New Delhi, India -- I'm borrowing my title today from Raj Chengappa, managing editor of India's biggest newsmagazine, India Today. Chengappa was describing what he thought was needed when the world gathers in Copenhagen -- and certainly what I am seeing here in India is not business as usual. Since I was last here, 18 months ago, a burgeoning youth climate movement has arrived on the scene, and they have invited Bill McKibben to come address them tomorrow. At their conference there's a new documentary, made by a couple of young filmmakers, called Why New Coal? (The answers didn't seem very convincing to either the filmmakers or the audience -- and the scenes of open-pit mining and underground fires in the Indian coal fields at Dhanbad show that, no matter where you mine it, coal is not clean!)
And in spite of the news headlines suggesting that conversations between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Indian Environmental Secretary Jairam Ramesh were a "clash," I actually think that the outlines of a deal, either at Copenhagen or after, are emerging here -- if the U.S. will listen and if India will frame its concerns as an offer, not a rebuttal.
The Post is right when it says that Ramesh is saying, "India would not commit to a deal that would require it to meet targets to reduce emissions." But that doesn't mean that Ramesh was not also right in saying "It is not true that India is running away from mitigation." India has an approach, if not yet a commitment -- and I think it's worth our considering it -- and encouraging India to really develop this as a proposal. There are four ingredients:
- India agreed at the G-8 to a 2-degree limit on climate change as a global target -- and India understands that such a 2-degree target likely translates to no more than two tons of CO2 per person by 2050. (The U.S. is currently at about 16 tons per person, India at 1.2 tons.)
I suspect one challenging aspect of the negotiations in Copenhagen is that India probably wants to discuss these points in reverse of the order I've listed them: finance and technology first, pathway second, and ultimate target last. The U.S. and Europe probably want to go in the opposite order. But that's what diplomats are for -- so let's not panic about this question.
A more serious question is this: Are the U.S. and the other industrial nations prepared to take responsibility for bringing their emissions down really fast?
Not if the U.S. Congress has to lead, based on its performance so far.
However good President Obama may be, and however much progress we have made, we are still the world's biggest atmospheric thief.