Climate is not the only thing that is changing in the world. For some countries coping with climate change, their status in the world and ability to work with, or against, the interests of other countries are also changing in an unprecedented manner. As nations of growing economic and political importance, India and China seem to have now found something other than competitiveness and mutual lack of trust to bring them together on an international platform, thanks to the politics of negotiating climate change. China has taken the initiative to draw up a draft plan with which to counter the developed nations’ pressure on the developing ones regarding emission cutting commitments. And India, together with Brazil and South Africa, has decided to put its trust on this initiative and take it forward into a joint front of developing nations (the Basic countries) that would present this counter-agenda in Copenhagen to the developed nations. This is perhaps the first time that Indian and Chinese interests are converging within a broader international context that goes beyond politics even when the path to that goal is still firmly geopolitical. Countries like France and Denmark are making their presences felt — more proactively than imagined, perhaps — at the Commonwealth summit in the Port of Spain. Again, the central issue there seems to be climate change, and what the alignments and allegiances are going to be in Copenhagen when the bargaining begins. India’s place in the Basic cluster is of key importance, and its decision to stick with the others on whether to stay or leave en masse the negotiating table in Copenhagen has implications that go beyond global warming. Insisting on sticking to the terms laid down by the Kyoto Protocol is both a way of reinforcing that solidarity and putting counter-pressure on the United States of America for equity and proportion in fixing the terms.

If the Indian prime minister feels the same sort of pressure to be present in Copenhagen as the American president is possibly feeling, it only goes to show how widely different economic and political positions can take on equal strategic importance in this sort of an international scenario. With power, and with growth, comes responsibility, and it is time for both the US and India, and the different allegiances each represents, to look eye to eye.