And by we, I mean developed countries and the people in them. Some of us do care, and are trying to do something. Some of us go so far as to think our Prime Minister is a traitor for not protecting us (or anyone) from the climate emergency. Some of us think the deniers and their paymasters should be strung up. And, to be fair, a lot of people want to do the right thing.

And yet – we are not. Our emissions are going up. We are obstructing action. And we, the people, continue to live the good life. Thanks for the cheap shoes and go to accent reduction classes if you’re going to staff our call centres, would you?

We continue to elect leaders who promise the easy way out, not the right way, the honest path, a fair deal for all. The late George Carlin said it crudely but accurately: The rich just don’t care about you.* The purpose of an empire, any empire, is to enrich the homeland. It is not to spread democracy or make the world safer or better. The purpose of any empire, including the American empire is to enrich the rich in the more powerful country.

Sooner or later, countries like India are going to realise we don’t care about them other than as sources of cheap stuff, resources, and possibly interesting places to visit and build McDonalds – to further enrich ourselves at the expense of their health, culture, and economic progress. As Monbiot points out, we have a long history of ensuring our progress at the expense of anyone else:

Indians are also painfully aware that the rich nations in the past deliberately prevented their nation from developing. England, for example, banned the import of calico (cotton cloth) from India, in order to protect its own textile industries. It went on to smash Indian looms and cut off the thumbs of Indian weavers in order prevent them from making their superior products. As Ha Joon Chang shows in his book Kicking Away the Ladder, England's industrial revolution was made possible by preventing India's. Many people there suspect that attempts to limit India's future greenhouse gas emissions have the same purpose.

So, sooner or later, countries like India are going to take matters into their own hands. They will realise that talk is cheap and it’s about all we have to offer; we will talk them right into their grave. And the Indian and Bangladeshi and other leaders are much closer to the pitchfork than the Americants or Canadianots.

If only 1% of the population of India gets hungry or angry enough to do something, that’s 10,000,000 hungry, angry people. And in reality, it’s a lot more than 1% of the populations in India and Bangladesh that will be starving and/or thirsty and/or driven from their land by rising seas and stronger storms. 

In the cases of Maldives and Tuvalu, it is 100%, but they’re tiny, powerless, and I’m sure if they have any resources, Western corporations will be happy to mine those as the islands disappear below the waves in a few years. So, from the rich and powerful perspective, who cares?

The Indians and Bangladeshis do have some power, though, and not just because of the nukes. No neighbour wants tens of millions of climate refugees streaming into their country, or a war over water, which is what it will come to, possibly within a few decades.

So it is no surprise that the Indians have decided to take matters into their own hands, and have embraced nuclear. In this case, Thorium nuclear, which has not yet been commercialized, but if you’re gonna go nuke, Thorium seems to be the way to go. 

When it comes to energy, especially nuclear energy, the order of priorities is:

• Conservation (use less or none)
• Sustainable (includes Renewable; means that supply is essentially unlimited – we are not using up Natural Capital – and we can do something indefinitely without harm)
• The least polluting technology available (only until we are Sustainable)

In this case, the Indians have chosen Thorium nuclear, and they cannot be faulted for doing so. They have lots of Thorium, they are going to need to generate much more energy if they hope to raise all their people to the middle class, and they need to do it without releasing carbon.

I would love to see them go all renewable, with wind and solar installations across the country; I think this would generate at least as many jobs and would leapfrog straight to renewable. It would also keep power generation close to the users, meaning energy security and less grid expense.

However, given that we, despite our great comparative wealth and technological prowess, have been afraid to make any serious changes and demonstrate what is possible, the Indians rightly choose their own direction. The rest of us have failed to lead or follow, so now we had better get out of the way as India charges ahead.

I say, good luck and godspeed to India. Lead on. Because we just don’t care about you.

* Audio disabled on YouTube due to a copyright claim by George Carlin’s owner. Dead, but still owned.

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