Limiting pollution in developed nations without curtailing their economies

After learning about Kuznets curves in class, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how we can help poorer nations develop like we did without creating mass pollution. It is a difficult problem because such nations deserve to industrialize just as much as we did, yet now that we know more about the environment, we can’t just sit back and allow carbon dioxide to be pumped into the atmosphere. Writers on Camfil, an air filtration company which also runs a blog, suggest that the most sensible option is to financially support these nations in making long-term sustainable energy investment. Despite the additional expenses associated with green energy, they argue that it will produce positive externalities such as decreases in preventable illness (which costs to treat), and subsequently, higher worker productivity because they are in the hospital less. Their points made a lot of sense to me, but I still wondered: if this were true, why wouldn’t we be seeing environmentally friendly investments everywhere? My guess is that the reason companies within these nations do not make such investments is because from their perspective, it is not worthwhile to do so; they would be footing the bill for general welfare while only receiving a fraction of the benefit. This is a problem of game-theory. One of the key lessons I took away from the sliver of game-theory I have learned is that if you want someone to do something against their best interest, you have to twist the game so that their only rational choice is to acquiesce. In subsidizing or in some way incentivizing the purchase of renewable energy, developed nations can set up the game so that everyone wins: we help the economies of developed nations to grow, and we protect the climate which we all live in.

https://cleanair.camfil.us/2017/10/30/air-pollution-in-developing-countries/#:~:text=Developed%20countries%20are%20more%20likely,economic%20resources%20to%20do%20so.&text=Energy%20production%20is%20one%20of,developed%20countries%20comes%20from%20coal.