alt Hacker News> Why would a country like India pay/sacrifice to reduce emissions while western citizens still pollute at much higher levels after reaping all the spoils from historical pollution?
To avoid their country having large regions become uninhabitable?
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Even for a giant country like India you control <20% of global population, and you are responsible for much less than 20% of the effect (climate change).
So why would India take more expensive and painful steps than say, the US or EU, or Japan? India both indisputably affects and controls climate change less then the US or EU, so why would they put in completely outsized amounts of effort to fight it?
Which leader do you think is more likely to get elected by the populace? The one who tells the destitute Indians they must suffer more, lest their home be lost, or the one who says it’s America’s fault, and that they should pay in MANY ways for what they’re doing to the Indians’ home?
And besides, what do you think they’re going to do? Give up their highly efficient motor bikes? Destroy their personal businesses and starve? How far do you think we could push them? Maybe we could convince them all to just die to make room for our pollution and their nuclear-backed army will agree happily.
I swear half the arguments I see are just completely lacking in regard for the fact that this is happening in the real world, and not a vacuum.
Air pollution (from smog) in India is already at a "seasonally deadly" level. If you haven't been to India during late autumn, it's hard to imagine how bad it is. Your eyes burn and every breath stings, you literally taste the acrid smog all the time.
India is working hard to get that down. It's a much more tangible and immediate problem there than the thought some parts of the country may become so hot as to be unliveable. Addressing thst, in India, is a side effect / a benefit of cleaning up the air, as much as energy autarky via Solar PV has the benefit of becoming independent of oil imports. India has coal. Lots of it. It's cheap to them. It doesn't particularly want to use more of it because of the associated air pollution and also because cooling water for thermal power plants competes with drinking water for people in some places.
Personally I think India is rather pragmatic here. Battery banks for scooters in the cities? tick. Buildout of PV? tick. Electric car charging stations? tick. Replacing wood, coal and other dirty cooking fuel by gas? Also tick. India just doesn't bother fighting some internal culture wars about how great fossil fuels or renewables are. They just move ahead more or less silently.