We discussed the new fashionable alternative that the “developed countries” had dreamt up — offsetting their carbon emissions by various methods of “investment” in the “third world” countries.
Developed countries cancelled their CO2 emissions of a return air trip to anywhere in the world, by getting a poor villager in rural India to pump water to his fields by foot, rather than by diesel power. They are also investing in projects to plant more trees and in renewable energy projects in the developing world, so that the westerner’s return air trip to anywhere in the world, would be carbon neutral.
These are being done through a company called Climate Care. Being an Indian, a needle of doubt suddenly loomed large in my mind. Why is Climate Care a company into the business of “offsetting” carbon emissions, so bothered about developing countries? And why are we, supposed third world countries, willing to accept the sins of the West in exchange for money?
Check out the website of Climate Care. Its clients include The Prince of Wales. Visitors to the website are invited to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by paying a fee. It was shocking to even comprehend that some poor villager in our country, was offsetting the pollution of a westerner, by working a treadle pump in a village with his feet.
The website claims that a treadle pump, which is being introduced in parts of Chattisgarh and West Bengal replaces “polluting diesel pumps, facilitates two to three harvests per year instead of one, keeps the farmer at home rather than sending him off to the city to find ‘off season’ work”. And finally it says this helps the farmer make more money. Their claim, in bold letters, is that one treadle pump saves 0.65 tonnes of CO2 in a year, in this ‘human energy’ project.
Another of its project, promotes the use of dung for cooking rather than firewood. Wet biomass is put into a tank and turned into methane. Liquid fuels are made from Jathropha seeds, rape seeds or palm oil. This is used in combustion engines.
The claim is that a biomass cooker for a school, replacing a LPG cooker (fossil fuel), helps save the planet from 32 tonnes of CO2 emission. This project is close to the Rathambore Tiger reserve and it claims to help save trees and thereby the tigers’ natural habitat.
On the hills around Gudihalli, near Chitradurga, Karnataka, wind turbines have been erected by the company to harvest energy. Apparently, a 0.8 MW turbine installed in India is equivalent to approximately 800 tonnes of CO2 emission saved per year.
All this sounds OK. But is it ethical for developed nations to trade carbon credits with developing countries, to meet their emission targets stipulated by the Kyoto Protocol? Is this a fair means of offsetting carbon emission? Or is this another way for the developed countries to ease their conscience, by an obviously exploitative project like the foot pump?
Climate Care calls it “human energy”. Are we going back to the days of the British Raj and the hand pulled rickshaw or palanquin? Can you visualise a farmer in Holland or Germany, pumping water to irrigate his farm with his feet? I smell exploitation of the poor yet again by the rich West, with this smart project to ease their guilty consciences.
