‘America First’, the world last

Published July 3, 2017
BEFORE and after photos of Henderson Island, located in the eastern South Pacific, is only 37 square kilometres in size but over 38 million pieces of plastic have washed up on its shores.
BEFORE and after photos of Henderson Island, located in the eastern South Pacific, is only 37 square kilometres in size but over 38 million pieces of plastic have washed up on its shores.

WHILE we fret over the political and economic crises unfolding before us across the world, we often close our eyes to the environmental disaster facing our planet. Global warming, largely caused by a huge rise in emissions from the use of hydrocarbons, is very much a reality, whatever Donald Trump might think. The effects are evident in the form of ocean warming, the loss of ice shelves in the Arctic, the melting of life-sustaining glaciers and changing weather patterns.

It was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that the United Nations Climate Change Conference was called in Paris in 2015. One hundred and ninety-five states plus the European Union attended, and after much discussion and debate, an agreement was reached. The target set was to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius by ensuring zero net manmade greenhouse gas emissions.

This is possible only by making huge investments in generating electricity from sustainable energy sources like nuclear, wind, tidal and solar alternatives to coal, oil and gas. Also, expensive scrubbing equipment would need to be installed in polluting factories. All these solutions will require substantial investments in the coming decades.

The cost factor has always been the major stumbling block, especially for developing countries. Their position has traditionally been that advanced economies industrialised when there were no environmental concerns in the 19th and 20th centuries, and could thus pollute the environment using coal and later, oil, to forge ahead. But now that poor countries are trying to catch up, they are told to invest in more expensive technologies.

However, this argument is akin to dissuading a young person from smoking: he can turn around and argue that you smoked when you were his age. Of course this misses the point that there is so much more information about the problems produced by polluting the environment than there used to be, just as we now know that nicotine poisons the body.

BEFORE and after photos of Henderson Island, located in the eastern South Pacific, is only 37 square kilometres in size but over 38 million pieces of plastic have washed up on its shores.
BEFORE and after photos of Henderson Island, located in the eastern South Pacific, is only 37 square kilometres in size but over 38 million pieces of plastic have washed up on its shores.

Almost every day, we hear more news about environmental disasters. Currently, the number of plastic bags and bottles that find their way to the sea, and are then often ingested by fish, has caused shock and horror. Recently, photographs from Henderson Island, an uninhabited, remote speck in the Pacific between New Zealand and Chile, revealed once-pristine beaches covered with 38 million pieces of mostly plastic garbage that had washed ashore. A large, man-made island of plastic objects has formed in the Pacific where it slowly spins around, gathering more floating rubbish.

But more than aesthetics, neglect of our responsibility to our planet is causing long-term damage, with unimaginable consequences. Actually, a dying world has been the subject of many dystopian books and films where what remains of humanity struggles to survive.

One factor driving this doomsday scenario is our inexorable population increase. The 18th century British cleric and scholar, Thomas Malthus, theorised that as food production increased, population grew until it outstripped food supplies, and starvation caused it to decline until it was in equilibrium with food availability again. This theory, known as the Malthusian Trap, could not foresee the 20th century’s Green Revolution that applied scientific advances to agriculture, thereby multiplying yields several times. Simultaneously, rapid progress in medicine prolonged human life, and continues to do so.

With 7.5 billion people inhabiting the world currently, we are imposing an intolerable burden on the planet’s resources. Water and food shortages, combined with erratic weather patterns, are now a regular feature of the lives of hundreds of millions. These, together with poor governance and violence, are driving many from their homes in search of a better life in the West. These desperate migrations cause deaths and heartbreak on a large scale.

When I studied economics at university many years ago, America was held up as an example of how development could lead us to a life where each family had a house, a car and all the other objects of desire that constituted the American Dream. Imagine our world today if each family had a car, even though this is what most people aspire to. With over a billion cars, trucks and buses on the roads today, the fumes they emit are killing thousands every day, apart from adding to global warming.

The Paris Agreement, although it didn’t go far enough in imposing targets or penalties for defaulters, was still an important expression of political resolve. Individual action, though useful, does not address the problem that calls for global policies. In this context, Trump’s unilateral step of pulling America out of the accord has been a deeply depressing example of ignorance of basic environmental science.

Fortunately, others have not followed suit, even though America under Obama had led the efforts to forge a consensus. China, India and Germany have all reiterated their determination to achieve the targets laid down in Paris. Even in America, several states — with Democratic governors, naturally — have affirmed their commitment to the Paris Agreement.

But as Trump rips up the legislation and rules put into place by Obama to meet environmental targets, it will be virtually impossible for the country to stick to the 2015 agreement. Trump’s “America First” mantra puts the world last, but the US president does not seem to realise that America is on the same planet as the rest of us. In his campaign to reach the White House, Trump was clear that the whole problem of global warming was a Chinese ploy to make America less competitive, and thus gain a trading advantage.

With this kind of bizarre thinking, America — the second biggest polluter after China, but easily the top emitter of greenhouse gases per capita — has become part of the problem instead of being a big part of the solution. This is still another reason to miss the sober, rational presence of Barack Obama.

irfan.husain@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2017

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