“In per capita terms, India and China are way below the US and North America. But a quite apart from that, China and India have to chart a new path. The developed country experience has proved disastrous for variety of other reasons energy security for one thing, local pollution another,” Pachauri said in an interview to Newsweek.
In India and China, there is now a serious debate. “In India I can see it for sure because the prime minister is quite concerned about this issue. He had set up the advisory council on climate change,” he said.

“Similarly in China, there’s a China council for international cooperation on environment and development, of which I am a member. There’s now a serious effort to look at a low carbon economy in China,” Pachauri said.

Optimistic
Pachauri said he is “very optimistic” that the world is ready to tackle climate change because awareness has increased in the last 8 or 9 months ever since the UN Panel’s reports.

He did not endorsed the view that the United States administration is still a laggard and said, “I would say there is clearly a very detectable shift on the part of this administration...  Irrespective (of) who’s in the White House, I think the next administration will have to be far more proactive on climate change than we have seen so far.”
Debunking the contention of the high cost involved in curbing global warming, Pachauri said, the cost to global economy in 2030 will be less than three per cent if concentration of greenhouse gases is to be stabilised at the level that would limit increase in temperature to 2 to 2.4 degrees celsius.

“Now, that really means that the level of prosperity that we are going to reach in 2030 may, at best, be postponed by 8 or 9 months. That’s certainly not a high price to pay. If you’re going to translate this into annual cost, it’s only 0.12 per cent of the GDP,” he said.

Need for innovations

As far as coal is concerned, he said, technological innovations are needed, like the gasification of coal that could improve the efficiency of the whole society.

He said he expects the private sector would invest in these things if there is a price on carbon. “In our findings, we have clearly highlighted the importance of keeping a price on carbon. If one were to do that, then you would see the world moving towards a low carbon economy.”