At either end of the economic spectrum, the way people use energy not only impacts their lives but also affects the world as a whole. However, within each one of the impacts mentioned below is the seed of a solution; sustainability is the test of its long-term effectiveness.

As might be expected, energy consumption patterns and economic status are directly linked. The United States and Canada, with only 6 percent of the world’s population consume nearly 30 percent of the world’s energy while all of Africa consumes only 5 percent. At the village level in Africa, such a statistic means that women spend a significant part of time during the day simply gathering the energy required to process and cook their food. Consequently, they have less time to spend on income generation or efforts to relieve their poverty. They would pay a significantly larger amount for the same energy as a more affluent individual and have less capital available for health care and education.

In the rich nations of the world, energy for cooking, heating, hot water, and light are readily available at a relatively low cost. They have invested in both the centralized sources and extensive distribution systems to make that energy available to citizens and businesses. At the same time, it is estimated that almost two billion people still lack electricity in their homes. Providing similar, inexpensive energy to the village woman of the developing world would transform the economic status of her family. One of the foundations of a civil society is the provision of a reliable and cheap source of energy.

Provision of clean water and adequate food rely heavily on the availability of an inexpensive and reliable source of energy. According to the United Nations there are nearly one billion people of the world who are undernourished and must increase their daily caloric input to 2,160. To do that requires more efficient production by even peasant farmers who rely on energy for irrigation, mechanization, and other forms of basic agricultural technology. Transfer of harvested crops to market requires not only a developed infrastructure but also a trustworthy system of transportation, which again relies on cheap energy. At various points during this cycle of production and consumption, the processing of food also requires energy, whether it be sun for drying or electricity for elaborate preserving operations.

Most experts claim that potable water is an essential key to development. In villages as well as large urban areas, energy is crucially important both in the drilling of wells and the development of water sources and in treatment and supply. Food and water security, in turn, impact the general health and the quality of health care of world citizens.

But world health is also impacted negatively by careless production and use of energy. At the producer level, the health of coal miner, refinery worker, and wood collector can be adversely affected by their activities. In the processing and cooking of foods, many rural dwellers in the developing world are exposed to harmful smoke and other by-products of burning organic material. In developing countries where large refineries are located like in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, the health of those living in the vicinity is directly affected. As the scale of production and fossil fuel use increases (in manufacturing and transportation sectors, for example), so do the harmful emissions that are breathed in by large populations of the world. Finally, and most significantly, increased carbon in the atmosphere is accelerating global warming with resultant skin cancer and respiratory problems.

Local and global environments both suffer in the face of unsustainable energy policies. Acid rain, a direct result of the burning of fossil fuels, renders large bodies of water lifeless. Globally, the greenhouse effect already threatens low-lying areas with flooding as ocean water levels rise. Arid regions of the world like the Sahel in Africa are threatened by increased desertification. Pipelines, which stretch over long distances from oil source to convenient port as in Chad and Cameroon, have a devastating effect on the local populations and the environment. Oil spills resulting from transportation in supertankers and the pipelines themselves affect local flora and fauna in a variety of ways. On the local level, when rural populations must rely on wood both for processing and cooking food as well as for heat, the ultimate result is deforestation and land degradation.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

next in depth issue