India, China must share burden of climate change: US

Lima, December 12

Asserting that industrialised nations have to play a major role in reducing emissions, the US today said developing countries like India and China too have a key role to play in addressing this challenge and asked the world leaders to jointly share the burden of combating the crisis.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who addressed representatives of more than 190 countries at the UN climate talks being held here in the Peruvian capital, also took a swipe at American politicians who continue to deny that climate change and its devastating effects are real.

“You don't need a PhD... you just need to pay attention to see that the world is already changing. No single country, not even the United States, can solve this problem or foot this bill alone. That's not rhetoric. It is literally impossible,” Kerry said in his address to the Climate Summit here.

"If we each in America planted a dozen trees – if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions – guess what? That still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world and providing the same level of damage at a different point in time than we face today,” he said.

"The same would be true if China or India came down to zero emissions, if either was the only country to act. It's just not enough for one country or even a few countries to reduce emissions when other countries continue to fill the atmosphere with carbon pollution as they see fit,” he added.

Developed nations have to play a major role in cutting emissions, “but that doesn't mean that other nations are just free to go off and repeat the mistakes of the past" by not having environmentally-friendly energy policies and investment, he said.

He said if the US drastically cut emissions on its own, it would still not be enough to save the planet from warming to 2 degrees Celsius because “it's the net amount of carbon that matters, not each country's share.”

“The solution to climate change is energy policy," Kerry said while calling for a focus on renewable energy.

He urged big greenhouse gas emitters to follow the examples of China and the US, saying the two “leaders of opposing camps” in the climate talks have come to an agreement, which should send a message to other countries that the "roadblocks" to a Paris 2015 agreement can be removed.

The climate talks are aiming to establish the draft text of a new international climate change agreement to be signed by all countries at the next major talks in Paris in 2015. PTI