When India has a choice between spending capital on more climate-friendly energy production versus improving education/health care/the conditions of the elderly, who can blame them for prioritizing the latter?
When India has a choice between spending capital on more climate-friendly energy production versus improving education/health care/the conditions of the elderly, who can blame them for prioritizing the latter?
For a rich western nation like germany? Not a lot of low hanging opportunities so might as well spend on green energy.
They are prioritising older voters over younger ones.
This tactic ends with a gerontocracy and ultimately no more humans.
Climate change is THE existential threat of our generation. The only ones which will benefit long term from avoiding the problem are those with a vested interest in fossil fuel companies.
Anyway, I welcome you to India. Stay here for a few years. Live through peak summers with power-cuts due to load shedding. And then repeat your message.
India is already building plenty of solar parks. We still need a lot more power.
I don't want to wear a hair shirt while people in other countries wear the finest silks.
I recognise that this is currently a privileged position - the upfront costs aren’t insignificant - it has cost us about €100k to achieve this degree of low-impact living - but it doesn’t have to be that way.
It’s perfectly possible to direct investment in a direction other than massive centralised and industrialised growth, which incurs the problems you describe, and simultaneously provide a better quality of life for the majority. You could subsidise rooftop solar, or local hydroelectric projects, or passive cooling systems, or subsidise people to nurture nature, and both provide energy and cut energy consumption in one fell swoop. India has the opportunity to make good decisions, rather than becoming burdened by what seem like good decisions now, but are bad decisions in the long term. It’s a shame to see that opportunity squandered.