India signs on to do-nothing deal for Paris Climate ‘Theatre’

India is doubling it’s coal use by 2020 and tripling it’s emissions by 2030. That’s what “going green” means.

India has ratified the weakest kind of non-reduction, just a promise it will try to “cut emissions intensity“.  That big goal is to increase its carbon emissions by slightly less than the rate its population is growing at. An achievement most countries do just by being there. It’s the default condition as economies develop. Instead of reducing emissions, India is set to increase its total emissions threefold by 2030. Ratify that, eh?

Though even that pitifully weak anti-goal is not enforceable. Nearly everything in the Paris deal is optional, voluntary, and written as a should, not a shall. After ten months of delays and frivolous ambit claims like trying to get entry to the nuclear club (and access to more uranium), India has finally signed up for Paris anyway. Which is signing nothing much — really India has  agreed to submit a new goal for itself every five years, and do a stocktake. It’s that banal.

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