Poverty

• Energy and the “Great Ascent” from poverty in the 19th Century
 
• The second “Great Ascent” in the 1950’s
 
• The lingering “Great Gap”
 
• A new source of energy - Focus Fusion - is required to close the Great Gap and complete the Ascent!
 
• The Fear of Over-Consumption

Energy and the “Great Ascent” from poverty in the 19th Century

Today, the vast majority of energy is produced the same way it was at the end of the 19th century, by burning fossil fuels to turn heat into work. Humanity owes a great deal to these 19th century sources of energy. Without this energy, the prosperity and quality of life at the scale that many of us experience today would not be possible.  (e.g., In general, life expectancy has increased, infant mortality has fallen drastically, we are taller and healthier and get fewer infections than people did just 50 years ago, we have more to eat, we have an amazing selection of consumer goods, many more of us are literate, and the number of hours in the work week have been halved during the last 120 years when back-breaking, labor-intensive agriculture was the norm.)

In a 1997 UN report on poverty and inequality, we read that: “The accelerated progress in reducing poverty in the 20th-century began in Europe and North America in the 19th-century - in what can now be seen as the first Great Ascent from poverty and human deprivation. The ascent started in the foothills of the Industrial Revolution, with rising incomes, improvements in public health and education and eventually programs of social security.” [UNDP, 1997]

The “Industrial Revolution” can be defined as “the application of power-driven machinery to manufacturing.” The “power”, of course, being supplied by fossil fuels and steam engines. Harnessing this energy changed the world. Jeffrey Sachs, in his book The End of Poverty says:

Until the onset of the Industrial Revolution, humanity had known only unending struggles against famine, pandemic disease, and extreme poverty, all compounded by endless cycles of war and political despotism.

With the Industrial Revolution, machines run by fossil fuels were harnessed to produce work, making people exponentially more productive. This freed up human energy for many more inventive and creative things and fueled an amazing sense of possibility.

...with the early glimmerings of a new scientific and technological age, bold and brilliant Enlightenment thinkers throughout Europe and the emerging United States began to envision the possibility of sustained social progress in which science and technology could be harnessed to achieve sustained improvements in the organization of social, political, and economic life.” [Sachs, 2005]

While the ideas of the enlightenment themselves were powerful, the power supplied by fossil-fuel energy was a key ingredient in making the vision a reality. With this one-two punch of fossil fuels and enlightened thinking, prosperity spread to most of Europe and North-America, a middle class grew and thrived, and despotism and monarchy gave way to democracies.

The Second “Great Ascent” in the 50’s

The second “Great Ascent” out of poverty started in the 1950s in the developing countries as colonialism wound down, education and health improved and economic growth accelerated. These improvements, of course, caused a population explosion which added major challenges to the poverty equation. Suddenly, you had a lot more people with material needs to fulfill. Nevertheless, poverty continues to decline, especially more recently in countries such as India and China.

That’s right. Today, poverty continues to decrease world-wide. It may not seem this way, because the net number of people trapped in extreme poverty has been steadily hovering at about 1.2 billion for the last 20 years. But keep in mind that the population has also been increasing, so the percentage of people who are poor has decreased. [Lomborg, 1998]

The problem is that it is decreasing too slowly and that the huge number of people in extreme poverty remains constant. Every day - while some wring their hands, and the rest just don’t care - over 20,000 more people needlessly die because of poverty. Over a billion continue to suffer intolerable living conditions. Slavery has made a comeback and pointless wars continues to claim lives.

The Persistent “Great Gap”

The Haves & starting to Haves

The first “Great Ascents” out of poverty have brought humanity a long way. A billion of us, a sixth of the planet, live in the high-income world. Another 2.5 billion live in the “middle-income” world, (but would not be recognized as middle-class by the standards of rich countries). They earn about a few thousand dollars a year. They have a long way to go to close the gap with the high-income world, but they are on their way.

