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

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: 2, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Sunday June 06 2021, @05:55PM (3 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Sunday June 06 2021, @05:55PM (#1142415) Journal

    :-) Very funny... Without corruption there will be no poverty or any other shortage. We can deliver anything anywhere on the planet in 24 hours or less. Permission takes months. All our problems are just mobsters that want to wet their beaks. The poorest countries are the most corrupt, by default.

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    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 06 2021, @11:25PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 06 2021, @11:25PM (#1142518) Journal
    I see several problems with that statement.

    Without corruption there will be no poverty or any other shortage.

    What does "without corruption" mean here? It sounds a lot like the biggest excuse for why communism fails - that it's never been tried. So if we try to completely eliminate corruption and fail (through some unavoidable combination of imperfections in the world and its people), does that mean you'll always have a permanent excuse for why your scheme never works?

    My take is a corrupt, wealthy society is going to fare better than the most incorruptible tribal society of pre-civilization days. Technology and infrastructure compensates for a lot of corruption. But you need the technology and the infrastructure. Lack of corruption doesn't give you that automatically.

    Next, you ignore that even in the absence of corruption, resources are finite, the universe is risky, and hence, shortage can still happen.

    My take is that your corruption talk is the law of triviality [wikipedia.org], often known as the Bike Shed effect. We tend to give increased importance to matters we think we understand than matters we don't, even when the former is utterly trivial.

    You don't know much about how to make lots of people less poor, or running a society, but you know that corruption is bad. So that's what you focus on even when it's not that significant to the operation of so many societies.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 07 2021, @06:04AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 07 2021, @06:04AM (#1142653)

      > most incorruptible tribal society

      You mean the ones with hereditary leaders and caste systems? Gotcha.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 07 2021, @12:31PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 07 2021, @12:31PM (#1142713) Journal

        You mean the ones with hereditary leaders and caste systems?

        Leading questions will get you nowhere.