India's pollution soars as does fossil fuel use, climate fight gets tougher

The Global Carbon Budget 2024 study says fossil-related carbon dioxide emission in India is projected to rise by 4.6 per cent this year in line with rapid economic growth

Even as the talk of the undying smog in northern India finds reverberations in the vast, cold corridors of the Olympic stadium in Baku, a major fossil-fuel producer and host of the 29th edition of the annual United Nations climate-change summit, two critical reports, released on the sidelines of COP 29, reflect India’s growth conundrum. The first was new data from the 2024 Global Carbon Budget project, a peer-reviewed collaboration of more than 100 experts led by Pierre Friedlingstein, at the University of Exeter, UK, released on November 13, showing India to be the fastest-growing emitter of greenhouse gases from