By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : US House speaker Nancy Pelosi says a Congressional delegation “learned a lot” on its recent trip to India on how the two countries could work together to tackle global warming.
“That is important…not only to our environment, but to our national security,” she said Tuesday in a statement on the trip noting that “in India, we were greeted at the highest level” by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The purpose of the trip, she said, “was to see how we could work together with India, a country with 400 million people who are without electricity, but nonetheless having a major responsibility as a rapidly developing country on this important issue” of global warming.
The delegation also met R.K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore last year.
He took them “through what was happening in the non-profit sector in terms of renewable energy resources, bringing light to one billion Indians by using solar and other renewables”.
The Congressmen also “met with leaders in New Delhi and Mumbai, who were in the lead on the issue of global warming, whether it was through their initiatives in transportation, buildings, renewables, and the rest,” Pelosi said, adding: “We learned a lot on our trip”.