Kill Oil

About 80 percent of the world's people live in poor countries that are as eager to get over oil as we are—they, too, want to escape the economic clutches of autocrats who rule 10 percent of the people but control 80 percent of the easily accessible oil. The poor, however, have made clear that they won't be spending what money they have curbing carbon, though collectively they emit more greenhouse gas than we do and their emissions are rising much faster. The people who can least afford to be wrong have accepted the inconvenient economic truth: coal, gas, and uranium are the only practical, affordable substitutes for oil and will remain so for a very long time to come.