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Actually India is going to be hard-hit by climate change on several fronts. Firstly, many parts of southern India are low-lying and will be affected by rising

Actually India is going to be hard-hit by climate change on several fronts. Firstly, many parts of southern India are low-lying and will be affected by rising sea levels. Then there's the effect that India is in the tropical zone - they've already experienced devastating monsoons and this is only predicted to get worse (see Typhoon Yolanda) as time goes by. Lastly, those glaciers aren't far away, they're right there in the Himalayas - India can expect to have major problems with drinking water supplies as those glaciers melt. I'm not up with Indian politics, but I rather suspect that the current refusal to deal with emissions is more about climate change denialism mixed in with a sense of anti-colonial defiance than anything else. Don't forget that it's actually easier, politically speaking, for a developing country such as India to adopt renewable energy than it is for the developed world, goodness knows they have the engineers to make it happen! We need baseload power, our society has been constructed expecting it to exist, but as Indian populations get electricity, it's not going to be a major drama if electricity supply is intermittent - that's still way better than no electricity at all.

halfoot 13y ago
Stop with your preaching already, India has blocked the talks because developed countries have gone back on many of the promises they have agreed to keep including funding, technology transfer and their own commitments to reducing their emissions.
- demallien 13y ago
  Preaching? Hardly. My first paragraph was all about how India is going to be one if the countries hit the hardest by climate change. Once you understand that, you have to try and come up for an explanation as to why they are acting against their own interest. India needs more developed countries to stop polluting, and I really don't see how throwing a spanner in the works does not seem to me to be a winning strategy for convincing the big polluters to stop. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they have a really cunning plan, but we're talking about a country that got into a nuclear arms race with its neighbour, so I'm thinking that we're not talking about diplomatic geniuses playing a game if geopolitical chess. I would be happy to be wrong, but in the mean time my money is on the Indian government doing stupid things for base political considerations.

halfoot 13y ago

Stop with your preaching already, India has blocked the talks because developed countries have gone back on many of the promises they have agreed to keep including funding, technology transfer and their own commitments to reducing their emissions.

demallien 13y ago
Preaching? Hardly. My first paragraph was all about how India is going to be one if the countries hit the hardest by climate change. Once you understand that, you have to try and come up for an explanation as to why they are acting against their own interest. India needs more developed countries to stop polluting, and I really don't see how throwing a spanner in the works does not seem to me to be a winning strategy for convincing the big polluters to stop. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they have a really cunning plan, but we're talking about a country that got into a nuclear arms race with its neighbour, so I'm thinking that we're not talking about diplomatic geniuses playing a game if geopolitical chess. I would be happy to be wrong, but in the mean time my money is on the Indian government doing stupid things for base political considerations.