Neither China nor India has submitted updated climate plans to be included in an assessment of progress towards the Paris Agreement goals ahead of COP26. Only 110 out of 191 parties to the Paris Agreement have presented new or updated plans by the cut-off date for submissions to be included in the forthcoming UN progress report. This is despite the UN extending the deadline for them. The UN’s Patricia Espinosa has been pleading with governments to contribute their plans…
That the governments of half the world’s people have not complied suggests that either they are not taking the process seriously or they, more likely, don’t want to put in writing that they are failing to decarbonise. India and China are rushing to develop their economies and raise the living standards of hundreds of millions of their citizens from absolute poverty. That can’t be done if they are restrained by net zero commitments…
Alok Sharma hosted a pre-COP26 summit in London last week where he was attempting to shape the agenda and outcome of the event. India, which due to industrialisation in recent decades has raised the living standards of hundreds of millions of her citizens, made excuses for not attending. Continental Africa, which sent only a handful of countries, repeated demands for rich industrialised countries to transfers billions annually to fund green growth. This comes after Britain cut back billions from foreign aid this year, putting Sharma in a difficult position.
South African Environment Minister Barbara Creecy demanded countries at November’s UN COP26 climate talks in Glasgow should set a target of mobilising $750 billion-a-year from industrialised countries to help poorer nations transition to greener energy. Her goal is significantly higher than the $100 billion-a-year that was set for 2020, which rich countries have so far failed to deliver on. In negotiations leading up to COP26, a compromise is supposedly emerging to push the date to 2025. Which rich democratic countries will once again fail to deliver on.
The truth is that there will not be, whatever is promised in November, a $750 billion-a-year transfer of capital from the billion or so taxpayers in the industrialised world to the government elites in the developing world. No democratic country has a mandate to “tax and send” at that level – nor will they ever. India is not going to change direction on the dash for industrialisation powered by coal, which has powered great rival China’s rapid industrialisation. India knows that vastly more people die as a consequence of poverty and disease each year than die as a consequence of global warming. As in the past, we humans are capable of adapting to climate change in ways that can significantly mitigate its adverse effects, without choking off economic growth. A massive reduction in fossil fuels would exacerbate global poverty, cost-benefit analyses of climate policies reveal that there are better ways to alleviate human misery than spending taxpayer subsidies on panic-driven, political non-solutions to a changing climate. We need to develop more clean, green technology to save the planet and lift people out of poverty.
From the office of the Indian PM:
“Prime Minister Modi recalled his memorable visit to the UK last November and affirmed India’s commitment to further strengthen the strategic partnership between both countries.”
Visitors to India’s most famous attraction, the Taj Mahal, can now upload their snaps with the gleaming Mughal masterpiece over free WiFi thanks to the “inspiring leadership of Prime Minister Shir Narendra Modi“. “History meets Technology”.
Hardcore selfie takers will have 30 minutes of free internet courtesy of the state-run operator BSNL before having to cough up for a subscription.
Judging by the poster, the Taj will be getting WiFi circa 1994…
The line from the Guardian/BBC axis is that Narendra Modi is a dangerous blood-thirsty right-wing nationalist, a sectarian Hindu who oversaw the massacre of Muslims in his home state of Gujurat. For added measure he was associated with the RSS, a uniformed Hindu-fascist organisation. Despite all this disapproval from the left-wing media establishment he has just won more votes in a free election than anyone on the planet…
The reality is he has risen from being a lower caste, poor chai-wallah, a boy selling tea at a train station, to successfully running Gujarat – a state with a population of 60 million – which has outperformed the rest of chronically corrupt India on all economic indicators. The Indian supreme court found there was no evidence that Modi allowed or even encouraged the mob violence in 2002 in Gujarat that led to some thousand deaths. The RSS is closer to Baden Powell’s boy scouts than Hitler’s brownshirts. Modi is a vegetarian, technocrat who believes that India’s Hindus and India’s Hindu culture should command more respect. In that it is fair to say he is a conservative nationalist.
The born-to-rule Congress Party has been swept from power, the once great idealistic party of Gandhi that brought Fabian socialism to India had degenerated into an arrogant, corrupt, nepotistic kleptocracy. Modi offers his fellow members of India’s lower castes the prospect of social mobility, competent government and a high growth economy based on free market reforms, accelerated privatisations and technological progress. Modi’s campaign emphasises optimistically that India can become the largest market in the world and in a way reminiscent of Ronald Reagan, Modi promises to make India proud of its future. His campaign anthem commercial rocks too:
India has won! भारत की विजय। अच्छे दिन आने वाले हैं।