Mrs. Clinton [said] that the United States would not seek to limit the use of energy in the developing world but would help make it cleaner.Nice words, but how do you turn them into reality when coal is the cheapest form of power? The U.S. hasn't even started an internal conversation about subsidizing cleaner power oversees, and I don't see that conversation going anywhere.
“We want your economies to grow,” she said as representatives of Brazil, China, India and Indonesia listened. “We want your people to have a higher standard of living.”
Hence my one "happy story" about how we get out of this mess: The U.S. and other rich countries impose carbon pricing (through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade) and that pushes the market to develop clean energy technologies that are cheaper than coal. Then poor countries will adopt those technologies, not because they're green but because they're cheap.
It's not a guaranteed fix, but I think it's the best chance we've got. The alternatives are to put our faith in government-funded R&D or hope that poor countries put environmental priorities ahead of things like electricity and running water (and that rich countries do way more too).
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