‘Despite the scientific consensus that climate change is occurring, there remain sharp political disagreements both here in the United States and around the world about how policymakers should respond. Nowhere is this gap more profound than between developed and developing countries,’ Richard G. Lugar and Henry M. Paulson Jr. write.

The issue is, essentially quite simple: because developed countries are developed (and thus have money, etc.), they have the time and the will (and the resources) to do something about global warming / for the environment. Developing countries, on the other hand, have other priorities (which makes a lot of sense); the most important thing for them right now is to make their population richer / to become as rich as the West, or at least close the gap somewhat.

Developed countries, rightfully, argue that a project to go from ‘dirty’ to ‘clean’ energy would cost them too much money and greatly hinder their economic progress. Therefore, the two politicians (secretary of state of the treasury and senator respectively) support ‘a new multilateral initiative to help finance the deployment of commercially available clean technology to the developing world.’ This ‘Clean Technology Fund, proposed by President Bush last September, is an important opportunity for which American leadership is vital.’

The Group of Eight countries, led by the United States, Britain and Japan, in conjunction with the World Bank, have been working with potential donor and recipient countries over the past eight months to create the fund. The aim of the CTF is to reduce the growth of greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries by helping finance the additional costs of using cleaner energy technologies. It will stimulate private-sector investment in existing clean technologies and speed the deployment of emerging technologies once they are market-ready. Such emerging technologies include carbon capture and storage, which separates carbon dioxide before it goes up a smokestack and sequesters it underground.

Equally important, the fund will promote international cooperation to pursue a future climate agreement. Given the grave economic, security and environmental threats posed by climate change, such an agreement must prescribe significant long-term reductions in global emissions by requiring commitments from all major emitters in an equitable and flexible way.

Although that is certainly important, and positive, one wonders whether Western countries should, indeed, give (more) money to developing countries. If we give them money, won’t we simply make them dependent on us? And, this is also important, wouldn’t they be able to blackmail us (’stop giving us money, we will once again use energy that’s bad for the environment’)? Then there is, of course, the possible notion that the market itself should solve this problem, not human efforts.

Those are fair criticisms but, I believe, the problem of climate change or global warming is too big to let this opportunity pass without exploiting it. Then again, I’m someone who believes that global warming is real and that humans do indeed contribute significantly to it. This makes it, probably, more logical that I agree with the plan to help China and India and other developing countries get cheap clean energy.

One last point though; if Western governments give money to developing countries for this purpose, they cannot spend it at home on a energy project. Such a project - developing clean alternative energy - is costly. We can use every dime we have for it, perhaps even in the sense of simply providing tax breaks for companies and people that work on this subject and try to use clean energy as much as they can. We can’t sponsor developing countries forever; in return, they would have to promise - and progress will be checked on a yearly or even monthly basis - that they will pay for it themselves, say, 10 or 15 years from now.