International Political Will

Last week, two ominous events in India – a solar eclipse and record high-tides in Mumbai – spurred astrologists and soothsayers to predict floods and catastrophe. Their prophecies were dismissed, and the celestial events came and went with no horrendous devastation.

But maybe we weren’t looking closely enough, because life in Mumbai often looks and feels like a front row seat for the ecological apocalypse.

Daily electricity cuts of anywhere between 2-6 hours in much of Mumbai is a part of life. Many businesses can’t function without power, so as soon as the lights click off, thousands of gas-powered generators start up, spewing thick, black exhaust into the air. As if the exhaust from cars, buses, and the lawn-mower-motor-powered auto rickshaws wasn’t bad enough.

Then last month, as the city awaited a delayed monsoon, the water cuts started. No warning, no back-up supply, nothing. Just – boom – one morning at 7 a.m. my taps stopped working.

We were lucky – we only had two non-consecutive days of water cuts – but others were less fortunate. Some neighborhoods had no water for four straight days. No drinking water (bottled water is not an option for most poor in the city), no washing hands, no showers, no washing clothes, no way to cook rice or other staple meals.

Then came the record high tides flooding many areas – especially slum settlements (surely nothing to do with global warming/rising sea levels).

And as if flooding wasn’t bad enough, there was the trash that came with it. Garbage disposal in Mumbai – or lack thereof – goes beyond the mentality of many Mumbaikars who think nothing of littering anywhere (they are especially fond of waterways…). The inadequate government infrastructure only encourages more littering.

The three days of high tides last week washed up 640 tons of trash. Beaches, the coastal mangroves, and some slum settlements were immersed in trash, bottles, plastic bags, and Styrofoam.

But the worst part is that the city claims the 640 tons is “more than four times the average amount that is dumped on the coast in three days.”

That means 50 tons of garbage normally washes up on the shores of Mumbai everyday. If that’s how much is making it back to the source, how much is still floating around our oceans, landing on the eastern coast of Africa or polluting marine life habitats?

The underlying factor of all of these problems is that, for now at least, they primarily only affect the poor – the wealthy have created buffers to isolate themselves from most environmental consequences. Unfortunately, this is in spite of the fact that the wealthy are responsible for an unequal share of the problem (and they make up a very small minority in Mumbai).

The power cuts don’t affect the wealthy of Mumbai: when the city electricity is cut, turning off their air conditioners, clothes dryers, microwaves and other power-hungry appliances, they simply fire up their generator. Problem solved. The power is back on, and so is their air conditioner.

But the generator adds to the air pollution problem, already exacerbated by the wealthy’s penchant for driving cars instead of using the extensive public transportation system. And while the power is off, the middle class and the poor – who only escape the heat with fans and have no generators – are left to swelter. The wealthy contribute unequally to the problem, yet suffer no consequences.

Water is no different. The wealthy in Mumbai use far more water than the rest of the residents. But when the water is turned off, they pay for a tanker truck to bring in a private supply.  When the water is turned back on, they go back to using city water in excessive amounts for their dishwashers, gardens, and (though it’s rare beyond the luxury hotels) swimming pools.

Garbage? Consumption means waste, and no one consumes quite as much as the wealthy. Plastic bags, packaging, wrappers, disposable goods – these are all purchased in larger amounts by the wealthy minority. And in India they litter just as much as the poor.

But what is the solution? How do we avoid ecological catastrophe? How do we distribute the costs of environmental destruction fairly? How does one create the incentive to change behavior and the revenue necessary for infrastructure and environmental education?

With a dramatic sliding scale tax on public utilities.

The current system – both in India and the U.S. – favors the wealthy. Charging a private citizen essentially the same rate for the first kilowatt hour and the 500th is not fair. Yet simply raising prices on electricity and water will only price out the poor. So a sliding scale tax is needed to both create the incentive to conserve and generate revenue from those who don’t.

Consider the example of air conditioners: Mumbai doesn’t get that hot and ceiling fans are enough (provided the power stays on). So, in essence, air conditioners are a luxury.

You can’t legislate people’s choices though, so let the wealthy buy their air conditioners. But charge them for it - each increment should be a considerable tax hike. For the first 150 kilowatt hours, charge customers the current rate (in Mumbai, it’s about 5 rupees/kWh). But for each kilowatt hour above 150, the price goes up – exorbitantly: 25 rupees/kWh. And for kilowatt hours above 200 – even more: 50 rupees/kWh. The scale just keeps climbing. The same concept could work for water use, too. (Businesses would require industry-specific scales.)

This would create the incentive for the wealthy to conserve (which reduces the overall use of energy). It also could create revenue for the state to use for garbage/recycling infrastructure, clean/alternative power research, and environmental education to stop littering. The solution would work for not only Mumbai, but for every country.

We have a crisis of consumerism – a world where excessive and unrestrained affluence is damaging the Earth. Lumping everyone together and claiming that, as a whole, we are using too much power, causing too much pollution, or wasting too much water, only allows those who are doing the most damage to hide behind the claim of “we’re all in this together.”

This would not be the wealthy subsidizing the poor (although the rates for the first kilowatt hours and first gallons of water would be below cost to assure the poor have affordable access to electricity and water). Rather, this would be undisciplined consumerism subsidizing education, poverty-reduction, and green solutions to environmental degradation.

High tides, dry water taps, and electricity cuts are just the first warning shots across the bow in our looming environmental war. We don’t need soothsayers to see that.

Tags: SEB, wealthy, electricity, water, poverty

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