Last week’s Washington meeting on climate change, called by the US President, Mr George Bush, and attended by 17 of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, focussed once more on the US’ unwillingness to accept mandatory limits on carbon-emissions as opposed to voluntary restraints. At the two-day conference, Mr Bush said that Washington was all for the development of “new environmental technology and voluntary measures” to tackle the climate-chang e problem, and that his objective was to “leave the debates of the past behind and reach a consensus on the way forward”.

Those attending the meeting were, not surprisingly, unmoved by Mr Bush’s homily because what they saw was one more attempt by the Americans to derail the ongoing efforts under the UN’s auspices to address climate change, the next meeting slated to be held in Bali later this year. All along, the Americans have refused to be tied down by carbon-emission caps. During the G-8 meeting held earlier this year, Mr Bush flatly rejected the German Chancellor, Ms Angela Merkel’s, call for an agreement on limiting the rise in global temperature to two degrees Celsius, but spoke of “a successor” to the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, which the US has not ratified and which expires in 2012. The recent Washington gathering was perhaps a first tentative shot in that direction. Washington feels the financial contribution of fast-growing economies, such as India and China, to the international effort to reduce carbon emissions, should be “proportionate” to their size and the intensity of their economic activity. This, it is felt, would reduce the burden of the developed nations — which, incidentally, have been spewing carbon into the air without any talk of restrictions since the mid-19th Century, especially during their rapid industrialisation. Clearly, this is not a fair approach because it means that latecomers to the “world of rapid growth” are penalised for something their predecessors have been largely responsible for.

As Dr Manmohan Singh has emphasised, per capita carbon emissions should form the basis for apportioning blame and for determining the contribution each country has to make to the current effort to develop clean-technology and distribute it worldwide. After all, India with 17 per cent of the world’s population emits only four per cent of global greenhouse gases; per capita that is just about a quarter of the world average and only four per cent of the corresponding US level. Nothing should be done to increase unfairly the costs of growth because, to quote Dr Singh, more and not less development is the best way for developing countries to address themselves to the issue of preserving the environment and protecting the climate. If that growth can be powered by energy-efficient methods, it will be doubly rewarding.

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