Guest essay by Eric Worrall
India has presented a simple yet devestating demand at COP21: If we want India to cut CO2 emissions, we not only have to pay for their renewables, we have to help them get rich, by gifting them our technological advantages. India estimates the cost of the assistance they request to be $2.5 trillion.
According to the Telegraph;
… Yet we cannot commit, as some want, to a common global objective of restricting carbon and greenhouse gas emissions without an affordable means of doing so. There is still a huge cost involved in switching to new processes and greener technologies and we simply cannot afford to do it alone.
India is a developing nation, and we must first acknowledge her needs; the eradication of poverty must remain our priority. This is why India’s climate change commitments have been designed to address environmental concerns while also enabling us to meet the growth aspirations of our citizens and our overall development ambitions.
…
All these [Indian] efforts stand to make a huge impact but we do require international support to prioritise and accelerate our initiatives in accordance with the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibility (CBDR). If we are to replace coal, we need access to cleaner energy sources and technology at a viable cost. Even with the huge strides we are making in the direction of renewables, to do more, at a faster pace, we need help from developed nations. That’s why international contributions towards the development and generation of greener technologies should be increased at the earliest possible opportunity through global carbon pricing, and by incentivising companies in the developed world to invest and share their research and development in this area. Our preliminary assessment indicates that the implementation of our climate change pledges (the INDCs) up to 2030 would cost approximately $2.5 trillion. India stands ready to meet this commitment, but if we are to accelerate our efforts, then further financial support should be extended to poorer countries via the Green Climate Fund.
Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/paris-climate-change-conference/12042237/Indias-priority-is-poverty-not-climate-change.html
You know what? The Indian demand for help is actually completely reasonable. India have been asked to do something very difficult, so they’ve dutifully calculated how this could be accomplished, without derailing their ongoing and successful efforts to lift vast numbers of their people out of poverty.
The fact that the price tag for the required help is politically impossible for the West to meet, is not India’s problem. India gave Prime Minister Modi an overwhelming mandate at the ballot box, in the hope he can bring the economic transformation he achieved in Gujarat to the entire country. Nothing is going to stand in the path of Modi’s plans for economic transformation.
Naturally the green response to Modi’s uncompromising demand for continued economic improvement has been extremely negative, and in my opinion racist – they seem to want to try to bully India into accepting continued poverty, rather than working with India to see what can be achieved within the framework of their demands.
The Indian press has noticed this negative rhetoric and mockery, and is not happy about it.
NYT affronts India again, this time with a cartoon on climate change
The New York Times seems set for another controversy over its portrayal of India. It has now published a cartoon mocking the stand India has taken at the ongoing climate talks in Paris – making developed countries with higher per capita emissions effect deeper emission cuts than developing nations that typically have significantly lower emissions.
The cartoon that NYT, titled ‘India at the Paris Climate Conference’, shows a giant elephant labelled ‘India’ blocking a coal-chugging steam engine labelled ‘Paris Climate Summit’. NYT has also carried an article saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi could make or break the legacy that US President Barack Obama is attempting to build for himself over climate change towards the end of the final term of his presidency.
This is not the first time the New York Times has mocked India. In October last year, after India had become the first country to taste success in its very first mission to Mars, NYT had published a cartoon that showed a rustic man in a turban, labelled ‘India’, knocking on the door to a room labelled ‘Elite Space Club’. The man had a cow in tow.
Read more: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/everything-social/nyt-affronts-india-again-this-time-with-a-cartoon-on-climate-change/
I suspect when the COP21 shambles falls apart, assuming the failure is admitted, India will be painted as the villain. But in my view India is making the right choice – they want, they demand, a better future for their children, no matter what.
India has big ambitions, which they are well on the way to meeting. Many of those Indian expats you meet in your workplace are paying very little tax, thanks to generously interpreted export incentives promoted by the Indian government, incentives which provide easily accessible tax loopholes for offshore Indian workers. They are learning first world skills, and accumulating vast pools of personal wealth – wealth which will in the near future fund a wave of economic development and entrepreneurship, the like of which the world has never seen.
