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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: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 06 2021, @12:15PM (5 children)
While there does seem to a lack of industrialization at higher levels (lasting into the 20th Century [e-ir.info]), said extracting of raw materials was heavily industrialized.
Last I checked, those people were grown ups. If current country boundaries were inadequate, they could figure out how to fix that, rather than kill the better part of a million people (and a lot more than that died in the wars in neighboring Congo).
Further, contrary to your assertion, genocide in Rwanda couldn't be fixed through better selection of boundaries. The two primary ethnic groups in conflict (Hutu and Tutsi) lived in mixed communities. There are no natural boundaries that separate the two. This conflict has also driven the largest war since the Second World War. So there's a lot of dying that can't be explained by poor choice of country borders.
Finally, once again, we're well beyond that colonial era. A number of countries have already elevated themselves out of deep poverty (China being the most notable which is on track to hit developed world status in the next two to three decades). Why does such modernization work for China and not for all these other countries? My take is that the big one is allowing people to create and run businesses with relatively little interference from the government.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Sunday June 06 2021, @06:10PM (2 children)
Wow! Cut your nose to spite your face! Well done!
You mean businessman have no interference from government in China? Really?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 06 2021, @10:50PM (1 child)
Relatively little != no. Compare to India, for example. You've heard of the saying about the one-eyed man in the land of the blind?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 07 2021, @05:52AM
He gets all the pussy? That's the one I heard anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06 2021, @08:50PM (1 child)
Well beyond? Less than a century, in some places.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 06 2021, @11:31PM
I rest my case.