Poverty and climate change are two major problems facing humanity. Can we get over these?
It is easy to see that humanity currently has two main and interdependent problems, namely poverty and climate change, both of which are happening extremely fast. To solve poverty, we need to create food, but this will take a lot of energy. Meanwhile, if too much energy is used, the natural environment will be adversely affected.
To completely solve these two problems, humans must find an energy source that is both powerful enough to quickly solve poverty without harming nature. Recently, NASA researchers have embarked on a search for this “miracle” energy source, to ensure that it can meet human needs without causing climate change.
Economic development and climate change mitigation are concepts that do not go hand in hand.
So how much energy is humanity consuming?
As is known, economic development and mitigating the effects of climate change are concepts that do not go hand in hand, because in order to develop, humanity needs more and more energy to promote growth. Reducing harmful emissions into the atmosphere would stabilize the planet’s climate, but so far there has been no really effective way to separate energy demand from economic development.
To see the dependence of physical demand on energy sources, the researchers analyzed three developing countries for energy needs in different cultural and climatic contexts. Brazil, South Africa and India became the “testing countries” in this theoretical experiment by scientists.
The research results show that the energy demand required to ensure a decent standard of living for all social sectors in the selected countries is significantly lower than the existing average energy consumption. countries, as well as being significantly lower than the global per capita electrical energy use.
The energy required to ensure high levels of health care and education is less than what modern infrastructure, transportation and buildings are used to today. In addition, this energy demand can be further reduced if countries ensure widespread use of public transport or use locally available materials to construct buildings.
The obtained results also demonstrate that energy demand is determined not only by basic needs, but also by its excess which is used to meet the needs of the middle income class. medium and high.
Much of the future energy growth in developing countries will be directed not toward poverty alleviation, but rather at preserving the wealthiest areas of the population, the researchers say.
Due to differences between social groups, developing countries are at risk of facing different losses and problems associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions by improving the quality of food. the standard of living of citizens to rise above the basic level.
Such non-uniform results may indicate that the world economy in the very near future may begin to need a real technical revolution to ensure humanity with new, clean energy sources. and continuously.