Emphasizing that environment and climate have an essential place in Indian culture and tradition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said government is working to make India a green energy hub.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden were speaking an joint press conference at the White House after holding bilateral talks.
He further said, "Environment is an article of faith for us. We do not believe in the exploitation of nature."
Speaking about India's promise to protect the environment, he said, "We are taking global initiatives for the same. India is the only G20 country in the world that kept the promise it took in Paris to protect the environment."
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden said," I think it is existential threat to humanity."
“In order for all of creation to work, we can make nature -- we cannot have exploitation of nature and we have always believed this," he said.
And on the basis of these values, India is not only doing things for itself but is taking some global initiatives as well, he said.
India has set itself the target to make Indian Railways net zero.
“And you must understand the scale of Indian Railways. When we talk about Indian Railways, it means that every day the entire population of Australia travels in wagons on our trains. And we have set ourselves the target to achieve net zero for our railways," Prime Minister Modi said.
"We have also set ourselves targets for solar energy for ethanol, a 10 per cent mix of ethanol. We have completed this target before the set date,” the prime minister asserted. India is also working in the area of green hydrogen, he said.
“We want India to be a green hydrogen hub and we are working towards this. International Solar Alliance has been launched by India and many countries have joined it and are working with India,” he said.
“We will not only fulfil our responsibilities, but we will also help you in the area of climate change… There is a lot of destruction of infrastructure as well and therefore because of climate change, the kind of crisis we are feeling we need to develop infrastructure that is resilient,” he said. President Biden said climate change is an existential threat to humanity.
US President Joe Biden's take on climate change
Speaking about the environment, US President Joe biden said, "The US is well on its way to doing that and that's also absorbing carbon from the air as a consequence of that because of conservation.
"We are in a position...we have provided for a significant increase in funding for a whole range of issues, not just for the United States but for the rest of the world,” said the president.
“We're trying to work with other countries to maintain their carbon sinks so they don't have to develop them like we did and causing pollution. And we're trying to figure out how to work out to pay them not to develop certain areas like the Amazon and Brazil. But there's a lot of technology that's available that we're sharing and we share with one another,” he said.
“We've learned how to do solar energy, which is considerably cheaper than fossil fuels.The same way dealing with not just solar but dealing with wind.
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