RANAWAKA, Patali Champika. Climate racism, climate terrorism & climate genocide

Patali Champika Ranawaka is Sri Lanka Minister of Environment and Natural Resources (see: http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2009/11/01/spe07.asp ).

Patali Champika Ranawaka on Developed World climate racism, climate terrorism and climate genocide (November 2009): “Climate racism … During the pre industrial era when oil or coal was not used as a main energy source, carbon concentration in the atmosphere was 260ppm. Now it has risen to 390ppm. During the last century the mean temperature has risen by 0.730C. It is now predicted that the temperature would rise to a point between 1.5^o – 6^o Celsius, during the 21st century. Therefore, scientists introduced a carbon budget to avoid catastrophic environmental disaster which may end the humanity on the planet. According to their calculations, if we could be able to go back to the 350ppm and limit the temperature rise to 1.50C relative the pre industrial era, there would be an over 90% probability to avert an environmental calamity that could devastate this planet… The infamous US Senate (Byrd - Hagel) Resolution stated that it was the sense of the Senate that US should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and time tables for developing countries (like Sri Lanka) as well. A few weeks ago, the G-8 Summit reiterated this position. Australian and Mexican proposals to Copenhagen too have suggested a similar position. In order to cut emission levels of developed countries, developing countries too should cut their emission levels. The USA emits over 36% of carbon and “Wyoming” the least populous state with only 495,700 people emits more carbon dioxide than 74 developing countries with a combined population of nearly 396 million. The carbon emission of Texas with a population of 22 million, exceeds the aggregate emission of 120 developing countries with a combined population of 1.1 billion people. For the past century the US had emitted more than 50% of the total emission of all the developing countries in the world put together! So what right do they have to ask developing countries to limit their development? On the other hand, the USA economy is very inefficient with respect to the black carbon content. Each dollar contains 0.56 grams of carbon. Whereas in Japan it is 0.26 and in Sri Lanka it is 0.16 grams. If they simply are matching the Japan’s energy efficiency they would have to reduce their emission by more than half without signing the KP. But they ignored this under developed technological structure and simply were wasting fossil fuel deposits, causing genocide to others. When the US administration talk about human right violation, global terrorism, genocide etc., they should realize that its mirror image is much worse environmental human right violation, global climate terrorism and climate genocide over our children etc., Joseph Stieglitz, the ex president of the World Bank and Nobel prize winner for economics rightly pointed out that any agreement should be based on emissions per dollar of GDP and emissions per-capita… So in Copenhagen, developing countries will have a moral high ground and rational argument. On the other hand, developed countries only have brute force and concepts like Climate Nazism, Climate Racism and Climate Terrorism.” [1].

[1]. Patali Champika Ranawaka, “Climate racism”, Sunday Observer, 1 November 2009: http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2009/11/01/spe07.asp .