[Looking to the future of global climate
policy, it is critical to keep an eye on India, which is the world’s
third-largest emitter of all greenhouse gases, after China and the United
States, and projected to have the highest rate of greenhouse gas emissions growth
over the remainder of the century. Its decision to support the amendment, but
at the slowest track, may reveal how India is likely to manage the climate
trade-off.]
By Michael Greenstone
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An Indian migrant daily
wage worker sleeping next to an air cooler under a mosquito
net on a steel box in New
Delhi in May. Hot temperatures were making life tough for
millions of poor people
across north India. Credit Altaf Qadri/Associated Press
|
Air-conditioning is not just a luxury. It’s a
critical adaptation tool in a warming world, with the ability to save lives.
It also warms the world.
Which is why the structure of the recent
landmark agreement reached in Kigali, Rwanda, on limiting hydrofluorocarbons
(HFCs) used in, among other things, air-conditioners and refrigerators is so
important. The agreement accounts for the trade-offs that the world, especially
today’s poorest countries, must make in confronting climate change while
improving people’s lives.
Consider this simple fact: While 87 percent
of households in the United States have air-conditioning, only 5 percent of
those in India do. Any agreement to limit HFCs across the board would greatly
reduce opportunities for people in poorer countries to have access to
air-conditioners.
To deal with these disparities, the Kigali
agreement created three tracks of countries. The richest countries, like the
United States, are on the swiftest track, freezing the production and
consumption of HFCs by 2018 and bringing HFC levels to 15 percent of 2012
levels by 2036. Much of the rest of the world is taking a middle road. And a
small group of the hottest countries, like India, have agreed to an even slower
path of reductions. Rich countries, as well as a group of philanthropists, will
also provide $80 million to middle-track countries as incentives to attempt
tougher goals.
The track system illustrates that, at its
core, cutting greenhouse gas pollution requires countries to assume upfront
costs today in exchange for smaller climate damage in the future.
But there is no universal right answer for
how to balance these costs. Countries’ choices will reflect their current and
future wealth; current and future climate; and a variety of other factors,
including societal values. The track system allows for those differences and
may well be a model for future climate deals.
Looking to the future of global climate
policy, it is critical to keep an eye on India, which is the world’s
third-largest emitter of all greenhouse gases, after China and the United
States, and projected to have the highest rate of greenhouse gas emissions growth
over the remainder of the century. Its decision to support the amendment, but
at the slowest track, may reveal how India is likely to manage the climate
trade-off.
It is apparent that India will remain focused
on improving lives — even saving them — and air-conditioning is an important
part of that.
In our continuing research, my colleagues and
I have found that hot days in India have a strikingly big impact on mortality.
Specifically, the mortality effects of each additional day in which the average
temperature exceeds 95 degrees Fahrenheit are 25 times greater in India than in
the United States. Currently, India has roughly five of these days per year.
Without global climate policy, it is projected to have 75 such days annually by
the end of the century. It is apparent that high temperatures are a risk to
India today, and at the same time it is vulnerable to climate change,
underscoring the challenge the country faces.
The effect of very hot days on mortality in
the United States is so low in part because of the widespread use of
air-conditioning. A recent study I did with colleagues showed that deaths as a
result of these very hot days in the United States declined by more than 80
percent from 1960 to 2004 — and it was the adoption of air-conditioning that
accounted for nearly the entire decline.
So we are in the difficult position in which
the very technology that can help to protect people from climate change also
accelerates the rate of climate change.
India, like the rest of the world, cannot
choose to improve lives now with no thought of the future. This means they must
balance protecting people today from their already hot climate with ensuring
that its people do not face an unmanageable climate in the future.
In time, India will be richer, and perhaps
technology will provide more inexpensive solutions, such as cheaper
air-conditioners that use alternatives to HFCs. But the agreement reveals that
for now India is heavily focused on current residents who face risks that
simply don’t exist in wealthy countries like the United States.
This trade-off between the present and the
future shapes every country’s decisions about climate policy. It is unrealistic
to think that what is right for some countries is right for all. But the
choices being made now will determine the climate we give our children and
grandchildren.
Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman
professor of economics at the University of Chicago, runs the Energy Policy
Institute there.
