This is a fairly one sided opinion piece which does not accurately reflect India’s policy towards fossil fuels.

I follow Indian politics fairly closely and I was suprised to see the assertion that Modi has denied climate change for years especially since India has been fairly aggressive at expanding renewable usage since it is a matter of energy independence for them. Unlike Saudi Arabia, India imports essentially all of its oil and has very little to none domestically.

The often referred to quote from the speech he gave was “Climate has not changed. We have changed. Our habits have changed.” In the rest of the speech he goes on to explain further that the environment isn’t changing on its own; human behavior, lifestyle shifts, and a lack of harmony with nature are driving environmental destruction. The argument he was making recognized anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change; it wasn’t a denial of it.

From 2025 to 2026 India added 55+ GW of non-fossil fuel capacity and is currently the world’s third largest market for installed renewable energy.

Modi was vocal about combatting climate change at COP26, committing India to a “Net Zero” emissions target by 2070 and pledged that India would source 50% of its energy capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030.

India also recently had its fast breeder Thorium reactor reach criticality and is planning to expand capacity to meet 15% of domestic energy demand by 2047.

There’s a lot of reasons not to like Modi but this is a misrepresentation of his and India’s current stance on climate change.

Yes, India still burns coal. No country in history has developed without coal. It is cheap, abundant and accessible domestically. Renewables are still too inefficient and pricey to meet the needs of a rapidly developing nation robustly. Oil is a foreign import for India, which comes with its own unique costs and geopolitical complexity. Energy has been crucial to India pulling 30 million people out of poverty domestically per year and abandoning coal at this stage would likely mean decreasing that number.

Its a complicated situation, but what is clear is India recognizes climate change and has expressed a clear intention to expand renewable utilization over the next several decades. For India it’s not only a matter of domestic climate impact but decreasing reliance on global oil markets.

Would you describe India as a social democracy under Modi? I am hesitant to. There are robust welfare schemes no doubt but the leanings are overwhelmingly capitalist especially in areas of the country controlled by the BJP.

You know what I was just going to accept capitalism as is for the rest of my life but now I’m a radical leftist. Whoever made this meme took it just a step too far.

Absolutely. Napolean and trade barriers had an important role in that evolution

During the Napoleonic Wars, the British Royal Navy blockaded France, cutting off all Caribbean cane sugar. The price of sugar loaf skyrocketed. Facing a riotous, sugar-deprived public, Napoleon poured state funding into beet research. ​He ordered thousands of acres to be planted and offered massive prizes to scientists who could refine the process. By the time the blockade lifted, the industry was advanced enough to compete with cane on a price-per-pound basis.

It’s remarkable how much of human history (if not all of it) is adapting to the circumstances around us.

Europeans were using roman numerals and an abacus for accounting until the 1200s. In fact, the number zero was initially banned out of concern for fraud. The Medici Bank was an early adopter of the IndoArab numeral system we use today and it helped them become one of the wealthiest families in Europe.

From the 600s to 1400s we can draw a fairly clear line from Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Fibonacci, Pierro della Franchesca to Leonardo da Vinci.

In the old world it could take centuries for ideas to travel, even if they’re foundational to modern mathematics, physics etc.

A similar story can be told of sugar which was first refined in South Asia, the engineering process travelled through and was further developed in the Arab world during the Islamic golden age and then went to Europe.

Italian merchant republics—primarily Venice—began managing sugar production in Mediterranean colonies like Cyprus, Crete, and Sicily. However, sugar is a land-hungry and wood-hungry crop. By the 1400s, the Mediterranean was running out of timber (needed to fuel the massive boiling vats) and space.

Christopher Columbus lived in Portugal and married the daughter of a sugar estate owner. When he sailed for the Americas, he brought sugarcane stalks from the Canary Islands on his very first voyage, knowing the Caribbean climate was a perfect match for the “white gold.”

The Caribbean offered vast land, tropical rain, and timber. Because the process of cutting, hauling, and boiling cane is so physically punishing and dangerous, European powers scaled up the enslaved labor system to a level never before seen in the Mediterranean, turning the islands into “sugar factories” to meet the soaring demand in Europe.

The profits from sugar were unlike anything seen before. At its peak, a successful sugar plantation could see annual returns of 20% to 50%, far outstripping traditional agriculture or local trade. This led to the founding of institutions like the Bank of England, Barclays and Lloyds. Sugar also provided a cheap source or energy and made caffeine based beverages more palatable to maximize the productivity of human capital in operation of early machinery during the industrial revolution.

You’re absolutely right. What is this, the 1900s? Europe is old news - and I mean this literally, look at the demographics.

