'No reason for US to wait for India, China on climate change'

Lalit K Jha
Washington, Mar 9 (PTI) The US should not wait for India
and China to act on climate change and should go ahead with
its environmental protection activities in terms of
legislation besides research and development, a top official
of the Obama Administration has said.
Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the US Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), also decried lawmakers of the
opposition Republican Party who have been opposing the Climate
Change legislation and asking the Obama Administration not to
take any further step on the issue unless India and China take
concrete steps in this direction.
"I really think that we're missing an opportunity if we
don't realise that the technologies that are going to be used
to move us into cleaner energy, lower carbon, less water use,
all those technologies are going to be important, not just
here but to the world," Jackson told reporters at the National
Press Club here.
So I would say there's no reason to wait for China and
India to act if we truly believe that there is a reason,
environmental and economic, to act now. In fact, there's every
reason not to wait, Jackson argued.
There's every reason to move forward as expeditiously as
we can so we don't see what seems to be happening continue,
which is that we innovate, we invent, and then it goes
overseas to be manufactured and used because there's no market
for it here, Jackson said in response to a question.
Responding to an argument that the rich countries, such
as the US and the European Union, which cause global warming
more should have to foot most of the bill, the EPA
Administrator said one can understand the equities and the
needs of those nations to try to develop in a way that gives,
first and foremost, their citizens access to energy, something
we probably take for granted in this country every day.
"The ideal, of course, is that, as those countries
develop, they develop in a way that jumps over dirty energy
and moves to cleaner forms of energy, so that, as they are
growing -- and I think technical assistance is a wonderful way
to help to ensure that," Jackson said. PTI LKJ