Barack Obama’s recent trip to China has received much criticism for its failure to achieve much of substance, giving a short-shrift to human rights issues and even raising a minor storm in India from an otherwise innocuous press release.  However, the trip may not have been entirely wasted.  Richard Wolfe notes that lost in the press coverage (and he charitably does not mention the American media’s obsession with Sarah Palin’s new ghost-written book) were agreements reached regarding emissions targets.  This along with talks held with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his state visit last week (which also helped defuse the brouhaha over the joint statement with China) could help break the deadlock at the upcoming Copenhagen talks.

The Chinese visit may have also contributed to the China joining the recent censure of Iran by the IAEA.  The deliverables may not be as groundbreaking as previous presidential visits abroad but address two upcoming issues on the President’s foreign policy slate.  Success in Copenhagen could reaffirm the goodwill that exists for the administration on the ground in Europe.  Bringing India and China into any global agreement to cut emissions will blunt one of the major criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol.  Likewise any Chinese help on Iran is to be welcomed.  These are small steps at present, but they could lead to greater rewards down the road.

Global warming is on its way to making the title of Hemmingway’s book a thing of the past.  This continues a patter with the melting of arctic ice flows and the disappearing Himalayan glaciers that make North India’s rivers perennial.  Yet a vocal contingent of global warming deniers insist that all of this is exaggerated and we may actually be in the middle of global cooling.  The mind reels.

Scientific American has an interesting read on a new analysis that seems to confirm the sometimes derided hockey stick graph of global warming.  I don’t share the optimism that it will change the minds of prominent global warming deniers.  As in the debate over evolution, emotion trumps empirical evidence.

How to deal with emerging economies has been a huge stumbling block in climate change negotiations.  The Kyoto treaty foundered in the United States because it did not place requirements on India and China.  India and China point out that their per capita pollution is a fraction of western countries and they would need assistance in terms of technology transfer.  This position has been cynically exploited by resource rich countries like Saudi Arabia.  However, faced with the impact of global warming the Indian environmental minister is internally lobbing around a proposal to kick start negotiations.  However, as the article suggests that none of this will work without American leadership.  And American leadership is imperiled by climate change deniers (See a slideshow of some of the most vocal deniers) many of whom who control the ideology of its opposition party and a national chamber of commerce too short sighted to explore the opportunities that a clean energy policy could provide.

With global warming melting the Himalayan glaciers an interesting read on a local attempt to limit the fallout.   Water will be a major flash point in South Asia in the coming decades as the perennial rivers like the Ganga, Yamuna and the Indus could become seasonal rivers and the rain patterns that feed agriculture and aquifers across the subcontinent change.  The Economist discussed this issue a month back.  A friend has often joked about India’s constant position as an emerging power – that it is full of “potential energy” rather than “kinetic energy.”  In addition to the other domestic, structural and regional issues India needs to solve, this looming water crisis adds to its development burden.