The different worlds of wealthy nations and developing countries

There is a tight correlation between poverty and "deprivation" of the entire range of basic products and services that are taken for granted by wealthier citizens. A personal car is the iconic energy-dependent product that is highly correlated with freedom of mobility and independence, as well as improved personal and national economic outcomes. In the United States, there are roughly 800 cars for every 1,000 people; in poorer developing nations, there are only a few cars for every 1,000 people.

Much of the rhetoric one hears from representatives of wealthy nations at global gatherings is focused on the goal of lowering global CO2 emissions. Such a singular focus not only ignores the realities of multidimensional environmental issues, but more importantly ignores energy poverty and the central need for access to a sufficient supply of affordable products made from fossil fuels, and affordable electricity. This is the only way to increase well-being everywhere and reduce destructive global disparity. For the foreseeable future, much of the energy to achieve this will come from oil, natural gas, and coal.

The high price of wind and solar deployed just to generate electricity at society-scale illustrates an important cost of supply principle. Because everyone needs affordable and reliable energy-whether electricity, gasoline, diesel, aviation, or heating fuel-the higher the overall costs, the more damaging it is proportionally for those who can least afford it.

Economic growth is propelled by imagination and invention. Many processes are made possible by the ability of fossil fuels to deliver the extremely high heat required to fabricate cement, steel, and other vital materials, and as feedstock for many critical materials, not least of which are fertilizers and plastics. The latter, while often vilified, are essential in a myriad of products, including in medical domains and vehicles of all kinds.

Improving the well-being of the billions on this planet who live in poverty will vastly increase the demand for, and thus the energy associated with, all conventional products and services from home heating and cooling, to transportation, healthcare, and more. Then, in wealthy nations there is a further effect on energy demands from continued invention of new kinds of products and services.

Making products and services more energy-efficient effectively makes them more affordable and accessible for more people and thus increases overall energy demand around the world.

Policymakers in wealthy nations recognize that outsourcing to emerging nations the mining of basic materials, the refining of those materials, and the manufacturing of associated components simply shifts CO2 emissions somewhere else. More than half the world's CO2 emissions come from Asian nations, which also produce more than half of the world's goods. Similarly, mining has in recent decades increasingly shifted to emerging economies, many with fragile or often compromised political and social structures. Dependence on imports does not make the world "greener", it just moves environmental and other impacts elsewhere.

When wealthy economies export the production of minerals and metals to less wealthy nations, they impose environmental impacts and the exploitation of human atrocities on those developing countries.

We want our products to be inexpensive, but it is naïve and myopic to ignore the reality that those products are being produced using coal-fired electricity and energy for the 21^st Century coal-fueled manufacturing, transported by diesel burning trucks and ships to stores and front doors.

All products and goods are moved into markets on transportation equipment using oil somewhere in the supply chains; overall, petroleum powers over 95% of global transportation. Exporting industrial and environmental challenges from wealthy to developing countries is not a solution, it is a "shell game".

Thus, while wealthy Europe and the United States have spent more than two decades and trillions of dollars trying to "transition" from fossil fuels to reduce CO2 emissions, the fact is that global emissions have risen, predictably.

The history of foundational innovations is not correlated with, nor does it arise from, mandates or subsidies. Subsidies and mandates tend to lock in yesterday's technologies.