Copping Out COP28

Over three hundred years back, the English astronomer, mathematician and physicist Edmond Halley implied that for the environment to survive, the human race has to go extinct. Amazing that such a thought had already occurred some three centuries back. One has to wonder - what may have been happening those early days that someone foretold - quite accurately - the state of our environment, many centuries later?

In June of 1992, a total of 154 countries got together to sign the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Thirty-one (31) years later, and after deliberating for twenty-eight (28) years of COP after COP (Conference of the Parties), our environment is in greater peril than when the UNFCCC was initiated.

Twenty-eight years of yacking in great pomp and pageantry has not resulted in any improvement to the health of our environment. Apparently, the human society is running out of ideas – we are now forced to hold the 28th COP in a country that contributes to the top ten polluters of the world.

As I told one American friend – the way of the GNH could save the environment – but its very idea is antithesis to the basis of human development as we understand it. I told her that unless the present human society is willing to dismantle everything on which the supposed human progress is founded, NO WAY we can halt the march of environmental devastation.

Because, the human society has gotten used to exacting the cost of our competitiveness and efficiency on the environment. That would explain why the chilies grown at the other end of the world can be sold cheaper in your local Sunday Market, than that which is grown in your backyard. No one will stop to ponder: how is it possible that chilies trucked and moved tens of thousands of miles across the seven seas can be cheaper? The answer: abuse of the environment.

The processes we have developed to manufacture, transport, distribute and package our manufactured goods is such that it disregards the environment completely. We have gone so far that it is not an option to dismantle it – for the sake of the environment – it is a scary thought!

Consider, for instance, the European manufacturing conglomerate - Airbus SE, a company that holds almost 50% of the global civil aviation market. Its success is not because it manufactures all of their over a million parts that go into a single aircraft – its success is attributed to building partnerships among a number of countries such as France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, UA, Canada, China. They build competitive edge over their competitors – by allocation manufacturing and assembly to different countries in different geographical locations, based on their core competences. This way, they distribute the burden of investment, tap into talents and skills based in a number of locations, instead of in one country and one location. This way they achieve economies of scale – cost savings, efficient distribution, cheaper cost of storage, ease of transportation to markets and consumers etc.

Same is with the Apple iPhone – they are built, assembled and shipped from multiple locations spread across multiple counties around the world, such as: China, the Czech Republic, Malaysia, Thailand, and South Korea among others.

Similarly, the car we drive may carry the brand name of one company such as TOYOTA – but over a hundred manufacturing companies spread across the globe would have contributed to the final product.

This means that the principal manufacturing company and the hundreds of ancillary companies based in over a dozen countries must function in synch with each other – they must use the same technologies – follow the same objectives and, above all, must be tuned into each other – the moment one part of the whole collapses, the entire chain gets broken. No single company in the world has the wherewithal to bear loss at this scale! Thus no one will dare shift to something new that calls for investment from ground up.

This means that the principal of GNH manufacturing – as charming as it may sound – is impractical as well as impracticable – it will be too costly to make it work.

Can you imagine the chaos it will create – the day you decide to shift over to a new order of things? It will fast-forward the collapse of the human race!

A simple thought: Can you imagine the catastrophe that will befall the automotive industry if they have to change over to electricity as the source of energy to power their engines? Can you imagine how many million companies will go bankrupt? How many millions of workers will be rendered jobless? How many fossil fuel producers (don’t forget they are also members of the human society) will go out of business?