Sunday, February 16, 2014
Love it!
Now here's an organization that's doing everything right! The Barefoot College in India. Training village women to install solar equipment on their own houses and for their neighbors.
(1) Solar power in rich countries is just another way to transfer wealth from poor uncool people to rich cool people. It provides no net power, overloads the grid, and pays rich cool people to overload the grid even more. In poor countries it's an entirely different story. In a village where no electric connections are available, solar water heaters and cookers and electric panels are a source of independence, health and comfort.
(2) Since the peasants are illiterate, the instruction is done with colors instead of numbers. Connect the red point on this box to the red point on that box, etc. PURE HOW-KNOWLEDGE. No time wasted on arithmetic and theories.
(3) In these villages most of the men have gone to The Big City to earn money and send it home. Solar work gives the women an extra source of money and eases their labor. Less time needed to gather polluting "biofuel", and less burning of polluting "biofuel".
¶ 3:37 AM 
