Lomborg's Second Key Argument

The conclusion of Lomborg’s second key argument is that the poor countries must rely on cheap fossil fuels to sustain their growth and improve people’s lives. This argument contains three premises. The first premise is that fossil fuels are absolutely necessary for providing 81% of the planet’s energy needs today and the percentage will be almost as high in 2035. The second premise is that coal is the only plentiful and cheap choice for poor countries to sustain their development. The third premise is the case of China, which used coal to generate energy and moved about 680 million people out of poverty. Lomborg’s second key argument is a deductive argument because the first premise is broad and the following premises become increasingly specific, the conclusion fits into the specific condition and follows logically from the three premises. This key argument is valid since if the three premises are true, the conclusion must be true. I intended to argue that this argument is not sound because its premises are not true.

Though this statement is supported by the International Energy Agency (IEA), an authoritative international institution that making his statement much credible, we should realise that there is an underlying assumption for this premise to be true, that is, the current policies are unchanged. Since we are not sure whether the current policies would continue or not, this premise is not necessarily true. On the contrary, according to another report by IEA, solar electricity is estimated to cover 25% of the world’s total electricity needs by 2050, taking up the largest portion of all sources of electricity (IEA,