Against the backdrop of India's insistence that it would not accept any legally binding emission reductions, a top US Senator has said the Obama Administration needs to build a "flexible" climate partnership with New Delhi to address the issue of global warming.
Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the recent visit of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to India offered a fresh reminder of the challenges being faced in this regard.
"India's rhetoric was as strident as we ever heard China's, so we need to build a climate partnership with India, too; working from the same principles, but respecting the massive differences," Kerry told reporters yesterday.
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had said after his meeting with Clinton that India would not accept any legally binding emission reductions but made it clear that the country was not running away from its responsibilities on the issue.
"If India took full advantage of its energy efficiency opportunities, experts say it could substantially reduce its construction of new power plants," Kerry said. "Some even suggest that it wouldn't have to build another power plant for a decade, if it took advantage of those energy efficiencies."
"Ultimately our climate diplomacy depends on building a framework that is flexible enough to accommodate individual countries' wants and needs, but firm enough to bring all of us on board and hold all nations accountable," he said.
"That is the challenge (of building of a framework) we face, and it is one that's going to be made easier as people everywhere begin to realise that in the 21st century, the challenge of developing clean-energy sources is not a brake on economic growth. It is the engine," Kerry said.
He noted that the State Department-funded joint efficiency labs are already working in Delhi and Mumbai and "they will soon expand their collaboration to all of the states in India."
"... India's geography and grid suggest that we focus even more on thermal technology, which could provide 10 per cent of India's electricity as soon as a decade from now," Kerry said.
Arguing that there is no way the US acting alone can solve this problem, he said "so we have to have China. We have to have India. We have to have the less developed countries as they bring their power grids online — and they should."
"We all recognise and respect that they have to grow their economies, they have to grow jobs, they have to take care of their people. All we're asking is that they do so in ways that don't replicate the mistakes that the industrial world made for the last 150 years."
Kerry asserted that the US has the responsibility to try to help some of those who cannot afford any new technology. "...So what we're seeing is that it is critical — we believe — I believe the United States has to lead."
Asked about Ramesh's statement on climate change, Kerry told reporters at the National Press Club that this is not new. "I did not read that as a new statement at all."
"The Indians and the Chinese and other less-developed countries have continually said, we're not signing up to the same deal that you are, because that's what we all agreed on in Kyoto. It's what we agreed on Bali. It's what we agreed on in Poznan, in Poland. And it's true," he said.
"The framework which was created back in Berlin prior to even going to Kyoto in the 1990s was that the less-developed countries are over here in a group and the major emitting countries are over here in a group. They're called the annex- one countries," he said, adding that things have changed since then and China is now the number-one emitter in the world.
"The bottom line is that India, I believe, was simply reasserting the notion that it's not part of the annex one. I don't think that means India is not going to embrace new technologies or new energy efficiencies or other things; that they won't even embrace a goal that they set," Kerry observed.
China and India, he said, do not have to sign up to the exact same percentage "that we're going to in the exact same manner. I believe they do have to come and set out what their plan is and what their reductions will be, and they have to be measurable, reportable and verifiable."
"That's the key to Copenhagen (talks later this year). That's the key to success. And that will still work within the framework of the language the Indians are currently using," Kerry said.
