Everyone in the world is feeling the effect of global warming in one way or the other- melting ice some cases, rising sea level, hot weather and so in in other cases.
When it comes to climate change, everyone is concerned - the developed, developing and the underdeveloped countries altogether. To this effect, the United Nations in the year 2015 held a climate change conference in Paris to employ all countries to sign an agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases which would result in keeping the globe's temperature at around 1.5 degree celcius.
It is very eveident that developed countries have the capacity to reduce their emissions, infact some of them almost completely in the nearest future, but this is hard to say for developing countries.
For developing countries, economic development is very paramount and the longing for the kind of good life that comes with it is in the citizens of these countries.
Economic development is strongly driven by energy security, while energy security is ensured by having a reasonable number of energy resources in the energy mix. Renewable energy resources and conventional fuels fall in this mix and it is the burning of the conventional fuels for energy security that contribute to global warming. The question then is - why don't renewable resources be deployed to achieve development? The answer is not that straightforward.
Conventional fuels are cheap and abundant in most of these countries but the problem with renewable energy technologies is that they are expensive to use on a large scale as conventional fuels are being used right now most especially for these countries because they are not as rich. Another important factor to note is that they have to import these technologies for use.
What is the answer for developing countries?
It is clearly shown that developing countries are caught between burning all the fuels they can burn to achieve development at a fast rate -after all the developed burnt so much during their early days of industrialization which scientists believe to have contributed majorly to the climate change of today (there are still debates about this)- or should they live up to the agreement signed with the UN.
What is your opinion? Should developing countries go all in for development? Please feel free to share.
Thank you for reading.