The uptake of renewable energy in these sectors is slow because of subsidies to fossil fuels and the high cost of acquiring the sophisticated technology required to produce cleaner fuels.
Absent new technologies that produce cleaner power for all of these richer countries, the global environment will be in even more dire straits than it is already.
Even before the story broke, diesel had several factors going against it, including declining crude-oil prices, improvements in gasoline engines and technologies that produce cleaner cars.
Reasoning behind an electric vehicle is driven largely by the vagary of world oil prices and the need to produce cleaner engines to reduce harmful emissions.