alt Hacker NewsSeems like a tough argument to make stick. The Chinese & Indians are clearly benefiting more from the economic growth than they are suffering from the downsides of pollution. They would not swap their current environmental problems for clean poverty.
It isn't a broken windows problem as much as drawing 2 billion people out of poverty is more urgent than most other concerns.
Exactly this. Living standards are closely correlated to energy use and no one is going to volunteer to live in poverty.
The environmental movement does itself no favours either by pursuing high social cost but low impact interventions like paper straws and ignoring (or outright vilifying) nuclear as a viable path forward.
Finally, there's a huge disconnect between the (supposed) low cost of renewables and what people experience on the ground. Countries like Germany are a good example of this. The constant refrain is that solar and wind are super cheap and are running more and more of the country, but those savings (if real) don't make it to the average rate payer. Something is clearly wrong here. Either the cost claims are incomplete and don't factor in something important or the auction mechanism used to set prices must be discarded. But the disparity between claiming massive cost benefits while having people pay more sours the public on the technology and destroys credibility.