Nice and naive – the Indian expats are also fully wired into their global spying network. Be especially wary of those who have past history in electronics TNCs on their CVs…….they role model the CIA and don’t you forget it…..
Interesting. I get the sense that the developing world has a smile on its face when discussing all of this. Western leadership has bought into a guilt complex. Doesn’t really inspire respect.
India makes up about 1 in 7 of the people on the planet. Anything that helps a group that large must be taken seriously.
If India thinks that they need to raise themselves out of poverty rather than trying to pay the way of people who may live 100 years in the future…
Well, they should be listened to.
And they need a mere $2.5 trillion to make all this happen? That’s only the $100 billion per year we’re used to hearing for the next 25 years. Tell the world bank to write them the first year’s check tomorrow (but don’t send it to Pachauri).
Well, 2.5 trillion is not that much capital when spread through a billion people. $2,500 each? That’s not much in the way of infrastructure, much less personal wealth. To compare, the purchase price of America is roughly $1 quadrillion. If they are being asked to give up all of their reliable electrical generation capacity, then a commensurate compensation would actually be in that neighborhood.
They aren’t asking for $2.5 trillion to get their people out of poverty, they are working on that on their own. What they are saying is that if the West expects them to cut CO2 emissions AT THE SAME TIME as they are trying to get their people out of poverty, THEN they are going to need a lot of help, and it is going to cost about $2.5 trillion.
The way I see the 2.5 trillion is not, “Yo, gimme 2.5 trillion” but rather “If you don’t want to fork over 2.5 trillion, leave us alone with this carbon jive.”
The big problem I see is that there are folks who might be game for forking over the 2.5 trillion, messing with the development plan they have in India and also putting US and EU taxpayers on the hook.
And where is the money coming from — to be borrowed from China, who will generate 2.5 trillion worth of stuff by burning more carbon?
And how much of that would go to extremely wealthy Indians, already billionaires, living in secure gated communities?
My model indicates that 102.4%, +/- 0.8%, would go to India’s top 1%.
Foreign aid is the government program that channels money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
“JimBob
December 10, 2015 at 5:37 am”
Indeed!
Overpopulation is their biggest problem. Perhaps they should institute some birth control before they cast stones at the West.
The population density of India is comparable to that of the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan. And it is vastly lower than that of Monaco, Hong Kong, Bermuda and Singapore. The difference is GDP. India’s GDP is far lower than that of all these countries. Perhaps you should do some research before you cast any more stones at India.
China’s biggest issue right now is demographics. Not enough young people, not enough females. Beware of too much birth control. It’s also proven that the best birth control is economic progress. Wealthier nations have fewer children.
Monna Manhas December 10, 2015 at 6:53 am
“The population density of India is comparable….”
Nice try. Not talking about density, talking about total number of people. 1.28 BILLION people.
Tom in Florida – so what you are saying is that Monaco, with almost 17,000 persons per sq km and no arable land, is not overpopulated because there are only about 38,000 people there in total? Or is it not “overpopulated” because the people there are relatively rich? GDP has a lot more to do with India’s problems than the number of people living there. Much of the work that is done there is still done by hand, because they lack the infrastructure to implement labour-saving devices. You can’t run factories when you don’t have reliable electricity. And most of the country does not have reliable electricity.
No Monna Manhas
Isn’t he saying it’s not overpopulated because it’s made up of people like him. Caucasoids.
There’s only one sure way to lift a country out of poverty–they have to work for it themselves (and for so many reasons I’m not going to list them here).
Since Johnson’s “Great Society”, the US has invested over $15 Trillion on our own poor and do you know what we’ve got?
The same amount of poverty-stricken people; those $Trillions and $Trillions haven’t lifted anybody out of poverty.
The old saying is that if you tax something, you get less of it; if you subsidize something, you get more of it.
We’ve invested a HUGE amount of money into poverty and sure enough-we have just as much as we did before the investment.
Talk about stupid.
