Alright. But none of that matters a damn bit on the ground in the third world, where they are desperate for a means of distributed energy ... And the cheap and easy energy is always the polluting kind.
In the end, regardless of any argument otherwise, it's what they can do, and they should do it.
With the energy comes prosperity, and with the prosperity comes the ability to afford the higher tech, more refined means of energy which will tend to pollute less.
The necessary means to the end goes through the lesser, cheaper, more polluting forms. Or they must stay in grinding poverty. That's the only choice here.
In many of these countries, oil drilling produces natural gas, and for that matter, liquifiable fractions like propane and butane that can be stored and shipped in tanks, large and small, not just pipelined. Those gas fractions could be used for anything from direct fuel to generating electricity, and distillates from the crude (like diesel) and heavy ends like asphalt used to do a host of modernizing. Africa has the resources to do this, and with some investment, the ability to do it right (as far as pollution goes). Most of the barriers to this are political, and in some cases, religious. Tribalism and corruption, as well as Muslim terror groups will make this difficult, but the resources are there onshore and off, and are being tapped in some countries already. Now, that's subSaharan Africa, I'm talking about there, there are well established resources in North Africa as well.
Why shouldn't the Africans use some of their own?
Old data, but it points out what there was then, and new discoveries are being made even now. I doubt the average African would object to having energy from their own country, even though I'd wager the majority is exported.
