Earth year 4,492,056,017
Mother Earth/ Gaia‘s Blog number 7

Mankind, My children

In my first blog I asked that you commit to following my blogs for the next few weeks to give me a chance to explain the most important issues affecting our joint survival. Subsequent Blogs have started to give you some facts about the big and important Global issues that need to be addressed. In today’s Blog I want to talk about Affordable and Clean Energy 

The problem 

Lack of access to affordable, reliable energy supplies is a constraint to human and economic development. About 1 billion people live without electricity and more than 3 billion have to rely on wood, charcoal, animal and crop waste  or other solid fuels to cook their food and to heat their homes. Nearly 4 million people die prematurely from illnesses attributable to household pollution from inefficient cooking practices and businesses cannot thrive and grow where electricity is not available or is only intermittent and unreliable. Since energy contributes to 60 % of the Greenhouse gases causing climate change, we need to move to renewable sources.

Do you feel guilty and helpless when seeing TV reports about children sitting in semi darkness trying to do their homework by firelight or families  having no choice but to cook their meals on polluting and smoky energy sources ? Now you can do something to help make things better  

The facts:

1. 291 million children ( 40% ) attend primary schools without electricity 
2. Girls have to collect most of the fuel for their families so often miss school 
3. 7 out of 10 African business lack reliable electricity 
4. Energy contributes 60 % of the greenhouse gases causing climate change so we must urgently support renewable energy sources 

wcydo (wich-ee-do – What Can You Do?) 

1. Buy fair trade fruit once a week to help poor farmers
2. Support charities such as www.betterenergy.org  
3.  Join and support a pressure group to demand action www.globalcitizen.org 
4. Share the facts about energy to family and friends so they do it too

Encourage others to join us and to visit www.wcydo.com to sign up for our newsletter and information about our proposed wcydo APP.  See you next week on blog 8.