But hey consider all the wages and fringe benefits the War on Poverty paid to the many government employees who were on the front-lines in that war. They should be very grateful for all that the Great Society did for them.
Especially because they’re talking common sense. As opposed to the NY Times, which as a reader for over 40 years I can honestly say gets farther left every day. They are now writing for about 3% of the population, the hipster-avant-garde-wannabe Social Justice Crusader in search of moral high ground. The paper is almost bankrupt, and at the rate they’re going I give them about 2 years to online-only format. Then they can join Salon.com and Huff Po churning out propaganda to their ever-shrinking choir.
Ah yes.
India is so poverty stricken it can afford a Space Program and a full range of nuclear armaments (including nuclear armed submarines) and a conventional military with all the bells and whistles including aircraft carriers.
Off is the second word that comes to mind.
My thoughts exactly. Been involved in nuclear weapons development since the 50’s.
They have had to contend with China on their shared border. That is no small worry for them. Even more so now that China is feeling it’s “oats” once more on the world stage.
And the perpetual Kashmir war with nuclear armed Pakistan…
“And the perpetual Kashmir war with nuclear armed Pakistan…”
Which developed nukes as a response to India developing nukes.
India and Pakistan were “given” the technology pretty much at the same time. The main issue still remains and that is the delivery system. Neither has that. MAD!
How will China’s military cross the passes of the Himalaya and Hindu Kush in anything like sufficient numbers to wage war against the Indian Army?
How will the Chinese Army keep itself supplied in Northern India with logistics lines traversing those mountains and the choke points of the high passes?
One conventional bombing raid on each pass and the Himalaya is closed to China. Forever. And their army trapped on the wrong side of the rubble.
China, like India, can take massive civilian casualties in a nuclear exchange and remain in action. Do you really think either country could care less if it lost 500 million in a nuclear tit-for-tat? The population of both in such an event would still be double that of the US.
The second word in any First World reply to India’s gambit remains off in my view. We jut don’t have politicians with the nuts to say it.
Good for India! They deserve to join the industrialized economies and leave poverty behind if they can. I would guess that since the economy is their main goal that the Indian government has scientists who tell the leadership what a hoax the entire CO2 delusion is. After all, interglacials come and go despite CO2 levels. (and we are near the end of the present one).
I wager the crazies will blame India, China, and Russia for the coming failure. The ‘usual suspects’ in other words.
Shortly before I told Avaaz to [buzz] off they sent me another of their rants about Paris. They made two claims that struck me as incompatible: (1) China is leading the world in use of renewable energy sources, and (b) it was necessary to put pressure on China lest the planet-saving at Paris fail. Seems to me that if China think it’s in their interests to “decarbonise” (ick, what a word) they will and if they don’t they won’t and fair play to them either way. Seems to me that India have asked “are you serious? I mean, REALLY serious?” in a very polite and rather amusing way. And the cream of the jest is that they’re *right*.
India have asked “are you serious?
Quite so, I recognize exquisite diplomacy here. At least one country of British heritage has not lost its marbles.
The US rejected “British heritage” with the Revolutionary War, and I’m glad we did. They were scoundrels then and they are scoundrels now. Of course, in 50 years, Great Britain will be Sharia Britain.
Oh, wait! They already are!
You had to get help from the French!
Funny how at the NYT cartoon, the Paris climate summit is portrayed as a carbon (charcoal carbon, not CO2 carbon) gulping train engine and India is portrayed as an elephant. I thought that, according to the green philosophers, we had to save the planet from these CO2 producing biosphere killing machines, for our childen, and for life diversity, including elephants.
I guess elephants are second class animals, which do not deserve as much attention and care as first class animals, such as polar bears.
If cows produce a lot of methane, think how much an elephant makes. They obviously have to go. For the betterment of the planet.
Cows are sacred and elephants are carbon neutral (Got carbon credits from Al Gore).
Most of the methane is emitted by the New York Times.
…and everybody knows that polar bears don’t fart.
I’m sure it’s no accident that the NYT portrayed an elephant as the antagonist. They’re never one to miss an opportunity to denigrate their political opponents, even “subliminally”.
