 It is spring and the harsh winter months are finally over. This is the time for all the birds to return from the tropics and meet their friends. Ah, you are back, Tweety. Long time, Daddy. How have you been? I'm good, I'm good. So, where are you coming from? Oh, you know it. India. India. Again. What the hell takes you there, year after year? Oh, I just love it there. Love it? Really? You've got to be kidding me. I've heard there are just too many of them there. A billion or so or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And they're spewing so much of that dirty carbon that is melting on my eyes. Look at that. Those seeds look so thin now. Oh, hold on, Daddy. You need to get your fats right. Well? You need to go to India to know what's happening there. Really? This is the time of year India is most vulnerable to being hit by cyclones. Sealing at least three people uprooting trees and telephone towers and damaging buildings and power lines. Jamun Kashmir has not had a natural disaster on this scale in living memory. This is the worst floods that's hit the state in the last six decades. India's roots, her land, her people are being jolted more than ever before. It's been described as the Himalayan tsunami. Days of heavy monsoon rain have swept away roads and buildings. Thousands of people are still missing. The flood situation in Jammu and Kashmir is very grim and steadily deteriorating. The number of dead in the floods has reached 148. In Srinagar, while the average norm for the 4th of September is less than one millimetre of rain, almost 52 millimetres of rain or 77 times the average took place. One fury after another. Thousands of lives snuffed in moments. Millions displaced. But science says, hold on, there is more to come. The impacts of climate change pile up in the extremes. Extreme high temperatures. Extreme droughts. Extremes of intense precipitation. And extremes associated with high sea levels. In Uttar Pradesh's Hamirpur district, devastated after his standing rubbish crop was lost to the rain, Indrajit committed suicides in his own field. Economists call it the tragedy of the commons. The rich countries that industrialised first overused the atmosphere as a dump for greenhouse gases. It cost them nothing. But the price of their mistake committed over centuries is now being borne by people all over the world. Especially the poor, who have done nothing to cause climate change. In 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, all nations of the world, 178 of them gathered to correct this mistake. We have been the most successful species ever. We are now a species out of control. All countries signed the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change. The rich countries agreed to take the first step to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and further promised to enable poor countries to fight climate change by extending funds and technology. But these were empty promises. Twenty conferences have gone by. The world is expecting us to reach some kind of agreement concerning climate change and not just continuing discussing procedure, procedure, procedure. The rich countries have neither reduced emissions nor have they delivered the billions of dollars they committed to support poor countries in their fight against climate change. I was born in 1992. You have been negotiating all my life. The fact is in Rio there were two parts of the agreement. They will reduce. We will have the space to increase. The second part of the agreement was they would give money and technology so that when we develop, we can develop differently. Now if you look at what has happened since Rio is, annex one countries have not reduced at the scale that they should have. And I'm talking about all annex one countries, including Europe. Okay, okay, I got it. You don't have to go on and on about it. You just love to take up the past, isn't it? That's not true, Teddy. I don't agree. I don't agree with that. Sure, there must have been some oversights, some goof ups. But now these guys in India are making the same mistakes all over again. I just don't get it. Yes, of course you won't get it. Because you really can't look beyond your nose. Just like those guys in your backyard who have those big dirty cars, heated homes, highways, broadband and... Hold on, hold on. What's wrong with that? It's a blessed way of life. It is very... Blessed way of life. Blessed way of life. Your blessed way of life needs five planets. We just have one. A blessed way of life lived by the developed countries has obviously come by spending a good fortune. Science calls it the carbon budget. If the world has to limit warming to no more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels to avoid catastrophic climate change, then it has a limited budget of carbon dioxide to emit. 2,900 billion tons from the dawn of the industrial revolution at the end of this century. Two thirds of this budget has already been used. The United States, the European Union, Russia and Canada together have emitted 50% of the carbon dioxide during this period. In comparison, India has just emitted 2.8%. At the current rate, the world will effectively finish the entire budget in the next 20 years. Leaving nothing for the development needs of the future generations. Let's talk about the United States in particular, which till date has occupied the maximum carbon space and how. America is addicted to oil. The US per capita coal consumption is five times higher than India's. An average American consumes 34 times more electricity than an Indian. In 2013, an American household purchased items 44 times that of India. 