Don't repeat US mistakes on climate change: Clinton

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that the US made mistakes that added to global warming and said India should not repeat them.

“We, along with other developed countries, have contributed significantly to the problem that we face with climate change,” Clinton told reporters in Mumbai today after a meeting with Indian business leaders. “We are hoping that a great country like India will not make the same mistakes.”

Clinton, visiting India to showcase trade and security ties, will try to bridge differences with the world’s largest democracy, whose cooperation is essential to slow climate change. India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said before the G8 summit in Italy this month that developed countries must bear “historic responsibility” for industrial emissions of greenhouse gases they have produced.

India contributes 4 per cent of the world’s emissions from burning fossil fuels, compared with 20 per cent from the US, and the South Asian nation has opposed any limits on emissions that would slow its growth.

Output of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide from activities including power generation, is blamed for global warming.

“There is no inherent contradiction between poverty eradication and moving toward a low-carbon economy,” Clinton said. “We believe India is innovative and entrepreneurial enough to figure out how to deal with climate change while continuing to lift people out of poverty and develop at a rapid rate.”

Climate change was discussed at the meeting with Indian business leaders, including Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, India’s most valuable company; Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, and Chanda Kochhar, chief executive officer of ICICI Bank, the second-largest by assets.

Right to pollute
Ambani said India and the US need to set up “self- sustaining institutions” rather than argue about who has the right to pollute. “The time is now,” Ambani said. “My perception is the Indian corporate sector is ready to do more.”

A successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol is being negotiated this year under United Nations-sponsored talks culminating in a summit in Copenhagen in December. Almost 200 nations will gather in an attempt to craft a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Agreement is crucial if global warming is to be limited to an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). For that to happen, emissions have to peak by 2015, according to the fourth assessment report of the Nobel Prize-winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change released in 2007.

Differences between the developed world and China and India remain a sticking point for the new agreement. The Asian nations say industrialized countries must be willing to cut emissions 40 per cent by 2020 if they expect emerging economies to agree to long-term reduction goals.