Growing Pains

Meeting with India's Environment Minister, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has run into a bit of a snag in trying to convince India to accept carbon production limits.

India will resist pressure from the Obama administration to accept legally binding caps on its carbon emissions, the South Asian nation’s environment minister told visiting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have been among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions,” Jairam Ramesh said at a meeting today with Clinton in Gurgaon near New Delhi, according to a statement he issued to reporters. “And as if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours.”

Clinton is on a state visit to India meant to showcase trade and security ties and seek common ground on climate change and arms control. India has said it will reject any new treaty to limit global warming that makes it reduce emissions because that will undermine the country’s energy consumption, transportation and food security.

The climate-change bill that passed the U.S. House on June 26 calls for carbon-based tariffs if countries like China and India don’t adopt their own greenhouse gas controls by 2020. The U.S. said its push for higher environmental standards is not aimed at limiting the economic progress of nations, including India.

“No one wants to in any way stall or undermine the economic growth that is necessary to lift millions of more people out of poverty,” Clinton said at a joint news conference with Ramesh in Gurgaon. “But we also believe that there is a way to eradicate poverty and develop sustainably that will lower significantly the carbon footprint of the energy that is produced and consumed to fuel that growth.”

Which is polite diplo-speak for "Screw you guys." India is basically calling out the Obama administration on Waxman-Markey bill, saying that they not only believe that that there's no way the US will ever put carbon tariffs on India, but that they don't believe climate change legislation will ever pass here. The international language is business, and there's no way America is going to threaten that.

“Legally binding” emissions targets won’t be acceptable for India, Ramesh said. “It’s going to be impossible to sell in our democratic system.”

Clinton said she is confident that the U.S. and India can devise a plan that changes the way energy is produced, consumed and conserved, helping to create additional investments and jobs. The two countries must also expand the use of renewable energy in India, especially for rural electrification.

“There is no question that developed countries like mine must lead on this issue and for our part, under President Obama, we are not only acknowledging our contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, we are taking steps to reverse its ill effects,” Clinton said. “It is essential for major developing countries like India to also lead because over 80 percent of the growth in future emissions will be from developing countries.”

Obama's point of view is that India and China having a third of the world's population means that those two countries will have a massive effect on the carbon footprint of the world in the future. India's point is that America has a massive effect on the world's carbon footprint NOW, and by having that growth over the last sixty years has put America where is is today.

However, India's major point is that since Kyoto, the United States has zero credibility on carbon limits. None. Zero. Zilch. We certainly don't have the credibility to pull the paternalistic big brother colonialist crap on them, not when we told the rest of the world to kiss off at Kyoto. 183 other countries ratified Kyoto. We never did. Even China and India ratified it. Why should India bow to U.S. pressure when our word on climate change agreements is literally worthless?

Until the U.S. gets serious and passes cap and trade legislation, the rest of the world will simply smile and nod at our desires for what the planet needs to do, and go on without us. Should Waxman-Markey become law, then we can ask other countries to go along.

We're all in this together.