Climate talks slow, individual nations must take action: PM

Voicing concern over "painfully slow" progress in climate talks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said the goal of stabilising global temperatures was "nowhere in sight" and pitched for individual countries to take action to increase energy efficiency.
Singh, inaugurating the Fourth Clean Energy Ministerial, also made it clear that rich nations, who were responsible for a bulk of greenhouse gas emissions, were best placed to provide workable solutions to mitigate climate change.
They (industrialised nations) also have high per capita incomes which gives them the highest capacity to bear the burden. They are technically most advanced, and to that extent best placed to provide workable solutions not only for themselves but for the whole world," he said.

At the same time, Singh said issues of financing mitigation actions to tackle climate change have been a focus of intense discussion in negotiations under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
"Unfortunately, progress in these negotiations is painfully slow. The goal of stabilising global temperatures at acceptable levels is nowhere in sight," he told Energy Ministers of 20 leading economies gathered here to discuss speedy transition to a global clean energy economy.
Singh said while it must be ensured that the UNFCCC process reaches some acceptable outcome, individual countries have to take action to increase energy efficiency and also to promote clean energy.

The Prime Minister said India was taking steps to exploit non-conventional clean energy sources like solar and wind power and has proposed to double renewable energy capacity in the country from 25,000 MW in 2012 to 55,000 MW by 2017.