Climate Change and Energy Sovereignty
As time progressed, with the availability of electricity, people’s expectation from life changed and they moved upward in the economic ladder for the betterment of their family and the society as well.
Group discussion is an important learning tool, widely promoted in the class rooms to enhance oratory skills among the students. A student receives multiple benefits after harnessing this skill and also comply with the academic curricula, when this becomes a part of the class room teaching learning methodology.
On one such occasion of class room group discussion, the given topic raised many pertinent insights followed by arguments and counter-arguments. The group discussion topic was “Climate Change and Poverty Alleviation.”
The discussion started with many arguments supported by multiple reasons to validate those logic. During those tantalizing moments of conversation, Anjan brought completely a different angel to the discussion by saying, “one important component of poverty eradication is addressing energy poverty in the poor people’s life.” In order to provide more strength to his statement he further added, “You see! Provisioning of food materials, medicines or for that matter education materials for the children, have short term impact on the poverty eradication targets if it is not supplemented by the energy self-sufficiency.”
Probably the statement was not graspable by Soumya, another participant of the debating group, making him slightly annoyed. Holding an irksome tonality he said, “How could you say that provisioning of all other goods and services are meaningless? Do you think mere provisioning of the energy flow in the house would address the poverty issues, even if they don’t have food?”
Listening to Soumya’s remark, instantaneously Anjan’s one side of the mouth pulled up back followed by raised eyebrows and shoulder as well. Puffing out air from nostril and creating a voice of teasing he said, “Seriously! You are twisting my statement, my friend, yet it’s okay! Now based on your own argument, in urban areas, you will find many households where the elderly people with quite an impressive bank balance are living all alone.
These vulnerable and feeble people are struggling with many problems including food availability and provisioning for them. In such scenario are you going to refer them as poor? Probably no! You will not consider them as impoverished because of the availability of various other facilities of life that include availability of electricity at home! For your reference, you must be knowing that the per capita consumption of electricity is considered as an index of development.
Access to quality and quantity of electricity also indicates the stage of development that the particular society or community is in the growth path and the paradigm automatically gets transformed in to welfare and wellbeing. From the aesthetic point of view also, it is a human tendency that we associate poverty with darkness while flow of bright light along with the provisioning of cooking as per the requirement, creates an impression of economic affluence.”
In a stimulating voice another friend interrupted in the argument and said, “Yes! On the same note I heard from my grandmother that the Goddess of wealth doesn’t like darkness.
In her childhood days as there was no electricity in the villages and with the Sun set, ladies of the households used to lighten up the home by using oil lamp. It used to be considered as bad omen if any house didn’t lighten of Diya in the evening.”
Holding a wide smile on his face and a tonality that seconded the previous statement Anjan said, “Yes, my dear! Exactly, in earlier days in the absence of electricity people were dependent on oil lamps and the life tyle was ancient.
As time progressed, with the availability of electricity, people’s expectation from life changed and they moved upward in the economic ladder for the betterment of their family and the society as well.
In other words you can say as the darkness gets reduced from the household’s periphery and it started giving energy, efficiency and productivity of the family making them move in the upward direction of economic prosperity.”
The mind-boggling arguments of Anjan was enthralling the class, stimulating all the class mates to participate in the discussion. Carried away by inquisitive emotion another on-looker class mate said, “In essence you want to say that poverty eradication is possible if each house hold is supplied with their requirement of the electricity?”
“Yes! What you are saying is partially correct, I would like to add the context of climate change here, and in this context green energy would be the right answer. Use of green technology to produce green energy at the household level will address the self-sufficiency of energy production that would automatically alleviate poverty by raising the family’s productivity.”
Affirming the interpretation of Anjan, another class mate added, “Yeah! Now a days more conversations are happening around green energy to reduce the impact of climate change. So, in your opinion Anjan, we need to reframe our tag line as green energy for poverty eradication!”
“Partially right, but I would go for energy sovereignty for poverty eradication; where families should be producing and consuming the electricity as per their requirement instead of depending on others would be the right way of addressing this issue. This would disintegrate the centralized system of generation of electricity followed by distribution network and positively work in the direction of climate change.”
Looking at the paucity of time, teacher asked the class “Summarize your group discussion in few sentences as we are running out of time.”
In response to teacher’s advice Soumya said, “Poverty eradication can be achieved through energy sovereignty and through production of green energy. In this way people would be responsible for their production and consumption of energy, reducing the accumulated pressure of electricity production at few places that adds to the burning of fossil fuel adding to the problems of carbon emission and climate change. Green energy will surely ensure greener future for all of us.”
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