After his meeting with the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the visiting UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said per capita emission rates was an “important and equitable principle”, which should be “seriously considered” in global climate change negotiation.

This is a vindication of India’s stated position first narrated by Dr Singh at the G-8 meeting in Heiligendamn in Germany last year.

Countering intense pressure from the USA and other European nations on cutting down of green houses gases like carbon dioxide and methane that warm up the planet, Dr Singh proposed to use per capita emission as the basis for climate change negotiation. While in absolute terms, India is the world’s fourth largest emitter after USA, EU and China, the per capita analysis makes it aptly clear that India is way behind the USA or EU on emission.

India’s per capita carbon dioxide emission is 20 times less than that of the USA and almost 10 times less than European Union.

The UK per capita carbon dioxide production is 9.2 tonnes whereas for India, the figure stands at mere 1.1 ton.
When Dr Singh proposed the formula at Heiligendamn, the only support he received was from the German chancellor Angela Merkel.

The UK is the second influential nation that rallied behind New Delhi.

Responding to technology transfer demands from India, the UK has agreed to work together to find out the barriers preventing transfer of low carbon technologies from the UK to India.

The Confederation of Indian Industry and the Confederation of British Industry have signed a pact on Monday to work together on green technologies.

The funnier side
New Delhi,PTI: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s sense of humour, including jibes at politicians, had the audience in splits at a gathering of intellectuals at the Delhi University.

Brown, who was conferred an honorary degree by Delhi University, interspersed his acceptance speech with funny anecdotes. Noting that he was a lecturer at Glasgow University before he “descended into politics”, Brown said the varsity stood for qualities like objectivity, rationality, impartiality and honest pursuit of truth.

Thereafter, he took a dig at politicians saying these were all qualities “that you have to leave behind when you go into politics”. He also narrated an incident involving former US president Ronald Reagan and the then Swedish Premier Olaf Palme. “President Reagan did not know what to make of the Social Democratic Prime Minister of Sweden,” he said. Reagan, Brown said, asked his officials whether Palme was communist, getting the reply that he was actually “anti-communist”. “And to this Mr Reagan said, I don’t care what kind of communist he is,” Brown said.