Indian Official - Climate Plans "Cannot Superside . . . Maintaining Our Current Rates Of GDP Growth"

[hatrack]

India will not curb its greenhouse gas emissions as long as the West continues to treat it as a 'second class global citizen' with less right to pollute than the developed world, a senior Indian environment official has said. Pradipto Ghosh, who retired last month as India's environment secretary and now sits on a committee advising India's prime minister on climate change, warned that the West must "get serious" about cutting its own emissions if it wanted progress on the issue.

EDIT

"The goals of addressing climate change cannot supersede our goals of maintaining our current rates of GDP growth and poverty alleviation programs, as was agreed by everyone at Kyoto," he told The Telegraph in New Delhi.

At the heart of India's position on climate change is the notion that India - whose population is predicted to reach 1.5bn by 2050 - must be allowed to pollute on a per capita basis equally with the West.

That would imply drastic cuts in emissions in developed countries if the world is meet the target of keeping global warming within the generally agreed 'safe limit' of two degrees, as set out by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "The prime minister has said that while pursuing our policies of development and poverty alleviation, we will ensure that our per capita emissions will never exceed developing countries," Mr Ghosh added.

EDIT

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/06/12/eaindia12.xml

[Systematic Chaos]

1. At least they'll die proud.

n/t

[hatrack]

2. And rich, too!!

:eyes:

[David__77]

3. If the West doesn't like it, then the West should pay the cost.

The Western countries polluted the world during their industrialization. Now they enjoy the benefits of that development. If Western environmentalists don't want a similar process of unenvironmentally-friendly development in the third world, then they should lobby their governments to make massive investments so that developing countries are not adversely affected in terms of GDP by environmental protection measures. After all, the benefits of such an investment would also accrue to Western country citizens.

[Nihil]

5. Yeah, right ...

:eyes:

The "Western environmentalists" have got their hands full trying to
convince their pig-ignorant administrations (along with the pig-ignorant
majority of their own populations) about the *existance* of pollution
and the impact (short-term, medium-term and long-term) on each and every
polluter.

Given the stunning successes that we see every day to underline the
response from said administrators & general population (basically,
"fuck the world, we want our money") care to hazard a guess as to the
likely response when it involves sending money, etc., overseas to
some of "those foreign folks"?

I hold no hope of "Western environmentalists" being able to influence
"Western governments" to do the right thing but, unfortunately, it appears
that my hope that the developing nations might have actually LEARNED from
our fuck-ups was also in vain. There is no excuse for anyone to
deliberately continue on a known path to failure simply out of dumb
misplaced pride.

It is disappointing in the extreme to find that the leaders of the
so-called "developing" nations are even more pig-headed, stupid and
wilfully irresponsible than those of the "developed" ones.

:grr:

[brokensymmetry]

4. Should be an interesting dieoff.

We're going to hit the wall, pedal to the metal,
and screaming Yee-Haw.

The ones I feel sorry for are the animals.

[pscot]

6. Reminds me of General Buck Turgidson's "mineshaft gap"

We are well and truely fucked.