did we come to this pass? Textile factories in Manchester and coal mines in Newcastle were the pioneering polluters in the 18th and 19th centuries. North America soon caught up. Today an American spews 14.21 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. An Indian emits 1.89 tonnes of CO2 annually.

The transition to green energy is on every developing country’s agenda. But giving up far cheaper coal-based energy will signifi-cantly slow their economic growth. Rich countries in contrast, which grew rich by industrialising in the colonial era and fouling the atmo­sphere, have already transitioned to a post-industrial society. They don’t need smokestack factories in Manchester or coal mines in Newcastle anymore. Their economic growth relies on services. In the US, for example, services account for 81 per cent of GDP.

The recent climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, exposed the hypocrisy of rich countries. As an Indian delegate at the Baku summit said: “Rich Global North polluted the planet to turn wealthy in a short span of time. And now they are trying to get even richer by asking us to fix the problem.”

Rich countries had pledged $100 billion a year to miti­gate the impact of slowing industrialisation in developing countries as they struggle to control carbon emissions. That pledge has never been kept. At the Baku summit, Western nations pledged to increase the compensation (a more deli­cate word than reparations) to $300 billion a year—but only after 2035 when inflation would have cut its value by half.

To add insult to injury, Europe has introduced a carbon tax to penalise developing countries for not de-carbonising and de-industrialising quickly enough. Instead of paying reparations to developing countries for polluting the world, the West seeks to punish the victims.

India missed the benefits of the Industrial Revolution that began in Britain in 1760, three years after the advent of British colonialism in India in 1757. Over the next 190 years under British rule, India’s economy grew at an average rate of between 0 per cent and 0.5 per cent a year. During this period, India’s population grew at over 3 per cent a year, causing a plunge in per capita income and impoverishment of 80 per cent of India’s population by 1947.

Freed from the British yoke, India’s economy has grown at an average of over 5 per cent a year since 1947, accelerating to 7 per cent after the 1991 economic reforms un­der Prime Minister Narasimha Rao.

Former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran placed India’s posi­tion on the climate crisis in perspec­tive in an op-ed in Hindustan Times on November 27, 2024: “Up until the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, India did not hesitate to call out western hypocrisy and mean-minded selfishness. India’s position in climate negotiations was clear and compelling.

“I was India’s chief negotiator on the climate crisis up until the 2009 Copenhagen summit. In the run-up to Copenhagen, a view started circulating in government that India should take a more accommodating stance, that it should be a part of the solution rather than be seen as a perennial naysayer, that if India was seeking a seat at the high table it should not always be seen as championing the interests of developing countries. We therefore lost credibility with our core (developing world) constituency and our hopes of getting Western support in terms of finance and technology were belied.”

This has been a perennial Indian failing and one the West exploits with a combination of flattery and coercion. The West industrialised and enriched itself even as it actively suppressed economic growth in its colonies. That era is over. The climate crisis, however, is a new opportunity for the West to make the victims of global pollution pay for its own centuries-long profligacy.

That is why the rich world dreads the prospect of reparations—in climate change and elsewhere.

climate crisisde-carbonisingde-industrialisingdeveloping countriesglobal warming