In a second “No”, India’s Energy Minister Raj Kumar Singh said at an IEA meeting on climate change that “net zero” carbon is “pie in the sky” no matter when you pledge it for. At a meeting supposed to be preparatory to the COP26 in Scotland in November, Singh said, “I would call it, and I’m sorry to say this, but it is just pie in the sky. What we hear is that … 2060 is far away and if the people emit at the rate they are emitting the world won’t survive, so what are you going to do in the next five years…. You have 800 million people who don’t have access to electricity. You can’t say that they have to go to net zero. They have the right to develop, they want to build skyscrapers and have a higher standard of living; you can’t stop it.”
