This is a serious matter. Many of the industrialised countries, called Annex I states under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), won't meet even the modest Kyoto Protocol target of 5.2 percent GHG cuts by 2008-12 over 1990. If 2005/2006 is smuggled in as the base, they'll get a licence to emit 15 percent more GHGs than agreed.

Domestically, most Northern countries aren't getting on to a low-carbon trajectory. Their GHG-reduction plans rely more on offsets—trading carbon credits with the South—than on cutting their own emissions. The United States, the world's most greenhouse-addicted country, has just passed a climate law which mandates a 17 percent emissions cut by 2020 (over 2005) and 83 percent by 2050. Although the second figure is impressive, its date is distant. The big cuts are to be made through a flawed cap-and-trade system in which 85 percent of quotas are gifted away to polluting corporations.

The world needs deep and growing GHG cuts—starting right now, and ending within two to four decades. A more leisurely term is unavailable. The globe is racing towards a tipping point beyond which no corrective action will have any effect. President Obama will adopt a less negative approach to the UNFCCC than President Bush, who refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. But he won't show global leadership on climate change. Nor will leadership come from other Northern countries where the momentum to reduce emissions has been weakened by a lack of political will and preoccupation with the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

What about the Global South, which is less severely hit by the downturn? Here too, there's little leadership. Southern governments are deeply—and rightly—suspicious of the North's seriousness about sacrificing its disproportionate share of the global carbon space. But they're doing little to move to a low-carbon path. China has already overtaken the US as the world's largest emitter. But it's building a big new coal-fired power station every fortnight. India has overtaken Japan to become the world's Number Four emitter (after China, the US and Russia). India's emissions are rising at twice the global average rate. Brazil, South Africa and Mexico too are spewing out more GHGs.

Southern governments are right to argue that the North is responsible for the bulk of the stock of GHGs in the atmosphere and must cut these and also enable the South to transit to low-carbon growth. The Southern countries want the next round of climate talks to exempt them from legally binding obligations, like Kyoto did. They're miffed at the North's reluctance to cough up money to help the South adapt to climate change and mitigate it through new energy-efficient technologies and clean production.

But the South is wrong to insist it'll accept no future obligations whatsoever. By 2020 or so, it will contribute as much to global emissions as the North. And by 2030, it'll account for two-thirds of all emissions. This pattern cannot continue without causing a global catastrophe.

India has taken a particularly inflexible stand, separating the right to development from environmental responsibility, and putting the first before the second. It will accept no GHG obligations other than that its per capita emissions won't exceed those of the North. To reduce and eliminate poverty and provide electricity to the 60 percent of the population which lacks it, India says it must have high GDP growth.

If this means a big rise in India's emissions, so be it! Indian policymakers are paranoid about making even non-binding commitments or setting domestic targets. That explains the artificial furore over India's signature of the MEF statement promising an under-2 0C temperature rise.

India's seemingly principled position is deeply flawed. For one, per capita emissions are a highly misleading norm in a divided, unequal society like India's where income differentials exceed those in the North. India's emissions are growing rapidly not because its poor are consuming more, but because its affluent minority is consuming voraciously, as never before.

The average carbon footprint—GHG emissions—of the rich Indian is 5 to 10 times higher than that of the poor, and similar to the Northern elite's. Insisting on the per capita norm means hiding behind the poor so the rich continue their grotesque profligacy with unbridled consumption of air-conditioners, cars and other “luxury” items, as opposed to the “survival” emissions of the poor arising from the struggle to meet minimal needs, often not even that.

For another, the link between poverty reduction and high GDP growth is at best tenuous. India achieved its highest poverty reductions in the 1970s and the 1980s, when annual GDP growth was under 5 percent. In the past decade, which saw 7 percent-plus growth, poverty reduction slowed down—because trickle-down doesn't work. And for a third, major improvements in the standard of living of the masses can be achieved without big emission increases. That's what low-carbon development is all about.

Consider this. Today, three-fourths of the Indian population uses firewood or other biomass for cooking. Women and children typically spend two hours a day in collecting the wood—a terrible drudgery. They burn it in primitive stoves in poorly ventilated kitchens. The stoves' efficiency is usually under 2 percent. The soot and smoke they emit are a health hazard—besides being black carbon, a potent contributor to the melting of Himalayan glaciers. If efficient cookstoves were developed and given to the poor, or liquefied petroleum gas replaces firewood and is burnt in stoves of 50 percent-plus efficiency, there would be a huge reduction in emissions and a substantial improvement in the quality of life of the poor. The cost would barely exceed the subsidies on kerosene.

Similarly, solar electricity has already emerged a cost-effective source of lighting energy, especially in villages unconnected to the grid, where people use extremely inefficient kerosene lamps for lighting. If compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) or light-emitting diodes energised by solar cells are used, there would be a huge reduction in emissions, with a clean source of illumination which extends the working day.

India can set a low-carbon model for the world through such innovations. Instead, India has adopted a negative approach at the global climate talks which cynically exploits its people's poverty. Indian negotiators behave as if a failure of the talks would be preferable to their success, under which India would have to accept GHG reduction obligations, albeit far lower than the North's. This can only encourage an “each-one-for-himself-and-let-the-devil-take-the hindmost” approach—a lose-lose outcome and a sure recipe for a more cruel globe in which the poor will suffer the most.

However, there are alternatives to a “do-nothing” approach, which emphasise intra-nation equity as well as inter-nation equity. For instance, a Greenhouse Development Rights Framework has been proposed, which situates the right to development in a climate-constrained world. This establishes an income/emission threshold ($20 a day in purchasing-power parity). People below it—and that's all the poor and much of the lower middle class—will have no emissions-reduction obligation, indeed can increase them. Those above the threshold must undertake cuts based on their responsibility (for climate change) and their capability (for mitigation and adaptation).

The US has a 33 percent global share of this responsibility-capability. The European Union's share is 25.7 percent and China's is 5.5 percent. India's share is just 0.5 percent. Each country can either contribute to a global climate fund, or accept a GHG-reduction obligation, in proportion to its share.

Scientists have just proposed another alternative which identifies 700 million high-emitting individuals, who contribute greatly to climate change. They must be forced to cut emissions by 30 billion tonnes by 2030 across nations. Although this isn't easy to operationalise, it's a worthy idea. Other proposals focus on the corporations responsible for a large proportion of the high-carbon goods made, traded and consumed across borders. They can be taxed or compelled to undertake deep emission cuts by a democratic global authority.

Spurning such approaches, India launched a hastily formulated National Action Plan on Climate Change a year ago. This proposed eight Missions, for which detailed documents were to be completed by last December, with clear strategies, time-bound action plans, monitoring mechanisms and budgets. A year on, only five documents are ready—all unbelievably shoddy. India must do much better and more if it's to contribute to climate justice. (IPA Service)