It’s a nice sentiment but call centers are going to be entirely AI run before they return to higher income nations. It’s just too much of a competitive disadvantage unless you want to create a locked environment that requires corporations to run them locally even if at a higher cost.

The more likely outcome is Rogers or Bell will run their customer service via AI entirely and some American company will be collecting rent on every token processed.

You’ve never spoken to an Indian person outside of the context of a scam? Under which rock are you living, brother?

It’s niche in more diverse communities where history is reflected on in a more global sense and is less eurocentric overall (hence Denzel’s hilarious response) but it’s neat that these young men are reflecting on history. Hopefully it helps them understand something meaningful about the world.

*White men. Recall Denzel Washington being absolutely flabberghasted when asked this on the red carpet.

Well that just makes the US government look worse. I’m all for bringing down theocratic monarchies but if one’s democratically elected government is the only thing propping that up, it would make much more sense to direct the rage there, within a system that answers to its people. Either that or it looks like they’re enjoying the financial benefits of the partnership quietly while engaging in moral grandstanding outwardly.

If one’s morality is on a firm foundation, petition your government to bring an end to the petrodollar. The Saudi monarchy will fall as you wish for it to. Anything less amounts to hipocrisy.

This is interesting because the US government has clearly been very friendly with the Saudi regime for decades, supports monarchy / authoritarianism there militarily and diplomatically, developed the petrodollar system with them which saves the average American household thousands of dollars a year and allows the US government to run a $40 trillion dollar debt with favorable interest rates. Several advantages America has over other Western nations and the rest of the world come from this partnership.

In a sense every American makes money off of Saudi Arabia and doesn’t realize it. Perhaps that’s something they didn’t consent to so they shouldn’t be held accountable. But if the petrodollar ended tomorrow, inflation in the US would spike almost immediately through currency devaluation and a bond crisis would likely follow.

The first morally logical step would be to petition one’s own government to stop supporting the Saudi monarchy militarily and diplomatically.

Tl;dr: The US is the reason Saudi Arabia has international legitimacy and respect. If anyone wants to change that, start with them.

I like Shazam. Shit like Batman vs Superman is just too one dimensional unless you’re already deeply invested in those franchises.

Quite a few enlightenment thinkers were inspired by contact with indigineous peoples in the Americas where certain democratic frameworks existed.

Several different parts of the world had various democratic frameworks throughout history including in South and West Asia, Africa, and certain indigenous groups in the Americas.

The Eurocentric narrative persists though, but perhaps for not much longer.

This quote in OPs image is by the late anthropologist who cowrote the Dawn of Everything which explores global civilizational history further.

Location matters though. It wouldn’t make sense for a house to cost as much as it does to make. Though obviously prices have become completely detached from reality.

France 24 is not a scientific publication - it’s directed at a casual audience to whom describe does not inherently mean describe taxonomifally. The language has to be more precise if its looking to be intellectually honest.

A simple “first described by x” while not entirely true is at least a step closer to intellectual honesty.

That or “first became known to white people” would be even more candid.

A Westerner is someone that lives in a previous colonial metropole, usually Western Europe, or one of their settler nation states.

In other words, someone who does not live in the global south ie. those peoples victimized by colonial imperialism.

Why refer to them as the bourgeoisie proletariat? It’s the first time I’m coming across the phrase but it makes sense. This 20% segment of humanity holds 80% of global wealth, to the great suffering of others. This 20% segment has historically contributed over 50% of cumulative carbon emissions, disproportionately contributing to climate change through relative excess, while looking down at those that have less than them.

While not talking about any one person in particularly, surely anyone can see that describing this segment of humanity collectively as the bourgeoisie proletariat couldn’t be more fitting.

A few issues with this analogy:

1. Colonialism typically does not involve the consent of governed. If you live in a paritcipatory democracy then that doesn’t really fit the idea of being a colony.

2. Your leaders have the option to pivot your economies to emphasize other sectors for growth. Colonies are forces to become vehicles of extraction of raw materials and the people are often forced into labor. They have no say (or vote) in how the economy is managed.

3. Under a colonial framework, you don’t even get to the point of building for yourself. You build for another and hopefully live off the scraps the administration throws at you as their indentured / slave labor force.

I know that colonialism is not emphasized especially in Western education but I’m afraid this analogy does not hold. Well have to find other ways to describe this phenomenon that don’t resort to exaggeration.

Hopefully this isn’t lost on the group here but I find it a bit comical that a great colonial empire of the past, which once tortured people around the world into Catholicism, now has tourism accounting for a whopping 15% of its GDP (at the disdain of its locals). If that isn’t a manifestation of karma, I don’t know what is.