86% Americans drive cars in comparison to 10% in India. 40% of total food in America goes uneaten. Currently, India's per capita emissions are at 1.7 tons of CO2, while America's are at 16.5 tons. With its much celebrated climate commitments by 2030, the United States will reduce this to just 14 tons. Whereas India, with its most elevated trajectories, will still remain below the 2005 global average of 4.22 tons. Whatever happened to the promise of equity? The United States became the economic powerhouse of today simply because it emitted and therefore developed economically. But in that, it used more than its share of the global commons. Now, just like financial debt, you should be calling this the natural debt of the United States. The developed world used cheap energy to develop. It meant that there were emissions and they've occupied a large part of the carbon space. Now, when we want to provide our people with energy, there just isn't carbon space for the emissions that will result from the greater use of carbon. The C-word of consumption has to be the climate word as well. Because unless we discuss consumption and we make the American lifestyle negotiable, we will not be able to combat climate change. Let's now look at the inconvenient truths of some other rich countries. Compared to India's per capita emissions of 1.7 tons of CO2, the EU emits 7.2 tons, Russia 12, Korea 12.2, Canada 17.6. So this is equity in the real world that while a few rich countries continue to guzzle energy to live an addictive lifestyle, nearly 1.6 billion people globally do not have electricity. 300 million of these live in India alone. Their children study with an oil lamp. Millions of women here inhale toxic smoke while cooking on open fires. One third of Indians live in extreme poverty without shelter, education or healthcare. They suddenly deserve a better life. With such unfinished tasks at hand, India is investing her scarce resources to adapt to climate change, protecting its glaciers and coasts, making watersheds, building early warning systems, preparing communities for disaster management, training farmers to be climate resilient. India has a lot to do. It needs more carbon space. It is already too late for her people. I get your point. What? That everyone has a right to a good life. Exactly. But then if everyone starts living that life, then I have no hope. It's just going to get worse here. You know, that's the trouble. You're getting old and cynical. Just because a few folks had a party by blowing tons and tons of carbon into the air, it does not mean that it's the only way to go about it, huh? In India, the sun is revered as God. In thousands of far-flung villages that are off the grid, this God is literally helping to light up homes. But for a country where 300 million people still live without electricity, even the God can only do as much. This is Charanka. The rows go on as far as the eye can see. With an installed capacity of 600 megawatt, this is Asia's largest solar park in the Thar desert in India. But because of the limitations of solar technology, it operates at an efficiency of just 22%. Given the scale of India's energy challenge, Charanka is just a drop in the ocean. In Jaisalmer Rajasthan, the wind is turning the turbines of one of Asia's biggest wind farms with an installed capacity of more than 1,000 megawatt. These are some remarkable islands of hope that make up India's current green energy portfolio of 6%. By 2030, India has the potential to take this up nearly four times to 23%. But high capital costs, remote locations and lack of evacuation facilities make green energy costly. So who would bear this high cost eventually? So that cost has to be borne by a common man because in India, industrial tariffs are today the highest in the world. We cannot go on increasing the tariff for industry. They can definitely bear, but then there is a limit, which means that finally we will be looking at common man has to share additional burden. The common man in India is already burdened. Given his average income, he pays one of the highest electricity tariffs in the world. He cannot possibly carry further the weight of global expectations to use green energy. Today, 25% of Indian households do not even have access to electricity. A very large number do not get adequate electricity. So our goal is as quickly as possible provide adequate and affordable electricity to all. Now we are also greatly increasing our renewable energy capacity. But renewable energy even today is more expensive than for example coal energy. As we