@ur momisugly katherine, 11.59. Excellent observation!
And the [London] Daily Telegraph today depicts J Donald Trump as a pachydermatous anachronism . . .
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/getting-it-right/11171179/Telegraph-latest-cartoon-gallery.html?frame=3522490
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Or seals, because they’re white and cute and smooth-looking.
Come the crunch COP21 and all the other COPS have nothing much to do global warming and everything to do with a re-distribution of wealth.
One has only to Google Funafuti airfield Tuvulu – Images to discover that Funafuti 2013 is absolutely no different to when the airfield was built in 1943.
And I think you will find the same story goes for droughts in Syria, floods in Bangladesh and food production in Nigeria.
My advice to all the leaders of developed countries – by all means help those countries less fortunate with well controlled foreign aid projects BUT before you hand out more billions willy nilly on nebulous schemes to stop growing islands from sinking, trying to change seasonal tropical monsoons and blaming weather on poor African farm management, I would take a good look at what happened to FIFA in the last 20 years.
Half of Bangladesh is built on a FLOOD PLAIN. It’s not surp[rising it floods, the the nature of this geographical feature. The enviromentalists [sic] are dishonest in using it as an example of the ill effects of global warming.
At the end of COP21 they will all declare success and give a few $billion to the UN to waste. SUCCESS
Well, Mr. Modi’s stance likely went over like a fart in a minibus. Instead of asking for climate reparations, he’s asking The UN to repair the climate. Christiana’s scold-o-meter is off-scale by now, how dare some ask to actually end poverty???!!!
What is climate summit? Talking on climate change but draft is made relating global warming. Climate change is not global warming. India is affected by climate change and pollution and not by global warming. Carbon dioxide is not a pollution. Yesterday I saw a report relating to former Governor of a state in USA equating CO2 to carbon monoxide. Even the Paris draft all those effects refer to climate change and pollution only and nothing to do with global warming and emissions. China is also travelling in the same boat. People are suffering from pollution and floods due to human created problems over the years — poor town planning, encroachment of water bodies/drains/rivers and green belt. These are nothing to do with CO2. Urban heat island is a major issue. Paris draft has not dealt on these issues:
Paris draft — Recognizing the intrinsic relationship between climate change, poverty eradication and equitable access to sustainable development, and reaffirming responses to climate change should aim to meet the specific needs and concerns arising from the adverse impacts of response measures–.
They used all types of jargons: creation of decent work and quality jobs development priorities; safeguarding food security and ending hunger, and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems to the adverse impacts of climate change; promoting, protecting and respecting all human rights, the right to health, and the rights of indigenous peoples, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and under occupation, and the right to development, in accordance with their obligations, as well as promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women, when taking action to address climate change, Noting the needs and integrity of terrestrial ecosystems, oceans and Mother Earth. –
All these refer to “climate change and pollution aspects only” and are nothing to do with the global warming and emission control.
However agreement to be signed related to three scenarios of limiting global temperature rise above pre-industrial levels [below 2 °C, 1.5 °C, and below 1.5°C]. All this refers only global warming and yet they are shy of using this word and instead used climate change which has broader issues that were not dealt in the draft has the ramifications cited under jargon mentioned above. This is how UN is wasting public money for honey moon trips in every two years fooling the public.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
It’s more like Paris “daft” rather than “draft”.
Sounds like the usual UN claptrap to me!
I salute the wisdom of my Commonwealth colleagues Dr. Reddy
But we’re told that renewables are now so cheap that they can compete against fossil fuels!!
Surely India would want to embrace them without subsidies?
We’ll know that a renewable is competitive as soon as the “useful idiots” are being convinced to protest en masse against it. Just as they are currently railing against all big hydro projects.
I anticipate living long enough to see protests against “big solar”.
Of course, if people had any idea how much it was costing them personally, already (per watt and per tonne of CO2 avoided) – then they’d be protesting already.
That statement comes from the same people that believe in a CO2 control knob for climate, right?
