@rays427: Let's grant for the sake of argument your point that developing countries need to pass through a fossil fuel stage. With that premise, the moral case against
developed countries using fossil fuel is even stronger. Fossil fuel use in developed countries:
- Drives up the cost of fossil fuels for everyone, including the developing countries;
- Uses up the limited "carbon budget," rather than reserving more of it to help developing countries grow;
- Exacerbates climate change, which has disproportionately greater impacts on developing countries.
But as @nwdiver points out, it's not at all obvious that developing countries need to follow the same path we did on the energy front. You can't compare the cost of coal and the cost of solar
here to those in a country that doesn't have a robust electric transmission and distribution system. A village can install a solar array and a little micro-grid, or simply a panel or two on each house, using very basic equipment and skills. Electrifying villages using a coal plant requires that you build a LOT of wires, have trained engineers to operate and maintain the plant, transportation infrastructure for the coal, etc.
Take a look, for example, at how mobile phones have transformed developing countries. Sure a land-line telephone handset is cheaper than a mobile phone, but it requires infrastructure that doesn't exist in large swaths of the world. These countries have, outside of major cities, simply leap-frogged over the wired phones and gone straight to cell phones.
The same can happen with energy: skip coal, skip oil, skip natural gas, and go straight to small-scale, local production.
