The stable support this Fund would provide is essential to pay for the research and development needed if the U.S., as well as the developing world, are to achieve their goals in reducing greenhouse gases at an affordable cost.
A result has been lower prices in industrial nations as well as the developing world.
These pressures will increase as the developing world inexorably catches up to the developed world.
As the developing world's population booms, and its wealth grows, diets are catching up with those of the west.
"As the developing countries gain more shares, they have to pay for them," Mr. Zoellick said in the interview.
Meanwhile, changes like the use of water to grow wine grapes instead of rice carry their own costs, as the developing world is discovering.
As the developing world becomes richer, those countries are also being affected by the cancers of the westernised world, which are dominated by the health impacts of smoking.
Ellis pointed to mobile money, transferring money over distances using cell phone-based services, as the developing world's quintessential social app.
That has been happening steadily through the era of industrialization, which created today's wealthy minority, and will happen far more, biologists say, as the developing world strives to become developed.
In that context, the Cancún talks were also notable for the gulf that arose between the Group of 20-plus and the rest of what is known as the developing world.
The report describes education as the developing world's best hope for fighting the spread of H.I.V., noting that half the world's 15,000 new infections each day occur among 15- to 24-year-olds.
