China also has created a Ministry of Natural Resources and in terms of effectiveness for public subsidies, Chinese subsidies for the replacement to newer, cleaner buses, as well as domestic products from coal stoves to gas stoves has cut air pollution in Hebei by 40% over 5 years (World Bank, 2019). Despite all of this; China has made no statement in a recent U.N. session on environmentalism (Milman, 2019). Development in China is not finished.

That said; even China has been building coal plants in the poorer areas of China, away from the urban parts and towards the poorer parts of China that need cheap energy; energy production and consumption has always been part of modern China’s struggle. The poorer parts of China make around $367.58US per year (exchange rate $1:7.1RMB) (Statista, 2018).

Naturally, all of the Western countries that are developing well have much higher levels of income and disposable income. As such, they are not only economically positioned to act more ‘green’, but also have the capital to do so.

Arrogance and Solutions

Turns out shouting angrily at the U.N. doesn’t work. India’s Modi wouldn’t say he’d stop coal emissions nor anything new really. China declined to even comment. Germany’s Merkel said they’ll do so in about 15 years. Brazil’s Bolsonaro wasn’t allowed to speak. United States’ Trump didn’t comment. Neither Brazil nor the U.S. were selected to speak because they were not going to be positive enough about the movement (Milman, 2019).

Postmodernism is not something I like to indulge in as I believe that the I vs. You mentality it breeds isn’t good for public discourse. Not only that, but there is something of a ‘sins of the father’ aspect to it, that a country now should be blamed for the actions of a government, public, and people who are long-since dead.

But there is certainly an aspect of ‘colonialism’ here; we have the rich, Western countries who have benefited from the conquering of these third world countries, as well as modern interventions in their governments.

We also have the rich, Western countries who have already polluted the world with coal, gas, oil, mass industrialisation, mass use of the natural resources of the world, and pulled themselves into a position of comfort.

When the other countries try to follow in their footsteps, we have countries like France’s Macron declaring that they will no longer trade with countries who will not uphold the Paris accord (like the U.S.-TTIP? Like China? The two largest E.U. trading partners?) and who do not uphold environmental protections (Milman, 2019).

We have, effectively, countries who have already developed telling countries who have not developed that they cannot be allowed to develop; not in the same manner of the first world. They have to magically become first world without exploiting their own natural resources, or they have to remain in third world poverty forever lagging behind the first world. Not only thart, but the world looks away from Germany and Australia who get large amounts of their power from coal; Australia getting

Why should the third world care what France thinks? Why should China care, when no one is willing to confront it or force it to do anything, when it has 1.4 billion people with a GDP per capita of a third less than the U.S. and a slowing economy as well as domestic issues? Why should India care, with the issues in Kashmir, an economy struggling to kickstart, massive household debt, and a struggle to bring India into the 21st Century? Why should Brazil care, when the world demands they stop developing their own land, but does little to nothing to help?

We have discussed it before; that the Western world will weakly limp a few dollars towards the developing world to help. The International Development Association (2019), associated with the World Bank, offers $22 billion currently, of which, 35% is given to infrastructure. That’s enough to build about 2.5 nuclear power stations (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2019).

However, if you have nearly no money, maybe you’d like to be more efficient with your spending?