Can Constitutionalisation of Climate Justice Create Social Tipping?

 Few days back a verdict of the Supreme Court has recognised Climate Justice as a part of the Constitutional Rights. Adverse effects of human induced climate change which pose a threat to human life can now be considered as unconstitutional. Hence, Supreme Court has given a ruling that climate crisis impairs the constitutional rights to life. What does this ruling mean in terms of a social nudge to reorient the behaviour of society which is more environment friendly?

This ruling gives a citizen the legal power to question any human action or economic activity which can create adverse impacts of human induced climate change through global warming. So if a community near a thermal power plant feels that the smoke, pollution from the thermal power plant can create a climate crisis and impact their lives, they can go to court and challenge the operation of the thermal power plant?

But does that mean, the thermal power plant will stop operating given that coal driven electricity is still less costly to reach households in comparison to decentralised solar panel based or solar thermal power plant based electricity?

Will this mean that coal based thermal power plants can afford to close down and lead to unemployment of millions of people whose lives are dependent on the value chain of coal based electricity production from thermal power plants? These transitions can only happen if it is economical to produce electricity from renewable than from coal. They can only happen if there are systems in place to absorb the communities who loose jobs from shut down of thermal power plants triggered by a legal appeal of one community to close down thermal power plants as their lives are threatened due to climate crisis from coal based thermal power plants.

An appeal by a community at the backdrop of the violation of rights to life from climate crisis arising from thermal power plants might not be enough to close those plants. The economic system has to degrow, go through a structural shift to stabilize the accelerating growth of economy which demands more of coal based electricity in the absence of comparable economic sources of electricity from renewable, clean sources.

However, if more communities start going to court and appeal for changes in the production system of electricity, goods, services in an economy, a social tipping can set in creating a pressure on the energy supply systems and economic systems. A social tipping point if achieved on the demand side can create a pressure on the supply side systems to transit to cleaner goods, services and electricity production systems. However it might not necessarily induce a shift on the supply side immediately. For the shift to happen nudges in the form of economic , behavioural incentives have to be given to energy supply and supply side of economic goods and services systems which can help them to attain short and long term economic gains. If the supply side systems change towards cleaner energy systems with larger profit, benefits arising from such cleaner systems then the potential chance of climate friendly supply side systems will evolve in a society. 

All of these together needs to happen to sustain the success of the declaration of the Supreme Court which has the potential to set a social change but might not be enough to create a social tipping. A social tipping towards addressing the adverse effects of climate change from human induced actions of fossil fuel based economic activities needs to be necessarily be complemented by nudges and economic incentives on the supply side.

Once, all of these happen together, A Green Day will arrive when climate crisis will not impact the constitutional rights of a healthy human life within India any more!

মোবাইল মেঘ

  মোবাইল পিওন নিয়ে এল

  মেঘের চিঠির গর্জন

  হাত বাড়িয়ে চোখ বলল

  বসন্ত উৎসব অর্জন

   চোখের জলে পা ডুবিয়ে 

   কুড়িয়ে নিলাম বাড়ি

   জানলা দিয়ে বাইরে তাকিয়ে

    হঠাৎ সেই ছাড়াছাড়ি

    মোবাইল চিঠির জলের রেশে

    হয়ে উঠল বাগান

    সব শেষে এক নিমিষে

    বাগান গাছের ঐকতান।

The Psycho-Analysis of People Centric Energy Transition

 Since the time, I have started working on rural energy transition from 2003, one question that bothered and disturbed me was  my inability to find out a psychological structure behind rural energy definition.

 Over the last twenty years of struggle, every work that I have been doing related to energy transition or rural energy transition had its core being based on people. If it was, is or has been based on people, then ideally, a real, symbolic, imaginary definitional space of rural energy transition should also be there. I struggled to find it out for 20 years. Then, I came across the new nomenclatures of just, people centric energy transition and a close reading of Lacan helped me to find out finally a broad structure to my last twenty years of work on energy transition. The broad structure of the last twenty years of my work on "Energy Transition"  or if I may call it as "People Centric Energy Transition" can be largely seen through the below structural flow shown in the exhibit below :

Once, I framed or superimposed this structure to my twenty years of work and reading on energy transition and juxtaposed Lacan into it, the spaces between Real, Imaginary (The Gap Between Real and Symbolic), Symbolic opened. 

It is over here, I finally got an answer to the struggle led education of the past. Yes, the last twenty years of my work or many work that I read was always having a human being and a Freudian pyschoanalytic construct of that being within. In that pyschoanalytic construct of the Real Lens of People Centric Energy Transition, the being was like a Real Ego. The Symbolic Lens of People Centric Energy Transition was like a Ego Real and the Gap or The Imaginary Lens of People Centric Energy Transition was  like the Super Ego. The Real Lens of People Centric Energy Transition is like the Idealised Real Version of the Psychological Self whereas the Ego Real (Symbolic Lens of People Centric Energy Transition) is the Self which wants to mould itself the way the Other wants to see it. It is over here the Ego Real or The Symbolic Self of People Centric Energy Transition uses algebra, arithmetic, modelling to do projections, scenario buildings to create and project a self that has to be seen by someone else or the other in the society within its various actors.

However, the Gap between the Real and Symbolic Lens of People Centric Energy Transition is the Super Ego which is always having an ethical or moral clash in its definitional lens through its varied forms of evolutionary frameworks.

Finally, after twenty years of struggle, I could discover the Psychoanalytic Self imbibed within the definitional frame of Energy Transition or People Centric Energy Transition. The idea emerged on the New Day of New Year 2024.

On a year when a Green Day is coming, the new day told me to be more grounded in research to find out the psychoanalytic self of People Centric Energy Transition more and more!