US seeks help of countries including India on Climate change

Lalit K Jha

Washington, Feb 18 (PTI) US President Barack Obama has
sought the help of major countries of the world including
China and India in addressing the urgent issue of climate
change and clean energy.

In an interview to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
(CBC) Tuesday, Obama said the dilemma countries like Canada,
the US and China face is how to obtain the energy, which is
essential for the economic growth, in a way that is not
rapidly accelerating the climate change.

Observing that no country can solve this problem in
isolation, the President said: "So Canada, the US, China,
India, the European Union, all of us are going to have to work
together in an effective way to figure out how do we balance
the imperatives of economic growth with very real concerns
about the effect we're having on our planet."

Ultimately this can be solved by technology, Obama
argued. "I think that it is possible for us to create a set of
clean energy mechanisms that allow us to use things not just
like oil sands, but also coal."

The US has its own homegrown problems in terms of
dealing with a cheap energy source that creates a big carbon
footprint. Currently the US in association with countries like
China and India is developing a clean coal technology to
produce electricity.

"It's going to be important for us to make sure that
countries like China and India, with enormous populations and
huge energy needs, that they are brought into this process, as
well," Obama said as he referred to the tri-lateral
cooperation between US, Mexico and Canada in North America.

As the climate change crisis grows bigger every passing
day, Obama said it is important to capture the greenhouse
gases before they're emitted into the atmosphere. That is
going to be good for everybody, he said.

"If we don't, then we're going to have a ceiling at some
point in terms of our ability to expand our economies and
maintain the standard of living that's so important,
particularly when you've got countries like China and India
that are obviously interested in catching up," Obama said.

"The more that we can develop technologies that tap
alternative sources of energy but also contain the
environmental damage of fossil fuels, the better off we're
going to be," he said. PTI LKJ
RKM
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