The climate decisions that matter are made in poor countries
First world climate debates aren't so much wrong as monumentally beside the point
Pretty much every decision that matters to future greenhouse gas emissions will be made in the developing world. If you’re concerned about climate change, you should spend pretty much all your time thinking about the developing world. Do you?
Already, as of 2022, two-thirds of global GHG emissions came from the developing world. And rich world emissions are falling while developing world emissions are rising, meaning the vast bulk of future emissions will come from developing countries.
According to the International Energy Agency, 85% of the growth in demand for electricity from now until 2026 will come from developing countries. Just in the next three years, China alone will add electricity demand equivalent to half the entire size of the EU electric market.
First world climate debates are blind to this dynamic. While Californians battle one another over the fine print of their heat-pump subsidy regime, developing countries are just not part from the rich world’s insufferably narcissistic climate debates. To the extent that they turn up, they turn up as passive sufferers of the environmental disasters set off by rich world emissions.
This collective blindness to the overwhelming impact the developing world will have in any future emissions trajectory leaves us with a really screwy first world climate conversation.
We fixate on our politicians, our companies, our consumption habits. This kind of collective navel-gazing means our debate is divorced from what’s actually driving emissions growth: not so much right or wrong as disastrously beside the point.
If you want to get serious about understanding future climate trajectories, you really need to grasp the point of view of the people who matter: corporate and political leaders not in New York or Brussels or Tokyo but in Jakarta, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg and Beijing.
What does the world look like to them? What are the pressures that structure their decision-making? What are they afraid of? What are they trying to maximize?
Almost everywhere, developing country leaders are under intense pressure to make sure energy is affordable and reliable. In part, that’s because their populations are growing. But even more relevant is that people are leaving poverty behind. And as they leave poverty behind they start to demand products and services that take energy to provide: power itself, sure, and meat, of course, but also all kinds of services that you need energy to provide. Entertainment. Financial services. Education. Better housing. Mobility services.
In democratic countries, officials need to make sure the provision of these goods keeps up with voters’ expectations or else they’ll soon find themselves out of a job. But even in authoritarian countries, officials know they can only ensure social stability if they keep delivering the improvements in standards of living that people have come to expect.
By definition, developing countries are poorer than developed ones. Public budgets are pinched and so are household budgets. The incentives officials face to deliver continuous and reliable power at the lowest possible price is absolutely overwhelming. And when those officials look at their options, they continue to find that a GHG emission heavy energy mix is by far the cheapest way to deliver the energy that their people expect.
This isn’t ideological. China, in pursuing the cheapest-road to quickly expanding energy generation, is spending heavily on renewables. But since the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, they know they need to backstop that with other sources of new generation. Their hydro is tapped out, and nuclear is expensive…so they’re building coal fired power plants at a frenetic pace, despite promising to stop. Not because they don’t care about the environment, but because concern about the environment is dominated by concern for keeping social stability. And if you were an official in Beijing and you faced the incentives they face, you probably would’ve made the same choice.
This dynamic is repeated all over the developing world. Which is why you can decarbonize first world energy systems all you want and it will make little difference to the global emissions. Our failure to come to grips with this reality has left us with a nonsense climate debate that skips merrily past the point and never stops to grapple with it.
Should we give up on decarbonization in the rich countries? Of course not. Decarbonization is worth it purely on public health grounds: air pollution from burning stuff to make power leads to millions of premature deaths each year. But continuing to tell ourselves that first world decarbonization is a climate strategy is lying to ourselves.
The solution isn’t to give up. It’s not to wish for a killer pandemic. The solution is to understand that we will not decarbonize as fast as we all wish we could, so we need to expand our toolbox for dealing with the fallout of emissions we won’t be able to prevent.
Once we stop lying to ourselves, we’ll realize we need a radical change in strategy. We need to develop the scientific basis to roll out climate interventions safely, as a matter of urgency. Scientists are working on this right now. We need to fund their efforts much more generously than we’ve been doing. Because we have some agency to determine how quickly they make progress. But we have no real way to influence the future path of GHG emissions.