Developing Countries: We want a Trillion Dollars to Sign your Climate Agreement

Here’s my take on India’s and the Developing Countries’ demand for funding their “CAGW” problems and costs.
They all still continue to argue that the developed world emitted all the previous CO2 emissions and created this problem during their development and, as such, we should be significantly funding actions needed by the developing world to manage this man-made CO2 induced global warming problem.
This belief and its basis are totally flawed. We should not be contributing anything to them, even if man-made CAGW/Climate Change is a problem, and for several reasons:
1. 500 years or so ago, there was little difference between the present developed and developing countries’ scientific and technical capabilities and in fact a lot of mathematics, and techniques and products such as printing, gunpowder, ship designs and discoveries etc. etc. had already been provided by present day developing countries. Cities, government and civil administration in both China and the Indian subcontinent were far more developed and effective than those in the present day “developed” countries. Nothing held back the present day developing countries, and neither did the present day developed countries have any relative advantages.
2. The subsequent empire building and colonialisation of the present day developing countries by developed countries was no different to the policies and practices of the developing countries in previous centuries, e.g. the various Mongal, Chinese and Indian Empires.
3. The later developed countries’ colonialization of what at that time were fundamentally flawed and failed and under-developed major empires and countries – even in the 19th century, literally dragged these countries into the 20th century with much investment and effort on infrastructure and government works and modern day administrations. All this was backed and funded by the developed countries’ scientific, technological and commercial expertise. This expansion was driven by a fossil fuelled industrial revolution!
4. Subsequently, post-independence, massive ongoing investment, funding and assistance was provided to these countries by the developed countries. In addition, through technological transfers of ongoing scientific and engineering innovation and development, better communications and access to current ongoing technical and scientific knowledge, and even education of former colonies’ students in developed countries all continued to advance the capability of developing countries to help themselves. No real obstacles to the advancement of developing countries’ capabilities were ever provided, and their politicians and leaders had every opportunity to provide what they had been preaching to their compatriots from pre-independence onwards, namely a far better life for them without their colonial masters. It is no fault of the developed countries that too many of the developing countries under their new politicians and leaders wasted or squandered their inheritance and in the years following their independence their past rate of development stalled and for many years to come.
5. It is also a fact that providing state of the art up to date carbon free technology and industrial processes and services is far cheaper starting from a less developed basis than providing similar up to date technology and industrial processes and services to replace existing but somewhat outdated systems. The carbon-free costs for similar works in developing countries started on relatively bare sites and are far cheaper than in developed countries, even over and above the advantages of less expensive labour.
6. Evidence available shows quite clearly that people from developing countries of all races are just as professionally capable as those from developed countries of managing and developing necessary infrastructure services and works and scientific and technological developments needed by their countries – given that these professionals stay within or return to their countries and are allowed to operate within a suitable political and cultural environment. Such progress in the developing countries from immediately post-independence should have been far more extensive given the aid then still provided from their past colonisers. No actions or inactions by developed countries has ever hindered this, but have only supported and encouraged this!
All developing countries have benefited from the developed world’s past industrial and scientific development which made full use of what was then current state of the art technology including fossil fuel usage. Without it the developed world would have been saddled with more manual or less efficient and lower capacity systems and would not have had the wealth generation that has been provided which in turn funded more social and industrial development, including all systems and knowledge that have since been bequeathed to developing countries. Developed countries’ past fossil fuel usage directly and indirectly provided what was bequeathed to developing countries and provided these countries with a quantum leap into the modern world as we now know it. What the independent developing countries started from would not have existed without the developed world’s past use of fossil fuels. They have themselves benefited from past fossil fuel usage.
As such, the developed countries owe nothing to developing countries for their past use of fossil fuels and particularly for developing countries expanding their power generation and industrial capacities, or for funding and supporting a massive increase in their populations. Just look at what the Chinese have achieved without such funding!