move ahead, if we want to accelerate the amount of renewables we have, it would imply both financial support as well as support in the transfer of technology for effective acceleration of the renewable energy program. In 2007, the government launched an unprecedented program called HAT, or Perform, Achieve and Trade to transform energy intensive industries in India. Nearly 478 heavy industry units were given specific targets to reduce their energy consumption. The idea was unique. Those units who outperformed their HAT target would be rewarded with energy-saving credits, which they can sell to industries who underperform. Across the spectrum of top energy-guzzling industries in India, HAT has already exceeded the target of 6.7 million tonnes of oil equivalent of energy savings. HAT has been very successful. It has focused on large energy intensive industries who have the capability and the capacity to invest in enhancing their energy performance. But there are millions of smaller units where hand-holding is required, where technological solutions delivered to the door are required, where adaptation of existing technologies are required for them to be meaningful to the small size of these industries. Honestly, all this is fine. I mean, it's not bad. Thank God. But you know it's not easy. You know these guys in India need help. Help? Like what? Well, if your friends lived up to the promises they made, a billion people in India are waiting to change the game. It has been promises galore. In 2010, the rich countries accepted that they would pay poor nations to adapt to the problems caused by climate change. They pledged that by 2020 and beyond, they would pool in 100 billion US dollars every year towards this purpose. This was called the Green Climate Fund. The headquarters of the United Nations Green Climate Fund has opened too much fanfare. The developing countries waited for this pledge to be honoured for the next four years. In 2014, the rich countries gathered once again for yet another round of pledging. I'm delighted with the outcome of today's pledging conference. Close to 9.4 billion dollars of contributions make this the most successful climate finance mobilisation. But eventually, high promises met with closed purses. Pledges need to be promised and to be converted into actual cash. And the signed commitments to date are about 5.3 billion dollars. That's all we have. 5.3 billion dollars that's going to be spread on an average over nine years. Typical project commitments. It doesn't go very far with 130-plus countries, if you think about it. Not even to speak of the scale and needs. So that's where we are with the Green Climate Fund. And it's a long, long way off from the US dollar 100 billion a year. The dishonesty is glaring. And it is often innovative. Here's another one from the OECD countries. So the OECD, as you know, is a club of the rich countries. Just like good clubs, we all want to belong to it. But not necessarily this one. The interesting question is, is these projects really about climate finance or retroactively or retrospectively you just called anything and everything under the sun? Climate finance projects. And when you actually look at the number of specialized climate funds, what is the amount? It's less than 2 billion dollars a year in disbursements from 24 specialized climate funds since inception. So 57 billion dollars, claimed OECD, actual neutral source, much more credible, 2 billion dollars. The ice melts back dramatically, exposing more... As these gimmicks play out on the world stage, climate science is screaming with new evidence. In September of 2012, Arctic sea ice shrank to its lowest extent ever measured in the satellite era. Britain's weather agency says the world has warmed one degree Celsius since pre-industrial times. Scientists are warning the planets now reached a grim climate milestone not seen for two or three million years. As time runs out, the scars of climate change are becoming uglier. But it is only ironic that when it strikes, disasters do not differentiate between borders, ethnicities, or even the GDP of nations. Hurricane Sandy crashing on shore winds now at 90 miles per hour, and this storm is so big, so vast, 60 million Americans will feel its power. Will feel its power. Will feel its power. Oh my God! I haven't seen so much disaster ever. Yeah, you haven't seen much anyway. Just because you travel, you think too much of yourself, Tweety. Anyway, I'm done. I'm hungry. I'm leaving. Your choice. But it's not about you, me or these seals. It's about all of us. We are in the same boat. It's about our planet. It's about our children. Teddy, are you listening? This was not the first time Teddy and Tweety were having this argument. For over three decades now, each time Tweety returns from India, Teddy listens to her stories, agrees, and then goes his own way. Nothing much has changed, except that the ice around is melting faster, and the seals are getting thinner and thinner. Alex, what countries wake up and smell the coffee? It's high time that the developed countries put their money with their power.