India, Oil and Nuclear Weapons

Exploding at the seams with building, investment and trade, India can hardly keep up with itself. Airplanes coming into Delhi and Mumbai routinely end up circling the airports for hours, wasting precious jet fuel, because there are not enough runways or airport gates. City streets originally built for two lanes of traffic are teeming with four and sometimes five lanes of cars, auto-rickshaws, mopeds, buses and trucks. This energy-guzzling congestion will only become worse as India continues producing fairly high-quality goods and services at lower and lower prices — from automobiles that cost only $2,500 to low-budget airline flights for $50.

India's president, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, sounded exactly like President Bush when he told the Asiatic Society in Manila earlier this month that energy independence must be India's highest priority. "We must be determined to achieve this within the next 25 years, that is, by the year 2030," he said. Unfortunately, Mr. Kalam, like Mr. Bush, is far better at talking than at any real action to reduce energy consumption. In the new enclaves for India's emerging middle class and its rapidly rising nouveau riche, environmentally unsustainable, high-ceilinged houses feature air-conditioning systems that stay on year round.

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