meddling

Last week at “Green Drinks”, (a fun international movement of environmentalist gatherings), there was a formal presentation put on by a couple from India. The speakers are part of a project designed to improve renewable energy technology in a village in east India.

They made several wonderful points about the lack of any connection between wealth and happiness. They also pointed out that in India, there are nearly 800,000,000 very poor villagers who put out almost no pollution or carbon emissions. The 200,000,000 of India’s wealthy consuming urban elite create the pollution.

Part of the presenters' project is to provide poor villagers with LED solar powered lamps in order to help eliminate health problems associated with the internal use of kerosene lanterns. This is certainly a worthwhile effort, a noble cause. However, and maybe this was because my brain was confused by the disconnected nature of having a formal presentation at what is usually a social event, and this may have been caused by my strong preference for social events over formal presentations, although formal presentations do have their place, and I certainly did not mean to put a damper on anyone’s evening, I couldn’t help but ask, “Why do they need to have any lamps?”

Silence.

-The answer? They need to have good lamps so that they can work and study at night.

Shoot.

I can’t think of two more vile things to do at night. Nights should be for relaxing, playing, campfires, or sleeping. They should not be violated with things like work and study. Tom Hodgkinson likes to say that the light bulb is one of the most evil inventions ever. I agree, unless you live in the Arctic where the night can last 6 months, but even that has its own appeal. Now we are condemning 800,000,000 more people to working and studying at night!

Sometimes I think the best thing we could do for the people of India (or Africa, or Iraq, or Afghanistan…) is to leave them alone. They are perfectly capable of solving their own problems, most of which the Western world has caused.

eddy out,
rich