The lack of access to reliable and clean energy supplies is a major barrier to improving well-being around the globe - there are an estimated 1.6 billion people living in the rural areas of developing countries who lack access to to electricity - but so is dependence on fossil fuels. Climate driven “natural” disasters also threaten far worse. Rather than just failing to improve the human condition, we could be about to witness the great reversal of human progress. This paper, written by Andrew Simms, Julian Oram, and Petra Kjell, proposes a major shift to renewable energy in order to tackle poverty and mitigate global warming as well as economic shocks due to the increasing prices of fossil fuels.
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Simms, Andrew, Julian Oram, Petra Kjell, with research by Jessica Bridges Palmer. 2004. The price of power: Poverty, climate change, the coming energy crisis and the renewable revolution. London: New Economics Foundation. http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/z_sys_PublicationDetail.aspx?PID=182.