Regardless of how the rest of the world behaves or legislates, however, the United States should be taking the lead. We have been in the lead on the polluting side for a long time.

India and the fully industrialized world are at different places on the Kuznets curve, so it’s completely reasonable for poor nations to put more emphasis on short-term economic growth and rich nations to put more emphasis on the long-term sustainability of their comfortable quality of life by mitigating environmental change their citizens find undesirable.

Basic economics tells us that adding $1000 per year to the average Indian’s income will produce a much greater increase in quality of life than adding $1000 per year to the average U.S. citizen’s (diminishing marginal utility of money).

Citizens of the U.S. can (and do) afford to sacrifice tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per family to provide higher education for their children, whereas Indian and Chinese families cannot and do not make comparable sacrifices of present wealth to benefit future generations. [Credit where it's due: I've stolen this point from Mike Maniates] Citizens of the U.S. and other wealthy nations sacrifice enormous amounts of economic growth by purchasing luxury consumer goods (cell phones, televisions, etc.) instead of investing that money in shares (which would promote economic growth).

The U.S. and similarly wealthy nations can also afford sacrifices of current wealth for the environmental benefit of future generations—sacrifices poor nations cannot afford any more than they can afford plasma televisions, iPhones, Escalades, or Ivy League tuition.

The normative conclusion I draw here is that we should make decisions about the environment by looking at concrete trade-offs amongst opportunities and risks in specific times and places rather than trying to force all times and places into one decision based on abstract and absolute principles.

This conclusion echoes in many ways Nordhaus & Schellenberger’s argument in Breakthrough that global warming is indeed an impending catastrophe, but that we can’t fight it effectively until the poor nations of the world have acquired sufficient wealth and income to afford concern about future environmental hazards.

Pachauri is advocating huge increases in CO2 emissions from the likes of China and India that will ensure that atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise, regardless of any emission reductions by developed countries – An odd position if he truly believes in a CO2 driven climate catastrophe and a high sensitivity of climate to CO2.

That said, the document outlines a good policy for India along with an observational climate assessment that should embarrass the biased UN IPCC.