The numbers behind climate change

Climate change has a long history. Scientists have been warning about rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels since the 1960s. However, it took a couple of decades before governments started moving. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988, and two years later, further international cooperation materialized at the Rio Earth Summit, when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC) was established to stabilize greenhouse gases. Here’s a look at the numbers that explain the politics of climate change and what countries have promised so far.

Why the Ambedkar legacy really matters

Why the Ambedkar legacy really matters
More important than tactically quoting him is to understand the Ambedkarite project

One of the welcome features of the parliamentary debates on the Constitution last week was the centrality given to the ideas of B.R. Ambedkar. We also saw the sorry spectacle of various political parties trying hard to claim him as one of their own. Such attempts to forcefully fit Ambedkar into a straitjacket does injustice to a complex thinker, undoubtedly the most scholarly political leader India has ever had.

Ambedkar wrote on various issues for over four decades, with utter intellectual honesty. A quick look at his oeuvre reveals an astonishing range. He wrote on why India needed to adopt the gold standard, on the exchange rate of the Indian rupee with the British pound, the evolution of provincial finance, the origins of the pernicious caste system, economic modernization as the ultimate solution to farmer distress, what needs to be done to annihilate caste, how to protect the rights of the oppressed, searing critiques of M.K. Gandhi, attacks on the Hindu orthodoxy, why the creation of Pakistan would be good for India, the nature of the Constitution, the need for linguistic states and the humane message of the Buddha. His range included economics, political philosophy, anthropology, history, religion and law.

The current fashion is to selectively quote from Ambedkar to make limited sparring points, as a result of which he is being claimed by the Hindutva camp, the Congress, the free market crowd, the Lohiaites and the Communist Left. His grammar of anarchy speech, made on the day the constituent assembly met on 26 November 1949 to adopt the draft Constitution, is a favourite these days. Far more important than tactically quoting Ambedkar is to understand the bigger Ambedkarite project, which has unfortunately not kept pace with his growing posthumous popularity.

Ambedkar himself often spoke about his intellectual debt to the philosopher John Dewey, who was his mentor at Columbia University. Many of the constant themes in Ambedkar’s varied writings spring from the school of pragmatic philosophy that Dewey was a distinguished member of. The pragmatists championed the cause of individual liberty, they welcomed modernity, they had a disdain for metaphysics, their politics was moderate, and they argued that truth is not an objective category, so any idea must be judged by whether it works or not when put into practice.

But perhaps the most significant idea or at least the most relevant for our times, from Dewey that one can find in Ambedkar is democracy as a way of sharing a common life with other human beings. Democracy is thus not just about periodic elections but a way of living. One core idea is that human beings are not only shaped by social institutions but also shape them in return, but the latter is possible only if there is an aware citizenry that has had the benefit of good education and equal rights. Ambedkar brilliantly adapted these insights from the pragmatic philosophers to develop his critiques of the caste system, his ideas about the Indian nation and his views on the requisites of a robust democracy.

It is easy to selectively quote Ambedkar. He wrote like a libertarian economist in defence of the gold standard in his early career. He led labour unions for the time when he flirted with what he described as state socialism. He attacked Hindu society but had hard truths to share about the reality of Muslim politics in undivided India. He was the moving spirit of the Constitution but once threatened to burn it in a fit of anger. He wanted India to have a strong centre though he warned about the threat of dominance by the Hindi states.

Picking and choosing quotes while ignoring the larger Ambedkarite project is an easy sport that too many indulge in these days. That Ambedkarite project is about individual liberty, the end of the caste system, social democracy, a democratic public culture, the embrace of modernity, pragmatism, constitutional methods and education for an enlightened citizenry.

Can any political party claim Ambedkar as its own?

The cost of redistributing wealth

The cost of redistributing wealth
Should we just redistribute all the wealth until everyone has an equal amount?

’d like to explain how most modern economists think about wealth redistribution. If you discuss welfare, taxes or inequality with an economist, you are bound to run into a concept called the equity-efficiency tradeoff. It’s the idea that there’s a fundamental tradeoff between the size of the economic pie and the equal distribution of said pie.

Suppose you’re a really rich person. You have $50 billion in wealth, though it fluctuates day to day depending on the financial markets. But even if the markets take a tumble, you will still have enough to buy almost anything you want.

