Just cheap vodka to celebrate Rs 225 million?

The Prime Minister is in Paris for talks on climate change. The last summit in Copenhagen was a dismal failure and ended in acrimony. Whether the present summit will lead to any binding agreement is doubtful. The 2 biggest emitters, the US and China, have already come to an understanding that will undermine any meaningful agreement. The US has proposed that it will reduce emissions from its power sector by 32% compared to 2005 levels while China has proposed it will reduce CO2 emission by 60-65% per unit of GDP. China has acted to improve its air quality since the US embassy in Beijing tweeted particle concentrations in the air in 2010 and now issues smog warnings to its citizens. But the US is suspect. The Obama administration has linked trade talks at the WTO, as well as climate talks, to matching sacrifices by developing countries. As a practiced gasbag he is able to cloak artifice in lofty words, a typical shyster. Also, his term finishes in a year and the next president may not honor any pledge he makes. No politician wants to cause a fall in economic growth and the US being the strongest country in the world there is not much anyone can do if it chooses to break its promises. There is some optimism this time because nations are being allowed to set their own targets, which can be legally verified, in a bottom-up approach, so that there is greater flexibility. So, what are the numbers they will be discussing? There are absolute numbers, which give the total amount of CO2 being produced by each nation, and there are relative numbers, which is the amount of CO2 produced per person. Canada's total emission is very low but its per capita index is the highest because it has a small population while China produces the highest amount of greenhouse gases but its per capita rate is lower than that of Japan because of its huge population. The US likes to focus on total amounts to pressure countries like India which retaliate by quoting amount per person to show that we are forced to produce more to catch with western standard of living. With hundreds of millions of poor people our situation is dire. The present government wants to create large numbers of jobs in manufacturing but advances in technology means that robots are taking over the work of unskilled labor. To produce jobs for all requires huge infrastructure, especially electricity, which will need burning of fossil fuels. Modi wants to produce 100 gigawatts of electricity from renewable sources by 2022 and such industries can generate a lot of jobs. Trouble is that most Indian workers are illiterates and probably unfit for employment in high-tech industries. When police found the driver of a security van, who had run away with Rs 225 million, he was eating tanduri chicken, with vodka. Probably never heard of single malt. The only way to become wealthy while reducing greenhouse gases is to bring down population. Else India will remain dirty.