The Have Nots

This leaves 40% of the planet in poverty. Today, despite all our enlightened thinking and technology, we still have 1.2 billion people in extreme poverty with no end in sight. These people are considered the “poorest of the poor” whose daily life is a struggle for survival. “If economic development is a ladder with higher rungs representing steps up the path to economic well-being,” these people are “too ill, hungry, or destitute even to get a foot on the first rung of the development ladder.” (Sachs, 2005)

Another 1.5 billion are “the poor” who live above mere subsistence. “Death is not at their door, but chronic financial hardship and a lack of basic amenities such as safe drinking water and functioning latrines are part of their daily lives.” (Sachs, 2005)

What Poverty Looks Like

Millions of people die each year of easily preventable diseases which they are too poor to do anything about. Millions don’t have access to safe, clean drinking water and sanitation. Millions of women still walk for many hours each day to collect fuel wood for energy, adding to the deforestation and desertification in their regions. As in pre-Industrial Revolution times, millions of people still know “only unending struggles against famine, pandemic disease, and extreme poverty, all compounded by endless cycles of war and political despotism.”

Slavery, too, has made a vigorous comeback in the past 50 years. Today, there are an estimated 27 million slaves. This is more than all the slaves in four centuries of the North Atlantic slave trade. Slavery today is different from slavery in the past in two key ways: Slaves today are cheap and disposable. “An average slave in the American South in 1850 cost the equivalent of $40,000 in today’s money; today a slave costs an average of $90.” This low cost is what makes them disposable and easily killed. Many of them are “debt slaves” working off the debts of their parents or grandparents. They work in agriculture, mining, factories and prostitution with little chance for escape or improvement in their quality of life. (Click here for more information on modern slavery).

Slavery persists because millions of people in developing countries are powerless, have no job security and are vulnerable to exploitation. Government corruption around the world allows slavery to go unpunished, even though it is illegal everywhere.

Ending Poverty

In his book The End of Poverty, Jeffery Sachs outlines a plan to end extreme poverty in 20 years. In other words, he thinks it’s possible to take those 1.2 billion people out of extreme poverty up to the level of poverty in 20 years. From there, it’s not clear how many decades it might take to get everyone up from “poverty” to “middle-income” and beyond, but the prospects would be much improved.

The plan relies on “economic justice” and “enlightened globalization.” It calls for more development spending, greater power for the UN (against the wishes of the more powerful countries in the world), re-configuring global and governmental institutions to be more concerned with the needs of the poor, (e.g., the IMF and World Bank need to stop being “the handmaidens of creditor governments” and instead, champion the afore-mentioned “economic justice”).

In order to work, this plan needs to overcome “global inertia, proclivities to war and prejudice, and understandable skepticism around the world that this time can be different from the past.”

Indeed, we here at the Focus Fusion Society think that this time can be different. that’s because this time, we’ll give these lofty concepts of enlightened globalization some real teeth by cutting loose the unlimited supply of focus fusion energy and harnessing it to solve humanity’s biggest problems.
A New Source of Energy is Required to Close the Gap and Complete the Ascent!

The first “Great Ascent” out of poverty rode on a wave of a newly opened frontier of energy supply: fossil fuels harnessed to the steam engine. The ascent seems to have stalled now, foundering in a world of limited resources, distribution problems, apathy and corruption. Unfortunately, it has run out of steam far short of the mark. What the world needs now is a vast new supply of power that picks up and revitalizes the ascent, taking it well over the top. We don’t just want to pull the “extreme poor” up to the level of “poor”. We want everyone up at “affluence”.

We’ve had the Industrial Revolution. Now we need the Fusion Revolution.

The “End of Poverty” plan outlined by Sachs above relies on the will of humanity. But this will has heretofore been lacking, due to petty, short-sighted self interest of many parties involved. We think this will can be activated much more quickly with the appearance of an amazing new clean, cheap, safe, easily deployed energy supply.

Economic impact of clean, cheap, safe, abundant energy:

[Note: If you are an economist and have some thoughts on the connection between abundant, cheap, clean fuel for everyone and the end of poverty, please contact us to help us clarify this section.]

With Focus Fusion, optimistic end-of-poverty global development will appear much more feasible. Key barriers to growth will be eliminated. These barriers include counterproductive policies and irrational actions that arise from fears of limited resources and the sense that economic progress is a zero sum game and there must be winners and lots of losers. Another key barrier is transportation costs. The areas which suffer the most poverty in our world also tend to be the most landlocked, with the little access to navigation (e.g., ocean ports or rivers). With ridiculously cheap energy, transport costs will become much more even throughout the world, enabling people in impoverished countries to engage in trade a lot more easily, and foreign companies will find it much more feasible to invest in them. This sort of thing will have a huge impact on their regional economic development.

