All Africa.com posted an excellent article by Berhe W. Aregay in the Opinion Page of The Daily Monitor (Addis Ababa) of June 28, 2006, titled: “Ethiopia: Are You Scared of Global Warming? Good for You.”

The article points out a road that can take developing countries to their goal of development while not sacrificing the goal of everyone of stopping the destruction of planet earth. The argument as it goes is that “Global warming, or more precisely, the fear of global warming, may be the best thing that ever happened to the Earth’s environment and to the future of sustainability.” In the wake of this angst came the Kyoto idea, and in its wake came, if not a complete consensus, at least the Kyoto Protocol. And with that came the realization that countries have different priorities and that the environment may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

In the past people merely worried, if at all, that the world’s natural gas and oil would one day run out. This might have been in the form of a nagging feeling at the back of the head that like other finite resources, fossil fuel could dry out; but not much more than a hunch. But, then again, what the heck, if Saudi Arabia’s wells parch, some obscure area in some part of the globe could announce a new find.

Enter global warming. It has several names: greenhouse effect, climate change. The culprit is the carbon emitted from the hydrocarbons, otherwise known as petroleum. As countries get richer and have more money to burn, they burn more of these gases and oil. The richer the country the more it burns but to keep on being rich it has to burn more and more, not less and less.

China and India are getting richer to be sure, but a huge number of people that have yet to put their hands on the national pie are queuing up. That pie, however, will not materialize without sufficient oil to burn.

What a trap we are all in! It is like in Catch 22. Damn, if you burn. Damn, if you don’t. Besides, even if you decide to go slow, others will want to outpace you. No, better you burn too.

So what do countries have to do? There are several options none of which are hardly inspired. One is to deny that the problem of global warming exists. The other is to endorse the Kyoto agreement and begin the long, arduous, unpopular process of conservation to curb carbon emission.

Here below, for instance, are some simple examples of people and institutions are doing for long-term conservation, as described by The Economist May 6th 2006. “How times have changed. Ten years ago, when your correspondent studied at Harvard, energy conservation meant staying in bed an extra hour. These days dorms compete to turn off the lights and recycle. Some places are flush with waterless urinals. Tufts University in Boston has switched to water-saving washing machines and has an-electric, non-remitting vehicle to deliver post. At the University of Michigan, one recently renovated building uses glass from aircraft windscreens in its window and recycled tyres for rubber flooring. At the University of Colorado, students have even taxed themselves to pay for renewable power”.

But why do I say the fear of global warming has have been good news in disguise? Because the right amount of scare-mongering might help us and governments to keep on our toes.

It is common knowledge that man had inflicted huge damage to the environment over the course of centuries. So much so the present scare due to global warming could be considered luxury compared with what transpired in the past.

Despite all the destructions and extinctions and degradations that happened and still continuous to happen, there was no collective awareness. Nor was there any “call to arms”, as it were, of the level that is being heard at present.

A partial explanation to this discrepancy could be that, unlike soil erosion, pollution of rivers, and assault on biodiversity, global warming happens to affect the sky; and everybody is under the sky.

Coming to the present, how will this embryonic feeling of worry for the future of our climate impact on our view of the protection of the environment then?

One thing third world countries could do is leverage this new-found empathy for the environment by the world community to their benefit. To be precise: try to sell some of their quotas to generate carbon to the industrialized countries in exchange to receiving help to develop their forests. It also should be incumbent on developing countries themselves to try and discard their decrepit factories that survive by bank subsidies and which are on the main only good at producing black smoke from their chimneys.

This article points at a development strategy that is in line with the Kyoto Protocol and it shows how developing countries can actually benefit from the energy dilemma. What the article does not mention is the impact of draughts on Ethiopia and most of Africa. When this is also considered, the article makes even more sense to designing the developing countries self interest on this conundrum of issues.