Sunday, March 9, 2008

India's climate change policy a hot topic

Carbon footprints trifling, but energy demand is immense

PDT Gurgaon , India -- It is Friday night in the center of new Indian ambition. The air is thick with the construction dust of new glass-fronted high-rise buildings. The traffic moves so slowly that commuters can gape all they want at the Burberry advertisement that lights up the facade of a shopping mall. In the din of car horns and cranes, Sucharita Rastogi, 27, a business school graduate, waits wearily for her office van to pull up and take her home; it will be at least a 90-minute crawl. "Mind-wise," she says, "we are exhausted, sitting, waiting."

A beacon of India's red-hot economy, this new suburb on the edge of the capital, New Delhi, is also a symbol of India's fast-growing hunger for energy. By the government's own estimates, energy consumption in this country of 1.1 billion is expected to quadruple over the next 25 years, inevitably expanding India's emissions of greenhouse gases. More>>>