While first world countries debate bullshit energy talking points that, laughably, now generally touch on how much they think they can influence the Earth’s climate, always for the better, even as all indicators show they absolutely can’t and are even failing miserably on every emissions reduction front, the reality for many billions of people in energy poverty is that their lives will likely be cut short at some point relatively soon because of a lack of access to adequate supplies of safe cooking fuels (see our excellent reference article of the day below).
So, you’d think such major, guaranteed repercussions for actual humans, living today and not in some distant future, would move the needle of human compassion, even just little, and have governments around the world start to focus on energy poverty and access to cooking supplies, right?
No, of course not.
That would totally compromise their righteous, sacrosanct commitments to reducing CO2 emissions, and apparently saving an unspecified amount of other peoples lives at some point in the future, based on complete guesses masked as ‘scientific models’ that are generally the equivalent of a tarot reading.
You know, extend the suffering of the poor now so that future rich kids that will likely be multiple times more wealthy than today can feel like their dickhead parents did something for them, or something like that.
Honestly, none of it makes sense, the more we write these things.
And yes, fossil fuels, at least in the ways that most of the west uses them, would be the main way out of this mess, once again, and allow those in energy poverty at least the dignity to cook for their families using clean burning gas or diesel generator driven electricity supply, or whatever means really – just as long as it freaking works.
It’s such a simple solution, yet literally no government or influential group of people seems interested in fighting such a battle, all because they can’t be seen to be encouraging CO2 emission…
It’s just bloody insane.
Free up the supply of fossil fuels for billions in energy poverty to cook in safety, thereby extending their lives, FFS. Can’t even believe it has to be written.
PVC EDITORS
ARTICLE:
Clean and Modern Energy for Cooking – A Path to Food Security and Sustainable Development
KEY QUOTES:
The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organisation, and helps families across the world to access life-saving food and humanitarian assistance. However, most of this food needs to be cooked. Millions of families around the world rely on energy-inefficient stoves to prepare their meals, that cause premature deaths, pollution, environmental degradation and place the burden for cooking and collecting fuels on women and girls.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around 2.6 billion people cook using open fires or simple stoves fuelled by kerosene, biomass and coal, attributing close to four million premature deaths annually to illnesses associated with using polluting stoves (World Health Organisation, 2021).
Primate v. Climate 