John Doerr spoke in a quiet, deliberate voice. “Fighting climate change is the largest economic opportunity of the next century,” he told the audience at the 2007 Technology Entertainment and Design conference in California. Then he turned sombre: “I still don’t think we’re going to make it.” Doerr’s venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has invested $200 million in green technology start-ups. But the investment guru worries that three of the world’s largest polluters — the US, China and India — still don’t see climate change as an economic opportunity. Instead, they resist cutting climate change-causing greenhouse gases on economic grounds. “Any effort to significantly limit greenhouse gas emissions will require changes in economic activity that could impose costs on our society,” Kapil Sibal, India’s minister for science and technology, said at the 95th Indian Science Congress, this January.

New Delhi and Beijing also refuse emission cuts on the grounds that their per capita carbon emissions (1.2 tonnes and 3.84 tonnes per person, respectively) are the lowest among major economies. By this logic, Aruba (per capita emissions 21.3 tonnes) and eight other countries with tiny populations should be worse polluters than the US (21.4 tonnes). The troubling reality is that China (6.2 billion tonnes per annum) and India (1.34 billion tonnes) are the world’s lar-gest and fourth-largest carbon dioxide (CO2) emitters. The US is second with 6 billion tonnes and Russia third with 1.5 billion tonnes. But China’s and India’s emissions are growing at 11 per cent and 6 per cent a year, as opposed to US’s 1.7 per cent, and India will cross Russia by 2015.

Although India promises never to let its per capita emissions exceed developed country levels, this is hardly a plus. If India’s 700 million strong upper and middle class, which pollute the most, reached European levels (9.5 tonnes per person), India would be the world’s worst polluter — and could still claim the right to pollute until emissions doubled to US levels. The obvious unsustainability of this means Indian industry “will be under significant pressure”, unless it fully addresses climate change, says Anand Mahindra, vice-chairman and managing director of Mahindra & Mahindra.

Last year, US senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner tabled the Climate Security Bill that would cut US CO2 emissions and levy a carbon import tax on countries that did not enforce cuts. The European Union also discussed a similar law. Although neither passed, Lester Brown, founder of the Washington DC-based Earth Policy Institute, believes future Bills “will be more ambitious”. Both the US presidential candidates, EU law-makers, and scores of CEOs believe that tackling climate change will create more jobs, and accelerate investments in a promising new industry. And all of them want legislation that turns this promise into reality.

Even in India, more than 60 per cent of business leaders feel the country should lead the way in green initiatives, says consultancy firm KPMG, which estimates this to become a $3-trillion industry by 2050. For example, GE’s Ecomagination initiative, which began in 2005 with 17 products and $700 million in research, today has 60 green products with $17 billion in revenues and $1 billion in R&D. The company’s order book stands at $70 billion. “Just three years in, we see huge demand for such products and solutions,” says Guilllermo Wille, director of GE’s research centre in Bangalore.

Domestic companies such as wind turbine giant Suzlon Energy and solar power pioneer Tata BP Solar are racing to catch up. With access to top-level engineers, low-cost R&D and a growing manufacturing sector, these companies believe they can corner large portions of the green market. But with New Delhi and India Inc. doing little to cut emissions, the full potential of cashing in on global warming is being neglected.