I can't help feeling like what you didn't talk about says much more in this analysis.
Abundance of energy is greater in the South. We can't get around that, it's a feature of the geometry of Earth and sun.
Higher "standards of living" by modern ideals come about with greater consumption of energy.
Can't get around that either, money is energy.
Yet "The South" is relatively impoverished.
We know energy can't be created from nowhere, physics tells us it can be pushed around but never actually created nor destroyed (though we are converting an awful lot of it very rapidly to heat, but I won't bang on about that here).
So if the North is obviously more wealthy it follows it is more energy abundant, so it has to follow that at least some of this had to come from the South.
Knowing this, why would we be more inclined to question Southern Mindsets, rather than look at maybe the reasons for, and the effects on everyone, of what has to be acknowledged, is actually a pretty unfair transfer of energy, away from the areas that rightfully should have it?
On what they could do with that energy, if they had it, concerning heat, I've shown in a story about the "Energy Polarity Multiplier Framework", just an example of how it is possible to use only hydrogen backed solar energy to provide aircon with a net negative effect on both emissions and temperature impulse, on global temperature which could be used to create temperate environments in very hot places such that plants etc could be encouraged to grow again, those plants creating further natural temperature reduction mechanisms by themselves, feasibly unaided in the future, given that life itself, all life, powered by solar reduces temperature by definition.
If we were to empower the people of the South to do that, perhaps by returning some of the wealth we seem to have appropriated from them in terms of energy, together with a little of the technical knowledge we gained also by enriching ourselves using their energy, we would be doing the planet, and therefore ourselves a favor, I think.
That would be real win-win scenario, surely.
On what is regarded as freedom, I don't see the North as being particularly free. Freedom of speech is something really important for happiness. Notice the difference between the lyrics of Afro/Latin music, and European Music (And also the dancing! ). If you know a little Spanish, for example, the song lyrics are "filthy" by European Standards. But if you get into their Music and culture it is all about Love and everything that comes with it including sex between men and women, yep, lots of old fashioned sex, and it's fun, the most natural thing in the world.
We seem to have lost most of that in Northern Europe at least.
I don't see that as freedom at all.
I think this is fundamentally because we are more driven by profit culturally, in the European North.
Careers and money seem to mean much more to us than family and love.
Personally I don't think that is good, not much good at all.