India has rejected calls to announce a net zero carbon emissions target and said it was more important for the world to lay out a pathway to reduce such emissions and avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures.
India, the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States, is under pressure to announce plans to become carbon neutral by mid-century or thereabouts at next week’s climate conference in Glasgow.
But environment secretary Rameshwar Prasad Gupta told reporters on Wednesday that announcing net zero was not the solution to the climate crisis.
“It is how much carbon you are going to put in the atmosphere before reaching net-zero that is more important.”
The US, Britain and the European Union have set a target date of 2050 to reach net zero, by which point they will only emit an amount of greenhouse gases that can be absorbed by forests, crops, soils and still-embryonic carbon capture technology. China and Saudi Arabia have both set targets of 2060 to reach net-zero, but these are largely meaningless without tangible action now, critics say.
Representatives of nearly 200 countries will meet in Glasgow, Scotland, from October 31 to November 12 for climate talks to strengthen action to tackle global warming under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the conference as a show of how the country is taking climate change seriously, officials say. Chinese President Xi Jinping is not expected.
