Keith Schneider is a long-time National correspondent for the New York Times. He is also an international correspondent for Circle of Blue, a water-energy-climate research group.
Keith has traveled widely in Asia and elsewhere covering the story of the developing world’s increasing appetite for energy and industry, and the impacts on natural systems that follow.
I talked to Keith, and others, in researching my upcoming Yale Climate Connections video, which will be about the new US/China agreement on climate and greenhouse gases.
I think it’s one of the most important pieces I’ve done, and I hope it will be posted in a week or so.
Meanwhile, in our wide ranging chat, I asked Keith about a question we’ve heard in the wake of the new agreement – “What about India? Aren’t their emissions going to be a problem?”
That’s quite the gloomy outlook for India and for the world.
India and the rest of the developing world could overwhelm any concerted effort by China & the West to clean up our act.
Morin,
by “effort” you mean rhetoric? Well… we are not even slowing down global emissions, so there is really no effort. What “West” is doing, is exporting the emissions to “East”. But this is pure economics, almost nothing to do with climate policy.
Best,
Alex
It seems India do not want to get drawn into hard committals at this point and feel they have a right to some independence on the matter. Russia also produces nearly India’s amount of CO2 and there is not much talk of pressure on Russia, maybe because of the Ukraine situation.
To put things in perspective China and the U.S were estimated (by the European Commission and Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency) to have emitted around 44% of the worlds
CO2 emissions between them during 2012 as opposed to India’s 6% (India at a very comparative low per capita rate).
The terrible pollution in Delhi and other Indian cities is well publicized and they have to deal with it (just like China).
Remembering that president Obama has only just opened up on climate change (and there is no guarantee of continuance after the next election in 2016 – unless the republicans undergo a remarkable paradigm shift), we are still in the early days, we look, hope and pray that China and the U.S produce, and eventually India will fall in line.
“The world must accept that India’s per capita carbon emissions will need to rise rapidly if it is to eliminate poverty, the environment minister said”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/India-says-carbon-emissions-will-grow-as-it-drives-to-beat-poverty/articleshow/45387041.cms
“We don’t want a mitigation centric deal that is being pushed by developed countries as we want to grow to end poverty”, said head of the Indian delegation Susheel Kumar.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/India-says-five-pillars-of-strength-key-to-clinch-climate-deal/articleshow/45391794.cms
the next video will touch on this.
The key players in climate talks are China, India and Europe as between them they have half of the worlds population, the majority of its wealth and industry and they understand the problem. http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/blog/un-climate-change-negotiations
“Slowly but surely, we will stop buying coal and oil from the CRUA countries, and the problem will begin to be resolved”
We’re 20 years past “slowly”
What plan is going to be quick? I have the gravest doubts that the USA is going to stop developing coal and oil in the foreseeable future. It is a fossil fuel economy and there are massive companies committed to keeping it that way. If China, India and Europe went alone with a good scheme the rest of the world would follow.
Key players are you and me first..our leaders will follow and a critical mass demonstration of the myriad clean energy benefits will then allow under developed countries to bypass the fossil fuel mistake. Western democracy has failed continously and culpably for 20 years to take any meaningful action. Its up to us , not them.
Keith Schneider’s reporting I find always has excellent depth and insight to it. India has skipped the 20th century telephone line model to the cell phone model. As Keith says they can skip some of the resource intensive development models of the 20th century. Hydropower is one area that they are developing rapidly though Keith may say not as responsibly as they could.
Renewables are already closing in or even surpassing fossil fuels in cost efficiency in some places, but they are not, in general, clearly less expensive to implement. Yet. The industry is in its infancy, and we can look forward to continued price competitiveness. Eventually.
But you can’t make new a new tech field truly efficient until the new tech has been deployed(!) and the field becomes mature. This takes years and is true universally. We haven’t deployed squat, to be honest.
India would LOVE to deploy new clean renewable tech if it was cheaper than old filthy fossil fuel tech. Is it not our responsibility, as the world’s greatest technological innovator, to develop this field? We – Americans – have dumped the most CO2 into the atmosphere, after all.
How can we talk about not developing and deploying the renewable tech we all know we need because India might burn more oil or coal? Is this not the most irresponsible and short-sighted argument ever? If we had been doing the responsible thing all along, the field would already be maturing, and India would be choosing renewables NOW.