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Comment by Sodaware | Hacker News Reader

> But whatever method we chose, it should not ignore the actual people living there, their intelligence comparable to our own and their fight for survival.

A couple of years ago I attended a talk on lemur conservation, and this was one of the key points they brought up. Habitat loss from slash-and-burn agriculture is a huge problem for lemur populations, but from a conservation point it's not effective to visit Madagascar and tell people not to do it. To the Malagasy you're just a rich tourist telling them off for living without offering any help.

So instead they focus on education. Two of the initiatives they mentioned were teaching people more effective methods of cultivating food (such as setting up fisheries), and providing them with plans for more efficient wood-burning stoves.

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Good idea in general, but the details matter. Teaching people how to make efficient wood burning stoves could fall prey to the Jevons Paradox.

Ideally you would enable some other type of stove. They may lack the infrastructure for natural gas or propane, of course. But I'm sure heating can be accomplished without chopping down trees at all. Through solar, for instance.

Rocket stoves can use pretty much any dry woody detritus, though not whole logs. They aren't useful for baking, but much nicer for boiling and pan frying.

> But I'm sure heating can be accomplished without chopping down trees at all. Through solar, for instance.

In a perfect world, yes.

But this is the problem with conservation work in poor countries. 1.7% of US energy generation comes from solar [1], so going to Madagascar and saying "hey, you should be using solar instead of chopping down trees" rings a little hollow.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

I can also understand why a developing country might not take kindly to environmental regulations. Developed countries destroyed the environment for decades, but now want to restrict others from doing the same. It might feel like they crossed a bridge, then burned it behind them.

They get the benefit of all the hard work developed countries have done before them. Many countries have skipped right past land lines for instance and gone straight to cellular.

Should they also be forced to go through all the innovations and advances developed countries have in order to utilize them?

It seems to me it's perfectly OK to tell smaller countries times have changed get with the program, but we have to do it in a compassionate and understanding fashion as the OP mentioned.

Don’t forget all the rich-world subsidies for solar that bid up prices and make them less economical for those that can’t afford to subsidize.

how would subsidies on solar energy end up raising its price?

If the US gives 50% rebates on panels for US installation, the manufacturers of the limited good (panels) will charge more money because they can.

If you’re Madagascar, you’re SOL.

You might argue that subsidies create an industry of overproduction that’ll eventually crash the market, but that’s definitely not the initial state.

Just as if you’re a gas station and the government gives you a subsidy for every litre you sell, you’ll use some of that subsidy to pay more and sell for less in your local market and still have higher margins than your competitor.

Yes and no. People said the same thing about wireless phones 20 years ago.

Solar in a country with poor infrastructure means distributed generation becomes possible. Most places in the US have robust power grids, but even then conservation and point generation is the cheapest way to add marginal capacity!

That should be a guiding star of policy. Electricity is an almost magical force that opens doors.

IMO people are people. I’m fortunate to live in the US and be able to have the education and opportunity to use my abilities in a productive way. My grandfather was probably smarter than me in IQ terms, but drove a garbage truck and shoveled coal to support his family. (He taught himself calculus on that truck to help my uncle study.)

There are millions of people like my grandpa. If we figure out how to elevate them to their potential, we all benefit.

That statistic is for solar electric generation. A better alternative would be solar water heating, which is cheaper to install and more efficient.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_heating

For cooking, parabolic mirrors might work quite well. A bit bulky and dependent on weather, but very powerful, low maintenance and cheap. You could still use the efficient wood stove in the rainy season.As long as you don't burn it faster than it regrows wood is a fantastic CO2-neutral fuel that they already have access to.

These guys have ovens and roasters: https://lytefire.com/en

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