If you want to give people a higher material standard of living, you need energy. If you need to do this via industrialization, you need even more of it. China has done it with coal. There is this lengthy article by Greg Peel describing the situation much closer. The energy intensity of GDP has not gone down all the time.
Then there’s this video report by Journeyman pictures showing some effects you get when the use of a dangerous resource, in this case, coal, is badly controlled:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG1a3Z73WnI]
I’d take some claims there with a grain of sand, but it is something to take note of anyway, if you are interested in real world energy policy.