Beckett tells India to stop stalling on climate change

India must join a new global pact to switch to a low-carbon economy or face catastrophic economic consequences, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday.

Beckett says India must switch to a low-carbon economy
Her demand came as a poll showed that most people in Britain think climate change is a stark reality.
The YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph, the first test of public opinion since the Stern climate report, shows that people are prepared to support some green initiatives, including green taxes, but believe that Britain, which is responsible for two per cent of the world's emissions, can do nothing on its own.
In a thinly veiled critique of India's stance that the developed world must cut emissions before asking poor, developing countries to accept national targets for emissions reductions, Mrs Beckett said that only action from both sides would stave off potentially catastrophic economic and environmental changes.
Sir Nicholas Stern, the Government's chief economist, said in his report earlier this week that for every £1 spent now stopping carbon emissions, £5 would have to be spent later on.


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Mrs Beckett said: "We all want to continue to grow our economies. But those economies are being powered by the very fossil fuels that cause green house gas emissions.
"The very process which is making people's lives better across the world today is, at the same time, destroying their future."
Although India currently accounts for just five per cent of global emissions, a rapidly growing economy and population could cause the country's greenhouse gas emissions to rise by 70 per cent by 2025, according to the World Resources Institute.
Mrs Beckett warned that a billion South Asians could be affected by a reduction in melt water from the Himalayan glaciers, and tens of millions more by monsoon rains.
Despite its massive needs — some 350 million Indians still live in absolute poverty — Mrs Beckett said India could not afford to wait on the sidelines for the rest of the world to enter a low-carbon economy before acting itself.
"And that [low-carbon economy] will require us to transform the very foundations of how we live: how we generate and consume power, how we move around, and how we use land," she said.
"This necessary process will not happen if we all sit back and hope someone else will shoulder the burden. If we all try to free-ride we will all end in free-fall. We will move forward together or not at all."
cclover@telegraph.co.uk