It’s Now Possible to Grow Rich and Go Green

It’s Now Possible to Grow Rich and Go Green

For five decades, international environmental meetings have been riven by a north-south divide.

While the rich nations of the global north have led calls to rein in emissions, their less affluent counterparts have largely remained on the sidelines. The Kyoto Protocol was in essence a treaty between the wealthy Group of Seven nations, the former Soviet Union, Australia and New Zealand. Even after the 2015 Paris Agreement brought developing countries into the greenhouse-target club for the first time, emissions from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development fell 2.7% in the four years to 2019, while those from lower-income nations grew 7.2%.

The words of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at a 1972 environmental conference have been crucial to fortifying that position. “Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?” she argued.

By that logic, the preaching of richer countries reeks of hypocrisy. Having built their own wealth on the cheap energy provided by coal and oil, they’d seek to deny the same benefits to other countries. With less than a sixth of the world’s population, they’ve racked up more than half of historical carbon emissions. Just as they monopolized the world’s resources during their days as imperial overlords, so too have