Prof. Aseem Prakash and colleague Prof. Nives Dolšak tell us in a new Forbes article that the Biden and Modi talked about China but not about Climate.
The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was accorded a lavish welcome by the Biden Administration during his recently concluded U.S. visit. There is a bipartisan consensus in the U.S. that China is a major geo-political challenge and India must be recruited to contain it. Yet, the Biden-Modi lovefest had a glaring omission: climate change. This is surprising because the U.S. and India are the second and third largest emitters of greenhouse gases. The reason probably is that climate change is a divisive issue in U.S. politics. Including it on the Biden-Modi agenda might have forced Republicans to respond, bringing the focus on divisive U.S. domestic politics as opposed to bipartisan consensus on the geo-political challenge the U.S. faces.
"The lesson is that in the U.S., climate policy progress is possible if the term climate change is not employed. This is probably why Biden did not publicly talk about climate change during Modi’s visit. And in any case, climate change is unimportant in India’s domestic politics; so, Modi had no real interest in bringing up climate issues either. Both leaders focused on the real agenda: geopolitics and the China challenge."