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Reducing Poverty Can Actually Lower Energy Demand, Finds Research

posted by mrpg on Sunday June 06 2021, @03:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the good dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

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.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06 2021, @04:28PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06 2021, @04:28PM (#1142399)

    What we do when we realize XYZ is harmful is stop doing it, then some smart psychopaths figure out they can outsource it to a shithole and they'll do it over there. Or we'll bring some of them over here, call them 3/5th of a human and make them do it. Wonderful solutions.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 06 2021, @05:28PM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 06 2021, @05:28PM (#1142409) Journal
    Do you have better solutions? Economics is one of those weird fields where the unintuitive is commonplace. Here, the smart psychopaths have a pretty good record compared to the bleeding hearts.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06 2021, @06:48PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06 2021, @06:48PM (#1142437)

      Here, the smart psychopaths have a pretty good record compared to the bleeding hearts.

      Khallow! A higher body-count is not a metric of success!

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday June 06 2021, @10:58PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 06 2021, @10:58PM (#1142504) Journal
        You mean lower body count. Better living conditions, lower fertility, more wealth, more capable societies. Those psychopaths may be terrible people, but we got this figured out. When XYZ needs to be done, it's better to do it in the developing world - even for the developing world - than to not do it at all.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 07 2021, @05:59AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 07 2021, @05:59AM (#1142652)

      > good record

      depends on the metric. the giant show-stopping events of the last 100 years are probably the creation of welfare and national health services, won out of vast international wars caused in large part by the decline of monarchs/dictators in the west. coincidentally at the same time, most of the castles and great family estates went bust. hmm....

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 07 2021, @12:35PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 07 2021, @12:35PM (#1142715) Journal
        We probably should look at show starting events, not show stopping events. Silicon Valley for a region example wasn't fueled by welfare and national health services.