Global coal hypocrisy

India’s performance on greenhouse-gas emissions will get worse before it gets better.

India has somehow emerged as the villain of last month’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), blamed for resisting cuts to coal consumption even as toxic air envelops its capital, New Delhi. The country’s supposed crime in Glasgow was to join China in insisting on a last-minute change to the conference’s final declaration , in which countries pledged to “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal. For that, India, whose per capita carbon dioxide emissions are a fraction of those of the world’s leading emitters, was widely criticised for obstructing the global fight against climate change.