The Indian stand at Copenhagen: a sellout? 

India played a visibly leading role in Copenhagen and it did not change its previous stand of not accepting a  legally binding emissions reduction commitment. India went to Copenhagen armed with its earlier voluntary  decision to cut carbon intensity (i.e. the amount of carbon dioxide released per unit GDP) by 20–25% by 2020 from the 2005 levels, independent of the outcome at Copenhagen. It even promised to do more if there is international.

As against the 20–25% reduction in carbon intensity that India is aiming for, China has set a target of 40–45% reduction in its carbon intensity by 2020 as compared to 2005. One should not get carried away by these remarkably large Chinese numbers. Given that the Chinese  carbon intensity has been consistently much higher than that of India (Figure 1), the Chinese offer is not more substantial than the Indian target and it will not bring the Chinese carbon intensity below that of India. Improving carbon intensity is good for China, but the global  emissions will continue to suffer from the large Chinese emissions if they do not contain the very high rate at which their fossil energy consumption has been increasing in the recent years (Table 2). China is culpably silent on this whereas India does not share the same guilt as the environmental cost of its economic growth is much smaller than that of China, both at the aggregate and per capita levels (Table 2).  Total emissions continued to increase even as the carbon intensity reduced (Figure 2 a, Tables 1 and 2). Some parliamentarians and political parties in India alleged that  India’s voluntary decision to reduce the carbon intensity was made under international pressure and that it amounted to a ‘sellout’ to the US. Reducing carbon intensity means improving energy use efficiency, i.e. using Indian fossil fuel resources for more economic growth which is perfectly in India’s own interest. Where is the sellout here? International pressure is still on India to make  legally binding emissions reductions, but not agreeing for an emissions peaking year, India is keeping its options open to increase its emissions in future; India has not buckled under pressure. 

Some ‘inconvenient truths’ about the Chinese economy and emissions 

It is not just the aggregate national emissions and the per capita emissions that are significantly large in China compared to India, the former also shows no let up in the rate at which its emissions have been increasing in the  recent years (Table 2). For example, during 2000–2006, the aggregate emissions in China increased at the rate of 543.0 mt CO2 per year which constituted 57% of the rate at which the total world emissions increased (951.8 mt CO2 per year) during the same period, suggesting that the lion’s share of contribution to the current rate of buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere (which is about 2.1 ppm per year, Figure 2 b) came from one single country alone, namely China. The aggregate  Indian emissions increased by only 45.6 mt CO2 per year during this period. China consumed as much as 68.9 quadrillion British thermal unit (Btu) equivalent of fossil fuels in 2006, but the  Indian consumption of fossil fuels was only 16.3 quadrillion Btu the same year. Fossil fuel consumption rose at a stunning rate of 6.08 quadrillion Btu per year in China, but in India this rose only at a small rate of 0.61 quadrillion Btu per year between 2000 and 2006; a ten times slower growth than China (Table 2). 

 Going by the present trend (Table 2), the aggregate  Indian emissions will remain a distant fourth, almost 4.7 times below that of China and the rate of annual growth in emissions in India is highly unlikely to catch up with that of China in the near future (Table 2). Even if India could double its per capita emissions from 1.2 t CO2 per head per year (as of 2006) to 2.4 t CO2 per head per year, the mean per capita emissions in India will still be way below that of the 2006 averages for the world (4.38 t CO2per head per year), China (4.6 t CO2 per head per year) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (10.46 t CO2 per head per year). The environmental burden of the Indian economic growth on the rest of the world will therefore remain far below that of the world average, and below that of the Chinese and the developed counties for the next several years. 

 The carbon intensity of the economy, which is a gross measure of the climate burden of economic development was as low as 1.474 mt CO2 per billion US$ GDP in India and as high as 2.275 mt CO2 per billion US$ GDP in China during 2006 (Figure 1). The Indian economy has been consistently de-carbonizing at an impressive rate of 0.1375 mt CO2 per billion US$ GDP per year, whereas this rate was only 0.011 mt CO2 per billion US$ GDP in China during 2000–2006 (Table 2). Like most developed countries, even as the carbon intensity decreased, the total emissions continued to increase in India and China (Table 1) due to fast economic growth. The Chinese economy has been historically a more carbon intensive one than India (Figure 1). With the world’s largest aggregate emissions occurring in China, and its GDP and emissions growth the fastest in the world, the climate burden of Chinese economic growth on the rest of the world is also the highest.