John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, talked about India thrice at the UN climate meet. India’s increasing investments in renewable technologies, droughts and growing pollution were emphasized in his speech.
Kerry pointed out that advancement in renewable energy was not restricted to industrialized countries. On the contrary, it were the emerging economies like India, China and Brazil, which have invested more in renewable technologies. China alone has spent more than $100 billion. Clean energy will very soon be one of the biggest markets in the world worth multitrillion dollars, he said.
Kerry has gone for every big UN climate change summit since 1992. Talking of the changing climatic conditions he said, there have been unbelievable droughts everywhere, from India to Brazil to the west coast of the U.S. Unseasonal and heavy storms, which were a rarity in the past have become quite the norm. In the past years, almost 22.5 million people have been rendered homeless due to the intense weather events.
Kerry visited the Antarctica recently where scientists warned him about the fast change in climatic trends. He said that the coal-fired power plants in China were the major culprits.
A study done in China in 2014 found that nearly six million people have black lungs. This is the consequence of living and working very close to these plants. “In the US, asthma costs taxpayers more than $55 billion annually. The greatest cause of children being hospitalised in the summer in the US is environmentally induced asthma,” said Kerry.
In India the situation was no different with nearly 20 million new asthma cases a year linked to coal-related air pollution.
