people".

Western development agencies have banned the use of DDT when 300m people suffer from malaria and up to 3m die from it each year. The UN promotes the burning of charcoal instead of kerosene when 5m young people die annually from diseases caused by indoor wood-smoke inhalation.

Organic farming is promoted at the expense of mechanised agriculture when 840m people suffer from malnutrition. Guilt-ridden Westerners offset their carbon via charities that re-impose back-breaking drudgery on Third World peasants, while their governments, via the 2008 Bali Accord, pay poor countries to plant trees instead of developing their economies.

Historically, it is not through imposing limits but by transcending them that we have achieved truly remarkable progress. In the last century, although global population quadrupled, human wealth quintupled. Food production steadily outstripped population growth, and today we still produce enough to feed everyone on earth, and billions more. People starve because they can't afford food - not because it doesn't exist.

Human ingenuity has overcome resource shortages time and again, developing new technologies, using commodities more efficiently, overcoming scarcity and improving our living standards. The real question is why, given this historical record, we seem to have completely lost faith in our ability to keep doing this.

Developing countries, however, share neither our eco-angst, nor our poverty of ambition. Chinese investment is transforming southern Africa whether we like it or not, helping double economic growth rates in the last five years. We must stop wasting time trying to hold back global development and instead push ever faster, cooperating to develop and distribute cleaner, more efficient technology, and providing aid where necessary to help countries adapt to environmental changes.

As Millicent Kumeni from Ghana told the educational charity WorldWrite, "You think we don't want modern development? You must be dreaming. We want what you have... you've screwed Africa and held us back. I pray that you don't keep doing this."