Now suppose some hacker comes and steals $10,000 out of one of your brokerage accounts. The difference it would make in your purchasing power would be negligible. Now suppose that hacker, in the tradition of Robin Hood, decided to give the stolen $10,000 to a poor man in a slum in Baltimore. That $10,000 is probably as much as the poor guy earns in a year. Suddenly, his yearly salary is doubled and his risk of having to sleep in a homeless shelter is dramatically reduced.

This difference in the marginal value of wealth—the value of each additional dollar—is a key part of modern economics. It underlies our theory of risk and our theories of labour and leisure. But it also has implications for what we think of as human welfare—the total well-being of the species, or the nation. A given number of dollars creates more well-being in the hands of the poor than in the hands of the rich.

So, should we just redistribute all the wealth until everyone has an equal amount? Even if you think that doing so would be morally acceptable, you would have good reason for caution. Although rich people might not notice one or two random thefts from their bank accounts, they will most definitely notice the systematic appropriation of their wealth by the government. That systematic appropriation, of course, is called taxation.

When you tax people, you usually cause them to reduce the amount that they do the thing that is subject to the tax. That’s not always true—if you tax people’s labour, they may work less because of the decreased value of an hour of work, or they may work more because they are poorer than they were before. But in general, taxation reduces economic activity. Taxing investment reduces investment, and taxing consumption reduces consumption.

Anyway, the basic message is that the more the government tries to shift income around, the less total income there is to distribute.

This is sometimes known colloquially as “Okun’s bucket”, after economist Arthur Okun, who once likened redistribution to moving wealth from one person to another with a leaky bucket.

Modern empirical techniques have allowed economists to get a better idea of how big the leaks are in the bucket. For example, a recent paper by Nathaniel Hendren looks at the earned income tax credit, food stamps and housing vouchers. He finds that for every dollar redistributed from rich to poor with those programmes, anywhere from 34 cents to 56 cents leaks out and is lost.

This is how economists think when they consider redistribution programmes like the ones mentioned above. They don’t normally consider moral questions, like whether it’s ethical for the government to confiscate one person’s income in order to give it to another. When they do attempt to wade into the moral side of things, the result is often ham-handed and awkward.

Thus, economists typically leave questions of justice to the philosophers and politicians. Mostly, they focus on trying to quantify the tradeoff between equality and efficiency. That may seem a bit heartless, but to many economists, it feels like the most objective way to approach questions of redistribution. Bloomberg

india introduces injectable polio vaccine in routine immunization

india introduces injectable polio vaccine in routine immunization
Babies getting their third dose of oral polio vaccine (OPV) will now also be administered an injection with inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), as part of India’s efforts to boost its polio immunization programme. IPV and OPV together can provide additional protection to a child.

India was certified polio-free on 27 March 2014, but the immunization programme continues in the country since two of its neighbours remain polio-endemic and due to the threat of vaccine-derived polio.

In the first phase, the injection will be introduced in six states: Assam, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab.

“The last polio case was reported in India in 2011. But the risk is still there with the virus being active in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hence, we are introducing IPV for double protection against polio,” said Union minister for health and family welfare J.P. Nadda, at an event to launch the vaccine. “By 2016 April, we will switch from trivalent to bivalent vaccine. We have to ensure that core and support systems work, along with a robust cold chain system and improved routine immunization,” added Nadda.

Trivalent vaccines protect against three strains of the polio virus while the bivalent variety protects against two. Immunization programmes the world over are switching to the bivalent vaccine since the third strain has been eradicated, and the trivalent vaccine could theoretically re-introduce it.

There are challenges that come with the introduction of the vaccine. IPV is an expensive vaccine and each dose costs around Rs.120 and unlike OPV, the IPV which is an injectable vaccine can only be given by trained health workers at vaccination sites. There are also issues of vaccine availability which the health ministry is trying to resolve.

“IPV is a key step towards global endgame strategy. It is a tough task to convince a population to continue with OPV after a country is declared polio-free and even harder to introduce IPV on top of that,” said Louis George Arsenault, country representative India, Unicef. “A lot of people doubted India could get polio-free, but it happened. We now look forward to a transition from OPV to IPV. If India can do it, so can the world,” he added.

