Although an estimate of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on rapid recession of Himalayan glaciers has become a political issue in India, its scientific foundations are quite solid.
Climate change is a political and scientific conundrum. From the denialism of the George Bush era to the neo-liberal imperatives of carbon trading, the subject is confusing, and an activist agenda is sometimes a navigational minefield.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should create a special commission to cross-check all references in its report if errors such as the one on Himalayan glaciers are not to recur.
Most political leaders face a challenge they refuse to acknowledge: to gain control of runaway climate change they must abandon convenience, the unchallenged assumptions that place the corporation as means and ends of policies.
Like Hamlet, Shakespeare's conflicted Prince of Denmark, China was caught between conflicting currents in Copenhagen. Its failure to manage these challenges led to its biggest diplomatic debacle in years.
India has become collusive in the weak and inequitable Copenhagen Accord. The government must correct course if India’s poor are not to suffer further.
The Copenhagen Accord represents an ignominious retreat from the urgent and universal imperative of combating climate change through cooperative global action. It needs to be replaced with an ambitious, legally binding agreement.
Thanks to the courage of Bolivia and a few other nations – and against huge pressure and threats to sign the deal - the UN did not endorse or adopt the vacuous Copenhagen Accord but instead were forced to use the much weaker language of “noting” it.
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