India Rejects ANY Emission Caps Until 2020

In an update to a story I posted last week, Jairam Ramesh, the India’s environment minister, went on record today that India would not even discuss signing up for any legally-binding limit on greenhouse gas emissions until at least 2020. This means that both India and China, home of 1.17 billion and 1.31 billion people respectively, have now refused to set any emission limits in the near- or mid-term because "their fast-growing economies should not be hampered when western countries were responsible for climate change."

Don't they see the difference between the United States, who only accounts for 4.5% of the global population, and themselves, home to 37% (almost 2 out of 5) of the global population? I realize that the current situation with our environment is due primarily to the industrialized world (with the US being the number one emitter of greenhouse gases) but what will happen once these massive nations repeat the same mistakes?

I'm anxious to see how this affects the upcoming international climate convention in Copenhagen later this year.