However, the whole issue of developing countries can perhaps be solved with an increased co operation & mutual understanding between the developed & developing nations. We need to recognize that the poor countries have the right to economic development, but we also need to acknowledge the vulnerability of the poor countries to the effects of climate change. And coincidentally or otherwise, it is mainly the poor countries {Esp. African} due to their geography that’ll have to face the most extremes of global warming.

The latest evidence collated by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that the global average temperature will rise by between 1.5C and 4.5C if human activities double the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. In addition, under such circumstances, our world is not in a position to portray stubbornness against global welfare. It is for this reason that President Bush’s commitment to environmental welfare was criticized when announced that he won’t be ratifying Kyoto Protocol on account of its potential to damage the country financially. Yet we find that, out of total CO2 emissions - 5,410 million metric tons per year - almost a quarter of the World’s total CO2 emissions account USA as their source

We need to recognize that…THIS WORL IS ONE………

If 5 billion people of the developing world plant 10 trees each, i dont think we will ever hear global warming.

On the face of it, Climate Change is a problem of excess CO2 emissions. But analyse deeper, and one finds that it’s a problem of overconsumption by all of us, individuals, corporates, government.

Analyse still deeper, and one finds that overconsumption is triggered by and funded by CREDIT. There is an overabundance of bank credit — far out of proportion to actual earnings and savings — that gives people the power to overspend and overconsume.

So this is where the cancerous tumour can be clearly isolated from human flesh. This is where we can start cutting away surgically, methodically, without hurting too many people.

CONSUMER CREDIT — loans extended by banks for purchase of new vehicles and consumer appliances — is a major artery feeding this tumour. Easy loans warp our purchasing decisions, making our desires seem like needs.

Two calls from an aggressive marketer of car loans is all I need to make me feel that I NEED to step up from my family car to an SUV.

CREDIT CARDS make one feel really wealthy, by enabling one to securely carry large amounts equivalent to many months’ earnings in ones wallet.

And when you do that, you are potentially able to do all those wonderful, beautiful, generous things that you see in TV commercials like buying your wife a diamond solitaire, booking the Presidential suite for your wedding anniversary or surprising her with a couple of air-tickets to Paris.

Consumer credit and credit-cards are the hot air causing the great big Economic Growth balloon to go up… and up… and up.

Driven by this excessive consumer demand, a number of industries flourish, new corporates are created, and new factories get built, diversified, expanded, acquired… We aren’t only borrowing economically, we are borrowing ecologically.

Suggested line of action: At an individual level, we should stop buying things with credit, and stop using our credit cards. It is worth cutting up our credit cards. Let us stop borrowing from the future.

And as a community of concerned citizens, let us lobby for a clampdown on consumer credit. Let us write to the government, to our Central Banks and to individual banks and bankers.

Let each person in the banking industry be targetted with this message: Cap and roll back. Let us ask for a freeze of consumer credit at current levels this year, and a 50% reduction in the amounts of credit given each year.

This would give the economy about three years to adjust to the changing scenario.

Three years is 36 months — far more time than the economy and its stakeholders get for adjustment when the stock-markets crash. So why delay, postpone and vacillate?

Warmly,
Krishnaraj Rao

Just reading the comments here, i would like to share some of my own:

It is universally agreed that the problem, so to speak, of global warming has been created by the west. Although the world owes most of its industrial and modern development to the west and currently ‘rich’ nations. Please note that the very essence of business in the west has been the creation of a need and then proposing solutions for its abatement. this was fine till the time geo-political issues and commercialism was at bay.

We all know that as always, it is the west again that has the necessary technology to help abate global warming. Be it better insulation or be it better power generation/technologies which use a fraction of the energy which traditionally has been used. India and other developing nations do not have access to this primary technology and would either have to licence it from the west or wait till some great indian company acquires this technology from the west (mostly at the time a newer technology is available to replace the acquired technology). developing nations therefore will be ‘buying’ these technologies from the west or be controlled stringently by the technology transfers they receive.

in either case, it seems to me that this is another opportunity the west is propagating to earn money, which is not necessarily bad…….its just the looking out for number 1 syndrome. given this, the indian and chinese reply to these developments is befitting given that we are still developing the technologies at an abysmally low speed.

global warning is a problem which will effect us in every possible way discovered and yet to be discovered. however the fear psychosis used at the moment of imminent danger is yet to be proven substantially.