As world leaders deliberate over global warming in Copenhagen, there is considerable acrimony at home on the recent statement by Jairam Ramesh, minister for environment, articulating a 20-25 per cent cut in India’s “carbon intensity” by 2020. Opposition staged a walkout, there was a reported rift in the Indian negotiating team and several people questioned the basis for the Indian position. The general feeling is that India surrendered too much ground to the West without anything in return and that this policy would seriously undermine development and growth.

In the last several days in the media, “carbon intensity”, the new jargon, has become almost as ubiquitous as Sehwag and Dhoni.