I rest my case.
Rocky
“That statement comes from the same people that believe in a single control knob (CO2) for climate, right?”
All Fixed.
And now we rest our case.
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India has an over population problem just like most of the world. That is the problem that really needs to be solved and it can be solved. Climate on the other hand is caused by the sun and the oceans and no one knows how to change it. There is no real evidence that CO2 affects climate. They have yet to decide upon the optimum climate let alone how to achieve it. The USA is deep in debt and needs to get out of it first before they can consider helping other nations with anything.
And you solve overpopulation by defeating poverty, educating women, and creating jobs that will allow a middle-class lifestyle. Every. Single. Place. where this is done, the birth rate drops within a generation or two to barely replacement. DEFEATING POVERTY IS THE ANSWER.
As usual though, this is all rhetoric. I don’t see anyone about to cut that check for $2.5 trillion–do YOU?
You must begin to solve the population right away because it takes so long to take effect. It is a matter of decreasing the birth rate enough so that the population gradually decreases. A big upfront effort to eliminate poverty may actually increase the birth rate and make the problem worse before it can get better.
How do you plan to defeat poverty? Just injecting funds will make some rich and will be of some help to others but it will not defeat poverty.
The population density of India is comparable to that of the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan. And it is vastly lower than that of Monaco, Hong Kong, Bermuda and Singapore. The difference is GDP. India’s GDP is far lower than that of all these countries.
Stop with the density bs. India has 4 times more people than the U.S. all packed into 1/3 the land area. That’s overpopulation.
The US has about 35 persons per sq km and a GDP per capita of about $54,000. Monaco has almost 19,000 persons per sq km and a GDP per capita of about $79,000. India has about 436 persons per sq km and GDP per capita of less than $6000.
Is the problem “overpopulation” or “GDP”?
436 people per sq km is overpopulation. What would your per capita GDP be with only 100 people per sq mile? How about $26,000! You are seem to be saying a person isn’t fat they just aren’t tall enough. India has too many people, period.
Sorry, 100 people per sq km (not mile)
Tom: If you had a quarter the people, they would be performing roughly one quarter of the work, so your GDP per capita would be unchanged.
How about you get off your Neo-Colonial high horse and let India decide what India’s population should be? Their population can be fed quite neatly at existing rates of farming, and there’s really no other way to measure “overpopulation” that isn’t arbitrary and capricious.
In Australia every time you want to speak to a company all you get is a indian call center powered by coal
And sometimes you receive “cold calls” saying that my PC has a virus and we want to fix it. I like to keep them on the line asking silly questions like “What O/S am I running?” and then I pull out the big guns and state “By the way. My PC is actually turned off. How do you know it has a virus? Do you know the computer/network name I gave it at install time?” CLICK! Brrrrrrrrrrrr….
This happened to me when I was visiting my 84 year-old mum for a couple of weeks last year. I said, “Hang on, I’ll go look at the computer” let the phone off the hook and went back to watching the football with my mum. I told her about it and now she does it when they ring.
“In Australia every time you want to speak to a company all you get is a indian call center powered by coal.”
Does that mean that Australians aren’t as bright as Indians?
India has so many people in its middle class (that is, people who earn more than the average Australian wage) they outnumber the total Oz population, yet they put out the alms bowl …? Is that hubris, chutzpah or an organized crime?
I think it is the more than 250 million in abject poverty, earning less than $1.25/day, that results in them holding out the alms bowl…
To be fair to the greens they want to reduce ‘everyone’ to subsidence style of living as a means to punish ‘evil humans’ for the sins against the planet and because their hate of modernity . So it no just the poor Indians they want to retain in a short and grime life which this it reality , has opposed to their fantasy, of rural life pre-industrialisation. They want ‘everyone’ to have to live that life too.
Everyone but “them”…
Pat,
You’ve got it off pat!
(sorry . . .)
– but plus several shedloads, as it is – emphatically – not meant to apply to ‘them’ – our demigods.
