Even as the Japanese government took a decision to restart two of its nuclear reactors bowing in to the need of the day, elsewhere the Rio+20 summit saw the launch of an online campaign against fossil fuels. Both address growing demand for energy in the world today. After months of shutdown of its reactors, Japan which has been suffering major power shortages decided to fall back on its reactors despite the public outcry seen there. Does this mean safety comes only after energy security??
Climate activists would have us think otherwise. The 24-hour "Twitter storm" launched at Rio summit against the hundreds of billions of dollars of government subsidies paid each year to the petroleum and coal industry was making a case for the planet’s safety/health. While the campaign saw a record breaking number of participants, the moot point is whether such twitters are more than a glitch on the graph. Can online organising work any real wonders or do they serve as mere gimmicks? Does reaching out to youth serve a purpose on the grand scale of things? Do they remain in public memory for more than a twitter of a second?!
International Energy Agency figures show that government subsidies for fossil fuels are 12 times greater than those for renewable energy. The G20 promised action three years ago to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, but a new report suggests they have not yet eliminated any because the definition of "inefficient" is vague.
A piece of hope from the summit is what the United Nations Environment Program is offering as an alternative to GDP - called the Inclusive Wealth Index, it adds natural capital to the list of economic measurements in a bid to assess the sustainability of a country's growth. For example, China's growth drops from more than 400 percent since 1990 as measured by GDP to just 45 percent in the IWI, thanks to the decline in that country's natural resources. GDP, it has been argued, isn't a very good measure of whether people are benefiting from growth. A rise in cancer diagnoses registers as growth!
A piece of hope from the summit is what the United Nations Environment Program is offering as an alternative to GDP - called the Inclusive Wealth Index, it adds natural capital to the list of economic measurements in a bid to assess the sustainability of a country's growth. For example, China's growth drops from more than 400 percent since 1990 as measured by GDP to just 45 percent in the IWI, thanks to the decline in that country's natural resources. GDP, it has been argued, isn't a very good measure of whether people are benefiting from growth. A rise in cancer diagnoses registers as growth!
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