At a time when most scientists agree we need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, the prospect of increasing by tenfold our output of greenhouse gases over the next few years is indeed startling.

That’s the implication in a recent report from the Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based environmental think-tank that focuses on the Pacific Northwest.

Sightline was behind a neat little book I reviewed a few years back called Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet, that looked at “everyday things to help solve global warming.”

The book illustrated how commonly used objects, from bicycles to ceiling fans to condoms, can be part of the solution to the complicated problem of human-induced climate change.

The latest report is a lot less hopeful or helpful. In fact, if anything, it illustrates how impotent we in our little corner of the world are when it comes to warding off cataclysmic climate change, especially when we focus on the wrong things.

The author, Eric de Place, makes a list of all of the outstanding proposals to ship coal, oil and natural gas through west coast ports and concludes that taken together, when consumed they would add the equivalent of 12 times all the climate-warming gases now emitted in B.C., or the equivalent of adding 76 coal-fired power plants.

As the author concedes, not even in Premier Christy Clark’s fondest dreams are all of these projects going ahead. But if even a few proceed, are we turning a part of the world that we like to think of as particularly green into a planetary villain?

The problem with that interpretation is that it muddies the water by confusing a number of separate issues.

First, under the internationally accepted system for measuring greenhouse gas emissions, coal burned in China is counted in the Chinese inventory of greenhouse gases.

So the only emissions that are charged to Canada or the United States are emissions produced in the extraction and transportation of fossil fuels that we export.

In terms of impact on the environment, that’s a meaningless distinction, of course. We share the same atmosphere, so coal burned in China is just as potentially damaging as coal burned in British Columbia.

But it’s a distinction that matters in looking at what role we play if we want to be realistic about our effect on climate change.

All of these projects for exporting coal, natural gas and bitumen from Alberta, are in development because of demand for energy in Asia.

That demand will be met, if not from Alberta oil, Montana coal and B.C.’s natural gas, from other sources that feed the global energy market.

China and India will not stop buying fossil fuels just because we decide not to sell them. So will the world be better off if we have clean hands?

Or will we just be poorer for it?

An analysis by the World Resources Institute last year concluded there are nearly 1,200 coal plants at some stage of development around the world.

And the International Energy Agency concluded last year that over the past two decades, the carbon intensity of the fuels being burned around the world has barely changed while the quantity has continued to climb, especially in the developing world.

“Despite much talk by world leaders and despite a boom in renewable energy over the last decade, the average unit of energy produced today is basically as dirty as it was 20 years ago,” IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven said last month.

British Columbians represent a minuscule slice of humanity. So if we are looking for an opportunity to have an impact on climate that exceeds what we can achieve by cutting back on our own emissions, it strikes me that it is in supporting affordable technology to help the billions of people in China and India gain the advantages we have had from cheap energy without following us down the same disastrous path.

Any climate change solution based on trying to deny the legitimate aspirations of people in the developing world to a better quality of life is not only likely to fail; it should.

cmcinnes@vancouversun.com