Worst Possible Global Environment

Post World War II, without any catastrophic man made or natural disasters (nuclear war/accident, meteor hitting earth, 15.0 earthquake, etc...) and within reasonable logic (no endless wars just for the sake of it, governments devolving into anarchy for no reason, etc...).
 
I think keeping leaded fuel going for longer and using more cheap coal in power stations should do it - certainly long enough for the same thing to happen in the emerging economies.

Basically the pollution experienced in London in the 50s in every major city in the world

Perhaps an increasing shortage of quality coal with an increasing demand worldwide?
 
This is difficult to achieve in democratic countries because, if things get too awful, there will be increasing public pressure to de-awfulize them. The solution: get rid of democracy, and replace it with a government that has an ideological commitment to industrialization no matter the cost - basically, export the Soviet Union's economic model to the rest of the world.

My suggestion (although this is technically a pre-WW2 PoD): have Howard Scott's Technocrats take power in the US during the Great Depression. This is a long shot, but not impossible. The Technocrats went even further then the Soviets in terms of planned economics, and their ideology interpreted energy output as the prime measure of economic health. A Technocratic US would probably surpass the Soviets at being an environmental horrorshow.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Avoiding the energy crises results in some dramatic short term changes in the 1980s, but it is questionable how long the trends could be sustained. I actually ran an Excel sheet on this once and found this (from an earlier thread). Keep in mind this is with a PoD of 1973 and goes to 1990:

Around 1980, world petroleum consumption will have already exceeded the highest levels of historical consumption, which were not reached until the 2010s.

By the early to mid-1980s, growth in consumption will have outpaced growth in reserves. The world is running full speed towards a supply crisis, a date which grows ever closer as consumption increases at a rate of 7% per year.

By the mid-1980s the world needs to increase petroleum production, refining, and transportation capacity by around ten million barrels per year, every year.

Cumulativeworld petroleum consumption between 1986 and 1990 is half of cumulative consumption between 1965 and 1985. Cumulative 1986 to 1990 petroleum consumption is three times higher than historical.

It's possible that the impending crisis won't hit as hard as it could though. 1965 through 1973 was a bandwagon market for petroleum fired power plants, and when prices start to increase or the inevitable energy crisis hits they can be converted to coal or natural gas.
Of course, this was also around the time that the hydroelectricity growth phase was ending in North America and the bandwagon market for nuclear energy was slowing down and set to end in a few years. But, at least for nuclear energy, it is possible that the energy crises hit it in more ways than one: directly through reduced energy demand (petroleum use for power generation went from almost nothing in 1965 to a good size of total use of all petroleum by 1973), and indirectly through inflation, which nuclear power plants are quite vulnerable to due to their long construction times.

Depending on how things play out, if some of the canceled nuclear power capacity is completed things might be better longer term. Nuclear energy plants are less expensive to operate (variable fuel and maintenance costs, excluding fixed capital costs) than any other source of energy except hydroelectricity, so they would likely be chosen for continued operation by utilities rather than fossil fuel plants. Ironically though, because the variable costs are so low, the price of electricity could actually fall quite low and still allow utilities to make a profit, or at least minimize their losses. That could open up nuclear energy for use in electric vehicles, ammonia/hydrogen vehicles, heat and chemical applications, etc.
 
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