IPV is not a new vaccine and was first used in 1955. Thirty countries have already introduced IPV in their national immunization schedule, while 126 countries including India will introduce IPV soon.

A vaccine boost to India’s polio fight

The launch of the inactivated polio vaccine injection marks a shift in addressing vaccine derived poliovirus cases.

After nearly five polio-free years, and with the launch of the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) injection in the national immunisation programme tomorrow (November 30), India will be pushing for “endgame polio”.

The injectable vaccine, which uses killed polio viruses, will be used alongside the oral polio vaccine (OPV).

For now, immunisation using IPV will be restricted to Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. In the first quarter of 2016, it will be expanded to the other Northern and Northeastern States and in the second quarter, will encompass the four southern States and Maharashtra. “Immunisation using IPV injection is in a reverse order, with the well performing States getting it last,” said virologist Dr. Jacob John, formerly with the Christian Medical College, Vellore.

R. Prasad

Though cheap and easy to administer, OPV HAS an inherent safety issue —in rare cases, live viruses used in a weakened form can turn virulent, spread within communities and cause polio in unprotected children. In 2011, such a scenario caused seven vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) cases in India.

IPV aims to prevent vaccine caused polio cases, where viruses used in OPV cause flaccid paralysis. Till date, India, like many other countries, has been relying on an OPV campaign-style programme several times a year to keep the naturally-occurring wild polioviruses at bay.

All three strains of the poliovirus (type 1, type 2 and type 3) are used in OPV. Of these, type 2 is responsible for more than 95 per cent of VDPV cases. Ironically, type 2 wild poliovirus had been eradicated since 1999. Since then, all type 2 cases have been caused solely by vaccine polioviruses.

The move also marks a shift in addressing vaccine-derived poliovirus cases, with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative removing the type 2 strain globally from OPVs.

To begin with, one dose of IPV will be administered along with the third dose of OPV and DPT to children who are 14 weeks old. Even after being immunised with IPV, it is essential that all children are immunised with OPV every time it is offered. IPV when used in combination with OPV can quickly boost immunity against poliovirus and offer double protection.

“One dose of IPV will prime the immune system and the immune response will be quicker whenever OPV or IPV is given subsequently”, said Dr. Pankaj Bhatnagar, Technical Officer of the WHO India National Polio Surveillance Project, New Delhi.

There is a scientific reason for choosing 14 weeks for IPV immunisation. “When IPV is given to children at 14 weeks and later, nearly 70 per cent of them will develop antibodies against polio viruses. It will be around 30 per cent if given to children younger than 14 weeks”, he said.

The switch from OPV with all three strains to only two strains (type 1 and type 3) will happen towards the end of April 2016. “India will make a switch from a trivalent [containing all three virus strains] to a bivalent [containing only two strains] on April 24,” Dr. John said.

“There are a risk when this switch is made,” he warned. “Vaccine-derived type 2 will spread silently and cannot be stopped and children will continue to shed type 2 strain for 4-6 weeks after the last OPV dose. [A] new crop of children who do not get the trivalent oral polio vaccine can get exposed to [the] type 2 strain shed by vaccinated children,” he said.

It is to minimise this that the Global Polio Eradication Initiative requires all countries using the three-strain to introduce at least one dose of the injectable vaccine before making the switch.

“We will be building the immunity of the community against type 2 through IPV and OPV immunisation so that at the time of switching from trivalent to bivalent OPV there will be no risk,” said Dr. Pradeep Haldar, Deputy Commissioner – Immunisation, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.

Since the injectable vaccine contains all three strains in a killed form, it cannot cause vaccine-derived poliovirus. Superior safety apart, IPV has other advantages. Nearly 60 per cent who receive IPV will develop immunity when compared with/to the 10 to 30 per cent when OPV is used.

The higher the injectable polio vaccine coverage, the lower the risk. Hence, routine immunisation coverage in States like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar must be stepped up for IPV to become effective.

