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Maneka Gandhi charges...
US using Asia as excuse in CO2 debate
BELGIUM: A prominent Indian environmentalist accused the
United States of using India and other emerging economies as an excuse
for refusing to commit to a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions
blamed for global warming.
Maneka Gandhi, a parliamentarian and former Indian environment
minister, urged the U.S. to stop making cuts to its greenhouse gases
conditional on similar moves by India or China, saying Washington was
trying to divert attention from its environmental problems.
“America is using us as an excuse. For America to say they won’t move
unless India does, that is ridiculous. They should do it anyway. You
move because you need to save the world,” Gandhi told journalists in the
European Parliament, adding that India will not be “pushed around” by
the United States. Gandhi was in the EU assembly to present a European
environmental award later Wednesday.
The United States opposes the 1997 Kyoto protocol, which requires 35
industrial nations to cut greenhouses gas emissions.
The Bush administration argues that Kyoto would hurt the U.S. economy
and also objects that the protocol allows exemptions for rapidly
industrializing economies like China and India.
The U.S. is responsible for about one-quarter of the world’s
greenhouse gases that scientists say are causing global temperatures to
increase. Per person, carbon dioxide emissions are about 20 times higher
in the United States than in India.
But India’s demand for electricity is expected to double by 2015, and
CO2 emissions will rise. Some 84 million households in the country of
more than 1 billion people do not have electricity, Gandhi said.
India currently produces nearly 70 percent of its electricity by
burning coal, which pollutes the air. Gandhi said that relying on
nuclear energy was dangerous due to what she called lower safety
standards in the country, and instead called for more solar and wind
energy. India currently has 14 civilian nuclear power plants, covering 3
percent of the country’s energy needs.
“We’re not achieving the proper (nuclear) regulatory standards. Here
there is always some leak, everything is always shrouded in secrecy,”
she said. “If at this point we could go strictly into wind and solar
energy, we could head off the CO2 crisis.”
The 27-nation EU pledged last month to cut carbon emissions by 20
percent from 1990 levels by 2020. By then, at least 20 percent of
Europe’s energy should come from renewable sources like wind, solar
panels, hydroelectricity and energy crops.
A major conference in December in Bali, Indonesia, is to set an
international framework for controlling the emissions of carbon dioxide
after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.
Brussels, Thursday, AP |
