I don&#x27;t know why I couldn&#x27;t reply to your comment 4 children down but oh well.<p>I don&#x27;t understand how what you say is somehow a case for fossil fuel more so than a case for energy use. That is: why is the rise of a country&#x27;s wealth metrics tied to fossil fuel? Wouldn&#x27;t it be the same even if it were using say solar?<p>Also, I quickly browsed through your second link and I was very surprised about the figure 1.6 (which claims that there is less pollution as time goes by). I checked the source and although there isn&#x27;t much context, it seems that what the EPA data is saying is that less pollutants are emitted year over year… that&#x27;s a negative second order derivative of the amount of pollutant, not a negative first order derivative as the title seems to suggest (to me anyway).<p>It bothers me greatly that such a superficial analysis reveals bothersome details like this. I am inclined to believe that this source is not very good.