Mr Suhel SethMr Suhel Seth

Death by Death by

Power Point Power Point presentationpresentation

1984 George 1984 George OrwellOrwell

2084 2084 a.d.a.d.

Our narrator is a 72-year old (born in 2012) whose health is failing, but who has recognised that

he “may be one of the last historians to have the chance to capture the effects of the first truly global disaster in human

history”. The date is a nod to Orwell’s dystopian 20th century classic.

Our fictional narrator has spent several years making contact with survivors scattered around the world, each recalling the circumstances that befell them and their communities drawn from New York city, Miami, Bangladesh, Tuvalu, Rotterdam, Phoenix, Arizona, Switzerland, India, Pakistan and Canada. Borrowing a line from Thomas Hobbes, human existence has once again become “poor, nasty,

brutish and short” – and not just for some.

20842084

Looking back at 2012, the year of his birth, our narrator can see that the scientific

projections were clear, yet societies chose not to act.

Scientists were partly to blame. Being largely rational creatures, they “assumed that reason would prevail and that nations

would agree voluntarily to reduce CO2 emissions”. This allowed them to create

plausible scenarios in which global average temperature rises were pegged

below the 2C tipping point.

Well, the Scientists were wrong. They were wrong too about just how sensitive climate feedbacks would prove. IPCC modelling on the sensitivity of the world’s glaciers and the Greenland ice cap to relentless warming proved hopelessly optimistic. Mean sea level increases had hit the one-metre mark by 2083, with centuries more in store as the global cryosphere entered its unstoppable melt-spiral.

20842084New York, so often the subject of attack

by fictitious phantoms, from Godzilla to King Kong, finally succumbed to a combination of rising sea levels and intense storm surges by mid-century. After a major storm in 2042, Manhattan was effectively abandoned, with so much of its infrastructure destroyed, despite massive efforts to build sea barriers to protect from the worst of the storm surges.

“Geography is destiny”Bangladesh : by 2050,the sea-level rose by half a metre

globally.

is a phrase with particular resonance in Bangladesh. The half-metre global sea level rise by 2050 had led to

the inundation and abandonment of fields as far as 40km from what was the coastline in 2011. With 50

million climate refugees trying to escape, the international aid agencies had long

abandoned the country, and its neighbour India built a steel fence to try to keep them

out.

20842084 Closer to Europe, the Swiss Alps had lost their last

snow caps by the 2040s, and the Alps were coming to resemble the Atlas Mountains. Famous ski resorts, such as Davos, have long been boarded up.

The situation in Spain is much graver. Today’s Gold Coast is a graveyard of abandoned condos and dry swimming pools, with daytime temperatures of over 50C. The monoculture of olive trees have long since dried out and burned. The tomato and lettuce fields of Murcia are dustbowls, as are the hundreds of long-abandoned golf courses.In the first decade of the century, it took an estimated 11,400 litres of pumped fresh water just to allow one golfer to play a single round. That madness is beyond imagining in the parched Spain of the 2050s, which is now simply an extension of the North African desert.

Both Pakistan and India, both bristling with nuclear warheads and mutual antipathy, were less

fortunate. Declining flows from disappearing glaciers led to massive tension over access to fresh water, and in May

2048, the conflict ignited a short but deadly nuclear exchange that led to a military victory of sorts for

India and an estimated 150 million deaths. In the United States meanwhile, as temperatures made wheat growing impractical across much of the US’s corn belt,

its eyes turned north, to the vast rolling plains of Canada, with which it shares a border over 5,000 miles long. Illegal Americans had been flooding north into Canada, and

conflict flared into full-scale hostilities in 2046, when the US, claiming to defend its citizens from attack,

crossed the borders in force and quickly disabled Canadian military capability. Fighting was brief and casualties light. By

2050, Canada had been merged into an extended United States.

Paris in July 2084 is 46C in the shade. The famous sidewalk cafés are gone. People stay indoors. Even at night, the heat is stifling. Eighty years ago, southern Europeans feared that hordes of North African immigrants would overrun them. It did not occur to them that not only would the people of North Africa come, they would bring the climate too. The UN warned that the 21st century’s great wars would be fought over water, and in 2028, Israel and Egypt once again went to war over control of water from the Jordan river. Syria, Jordon, Lebanon and nuclear-armed Iran joined the escalating conflict.

Pakistan and India, both bristling with nuclear warheads and mutual antipathy, were less fortunate.

Declining flows from disappearing glaciers led to massive tension over access to fresh water, and in May 2048, the conflict ignited a short but deadly nuclear exchange that led to a military victory of

sorts for India and an estimated 150 million deaths. The USA :Meanwhile, as temperatures made wheat growing impractical across much of the US’s corn belt, its

eyes turned north, to the vast rolling plains of Canada, with which it shares a border over 5,000 miles long. Illegal

Americans had been flooding north, and conflict flared into full-scale hostilities in 2046, when the US, claiming to defend

its citizens from attack, crossed the borders in force and quickly disabled Canadian military capability. Fighting was

brief and casualties light. By 2050, Canada had been merged into an extended United States.