Problems with energy supply will also be eliminated. Energy supplies in the world today are centralized, expensive and vulnerable based on geo-political instability, leading to economic insecurity and impeding global development. This uncertainty would be eliminated and economic development could become much more stable.

Oil exporting countries would still have a valuable resource, but control of the resource would no longer be that critical for foreign powers. Thus, these countries would see a lessening of efforts by foreigners to control them. They would also have major incentive to improve their economies, develop their human resources and so forth.

Fears of global warming would be offset as polluting power plants are shut down and replaced with clean focus fusion reactors. It will soon be obvious that you can have prosperity at industrial country levels for everyone AND a clean environment at the same time.

With the sudden drop in energy prices, the cost of goods will drop dramatically and things will be affordable to many more people. In general, there will be a lot more economic activity. Foreign investment in developing countries will increase and the will to bring people out of poverty will be motivated mostly by the desire to bring 2.7 billion new consumers online.

In sum, enlightened globalization plus a vast new supply of power will team up for the final one-two punch against poverty.

Focus Fusion as the Energy supply of choice:

This energy supply needs to be Focus Fusion, because as we’ve noted elsewhere, conventional approaches to fusion won’t be available for decades, and won’t really free up energy the way Focus Fusion can. Focus Fusion is designed to be cheap, clean, safe, and easily deployed to wherever it needs to be. It’s so simple, inexpensive and elegant it stands a much better chance of fulfilling global energy infrastructure requirements than anything imagined today. The sooner the energy infrastructure is in place, the sooner impoverished areas can begin to thrive. (For an article on the relationship between poverty and energy infrastructure, click here).

It’s important to note here that the existence of Focus Fusion by itself won’t solve all these problems. We will have to make a concerted effort to deploy the technology in the most effective way to the places that need it the most, during a transition phase guided by the afore-mentioned “enlightened globalization.”

Finally, we acknowledge that Focus Fusion is still in a theoretical phase. The purpose of this website is to raise money for proof of concept. Until we raise the money and prove the concept, the matter is not certain. Please click here to support Focus Fusion today.

The Fear of Over-consumption

One of the barriers to pursuing Focus Fusion comes from the idea that it is dangerous for all people to have access to unlimited energy. The fear is that, if poverty goes away, everyone will consume like rabbits and this will devastate our resources, so it’s good to have a limited energy supply.

This view does not take into account the fact that unlimited energy means we can process waste and turn it into cleaner products. We can finally have the power to leave no footprint, to have 100% recycling.

Some people see limited resources as a good thing for people, because they force us to consume less, to learn to live within our means, to become more spiritual. In contrast, without limits, we are pure, unleashed appetite.

This may or may not be the case. It seems more likely that in the face of limited resources, people tend to hoard more and conflicts become more pronounced and there are some unpleasant winners and lots of pathetic losers. Not a pretty picture. Yes, with limited resources, there may be less consumption, but there is gross inequality. If we have the means to change it, it’s unfair to leave people in poverty just so that they don’t consume much.

Still, the issue of over-consumption is an important one that needs to be addressed. Here we take another page out of the Skeptical Environmentalist.  According to Lomborg, studies have shown that affluence results in a cleaner environment. This is because as people’s income rises, they demand a better environment. In a sense, a clean environment is a luxury that can only be afforded by affluent people. (For example, poor people sometimes find themselves having to chop down their last tree for firewood).

Some will argue that this is an illusion, because the affluent are simply exporting their dirty environment elsewhere, through the exploitation of other people’s forests in poor countries, and the dumping of toxics in poor neighborhoods.

First off, as previously mentioned, unlimited energy means that we can transform waste into clean products. Secondly, this only strengthens the argument that it is important to bring everyone up to a good level of prosperity because it makes them less desperate to accept the exploitation of their resources or pollution of their neighborhoods.

As the poor become more affluent, it will be harder for unscrupulous companies and countries to dump toxic waste in poor neighborhoods. Each neighborhood will get stronger and the “not in my back yard” phenomenon will grow, forcing manufacturers to design products with cradle to grave technology and actually clean up their toxics. The boost of fusion energy is also useful for this toxic clean up, as we see here in the Fusion World section.

If you have comments and ideas to add to this section, please contact us.