India's new stance on climate change is
unambiguous and unencouraging:
India said it will reject any new treaty to limit global warming that makes the country reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because that will undermine its energy consumption, transportation and food security.
Cutting back on climate-warming gases is a measure that instead must be taken by industrialized countries, and India is mobilizing developing nations to push that case, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told the media today in New Delhi.
“India will not accept any emission-reduction target -- period,” Ramesh said. “This is a non-negotiable stand.”
India's moral argument is that 1), most of the excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now were pumped out by the now-industrialized countries, and 2), their emissions are still >15x below those of developed countries like the U.S. on a per capita basis:
Ramesh reiterated India’s previous offer to contain CO2 emissions per capita below those of developed nations.
India, the second-most populous nation, only emits 4.6 percent of the global carbon-dioxide emissions, while the U.S. produces 20.9 percent, he said.
Hard to tell if this is a negotiating tactic or genuinely drawing an ideological line in the sand, but particularly if it's the latter it will make it much harder to reach a global accord on reducing emissions (let alone if India gets China and Brazil on board).
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