Auto
. .Agenda 21
they should stop all that open caste system mining
How can Kerry promise 700 million in assistance right now with the US 20 trillion in debt? It would be laughable if he was not serious.
India needs birth controls as many other tropical nations.
History shows us that as a population becomes richer, the birth rate falls. So the greens should hope that India becomes wealthy, right?
Dahl Tarka (spiced lentils) may have something to do with it!
As India’s vast population consumes copious quantities of soluble fibrous vegetable protein (including chick peas and lentils), maybe the flatulence causing oligosaccharides within them are the real threat to civilisation that none of us had ever considered before. Emitting high amounts of “evil” CO2 through Indian people’s bottoms is, after all, the root cause for all this intolerable heat that we’re (not) getting.
Maybe the self-appointed elders at COP21 should demand that India stops eating pulses. There, global warming crisis averted.
(sarc)
If I were a leader of a developing country or Pacific Island, I would have recorded everything said at cop21 as evidence in the biggest international lawsuit for reparations the world will ever see. Previously rich countries would be forced to pay astronomical indemnities or argue that, after all, AGW wasn’t that bad … Call their bluff.
In India the main problems were created by western multinational companies. Among these is the pollution — air, water, soil & food. The so called green revolution technology dumped on India and created pollution and thus created new health hazards and drug manufacturing industries & hospitals and again they introduced pollution & new diseases. Now, they introduced genetically modified seed. From all these MNC are benefited and farmers are committing suicides with huge cost of investment going up and up.
Because of this western MNC groups pressurised UN to shift the environmental movement to global warming and carbon credit policy. Now, what is the need to blame developing countries like India. Population is growing and we are producing the food to meet their needs — around 40% to 50% of the produce is going as waste — due to non-availability of storage and timely transport facilities under highly variable weather conditions. Indian government has increased the area under irrigation to produce the required food.
Westerners are dumping poor quality technology and meeting their greed. See now the IT sector with high power consumption. Who are the beneficiaries? Western MNCs, is it not so.
The MNCs are achieving their goal with the tacit support from corrupt politicians-bureaucrats-scientific groups.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
“Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
December 10, 2015 at 5:05 am
See now the IT sector with high power consumption.”
That is not the issue as “emissions” are “exported” (Offset?). The “issue” is connectivity and security. And most people wonder why their bank accounts (etc) are plundered. ANZ Bank did this in 1998 (Sheesh what a crock that was. First bank in Aus to “go online”…ha ha ha ha ha ha…serial you should have seen the “experts” install that system. Yes. I did! South Yarra. And had a good old laugh!) and they lost many customers.
Thats on top of the money we (UK) bung them for..er – space research?
In rough numbers, if only the US was to pay, that would be a 3 or 4 tanks of gasoline per year from each of us.
Since it’s so little, would you mind paying for my share?
When the Fed catches up on its debt, about $60,000 for each person with about $180,000 in additional future promises made without funding, then I might consider such a transfer. Until then, the Fed should not make any additional unfunded promises, and should not expect me to participate if they do.
India is just playing the climate hustle game. They, along with many others are there for the dough, simply pretending it’s about “climate change”. In the end, they’ll “settle” for a lower amount, complaining that it’s not nearly enough. It is still extortion.
Congratulations India!
My only problem is that Canada’s new Boy Wonder PM (part time drama teacher, retired) will pony up. He is known locally as Shiny Pony after all.
Here in the US, we know that PM Great Hair is known as “Shiny Pony”, but the term baffles us. Could you let us in on how “Shiny Pony” came about, what it originally was in reference to, and how it came to be that your PM got tagged with it.
Remember that Canadians speak Canadian, Americans speak American, the English speak English, and the Aussies speak Australian. Trouble starts when someone assumes that we speak the same language.
Thanks.
It’s a moniker bestowed upon him by Ezra Levant in 2011, and is a reference to an old My Little Pony commercial that rhapsodizes on their “so soft” hair.
Thanks, Monna.
It’s worse than I thought.
I don’t understand. Isn’t India currently in the position that climate alarmists want the rest of the world to be after energy prices soar in the world?