As the climate change debate gets louder, India and China are firmly on centre-stage. In fact, they have almost come to be regarded in hyphenated terms. This fierce scrutiny is more than apparent in the UNDP’s Human Development Report 2007, released on Tuesday.

China has long figured on the radar. A decade ago, environmentalists like Lester R. Brown, had flagged changing consumption patterns in China as potentially a major environmental threat. The arguments have since got far more persuasive and proven. But what’s new in the debate is the presence of India in the big league of polluters — which includes Japan, Russia and the US.

There are striking similarities between the two Asian giants that lend themselves to hyphenation. While China is the world’s fastest growing economy, accounting for one-fifth of the world’s population, India is also now firmly on the growth trajectory, with its 1.1 billion people. Although in per capita terms, emissions by both countries are much lower than the others in the big league, by 2015 per capita emissions from China and India are projected at 5.2 and 1.1 tonnes (America’s stand at 19.3 tonnes), there can be no denying the rising levels. Between 1990 and 2004, India’s emissions increased by 97 per cent, one of the highest in the world.

The other common feature both countries share — along with the US, incidentally — is a dependence on coal for power generation. Coal happens to be the world’s cheapest, most widely dispersed and most carbon-dioxide intensive fossil fuel: for each unit of energy generated, coal generates about 40 per cent more carbon-dioxide than oil, and almost 100 per cent more than natural gas. In 2006, China was building an estimated two new coal-fired power stations every week, while India over the next 10 years is planning to increase its coal-fired electricity generation capacity by over 75 per cent. Power generation, of course, is seen as the main source of carbon-dioxide emissions, and accounts for four of every 10 tonnes of carbon-dioxide despatched into the atmosphere.

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