Gates heats up talk on climate change, bats for India

Gates heats up talk on climate change, bats for India

Microsoft Corporation chairman Bill Gates did not mind taking cudgels with world leaders when batting for India’s poor in the raging global debate on sustainable growth, where climate change clearly seems to be edging out growth and development, so critical to emerging economies.

“Climate change issues cannot be addressed by asking the poor to cut back on consumption. You can’t get 90 per cent of carbon dioxide reduction by telling them to reduce their nutrition levels. You can’t have a just world by asking them to use less energy,” Gates said, responding to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who said climate change was the entry point for sustainable growth.

In his opening address at a session on “Redefining Sustainable Development” moderated by foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, the UN Secretary-General was clear that the world needed sweeping changes and some out-of-box thinking to create growth in a resource-constrained environment. “One resource scarcest of all today is time,” said Ban Ki-Moon.  

Source: The Indian Express