India won’t sign any binding carbon reductions. They’d be crazy to, just when they’ve finally thrown off much of the socialism that has held them back for decades, and are finally bringing their people out of poverty, particularly when it’s based on flimsy science, and economic ignorance. The Warm-monger religion demands that they remain in poverty for the good of Gaia, but they’ll stick with their traditional beliefs, and fully bellies.
[Update a couple minutes later]
More from Shikha Dalmia:
The resulting emission cuts won’t even make a dent in global temperatures. India’s per capita energy consumption is 15 times less than America’s and half of China’s—the two biggest polluters. To be sure, President Obama is poised to pledge to cut U.S. carbon emissions 80% below 2005 by 2050 at Copenhagen. But it’s an empty promise because there is little to zero chance that he will be able to get Congress to go along. China too announced plans—modest by all accounts—to curb its emissions. So India will certainly face pressure at the conference to act, despite the fact that bigger polluters won’t.
But as a developing country, India can least afford to give up its right to consume as much energy as is necessary to deliver all Indians a living standard comparable to the one that rich countries take for granted. There is every reason to believe that the new License Raj will damage India’s economy every bit as much as the old one in the preliberalization days, when India’s growth rate remained stuck at around 2%. This would be unfortunate at any time, but especially now, when the West itself is in the middle of a huge rethinking on this issue.
Yup.
President Obama is poised to pledge to cut U.S. carbon emissions 80% below 2005 by 2050 at Copenhagen.
And if he breaks that pledge, if we don’t meet that 2050 goal, he’ll do what — resign?
Mike G. points to exactly why the pledge appeals to Obama – he gets to feel virtuous at no cost.
India, however, is investing in thorium fuel cycle nuclear reactors in order to acquire a future energy base not dependent on fossil fuels, which India lacks.
Many of the same strategies for reducing atmospheric CO2 also work to help avoid:
(1) Ocean acidification
(2) Nasty non-CO2 by-products from coal burning
(3) Dependence on petroleum found underneath lands governed by dictators such as Chavez or Islamicists such as the Saudi royal family
Even if you dis-believe the climate change models, climate change arguments can be used to win Left votes for more nuclear power as part of a package deal.
Even Charles Krauthammer favors a carbon tax or gasoline tax for geo-political reasons other than climate change.
Grrr! CO2 is not a pollutant! Even if the willfully stupid describe it as such and even if they pass laws about it.
India’s open wood and dung fires cause much more pollution than the whole of the US power generation industry with orders of magnitude more effect on people’s health, and yet idiots bandy about terms like ‘biggest polluters’ willy-nilly.
Always, always pick them up on it.
Bill White says:
“Many of the same strategies for reducing atmospheric CO2 also work to help avoid:”
The problem is that global warming advocates are actually detracting from the overall environmentalist agenda by focusing specifically on the green house gases. They expend all their energy and political capital with India and China to curtail specifically C02 production. They should be initially focused like we were here in American with reductions in real aerosol pollutants before getting their panties in a wade over carbon dioxide.
Josh, in my opinion it all boils down to not using coal.
Coal is the worst offender for both CO2 (if you believe in climate change) and non CO2 aerosol pollutants and things like radioactive radon gas (if you do not believe in climate change).
In a heartbeat, I would trade more nuclear power for significant restrictions on coal burning and I say so on Daily Kos, regularly.
However, for nuclear power I am talking about thorium based fuel cycles which avoids the Yucca Mountain problem and which allows us to digest existing stockpiles of long half life waste.
As a fringe benefit, thorium processing of nuclear waste yields palladium and rhodium, two PGM metals Dennis Wingo wants to mine from lunar asteroidal fragments.
thorium based fuel cycles which avoids the Yucca Mountain problem
The “Yucca Mountain Problem” is mostly this fixation of burying waste. So don’t bury it! Leave it on the surface in armored, shielded canisters. Without hundreds of meters of overlying rock, waste heat gets dissipated easily, so the canisters can be packed closely together.
The only reason I can think this would be problematic with the existing nuclear fuel cycle would be a potential long term shortage of zirconium for the fuel element cladding. Uranium itself shouldn’t be a problem for many generations, especially if seawater uranium extraction becomes competitive.
By 2050 the population of the world is expected to be about 4x richer, per capita and adjusted for inflation, compared to today. India will probably be significantly more than 4x richer than it is today, per capita.
To my mind it’s incredibly difficult to pitch the notion that putting in place economically constraining CO2 restrictions today will be more useful in dealing with any potential negative effects of climate change than simply directly dealing with those effects with the benefit of several decades more advanced technology and a 4x wealthier population. Not to mention the many not-inconsiderate benefits of a 4x wealthier population.
And by 2100 that 4x should be 16x, which makes the math on CO2 reduction today even harder to swallow.
P.S. I forgot to mention. I’m sure India (and China) has an implicit understanding of these dynamics, which I think underlies their hesitance about limiting Carbon emissions.
Bill says:
“In a heartbeat, I would trade more nuclear power for significant restrictions on coal burning and I say so on Daily Kos, regularly”
There are so many things that China and India could do to improve the quality of air that don’t require extreme belt tightening restrictions and exotic power generation techniques. Look at the improvement to the quality of air in the U.S. of the last 40 years and tell me that China and India couldn’t do the same. Your talking about potential problems that may exist 100 years down the road and technologies that will take 30-50 years to implement. They can start to implement policies and technologies that exist today to remedy a great many of the quality of air issues that do represent a major problem in my mind — cancer, birth defects, and tigers oh my. For instance, an Indian friend of mine told me that many of the auto richsaw drivers will often run Kerosene through their engines in order save money instead of using gasoline as intended. On a busy day around an Indian town your head will get dizzy from all the smoke and fumes in the air. Just simply imposing fines on drivers that don’t run the proper fuel mix would possibly be a good first step. You can have a thorium reactor on every block if you want and it won’t solve anything if you don’t first address that simple issue and those like it.