One concern that people who care about the environment typically have is that developed nations tend to create massive harm to the planet and life on it. That concern is often hard to argue with. A valid concern has led some — let us call them the shitty wing of environmentalism represented by Paul Ehrlich — to appear to celebrate poverty along with the misery and early deaths that it brings. Less unpleasant people might still worry that all countries simply can’t have the same buying power as the US or else the planet has an even bigger problem. This leads to a practical and moral dilemma. People in other countries won’t willingly stay poor, and neither, obviously, should we expect them to. Are we all doomed then? Not necessarily. Poorer countries don’t need to get rich in the same way that the developed countries did. We can hope to see them, at least somewhat, leapfrogging towards a better world.
What Is Leapfrogging?
Leapfrogging is low-carbon development. Basically, bringing people out of poverty without creating the negative environmental impact that currently richer countries have generated.
Leapfrogging [describes] how developing countries can skip the brown-air apocalypse phase and go straight to renewables.
Johnson (2024) page 269
In essence, if countries can leapfrog they can create higher standards of living — get rid of poverty — without destroying the planet.
Can Leapfrogging Work?
Yes. It can. There are lots of examples of how a country can develop while not relying on the same old tech.
An example, not really directly related to climate, is the emergence of cell-phones in the developing world. Cell (mobile) phones took over really quickly in relatively poorer countries. This is partly because the new mobile technology was competing with having no phone. A phone when you don’t have one is an especially compelling offer. Upgrading to a cell-phone is good if you have a landline, but it isn’t quite as compelling an offer as a phone when you have none.
The Unique Benefits Of Renewables
The benefits of renewables often much the same hope. Solar and wind can be decentralized making it potentially easier to get renewable energy to remote locations. Putting a small number of panels somewhere is relatively easy, wind power is possibly easier. Lots of poor countries have sun and wind so that works. Putting a coal fired power station isn’t really an option in a remote area.
Indeed, the fact that renewables can easily be fitted to the scale of the community is a great boon. If you built a massive fossil fuel plant this might have worked in relatively rich, relatively high-population-density places. The challenge is much harder if you have to connect up the power sources to an electricity grid that doesn’t exist. Putting in a grid is expensive, especially when people are quite spread out. If you can have lots of local sources of power that is fantastic.
Of course, I am glossing over the problem of intermittency (what to do when it isn’t sunny or windy) but there are lots of innovative projects to work on storing the energy so it can be used when it is needed. The problem of storage is a significant one but creating a grid where one doesn’t exist in a relatively poor country isn’t a picnic either. We need strong support to create new ways to help overcome the challenges of renewable energy in developing (and indeed developed) countries. We shouldn’t be just seeing how other countries can adopt the same approaches the developed countries did just because that is the way that they escaped from poverty. There are now better ways to escape poverty than coal.
Leapfrogging Towards A Better World
…leapfrogging or pursuing low-carbon development is certainly not automatic, so each government needs to be intentional about the polices it’s putting in place to make sure it happens.
Kelly Simons Gallagher in Johnson (2024) page 269
We shouldn’t be expecting anyone to stay poor for the sake of the environment. It is clearly morally wrong but also practically infeasible — they simply won’t do it. We need to help developing countries in leapfrogging towards a better world.
For more see Escape From Poverty And Disease, How To Make The World Better, A Positive View Of The World Using Facts, Population As A Disaster, and Time To Get Past Malthus
Read: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (2024) What if get it right?, One World
