The Uplifting Reality about Modern Energy

The headline reads: The Solvable Problem of Energy Poverty: Spread of Electricity Need Not Harm Climate, says UN Report

When I first began looking at National Geographic for "uplifting" articles concerning the environment, I became... concerned. Out of the first 20-some stories, only two seem even remotely ok, not to mention cheerful. And cheerful isn't exactly what I got from the above article, but it is semi-hopeful.

This article from National Geographic covers new meetings of the United Nations that are addressing the effects that adequate energy and cooking techniques for the world's poorest people would have on the environment. It briefly mentioned the health consequences that burning wood and other traditional materials can have on a person and I believe it! In the very short time I spent eating and cooking in a person's home in Kibera, the slum outside Nairobi, Kenya, my friends and I had to step outside because we couldn't breathe.

This was the most important part:

Tackling the larger goal of universal energy access— reaching all 1.4 billion people who lack access to electricity and the 3 billion relying on unventilated and inefficient wood, charcoal, and dung cooking stoves—would require only a modest increase in carbon dioxide emissions, the report calculated. That’s because the amount of fuel needed to address basic needs is small, and the opportunities for using cleaner energy are great. If the world takes the problem on, by 2030, global electricity generation would be just 2.9 percent higher, oil demand would rise less than 1 percent and carbon emissions would be just 0.8 percent higher than the world’s current trajectory.

So that's good. We've talked about how if everyone in China was able to get a car the world would basically end. The UN is saying that that won't be the case for this issue. The article also asserts that this goal is affordable! Amazing! Providing modern energy would cost $41 billion annually over the next five years (which is only 0.06 percent of global GDP). But this is where we run into trouble.

The more and more I learn about the world the more depressed I get about the United States' attitudes toward everything!! They don't give a hoot about human rights and they sure don't care about allowing people to eat without killing themselves from toxic smoke. As usual, the United States doesn't want to pay up. While that might be (is) depressing at least this article asserts that this is a possibility. Modern energy can mean the difference between life and death for the world's poorest people and knowing that it's economically and environmentally feasible is... uplifting. :)