India Environment Ministry Says Climate Change Is Western Baloney

The chasm between the Indian environmental ministry and the self-evident truths of climate change widened precipitously today when Jairem Ramesh downplayed the danger of climate change and characterised fears of the Himalayan glaciers melting over the next 40 years as "... preconceived notion[s] ... based on the western media".

Speaking at an environmental threats conference in Delhi, Mr Ramesh dismissed predictions that the glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming. "We have to get out of the preconceived notion, which is based on western media, and invest our scientific research and other capacities to study Himalayan atmosphere," he said. "Science has its limitation. You cannot substitute the knowledge that has been gained by the people living in cold deserts through everyday experience."

The comments by a close ally of Sonia Gandhi, the ruling Congress party president, are likely to discourage environmental campaigners hoping that India might help forge an agreement at United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen in December.

Earlier this week, Mr Ramesh challenged Mrs Clinton over her appeal to India to embrace a lowcarbon future and not repeat the mistakes of the developed world in seeking fast industrialisation. He said India was not prepared to agree to legally binding greenhouse gas emission caps, although developed countries are not asking for such caps.

Ramesh's flippant dismissal of the matter is in stark contrast to the facts. The scientific consensus has repeatedly reaffirmed the fact that climate change can be directly attributed to the breakneck speed with which the first world industrialised in the 19th and 20th centuries. Still, the climate change denial meme survives, in large part due to the insidious, interdependent relationship of the sleazy, amoral career-politician suits in control of the state and industrial business interests whose revenue-model relies on exercising free license to poison you and spurn catastrophic climate change, all the while manufacturing reams of disposable consumer junk.

The comments seemed to drive further nails into the coffin of the notion that the Indian state might join the emerging bloc of nations committed (in theory) to sustainable industrial practices. Ramesh's faux-skepticism comes on the heels of India's refusal to agree to binding carbon caps and long-term reduction goals at the G8 summit and later at a press conference during American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's first visit to India in her capacity as chief diplomat for the Obama administration. Between today's statement and the habitual aloofness of India with regard to environmental concerns, the future of the Indian subcontinent looks hazy, stinky and possibly underwater.

(Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/43702396-77ea-11de-9713-00144feabdc0.html)

India Balks At Carbon-Caps While Bengali Tigers Dwindle

A meeting today in India between American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Indian Minister of Environment and Forests began innocently enough. It was meant to be just another dull photo op, one more chance for the venerable state figures to shake hands, mug gleaming, straight aristocratic grins for the cameras and have their pictures snapped by hordes of press photographers, this time in the ITC Green Centre, corporate headquarters of the ITC hotel chain and a "platinum certified green building", to punctuate the message that India is committed to limiting it's carbon footprint.

But then, everything went wrong.

“There is simply no case for the pressure” the U.S. is exerting, considering India produces among the lowest per capita emissions in the world, Minister Jairam Ramesh told Clinton during an unexpected discussion of climate negotiations during an event intended to showcase U.S.-Indian cooperation on clean energy at a “green” office building outside New Delhi.

“As if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours,” Ramesh said, referring to a climate-change bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on June 26 that imposes tariffs on exports from countries that refuse to adopt greenhouse gas controls by 2020.

[ . . . ]

“We look upon you suspiciously because you have not fulfilled” the commitments made by developed countries in earlier climate treaties, Ramesh told Clinton and Stern, adding there’s a “credibility crisis” that industrialised nations will have to overcome in their demands of poor nations.

This is, of course, problematic for the Obama administration, which has been pushing for emissions caps on the developing world since the G8 summit earlier this summer, likely to ramp up worldwide support for a binding cap-and-trade initiative come December at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Thus far the response from those developing nations has been tepid at best and at worst hostile -- witness China's visible absence from the G8 summit this year, along with their stated intention to increase emissions in response to demand.

The signs of ecological decay aren't far from the ITC Green Centre. You need only travel to one of India's largest swaths of protected wilderness, Panna Tiger Preserve, to see for yourself the end result of our impact on the environment.

The park, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, was part of the country's efforts to save the famous Royal Bengal Tiger from extinction.

State Minister of Forests Rajendra Shukla said that the reserve, which three years ago had 24 tigers, no longer had any.

A special census was conducted in the park by a premier wildlife institute, after the forest authorities reported no sightings of the animals for a long time.

[ . . . ]

While this controversy rages, there have been reports that another national park in Madhya Pradesh, Sanjay National Park, which was included in the tiger project three years ago, also has no tigers left.

One is lead to wonder if the iconic Bengali Tiger, symbolic of the exotic and mysterious character of India, will become another statistic, another miscalculated sacrifice for the creeping lurch toward unipolar regional dominance.

(Sources:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=aLjVkAtjjyr0
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8150382.stm)