You also get into absurd situations like how former colonial powers can’t say that up-and-coming colonial powers can’t develop in that particular way. Some things are just bad to do.
And until these issues are addressed, the Third World countries who rely so heavily on coal power cannot get off their reliance on it. It will need a global effort led and on the financial burden of the First World, to support the economies of the countries that are using coal to progress. I believe that is the only way we will turn this issue around, otherwise we are just putting a plaster on a stab wound.
Let's not forget Africa and India's growth over the next century is going to eclipse anything we've ever seen before, and without the correct structures in place we will have no chance of combatting this issue.
Words and lectures are irrelevant. Only what the First World can do—including influencing the Third World—matters.
> It is also not just at the feet of former colonial powers, the US wasn't a coloniser but did have a tremendous imperial influence throughout the Third World that has stymied progress and thrown Third World countries into a debt trap that they cannot escape (unfortunately China is doing the same these days). This needs to be addressed too.
I guess “stymied progress” is a way of phrasing it.
And what about the Philippines?
Unfortunately, nature doesn’t care. What’s fair and unfair is irrelevant. These political excuses are a weak justification for BAU.