NEW DELHI: Hitting out at the US for painting India as an "intransigent actor" in the fight against climate change, environment minister Jairam Ramesh accused Washington of consistently changing goalpost in the fight and termed it as "height of hypocrisy".
He made it clear that India will not yield to any pressure at the upcoming Copenhagen Summit on climate change in December as it is not ready to "compromise our developmental activities and take any legal binding cuts as desired by the developed nations."
He rejected allegations that India was holding up talks on climate change by not accepting binding emission while emphasising that its greenhouse gas emissions are in no way near those of Western countries or even China.
"They (US) have changed the goalpost consistently as far as climate change is concerned and are trying to paint India as an intransigent actor for creating global warming. It is height of hypocrisy," he said at a function here referring to the US first agreeing to Rio Pact and then refusing to ratify Kyoto Protocol.
"I can't think of any height of hypocrisy as Rio was signed by Senior (President) George Bush while Kyoto Protocol was never ratified by junior (President George W) Bush," he said.
