IIT Madras is a public technical and research university located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Founded in 1959, it is recognised as an Institute of National Importance.

IIT Madras has been ranked as the top engineering institute in India for four years in a row by the National Institutional Ranking Framework of the MHRD

It currently offers undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees across 16 disciplines in Engineering, Sciences, Humanities and Management. About 596 faculty belonging to science and engineering departments and centres of the Institute are engaged in teaching, research and industrial consultancy.

IIT Madras

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

The Environmental Politics of Sacrifice

Parental sacrifice as atonement for future climate change

Does humanity have a moral obligation toward the estimated millions of individuals who will be displaced from their homes over the course of this century primarily due to sea-level rise (SLR) as the earth’s climate warms? If there are indeed sound reasons for the world to act on their behalf, what form should these actions take?&nbsp;

World University root node

Ethics and International Affairs

The Ethical Implications of Sea-Level Rise Due to Climate Change

Climate migrants and exiles pose a unique challenge that requires a special international strategy, which only the United States, with its well-established and transparent regimes for legal immigration, has the experience and capacity to develop. To begin with, the US could take the initiative in formulating domestic policy to start absorbing a significant proportion of the most vulnerable climate exiles from small island states. It could raise and attend to an urgent issue on the impacts of warming and at the same time claim a leadership position in global climate negotiations by tacitly accepting its historic responsibility for climate change. © 2009, Economic and Political Weekly. All rights reserved.

Economic and Political Weekly

Warming up to immigrants: An option for the US in climate policy

Hydrogen is an energy carrier able to be produced from domestic, zero-carbon sources and consumed by zero-pollution devices. A transition to a hydrogen-based economy could therefore potentially respond to climate, air quality, and energy security concerns. In a hydrogen economy, both mobile and stationary energy needs could be met through the reaction of hydrogen (H2) with oxygen (O2). This study applies a full fuel cycle approach to quantify the energy, greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), and cost implications associated with a large transition to hydrogen in the United States. It explores a national and four metropolitan area transitions in two contrasting policy contexts: a "business-as-usual" (BAU) context with continued reliance on fossil fuels, and a "GHG-constrained" context with policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A transition in either policy context faces serious challenges, foremost among them from the highly inertial investments over the past century or so in technology and infrastructure based on petroleum, natural gas, and coal. A hydrogen transition in the USA could contribute to an effective response to climate change by helping to achieve deep reductions in GHG emissions by mid-century across all sectors of the economy; however, these reductions depend on the use of hydrogen to exploit clean, zero-carbon energy supply options. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Energy Policy

Greenhouse gas reduction benefits and costs of a large-scale transition to hydrogen in the USA

Time is fast running out for formulating a viable global climate policy regime even as it seems obvious that the major initiative will have to come from the United States, which currently appears indisposed to take any meaningful action at all. This paper reviews the prospects for emissions reductions in the US passenger transport sector and the technical, economic, social, and political barriers to developing policies that focus solely on technology or pricing. Using scenarios it shows that, in order to meet stringent emissions targets over the coming half-century, technology and pricing policies may have to be supplemented by strategies to change life-styles and land uses in ways that effectively reduce car dependence. In the medium to long term, bold initiatives that treat vehicle users as citizens capable of shifting their interests and behaviour could form kernels of social change that in turn provide opportunities for removing many of the social and political constraints.

Climate change dilemma: technology, social change or both?

The private car and the public freeway together provide an ideal – not to say idealized – version of democratic urban transportation... The watchful tolerance and almost impeccable lane discipline of . . . drivers on the freeways is often noted, but not the fact that both are symptoms of something deeper – willing acquiescence in an incredibly demanding man/machine system . . . It demands, first of all, an open but decisive attitude to the placing of the car on the road surface [and] a constant stream of decisions that [could be regarded as] a higher form of pragmatism. (Banham, 1971) Individualism is a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself. (Tocqueville et al., 1966: 477) In the West, by and large, we are all liberals now. Instead of ignoring or affecting to deplore this, we should be recognizing and reaffirming it. Or else, you never know, it might one day no longer be true. (Economist, 1996)

Fulltext

Sociological Review

Automobility and the liberal disposition

Given a certain pre-existing commitment to sea-level rise due to the long thermal lags of the ocean system, several million people living in coastal areas and small islands will inevitably be displaced by the middle of the century. These climate exiles will have nowhere to go. Rather than deal with this in an ad hoc manner as the problem arises, the authors propose a mechanism by which these exiles would be given immigration benefits by countries through a formula that ties numbers of immigrants to a country's historical greenhouse gas emissions. Such a compensatory mechanism appears to be a fair way of addressing the problems faced by climate exiles.

