There are times when it’s great to cheer blindly for your side. India vs Australia in Sydney for instance. There are other times, though, when things are not so simple, when a sensible point of view doesn’t necessarily fall neatly into an Us vs Them dichotomy. Classic example? The climate change debate.
The problem of global warming involves many issues  environmental justice, social justice, fairness, technology, science, population growth, generational equity and so on. It is not surprising, therefore, that there are many different points of view on what needs to be done to make a global solution possible. Yet when Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh holds forth on how the US demonstrates the “heights of hypocrisy”, or calls a two degree rise in global temperatures an “aspirational goal,” he chooses to take a stance that takes us nowhere near a solution and does not advance any interests  whether Indian or global.
I am not suggesting the United States or other developed countries are free of bias or hypocrisy. It is also absolutely true that development and poverty alleviation must be priorities for India, and therefore we will have to increase our energy consumption significantly. Yet for us to claim that global warming is only a problem caused by developed nations and must therefore be solved by them is unhelpful and ultimately counterproductive.
The facts are straightforward. Climate change is as much a problem of continued emissions today as it is about past, accumulated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And India today is the world’s fourth largest emitter. We are also in a part of the world that will be affected most by global warming. The two degree number that our minister pours scorn on is a realistic limit beyond which adapting to climate change will be extremely costly for everyone  including and perhaps especially India. Put simply, this is not a problem that will go away unless both the West and countries like India and China take action. Our notions of what is ‘fair’ or who should ‘move first’ will not change that fundamental fact.
In such a situation the right thing for us to do, is to honestly assess where we can act and take measures accordingly. If we do that, we are in a position to put pressure on other nations. The alternative is for us to call the US hypocritical, for them to call us obstructionist, for the problem to remain unsolved and ultimately  for both to pay heavily for the consequences. Indeed to an extent we are paying already, as we struggle to adjust to shifting rainfall patterns that affect crop yields in North India or rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers from which spring the rivers that are the very lifeblood of millions.
Unfortunately for cheerleaders of our negotiating position, we need to accept that there are two Indias. There are millions who use virtually no energy, have little access to electricity, and for whom development must be the primary objective. But there is also a much smaller, and richer, India. Wealthy urban households, a booming services sector, transport and manufacturing. That’s the India that uses most of our energy and causes most of our emissions and in many cases remains inefficient and wasteful. Perhaps we should call them ‘India Shining’ because a lot of their electric lights are certainly on.
It is here that there is plenty we could do  rationalising energy prices to reduce waste, enforcing strict energy efficiency standards, investing in green lighting and building technology. All areas where we have been painfully slow in acting. A good example is the recent National Action Plan on Climate Change, which showed no willingness to commit India to any concrete targets. Instead we regularly claim the existence of unspecified large economic costs and the need for technology transfer in taking action  ignoring many studies that have found zero or negative cost energy efficiency solutions that could be implemented today.
The point is not that we should cap our emissions and curtail development. Nor am I arguing that we need to accept binding limits on total emissions in the near future. However, we do need to commit to some action. What we can do, is to look at how energy is used in India, make concrete policy choices and, most important, place self-imposed, clear targets on the table. Doing so allows us to demonstrate global leadership, makes economic sense, places pressure on the West and moves us towards a solution. The alternative? Well it’s not pleasant  either for Us or Them.
The writer is doing a PhD in energy and environment policy at Stanford University
URL: http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20090807/1241/top-deny-deny-deny.html