India says that poverty is a more pressing problem than climate:
India said on Tuesday that poor nations had to give priority to ending poverty rather than fighting global warming at 189-nation U.N. climate talks criticized by environmentalists as a rambling talk shop.
Nations from Papua New Guinea to Iceland gave speeches during a novel two-day U.N. “dialogue” trying to bridge huge policy divides about how to slow a rise in temperatures that many scientists say could trigger catastrophic climate changes.
In one of the most forceful talks, India told rich nations to take the lead in cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases from fossil fuels, saying India needed more energy to end poverty for the 35 percent of its people living on less than a dollar a day.
India is completely correct, I think.
U.S. chief climate negotiator Harlan Watson reiterated that Washington has no plans to rejoin Kyoto, which President George W. Bush quit in 2001, saying it would cost jobs and wrongly excluded developing nations from a first round.
Of course, that’s true, too. This is fortunate, because it means it’s unlikely that much progress will be sacrificed in the name of “sustainability”. We’re not going to develop and deploy carbon sequestering technologies by living on a big hippie commune in harmony with nature like our ancestors allegedly did.
U.N. reports say developing nations such as India are likely to be among the hardest hit by rising temperatures that many scientists say could raise sea levels by up to a meter by 2100 and cause floods, droughts and heatwaves.
Wow - up to a meter! Well, that’d be unprecedented. I can’t imagine what people in that part of the world will do when they experience their first flood, drought or heatwave!