New Delhi, May 28: Indians eat less meat and so are more restrained in emission than people in the West. This is what Manmohan Singh will tell the G8 summit next week if some in his government have their way.
And that the country belches less gas because its elite is used to eating leftovers.
The environment ministry doesn’t picture this as an after-dinner joke at the high table of the world’s richest nations to which the Prime Minister has been invited.
It sees this as a policy statement against trying too hard to cut the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs), a subject certain to animate discussions at the meeting in Germany.
The German foreign and environment ministers, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Sigmar Gabriel, are expected to push India and China, another guest at the summit, to cut their GHG emissions. These heat-trapping gases fuel global warming and cause climate change, one of the most pressing world issues.
But environment secretary Pradipto Ghosh explained why Delhi should treat all such lectures as so much emission — er, hot air. India’s hands are cleaner than the West’s, he said, because its elite is far more environmentally conscious.
Indians don’t use and throw away; they “recycle” everything from clothes to shoes to food. Old clothes are handed down from the elder to the younger until they end up in ragpickers’ hands.
“I bet that even in Mukesh Ambani’s house, they recycle commodities as much as I do in mine. We do not, by tradition and conditioning, believe in conspicuous consumption,” Ghosh said.
Such an argument might stick in the throat of the Prime Minister, who last week rebuked the rich for their lavish parties and showy weddings.
But Ghosh has an answer to every question. Tell him that India contributes nearly 5 per cent to global emissions, and he insists that its per capita emission is far lower than the West’s.
Which brings the issue back to meat-eating. Even the elite in India is restrained in meat consumption, Ghosh said, and claimed that vegetarian societies contribute little to gas emissions.
And then the clincher: Indians use fuel-efficient automobiles rather than fume-spewing ones. That should make truck drivers happier than the Richard Gere-Shilpa Shetty peck at an AIDS function.
So, India will not accept any proposal to cut emission if that hits its GDP. “And any legally mandated GHG mitigation efforts would adversely affect our growth,” Ghosh said.
His logic inverts that of the US, the world’s biggest polluter. President George Bush has rejected the Kyoto Protocol that caps emissions till 2012, citing the harm to US economy and the “unfair” exclusion of China and India.
“We have done more than the developed countries. Our policies have shown results and by 2020, there would be a 25 per cent reduction in our GHG emissions,” Ghosh said.
But according to a ministry expert, India’s emissions will more than double by 2020.
The German foreign minister said: “At a meeting last year in Helsinki, European and Asian leaders promised new carbon reduction goals. However, they set no firm targets, facing resistance from China and India.”
In recent years, global warming has stopped being an academic issue. Its effects are showing in melting glaciers, floods, droughts and more frequent hurricanes. Experts have drawn disaster charts by the decade and degree Celsius.
