WASHINGTON, D.C. — Hillary Rodham Clinton displayed the naïvete of a 19th-century Bible Society lecturer recently when she badgered India to embrace the Gospel of Global Warming by curtailing its sinful output of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) — commonly known as greenhouse gases.
One could almost hear the imperial strains of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s “Onward Christian soldiers” as the U.S. Secretary of State met with Indian officials in New Delhi late last month.
In essence, Mrs. Clinton told India’s leaders to put their nation’s prosperity on hold in order to drastically curtail their carbon dioxide emissions that she, her close political pal Al Gore and many scientists say are causing catastrophic climate changes.
The sum of the message was that India can accomplish this feat by slashing electricity output from coal-fired power plants.
Indian Environmental Minister Jairam Ramesh listened to Secretary Clinton’s plea with extreme politeness and then told her to bug off.
With more than two-thirds of India’s estimated 1.2-billion people living in abject poverty, Mr. Ramesh bluntly informed Mrs. Clinton his country had no intention of committing economic suicide by signing a global treaty to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
“There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have the lowest emissions level per capita, face to actually reduce emissions,” Mr. Rameesh told his startled visitor, adding, “and if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours.”
Despite the remarkable progress of India in the few decades since it discarded the shopworn socialist system introduced by Nehru in 1948, 800-million of its people still live on $2 a day or less.
She had marginally more luck in China where government leaders said after some delay, that they may consider setting carbon dioxide emission targets. In short, the Chinese still rejected her pleas with more nuance, but left a crack open.
Whether this spoonful of sugar was intended to sweeten the bitter draught is open to interpretation. The real reason may have been a simple calculation that soothing the top diplomat from China’s best customer can do harm. China’s cumulative trade surplus with the United States runs into the trillions of dollars.
Carbon dioxide looks different in Beijing and New Delhi than in Washington or Ottawa. Anyone who has walked through the slums of Mumbai would realize th at the real pollutants are raw sewage, tainted water, chemical discharges and cow dung. The near-permanent brown clouds stretching hundreds of miles into the Indian Ocean say that millions of Indians must burn dry cow dung to warm their hovels and cook their meals.
Leaders at the controls of India’s full-throttle economic engine understand something the Obamas and Clintons of the world just don’t get; for sheer survival, it really is the economy — stupid.
The key to cleaning up the Earth’s most polluted air lies in prosperity, not in unctuous moralizing. Indians and Chinese will demand clean air when they can afford it. They see that in the United States and Canada, corporate profits and taxes pay for cleaning up the environment —and they are willing to wait until the same thing is true for them.
Cars built and sold in North America are 98 percent less polluting than they were in 1973. Industrial smokestacks no longer spew a witches’ brew of toxicity. There is fishing and swimming in rivers where oil and chemical slicks covered the water and would catch fire — as happened in Cleveland when the Cuyahoga lit up in flames.
Chinese and Indian leaders disagree with their counterparts in Washington and Ottawa. In Beijing and New Delhi, the governing class understands that gutting their countries’ economies with cap-and-trade carbon taxes, will not scrub the air clean, but could well raise the price of actually doing so far beyond what is acceptable.
That’s why Mr. Rameesh dowsed Mrs. Clinton with the cold water of reality. In my view, it would good if he would do as much for Al Gore, Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer, respectively the former vice president, then chairman of the Hour Energy Committee, the speaker of the House, and arguably the most vehement woman in the Senate.
The quartet would be more effective in putting carbon dioxide emissions under control, if instead of posturing, they concentrating on setting doable targets and realistic ways to reach them.
Bogdan Kipling——
Bio and Archives
Bogdan Kipling is veteran Canadian journalist in Washington.
Originally posted to the U.S. capital in the early 1970s by Financial Times of Canada, he is now commenting on his eighth presidency of the United States and on international affairs.
Bogdan Kipling is a member of the House and Senate Press Galleries.
