Wednesday, October 13, 2010

S*** Heats Up in Uganda

http://allafrica.com/stories/201010120041.html

This example of biogas as a renewable resource option in Uganda demonstrates why environmental solutions are not just a first world issue. The bioslurry, the waste produced by the process, also is used as a fertilizer in the home's garden. Biogas has seen a large social, economic and environmental return when applied in this capacity. By applying a localized solution, the family is also able to gain autonomy in its household economy and spends less money paying for energy in general.

"The inherent differences between fossil and renewable energies suggest that in order to be sustainable, the shift to renewables be include a transition to a more localized economy," http://www.localenergy.org/background.htm . Sustainability is not just a solution available for the first world's homes. There is a need to teach sustainable, achievable processes and make them into universal knowledge- empowerment of individuals and individual households to take up environmental solutions for themselves. By disseminating information and examples like this, environmental solutions seem so much more broach-able. Furthermore, the kind of neighborly, cooperative action that the biogas solutions promote (ie. sharing dung between households) help form a community around the positive environmental steps that they can participate in. The movement of environmental action ultimately comes down to a movement of people hoping that the world survives for generations to come, so the interest of an individual in their fellow man or woman becomes the crux of the environmental movement. A shift towards localized energy means that people become less dependent on international institutions and global markets, and become freed up to consider their futures and the quality of life that they want for their children.

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