Emission cuts-fundamental shift in India’s stance

US is praising India’s Environment minister for facilitating the climate deal at Cancun and expressed commitment for accepting emission cuts voluntarily in the future. Unfortunately, there are no targets, but only pledges by the rich countries to reduce future emissions. Without any legally binding emission cuts, nothing is going to happen. There will be constraints only on the developing countries and their developments will be on hold or will be economically not viable for global trade.

Are the voluntary pledges of the rich and polluting countries adequate enough to prevent the dangerous climate changes we are already witnessing today? The threat is for real. It is reported that the world is already emitting 48 billion tons of CO2 equivalent of Green House Gases. To keep the world below 2 degrees C temperature increase, the global emissions must drop to 44 billion tons of CO2 equivalent by 2020.

The world leaders should see the clear writing on the wall that the climate change is already ON, and whatever is planned to be done by 2020 should be done right now. It is now or never.

May be, the world leaders are realizing slowly that the climate change is the naturally occurring cyclic phenomenon and nothing can really be done or achieve by GH gas emission cuts at the cost of much needed global economical development