“In the beginning of this year only 64 per cent of children were fully immunised. It will reach 82 per cent by the March 2016. Of the 9 million children who were not fully immunised, 40 per cent have already been covered and another 10 per cent will be covered by March 2016,” said Prof. Ramanan Laxminarayan, Vice President — Research and Policy at the Delhi-based Public Health Foundation of India. He established the Immunization Technical Support Unit that supports the immunisation programme of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

India imports inactivated polio vaccine injections at a cost of $2 per dose. Since wild polioviruses are the raw material for IPV, no Indian manufacturer is allowed to make IPV in India. Companies now using biosafety level 3 facilities for IPV manufacturing will move to biosafety level 4 once wild polio is eradicated globally. After that all, OPV will be discontinued and IPV will remain the mainstay.

Wondering what’s COP21, ADP? Here’s a glossary for U.N. climate talks

 

It sounds like English. Yet to the untrained ear the language used in the U.N. climate talks is about as comprehensible as Klingon.

Sometimes you wonder whether the negotiators are trying on purpose to make a simple idea sound more complex than it is. But it’s also a matter of international law.

Many delegations have teams of lawyers that analyse every syllable for potential hidden meanings. Before everyone’s comfortable with the wording of a concept or idea, it’s often turned into an acronym.

Here’s the list:

COP 21: No, the three letters have nothing to do with the Danish capital, Copenhagen, where one of the most famous, or perhaps infamous, climate conferences was held in 2009. COP stands for Conference of the Parties, referring to the countries that have signed up to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The COP in Paris is the 21st such conference.

UNFCCC: To sound like an insider, pronounce this U-N-F-triple-C. Or just say “the framework convention.”

INDC: This acronym first appeared in the U.N. climate talks in Warsaw in 2013. It stands for Intended Nationally Determined Contribution and refers to the climate pledges that countries have made ahead of the Paris conference. Every word has legal implications indicating that the INDC isn’t a binding promise. The pledges are “intended,” not set in stone, and they are “nationally determined,” not imposed from the outside.

ADP: This is perhaps the most useful abbreviation in the talks, considering the time it takes to read out the full name of The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. The ADP is a subsidiary body created in Durban, South Africa, in 2011 for negotiations on the universal climate agreement that’s supposed to be adopted in Paris. The Paris conference will deal with other things as well, like pre-2020 ambition.

PRE-2020 AMBITION: This refers to actions taken by countries to limit greenhouse gas emissions before the Paris agreement would take effect in 2020. This part of the discussions is meant to remind big polluters that the Paris deal doesn’t mean they’re off the hook for another five years.

CBDR: This acronym lies at the core of the most difficult issue left to resolve in Paris. The principle of “Common But Differentiated Responsibilities” is enshrined in the 1992 framework convention. It recognises that countries in different stages of development have different obligations in dealing with climate change. Until recently it’s been implemented as a strict division between rich and poor countries, where only the former are obliged to reduce their emissions. The U.S. and other developed countries want to scrap that firewall in the new deal, while many developing countries including India insist that it live on in some form.

REDD-PLUS: It refers to efforts to protect forests, which when destroyed release carbon into the air, contributing to climate change. REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. The plus sign was added in 2010 to indicate that three more elements had been inserted into the discussions — conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

2015 set to be ‘hottest year on record’, says UN

2015 set to be ‘hottest year on record’, says UN
The U.N. weather agency has said that 2015 will be the hottest year on record and 2016 could be even hotter.
Why?
Due to a combination of a strong El Nino and human-induced global warming.
The El Nino weather pattern, marked by warming sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, also causes extremes such as scorching weather and flooding. Meteorologists expect El Nino to peak between October and January and to be one of the strongest on record.
Other notable observations made:
Global average surface temperatures in 2015 are likely to reach the symbolic and significant milestone of 1° Celsius above the pre-industrial era. A preliminary estimate based on data from January to October showed that the global average surface temperature for 2015 was around 0.73 °C above the 1961-1990 average of 14.0°C, and approximately 1°C above the pre-industrial 1880-1899 period.
The years 2011-2015 have also been the hottest five year period on record, with temperatures about 0.57 °C (1.01 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1961-1990 reference period. Global ocean temperatures were unprecedented during the period, and several land areas — including the continental United States, Australia, Europe, South America and Russia — broke previous temperature records by large margins.
Next year may yet be even warmer, since levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have risen to a new record every year for the past 30 years, and the El Niũo phenomenon is likely to continue into 2016