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Climate Policy

Providing new homes for climate change exiles

The recent UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan, was dominated by discussion of the Indian Ocean tsunami (“Solo efforts hamper tsunami warning system” Nature 433, 343; 2005). However, we must not forget the extreme vulnerability of small islands and low-lying coastal areas to sea-level rise caused by climate change.

Nature

Immigration could ease climate-change impact [1]

Since 2001, the United States government has blithely avoided developing a coherent climate change policy, even though the US economy is responsible for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, I examine passenger transport, an important source of these emissions, and point out major barriers to achieving deep reductions that are necessary from this sector. Interventions would have to be based on an understanding of social psychology, whereby vehicle users are provided incentives and reasons for changing behaviour and attitudes. These appear to be essential to bring about both the technology policy and behavioural changes needed to meet emission reduction goals. © 2004 International Energy Initiative, Inc.

Energy for Sustainable Development

The role of social change in the US transport sector for climate change mitigation

Abstract is unavailable for this paper.

Smoke and Mirrors: The Politics and Culture of Air Pollution

A fine balance: Automobile pollution control strategies in California

The Botanical Garden, was established in 1847 by Marquies &nbsp;Tweedale by collecting subscriptions from the European &nbsp;residents in the Nilgiris. The first curator Mr. W.G. Mclvor from &nbsp;Kew developed the garden and gave a definite shape to it. It &nbsp;covers an area of about 51 acres at an elevation 2200-2400m. &nbsp;The average annual rainfall is 1400 mm. With occasional frosty &nbsp;nights from December to February and the temperature &nbsp;fluctuates between 280 &nbsp;C and 00 &nbsp;C. The lawns are beautifully laid &nbsp;out and planted with indigenous and exotic ornamental trees, &nbsp;shrubs and herbs. There is a fine terrace laid out with flower &nbsp;beds in Italian style, three conservatories, and a range of glass &nbsp;houses for propagating and nursing plants of special interests &nbsp;in this garden. (Nathan, 1941; Price, 1908)

Zoos' Print Journal

Orchids in Government Botanical Garden Udhagamandalam, the Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu

Captive power generation - air pollution impacts due to increased capacity utilisation

Policy directed at managing automobile pollution is complicated by the concern for legitimate means of control over urban populations. Especially in regions where vehicle diversity is extensive, uniform policies of in-use vehicle emissions control are not always effective, but any stratified regulatory effort that concentrates on "weeding out" those vehicles that are the worst offenders can result in an awkward administrative predicament involving public accountability. In California, this challenge is particularly serious since automobile culture is pervasive to the point of being the most significant aspect of the urban experience. The history of automobile pollution control in the state demonstrates that in imposing rules on vehicle owners concerning emissions, regulators have had to tread cautiously on the issue of "driving rights" by invoking a public awareness of risk in order to gain consent to their intrusions on the private spaces of driver-citizens. Disproportionate restrictions on older vehicles with malfunctioning or poorly functioning emission control systems could not only challenge the doctrine of fairness and point to a problem of social justice but also raise additional problems concerning individual rights in liberal democratic societies. © 1992, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

International Journal of Environmental Studies

Legitimacy in environmental policy: The regulation of automobile pollution in california

Automobility, or the myriad institutions that foster car culture, has rarely if ever been put under the lens of liberal political theory, even though driving is one of the most common and widely accepted features of daily life in modern societies. When its implied promise of guaranteeing both freedom and equality is examined more closely, however, it appears that the ethical implications of driving may be darker than initially supposed. Automobility may indeed be in violation of both the Kantian categorical imperative and Gewirth’s principle of generic consistency, even though there has thus far been remarkably little ethical analysis to reveal these possibilities. It is conceivable that liberal political theory has turned a blind eye to automobility precisely because the latter has naturalized us into accepting what Roberto Unger has called a routine of “false necessity,” so that driving is now virtually imperceptible as a social fact worthy of critical analysis.