The Kyoto protocol obliged the rich and industrialized nations to bring down by an average of 5 percent their greenhouse gas emissions from the 1990s levels during the period 2008-2012. The counting for the Kyoto targets actually begins on January 1, 2008 though the document was signed in 2005. But in the last three years emission levels have arisen in 6 of the 15 old European (industrialized) nations. The US was among the most glaring exceptions among the rich and highly industrialized nations that had refused to sign the Kyoto protocol. Luckily another rich nation that had followed the US example, Australia, just had a change of heart but only because elections brought a prime minister who had avowed to upturn his predecessor’s anti-Kyoto stance.

Many have advocated a commitment by the rich nations to reduce emissions by 40 percent by the year 2020. The need is to limit carbon concentrates to about 400 ppm, which was 280 ppm in the pre-industrial era and currently averages 380 ppm. To achieve that target it may be necessary for the world, especially the rich nations, to alter their rather lavish and wasteful style of living which is in stark contrast to the continuing abysmal poverty in the developing world. Action has to begin in right earnest; the average rise in global temperature has to be restricted to less than 2 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial era levels. In another half a century global emissions must approximate near zero.

There are some climate control measures which can be put in place without generating any controversy. Some of them are: change the crop pattern and species; improve sea defense and Hood protection; curb water use in drought-hit areas; install early warning systems for extreme events. For a country like India, the efforts at climate control do pose a dilemma. There is no doubt that if India has to maintain a higher growth trajectory it will not find it easy to curb emissions very if India has to remain a Wiener growth trajectory it will not find it easy to curb emissions very strictly. Predictions are that in a few years lime India will be the second highest polluter after China.

The dilemma is that without conventional sources of energy by the cleaner but expensive technologies, India will find it hard to meet any tough climate targets that it might be asked to accept. India and many other developing countries, including China, think it is unfair to ask them to cut their emissions (at the cost of development) when the climate problem is primarily the creation of the rich and industrialized nations, led by the US. The poorer nations are being asked to pay for the sins of the rich nations who should first set an example by lowering their emissions.

It helps neither India nor the world to enter into arguments over the question of obligations for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. The US may not have any moral right to ask countries like India to mind their carbon emissions in view of their own record on emissions, but in future the developing nations, eager to catch up with the industrialized rich nations, will be bigger emitters than the developed nations. It is obvious that both the developed and the developing nations have to act together because our planet can be saved only when all the nations of the world act resolutely to arrest the adverse effects of global warming.