India will not curb its greenhouse gas emissions as long as the West continues to treat it as a 'second class global citizen' with less right to pollute than the developed world, a senior Indian environment official has said. Pradipto Ghosh, who retired last month as India's environment secretary and now sits on a committee advising India's prime minister on climate change, warned that the West must "get serious" about cutting its own emissions if it wanted progress on the issue.
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"The goals of addressing climate change cannot supersede our goals of maintaining our current rates of GDP growth and poverty alleviation programs, as was agreed by everyone at Kyoto," he told The Telegraph in New Delhi.
At the heart of India's position on climate change is the notion that India - whose population is predicted to reach 1.5bn by 2050 - must be allowed to pollute on a per capita basis equally with the West.
That would imply drastic cuts in emissions in developed countries if the world is meet the target of keeping global warming within the generally agreed 'safe limit' of two degrees, as set out by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "The prime minister
has said that while pursuing our policies of development and poverty alleviation, we will ensure that our per capita emissions will never exceed developing countries," Mr Ghosh added.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/06/12/eaindia12.xml