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in developing countries. This may one day need to change, but that is a different debate, and one that needs to be had for different reasons. As the climate scientist Roger Pielke, Jr., writes in his 2010 book The Climate Fix, “if there is an iron law of climate policy, it is that when policies focused on economic growth confront policies focused on emissions reductions, it is economic growth that will win out every time.” Greens may despair, but I think Pielke is right. The implication, however, is not that we are all doomed, but that any successful policy to decarbonize the global economy “must be designed such that economic growth and environmental progress go hand in hand.”54

In a related sense, although Greens often insist that energy is too cheap, this too is incorrect. Energy is actually too expensive, certainly for the 1.5 billion poor people in the world who lack access to electricity because they do not have the purchasing power to demand it. Well-fed campaigners in rich countries may fantasize romantically about happy peasants living sustainably in self-reliant African villages, but the fact is that people across the developing world are desperate to increase their economic opportunities, security, and wealth. They want to have enough to eat, they want to have clean water and they want their young children not to die of easily treatable diseases—and that is just for starters. They want the benefits of being part of the modern world, in other words, which is why so many young people across the developing world are moving to cities in search of a job and a better way of life. And this better way of life is coming, as the soaring rates of economic growth in China, India, Brazil, and many other developing countries demonstrate. The fact is that most of the world needs more growth, not less: China has lifted 300 million people out of poverty in the last couple of decades due to its economic miracle. Hundreds of millions more, in Africa now too as well as Asia and Latin America, are determined to follow, as they have every right to.

By mid-century, in other words, we will see a world of many more, much richer people. Most Greens view this prospect with dread, for how can the world possibly reduce carbon emissions under such a scenario? The London-based New Economics Foundation (NEF), for example, writes in a recent report: “If everyone in the world lived as people do in Europe, we would need three planets to support us.”55 This is nonsensical, for everyone in the world is going to live like Europeans within this century (and Europeans too will also get richer) whether NEF likes it or not, and we will still only have one planet. NEF’s “Happy Planet Index” was recently topped by Costa Rica (with the Dominican Republic in second place and Jamaica in third), apparently suggesting that the best country in the world to live is one where 10 percent of the population still survive on just $2 a day.56 Certainly, the fact that GDP does not necessarily equate to happiness is an important point to make. But it won’t cut much ice with the billions of people—a majority of humanity—who are poor, insecure, or malnourished in today’s world. For them economic growth is not a choice but a necessity.

So reducing human population and economic growth is neither possible nor desirable. Luckily there is a third way: We can reduce the carbon intensity of the economy, so that for each unit of GDP produced, less and less carbon needs to be emitted. This means deploying low-carbon technologies across the board so that the energy that is needed to drive economic activity can be generated without additional greenhouse gases. What we need, in other words, is an economy-wide technofix.

TECHNOLOGIES FOR 350

My own perspective on tackling climate change has shifted since I was appointed adviser to President Nasheed of the Maldives in 2009. The president, whose country is of course early on the list of those liable to be wiped out by rising sea levels, had just announced his ambition for his nation to become the first carbon-neutral country in the