Reducing poverty can actually lower energy demand, finds research:
[...] We found that households that do have access to clean fuels, safe water, basic education and adequate food—that is, those not in extreme poverty—can use as little as half the energy of the national average in their country.
This is important, as it goes directly against the argument that more resources and energy will be needed for people in the global south to escape extreme poverty. The biggest factor is the switch from traditional cooking fuels, like firewood or charcoal, to more efficient (and less polluting) electricity and gas.
In Zambia, Nepal and Vietnam, modern energy resources are extremely unfairly distributed—more so than income, general spending, or even spending on leisure. As a consequence, poorer households use more dirty energy than richer households, with ensuing health and gender impacts. Cooking with inefficient fuels consumes a lot of energy, and even more when water needs to be boiled before drinking.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 06 2021, @04:31AM
Actually, mixed in reasonable proportions, pine straw and pine chips make good mulch. Fifty pounds of pine trash mixed with fifty pounds of other vegetation and hoed into the garden soil will make nice soil for next year. "Other stuff" may include oak leaves, acorns, and twigs, grass clippings, gum tree leaves and gumballs, and clippings from bushes and shrubs. Basically anything that grew from the soil will decompose into good nutrients.