2084: My oral history is mercifully light on faux optimism and predictable take-home lessons. However, I do manage to sneak in one in the final paragraph: “In the first two decades of this century, people and their political leaders, prodded by the quisling scientists, acted as though they could enjoy the benefits of modern science while rejecting any scientific findings that they found inconvenient to their ideology or their pocketbook. For their folly, we paid a terrible price.”

So I conclude this oral history of 2084 the great global warming by calling it the ‘century of death’ on health and food production – both of which went into freefall

as access to energy dwindled and the

wheels fell off the once-mighty chariot of globalisation.

Energy Security in AsiaEnergy Security in Asia

Access to Access to EnergyEnergy

My presentation today will essentially take a look at the key decisions that were reached during last year’s IPPAI Summit and then, based upon those ecommendations, suggest what the way forward could possibly be. We hope that this Second Summit can now make the move towards operationalising some of the suggestions made last year instead of simply making another set of suggestions

The first Asian Energy Summit of 2011, made several recommendations: –

1.Asia needs quality leadership, which would be dedicated and have a vision to transform and make path breaking changes.

2.Regional power sharing could avoid additional investment costs separately by each country and interconnected power system between Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal could not only improve networks, but bring about economic efficiency.

3.The five Central Asian economies of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan need to create an efficient regional mechanism through conscious decisions.

4.The Caspian Sea could work as a central uniting factor.South Asian countries, along the lines of WTO, could define a set of rules based on the Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN), treaties.

5. South Asia could also develop A Union Of Financial and Technical Coordination to optimise use of regional resources.

6. Countries surrounding the Bay of Bengal should invest in deepwater and ultra-deepwater E& P technologies.

7. Developing Coalbed Methane and Shale gas should also be considered a possibility. A Bay of Bengal E & P Community should concentrate on exploration, production, transportation and sale of natural gas.

1.South Asian countries, along the lines of WTO, could define a set of rules

based on the Most-Favoured-Nation(MFN), treaties.

2. South Asia could also develop A Union Of Financial and Technical

Coordination to optimise use of regional resources.

3. MrParthasarathy this morning referred to Bimstec as an association of landlocked nations which could bridge

the ASEAN and South Asian gap.4.Countries surrounding the Bay of

Bengal should invest in deepwater and ultra-deepwater E& P technologies.

Developing Coalbed Methane and Shale gas should also be considered

. Energy security cuts across such a large variety of policy areas that consensus as to its vital nature often dissolves into misinterpretation and competing or redundant policy initiatives. At the nexus of energy and national security, then, we must construct sustainable, viable, and effective strategies.A new paradigm of Asian security is now necessary (Ambassador Talmiz Ahmed)

Greater Mekong cooperationGreater Mekong cooperationBangladesh Sri lanka Nepal Bangladesh Sri lanka Nepal

integration process in South Asiaintegration process in South Asia

Can Business Create A Holistic Integrated Can Business Create A Holistic Integrated Platform Towards Energy Security Platform Towards Energy Security (Suhel Seth)(Suhel Seth)

Share resources, develop harmony among peoplesShare resources, develop harmony among peoples Trade sees no boundaries=== need and supply Trade sees no boundaries=== need and supply

are the basics of trade.are the basics of trade. Trade between India and China operates on two Trade between India and China operates on two

different planes,the Indian plane and the Chinese different planes,the Indian plane and the Chinese plane.THEY SHOULD DEAL WITH EACH OTHER ON plane.THEY SHOULD DEAL WITH EACH OTHER ON THE SAME PLANE.THE SAME PLANE.

India and Pakistan,India and Nepal,India and India and Pakistan,India and Nepal,India and Bangladesh,India and Bhutan and India and the Bangladesh,India and Bhutan and India and the rest of South Asia need to change their perception rest of South Asia need to change their perception and we don’t have the luxury of time (Suhel Seth).and we don’t have the luxury of time (Suhel Seth).

We should stop surviving from election to We should stop surviving from election to election.Politics has created too many walls.So election.Politics has created too many walls.So train your sights on economic nirvana to break train your sights on economic nirvana to break wallswalls

Energy-hungry Asian economies are highly dependent on imported

oil and gas to fuel economic growth.

In Asia itself, Russia and the Central Asian states have a significant proportion of the

world's primary energy resources and are looking for ways to

increase such exports to expand and diversify into new markets in

Asia and Europe.

Providing universal access to basic energy will require annual investments of around $48 billion according to International Energy Agency estimates. ADB has invested approximately $2.8 billion in access to energy projects

Asia should work towards creating an integrated and

competitive natural gas market within the region.

India and China would be the major energy guzzlers in

future so they should work towards common goals in

areas of technology development and joint

development of energy assets.

In Asia itself, Russia and the Central Asian states have a significant proportion of the

world's primary energy resources. But there are,as pointed out by

Amb Parthasararhy this morning,there are problems of

Chinese attempts at hegemony in the Indo Pacific region. Problems

also are festering in Vietnam,Philippines,Malaysia

which need to be sorted out. These problems will take their own time

to sort out.

Energy security in the Asian region: How do you assess risks ?

Different types of risks1. relating to geological availability,2. geopolitical accessibility, 3.economic affordability and 4.environmental and social acceptability. There are two ways in which energy

security could be defined and tackled. One would be to rank countries, from most

to least secure, define those countries energy security profiles and then group countries with similar combinations of risks and resilience factors. This sort of evaluation would be based