...this but (of course) their actions affect everybody.

If we are going to force them to comply, we must do it now or it's simply too late.

Past. (2 hides)

They currently produce one third of the world average per capita CO2, under a quarter of the European average, and a tenth of the US figure. We've built our lifestyle on cheap energy and plentiful CO2 emissions. If we're going to deny them that, we have to provide an alternative.

If India trebles its CO2 emissions in the next 15 years, it will still be, per capita, under half the USA figure (which is proposed to be 28% below its 2005 figure - which will be about 12.7 tonnes per person), and still below the EU figure (they propose 6 tonnes per person by 2030).

So it's up to the rich countries to provide the affordable renewable power generation for them.

>> India is already the world's third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and
>> it plans a massive increase, proposing to treble CO2 emissions within the next 15 years.

> They currently produce one third of the world average per capita CO2,

So when "the rich countries" provide them with renewable power, all they need to do this
in order to maintain such handouts indefinitely is to keep breeding (as always) as this
will maintain their "per capita" figures while ignoring the "third biggest emitter" issue ...

Wonderful.

India's total fertility rate is about 2.5, down from 3.9 in 1990.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?page=5

and it's still dropping. Their population is already under 'control'. And phrases like 'breeding' are dehumanising.

That doesn't even make sense.

We in the West, collectively, have used cheap, carbon-rich energy to get a better life. In the process, our population exploded (eg England went from 5.8 million in 1751 to 53 million in 2011, and that was with loads of emigration to the USA, Canada etc.). Our plans are still to emit significantly more greenhouse gases than India. Telling India that they must not use carbon-based energy to achieve a decent standard of living, while at the same time refusing to help with any alternative method - that we ourselves never managed while we were developing - until they 'control themselves' is the worst sort of patronising, selfish, and blinkered assumption of 'superiority' that we could make.

In the case of both the Indian and total world populations, growth rates are falling significantly. Yet in spite of that, every year about the same number of additional consumption/destruction-units are being added, both in India and the world as a whole.

World population growth has been linear since 1980, at about 78 million new people per year. Indian population growth shows a similar pattern, though there has been a drop of about 2 million people per year since 1990 (that's a drop of 12% in the absolute number of people added per year since then.) However, they are still adding over 15 million people per year, so I think that's a problem - one that is not "under control" by any stretch of the imagination. Except of course in the imaginations of people who like to use percentages to obscure the real picture.

If you want to know what Indians are personally doing, the rate is what's 'real'. If you want to know how their lives produce CO2, compared to ours, you look at the per capita figures.

If your problem is that the political unit of India is too big, then you can advocate breaking it up into individual states. Then, their absolute population growth numbers will be far smaller. That would solve your problem, without anyone every changing anything, wouldn't it? It wouldn't do a thing to mitigate global warming, but that would get rid of the figure that you think is 'real'.

In the last 35 years:

Like every rectangle, the area is the product of the length times the width.

India's biggest contribution to the World Problematique, like China's, is a rapid growth in per capita consumption.
Their population growth added to the problem by almost doubling it.

In order to "solve" the bigger problem, the human world needs to adjust both consumption and population levels.

We need to be forced back down the consumption curve, towards the average per-capita levels experienced around 1500.
Coincident with that, the world population needs to drop drastically - over the next few decades by half, over the next century by 90%, over the next 2-5 centuries by 99% or more.

Then we need to stay at those levels permanently.

When all that has happened - and not before - our species will have earned the label "sustainable."

There is, obviously, no way that will happen without a drastic, even catastrophic change in our physical circumstances - the change that we are now in the process of engineering.

The role of the human conceit of "justice" is simply to make the problem worse, as everyone scrambles and scratches for their "fair" share of the pie.

as an excuse for further inaction.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/plunging-solar-costs-in-india-undercut-adani-case-for-carmichael-coal-mine-99992