Forging a Global Climate Deal

MUMBAI, India — As the Copenhagen Conference approaches in December, the Obama Administration is aggressively trying to lay the framework for an international agreement to combat climate change through global diplomacy. Hillary Clinton’s visit to India a few weeks ago shows the challenge of constructing an effective agreement. While she emphasized the importance of protecting the environment, India flatly stated its opposition to accepting any form of binding emissions cuts. As a developing nation that has played a very small part in producing the climate mess that the world now faces, India’s lack of enthusiasm is understandable. This does not mean, however, that an agreement is out of the question. A treaty that includes clean energy technology transfers and investment from wealthy countries in return for mandatory environmental targets in the developing world would benefit wealthy and developing economies alike.

Climate change is an urgent problem facing our globe, but developing countries understandably show apprehension when it comes to cutting emissions, given their growth challenges. In India, over 400 million people still live in poverty, and energy has yet to reach wide swaths of the rural land. Indians argue that no one told the United States or England to use expensive, untested modes of energy when Western countries were in their “developing” states centuries ago. Emissions limits could stunt the growth of these nations. However, countries such as India and Bangladesh also have the most to lose from the effects of climate change. The developing world will face the overwhelming brunt of global warming’s repercussions, bearing the burden of everything from drought to flood, population dislocation, wars over natural resources, and border disputes.

The United States can ensure that India and other countries in its position do not have to choose between higher growth and climate disaster by crafting an agreement that will provide energy investment in the developing world. Such an agreement would mitigate the high costs of an energy transition for poor countries while providing jobs and business opportunities to the United States and Europe, both in desperate need of economic revival. In an era where American manufacturing is on the way out and finance has been rendered incapable of serving as a foundation for our economy, green technology provides an excellent business opportunity for the United States. China has already realized this, and is building the industry at a rapid rate. We can retake the lead by supplying clean energy to much of the developing world, and easing their transition to environmentally-friendly economies. To ensure that the treaty would be effective, the investment should mandate emissions cuts in developing nations—cuts that these countries would hopefully accept in return for Western funding of their energy transitions.

Such an agreement would unlikely garner immense support in either wealthy countries or the developing world. Westerners would complain about government spending going towards another country’s economy; those in developing nations would complain about mandatory emissions cuts. The reality with any international treaty is that every side has to compromise. But this proposal would provide enough benefits to all parties that it is an idea well worth pursuing.


Ravi N. Mulani ’12, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Pforzheimer House.