Interestingly, poor countries often begin to clean up their act at a much earlier stage of development than rich countries did. This is partly because they can learn from our mistakes, but also because green technologies that were developed in industrialized countries can be used straight away in poorer countries. One example is unleaded gasoline. The United States started using it in 1975. India and China made the same transition in 1997, at which point they had only thirteen per cent of the wealth of Americans in 1975.24
