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India defends actions on climate change, but says coal to stay
Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh on Monday said the South-Asian power could be more affected than any other country by the consequences of climate change as he laid out his plans for reducing India's own greenhouse-gas emissions.
Ramesh said India could only go so far in curbing its own emissions as its surging economy is confronted with massive demand for new energy. He insisted coal power would remain a 'main-stay' of India's energy generation for many years to come.
'For a country of 1.3 billion people ... it is the height of foolish romance to think solar and wind will meet our energy requirements,' Ramesh said, predicting India would keep generating more than 50 per cent of its electricity from coal in future.
Speaking at the start of high-level talks at a UN climate change summit in Mexico, Ramesh said India was under serious threat from a warming planet that could disrupt rain patterns and affect the agriculture industry, on which so much of its population relies.
'India is perhaps the most vulnerable country in the world to climate change' Ramesh said.
Ministers from more than 190 countries arrived in Cancun earlier Tuesday, hoping to bridge their differences and reach a global agreement by Friday that could help curb climate change.
Ramesh slammed industrial nations that have been blocking an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, which puts limits on wealthy country emissions but expires in 2012. Asked how he would characterize the talks on Kyoto in Cancun, Ramesh said 'disturbing'.
Still, India is hoping to play something of a brokering role at the summit between wealthy and developing countries that have long been at odds over how to tackle global warming.
India offered a proposal ahead of the Cancun conference that would increase the transparency of developing countries' actions on climate change.
The United States, which has made improving transparency one of its key demands for a wider deal in Cancun, welcomed India's proposal, which would have all countries that contribute more than 1% to the world's carbon emissions submit regular reports to the United Nations.
US climate envoy Todd Stern on Tuesday said the issue of transparency was 'lagging way behind' progress made on other issues. There was support for India's proposal, 'but not from everybody who matters yet'.
Stern was indirectly nudging China, which has said it will only allow scrutiny of climate projects that receive foreign aid.
Ramesh said his country was making 'low-carbon growth' a centrepiece of its economic development in the coming years, promising to cut its emissions per unit of economic output between 20-25 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020.
To meet that goal, Ramesh said India was dependent on the development of controversial technologies that could help reduce the impact of coal power on global warming.
The United States has long resisted pressure to tackle its own massive emissions by insisting that developing countries like India and China commit to their own binding targets.
Source:monstersandcritics.com