At the recent COP21 2015 Paris Talks for reform on the environment, many developing countries felt short handed when it came to agreements on clean energy. India being one of the forerunners against forcing countries away from coal onto cleaner sources of energy (like natural gas). However, coal is cheaper and more readily available in India and they have been using coal to launch their industrial growth. India isn’t alone in it’s reliance on coal, many other Asian countries rely on it to industrialize. Coal is really bad for then environment, one of the best examples of this was during the industrial revolution when coal was the primary energy source for England as it was developing into a new era of development. India is now wondering why they too can’t have the period of industrialization burning coal like England and much of the West had already gone through. In many ways the already post-industrialized West is being hypocritical in saying that developing countries can’t burn mass amounts of coals and other fossil fuels to reach the development they need, but have already done so themselves, but just 200 years before.
Are the talks helping the West keep the faster growing countries under control? Faster growing countries that are set to outproduce them if not already doing so. Or is it that the damage done by these countries if they do industrialize (with some of the largest populations ever seen) will it tex our planet too much? I think this is an interesting thought about who should take responsibility and find solutions for issues on this scale.