By Krittivas Mukherjee
Singh's Council on Climate Change will look at setting up a venture capital fund to promote green technologies, increasing energy efficiency and combating the possible impact of climate change on millions of India's poor.
Those emission levels could be brought down further as and when the worst emitters in the developed world cut back on their emissions, he said.
But as a developing nation, India is not yet required to cut emissions -- said to be rising by between 2 and 3 percent a year -- under the Kyoto Protocol, despite mounting pressure from environmental groups and industrialized nations.
Kyoto binds 37 rich nations to curb emissions during the pact's first commitment period of 2008-2012. Developing nations are excluded.
"CLIMATE JUSTICE"
"We cannot continue with a global development model in which some countries continue to maintain high carbon emissions," Singh said, calling for "climate justice."
"The world will have to...in the next two years create a consensus for cooperation that involves finance and technology support to countries for adaptation," he said.
It will also ponder ways to combat the effects of global warming, which threatens the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people on the Indian subcontinent by melting glaciers that feed major rivers and causing frequent floods, droughts and heat waves.
"Are we encouraging overuse of resources through misdirected subsidies?" the prime minister said, calling for a debate on the energy pricing policy that is so often driven by populist political considerations.
"We need a much wider national debate on such issues."
