I came across a letter in the FT, (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9ce6a3d2-8159-11de-92e7-00144feabdc0.html) deriding India's efforts to try and stem the decline of the Himalayan glaciers in association with China. Now, we are talking about two countries that are villains in Western eyes, for refusing to toe the line on emission cuts. And now they get together to try and save the glaciers without first cutting emissions. This German academic, no doubt echoing the Indian rope trick, asked about the "Indians magic tricks to rescue the world from global warming".

The “magic trick” that India needs to continue to pull – as she has done with some success – is to provide a degree of economic development to its teeming millions, guaranteeing them a chance at living a small part of the middle class life that I am sure Prof Sendler enjoys in ample measure. And she has to do this while making sure her borders are safe, her democracy and civil liberties are reasonably secure, her various communities strive to find common cause rather than yield to those who exploit differences, her forest and natural wealth are preserved – I could go on.

Mr Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister who flatly refused to entertain the notion of unilateral emission cuts recently, is not a stupid or unreasonable man, and I am sure he reads the same literature as Prof Sendler. If the current path of economic development that India is on were to be arrested because India yields to concerns about emission control, the result would be social and economic chaos which I am sure the West will do very little to solve. If there is an alternate path, let it present itself. Until then, India has no choice.

If Prof Sendler would care to review the same evidence, he would perhaps realise that his country is the third largest polluter per capita in the world in terms of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere (Cf David Mackay, “Without the Hot Air”). The Indian position is not a simple one – this is because India’s development problem is not something that can be simplified. It needs to be understood, and I would urge Prof Sendler to do just that.

Having said all this, it is high time India and China collaborated on how to make their economies greener, and establish intellectual leadership in technologies that enable this path. Some of them are obvious measures. I am sure there are more things that can be done.