The talk turned to environmental issues, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, during US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's visit to India, with US special envoy for climate change Todd Stern tagging along.

As reported by the US media, India "rebuffed" or "refused" the call of the USA to mandate lower carbon dioxide emissions, backed up by a threat, the US House of Representatives having voted a bill that would require the US to take trade sanctions against countries that did not adopt binding emissions reduction policies.

India's minister of State for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, explained, "There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions."

Put on the defensive, Secretary Clinton claimed that "the US does not, and will not, do anything that would limit India's economic progress."

The diplomatically awkward exchange brought to mind an op-ed piece by geographer and physiologist Jared Diamond. Diamond pointed out that Americans (and Europeans) consume resources at a rate basically 32 times higher than people in the developing world, including India.

This observation makes Ramesh's comment understandable, and Clinton's call hypocritical: if India increased relative consumption from 1 to 3, it would arguably boost greenhouse gas production; however, if the US reduced its relative consumption from 32 to 27, this would arguably reduce greenhouse gas emissions while leaving Americans seven times better-off than Indians. Whatever the numbers, from India's perspective and Diamond's conceptual frameork it seems easier for the US to drop down from 32 than it would be for India to cut from 1. Of course, everyone would be better off if India increased greenhouse gas emissions less slowly than it increased its aggregate wealth and consumption. But this is a different matter than asking India to cut future emisions.