Agreed. You aren't going to convince people in India that their children should stay poor when there is an option to uplift them. That's an extra billion people of energy and material needs, all by itself.
''Now, the total population of well-off countries in the world is about 1
billion, while China has more than 1.3 billion people. If we are all to become
modernized, the well-off population must more than double. If we are to
consume as much energy in production and daily lives as the present well-off
people do, all the existing resources in the world would be far from enough for
us! The old path seems to be a dead end. Where is the new road? It lies in
scientific and technological innovation, and in the accelerated transition from
factor-driven and investment-driven growth to innovation-driven growth.''
-Xi Jinping, Governance of China
The question is whether you use solar PV or build more coal plants to supply them. The latter makes people sicker, but more dependent on the government, so you can guess which one gets the tax breaks and which one gets tariffs and international politics to make it more expensive to acquire.
Huh? Solar is widely acknowledged to be significantly cheaper than building new coal. And it is everywhere, you can just buy containers of it and have it delivered anywhere in the world.
Yes. You can just buy containers of PV equipment from China and have it delivered anywhere in the world. Until they decide not to sell it to you, or they decide to stop subsidizing it. Or we go to war with them. Then you're gonna wish you had built those coal plants.
Have you paid attention to anything since 2020? Are you paying attention to anything now?
Suggesting PV is "cheaper" because of the per-watt cost to install it misses so much reality it's hard to take seriously. We live in the now, not some idealized future state. We need energy NOW. Do you think solar cells are immune to supply and demand? And that the economics will not be affected by a global shift?
PV can't be switched off once sold, coal can stop being delivered. Coal is the one that brings centralisation and dependency on external parties, unless you happen to live somewhere with large coal deposits, and even in that case you get all the health problems of putting radioactive soot into the air.