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Now, Bush blames India for oil prices
First it was US President George W Bush's remarks linking Indians' food habits to rising global prices of commodities and now its rising oil prices that has been blamed on consumption in India and China. The White House has partly attributed the surge in global oil prices to the increased demand in Asia in particular India and China. Scott Stanzel -- White House Deputy Spokesman said, "Many developing nations like India or China are having greatly increased demand, which obviously is having an impact on price."
The senior White House official stressed that it was important for the United States to become less dependent on foreign sources of energy. Highlighting the need for "domestic exploration", he said "We also have to do more in terms of building refineries. We haven't built refineries in about 30 years".
Stanzel also spoke regarding Bush's remarks, which have drawn a lot of flak from every section in India, saying the United States saw "higher living standards" of people there as a "good thing".
"We think that it is a good thing that countries are developing; that more and more people have higher and higher standards of living," he said. However, he apparently did not go back on Bush's point that Indian food habits were contributing to spiralling prices of commodities, which in turn, were worsening the global food crisis.
"The point that I think was to be made is that as you increase your standard of living, the food that you eat can venture more into meats that require more commodities to feed the livestock which, you know, uses more of those commodities, whether it's corn, or wheat, or other commodities and it drives up the price. So that is just a function of how those food prices that we've seen spike around the world," Stanzel said.
Three days ago, Bush had specifically took the case of Indian middle class to argue that its demand for better nutrition was a factor in pushing the global food prices up. "There are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That's bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. "And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up," Bush had said.
Indian government on Bush remark
Shyam Saran, special envoy to the PM reacted to US President George Bush's remarks linking rising oil prices to the consumption by India and China. He said, "You cannot resolve the food crisis or the energy crisis by blaming each other. ou cannot resolve the food crisis or the energy crisis by blaming each other ."
-Times Now & PTI |
Dubya has done it again..
Probably, he is only echoing the concern among the western countries about the growing might of the asian giants like China and India, and the slowing economy back home.
But one thing i've got to agree on is the pollution hazard created by these two countries.Especially China..the rapid industrialization there has seen a unprecedented rise in pollution levels over a major part of the Asian subcontinent.
If not enuf measures are taken to tackle this menace, the whole world will be at the receiving end with little left to do, once the damage is done.
