| 1.6 Billion people (quarter of the world's population), live without electricity. All of these people live in the developing nations. Without progress, these nations can't bring basic things like a glowing light bulb to large sections of their population. I don't know if the chinese leadership is pragmatic or not, but it sort of makes sense to help your population today, than to help the planet in 50 years time. I don’t think the choice is Having lived in India and the UK, I'd say there is already a massive difference between India and UK, in terms of what we used. In India even if you can pay for water/electricity you just don't have access to it, there are regular power cuts in the summers as much as 8 hours a day in most cities. Running Water is available for a few hours a day. Most rich people drill a well and have a pump which pumps water into an overhead tank. For electricity, the rich have diesel generators, to run their homes. In the UK, I've never experienced a power cut, never had any water shortage, no cut of gas to the house. There just isn't any infrastructure in poorer nations. If you are poor you are on your own. If you are rich you are still on your own, but you have the resources to fix the problem for yourself. I think it is important that 1.6 billion of us get electricity some time in the near future. |