Speaking September 29 at the UN General Assembly, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it perfectly clear: India will not stop or even slow its people’s rise out of poverty to satisfy the global warming elites of the West.

Modi told the UN that any climate agreement acceptable to India must function “without affecting our ability to meet the development aspirations of humanity.”

And India intends to meet those aspirations by providing the abundant, affordable, reliable electricity without which no society ever has risen out of poverty or ever will. And its major source of that electricity? Coal.

It’s opening a new coal mine every month. Already the world’s third-highest emitter of carbon dioxide, it’s on trajectory to surpass the United States to become number two behind China.

Prakash Javadekar, India’s environment minister, says, “We want to clean our air, our water, our energy, our environment,” but he added, “Poverty reduction is our top priority. Providing power in the next 2,000 days is our priority. We want faster development. My people have a right to grow.”

Precisely. Poverty is a far greater threat than “climate change” or any of its alleged “impacts.” Even moderately wealth people can thrive in any climate from the Arctic Circle to the Sahara Desert and are much better able than the poor to survive extreme weather events like hurricanes, floods, and droughts.

India, China, and other developing nations are absolutely right to put the conquest of poverty ahead of fighting “climate change.” We make that point in our petition, Forget ‘Climate Change’, Energy Empowers the Poor. Sign it and ask your friends to join you!

 

Image Courtesy of Plaits/ Flickr CC