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by GVIrish 2449 days ago
What good is industrializing recklessly going to do for Brazil or any other developing nation when climate catastrophe destroys all of those GDP gains and more, causes food crises, destroys trillions of dollars of coastal real estate, and causes climate refugee crises? This is not a case where any country is going to benefit from ignoring climate change for more than a few decades.

Climate catastrophe is going to hit the lower GDP nations the hardest, because they're starting with less capital to adapt and mitigate the effects. All they'd be doing by developing carbon intensive economies is flooring the accelerator towards the cliff.

At any rate, it's a false dichotomy. With the current state of renewables, countries like Brazil, India, China, and Nigeria can continue to industrialize with clean energy and skip coal-based industrialization. They can also develop cities and infrastructure to support mass transit much better than some other nations did.