colinsett, excellent post.

Sant-Rayn

While I see India as Australia's ultimate strategic and economic ally after the US declines, I see your article as a tad tendentious.

You appear to frame the debate as a comparison between India and developed countries like Australia.

What you don't mention is a country of higher population than India that in many respects India is emulating.

That county is China. China has reached the state of industrialisation, scientific and military advancement that, my Indian friends tell me, India wants to pass in years to come.

Significantly "China has surpassed the US as the world’s largest producer of carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/06/20/eachina120.xml

"Surging demand for energy in the world’s most populous nation has lead to a surge in construction of coal-fired power stations, pushing China’s production of CO2 to 6,200m tons of CO2 last year [2006] , compared with 5,800m tons from the US."

So your argument is out of date. Its not a developed country (the US) thats the biggest climate change problem its highly populated, developing China.

So as other people have said in this string, population is the critical problem.

One partial answer is uranium.

Our new Labor Government in its wisdom is honouring deals to sell Australian uranium to Russia and China (countries that have been hostile to Australia for most of their modern Leftwing existence). Naturally the leftwing of Rudd's Labor Party wishes to deny uranium to India but not to old comrades Russia and China.

The logic goes something like "its OK for the US, UK, Russia, China and France to have our uranium because they had nukes pre NPT ie pre 1968". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-Proliferation_Treaty

But India had nukes AFTER 1968 (ie. in 1974 - a whole 6 years after) so it simply cannot import our uranium - however much that reduces India's emissions.

Go figure.

Peter Coates
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/2008/07/australian-uranium-trade-with-india.html

The author maintains that we cannot question India's right to grow its economy whilst he takes no account of India's enormous and rapidly growing population. That will only guarantee environmental calamity for India and the rest of the planet.

I suggest the author earnestly acquaint himself with the evidence of the severely detrimental effects of overpopulation and start in earnest to do what he can to try to stabilise India's population. A good place to start would be Siddharth Deshpande's "India's population will harm the country and the planet" of 26 December 2007. Part 1 is at http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=128816 Part 2 is at http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=128898 and Part 3 is at http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=128967

Of course, India's population problem should not be used as an excuse for Australia not to drastically cut its CO2 emissions without further delay, just as Australia's past irresponsible behaviour should not be held up by India as an excuse to also continue to act irresponsibly.

If anyone would like to read an article by someone who has given more careful thought to the consequences of economic growth for India, I commend "Cheapest Car Tata's 'one lakh car' could be traffic and environment hazard" of 21 Dec 2007 by the abovementioned Siddharth Deshpande at http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=128716

"Unfortunately, our country has proven itself to be replete with myopic governments, planners, policy makers, and general intelligentsia. The traffic situation in most Indian cities is already in shambles, with long snarls (especially during rush hour) causing wastage of much time and fuel. Two and three wheeler drivers are generally seen to be a nuisance on the road, driving dangerously and with scant regard to courtesy and traffic rules. Most of them, when they get their hands on a bigger vehicle, can be expected to carry on in the same vein ... God forbid, but it looks like a good way to further bloat our road accident numbers. Add to that the severe shortage of parking spaces in our cities, and we have the perfect recipe for total urban chaos.

"Another serious downside no one seems to have thought of is that most of our cities have long been the front runners in the dubious list of the most polluted cities in Asia and the world. They are desperately in need of good, clean, reliable and scalable public transport. Unfortunately, our experts seem more preoccupied with toasting the success of motorcycle companies who have become the largest sellers in the world, rather than analysing the embarrassing truth behind this success story. India already figures high in the pecking order so far as contribution to pollution and global warming is concerned. ..."

"All in all, unless we manage to build many more roads and parking spaces than we currently have, unless we manage to educate drivers better before giving them a joke of a driving license and unless we take serious steps to combat fuel adulteration and the resultant pollution, the ‘one lakh car’ seems like a devil in disguise."

...

Whats the point ?
If India and China go charging ahead nothing we do will make the
slightest difference.

All they are trying to do is blame us before the event for any
negative events that happen to them. The whole thing is ridiculous.

In any case there is an argument that large increases in CO2 will have
no effect on global warming, it might still go up anyway.

http://brneurosci.org/co2.html

http://brneurosci.org/temperatures6.png

The developing world (incl China and India) is now emitting roughly as much as the entire world was in about 1990.

If the entire developed world brought their emissions to zero and the developed world continued, global warming would continue on happily, reaching the same end point by 2120 instead of 2100.

Carbon taxes should be added to any items imported from these countries to offset their obvious advantage in not complying.