Temporary restrictions to energy supply, nationally or internationally are a frequent occurrence. I can recall energy shortages caused by striking miners in the 1970s, the OPEC embargo of 1973, the Iran/Iraq war in 1980, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and last year’s Fukushima nuclear reactor shutdown in Japan to name just a few.

Renewable technologies use freely available resources such as wind, water and sunshine and are not dependent on the fluctuating world price of carbon intensive fossil fuels. It seems an obvious solution to focus our investment on these.

But the prevailing wisdom amongst developed countries is that quick fix high tech ‘geo-engineering’ solutions will solve the problem of global warming.

There is a history of environmental disasters associated with meddling with our planet’s ecosystems in unproven ways. Cane toads were introduced to the sugar plantations of Queensland, Australia in 1935 to control a pest called cane beetles. Over the years, with no natural predators, these toads have become a much greater pest than the original beetle. The Nile perch was introduced into Africa’s Lake Victoria for food and sport fishing. It has already eaten its way through 200 native fish species, and is still going. I could go on….

Developed countries already make too many demands on the resources of our fragile planet while a third of humanity lacks access to modern energy. We should surely be concentrating our scarce resources on improving this situation rather than lavishing time, money and scientific expertise on unproven vanity projects. Practical Action has a wealth of experience to show that small scale renewable energy drives development.

2012 is the UN year of sustainable energy for all – we must ensure that is exactly what is does.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 6th, 2012 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Climate Change, Energy, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.