June 2017

Clean road
Development

Ways to improve living standards in a country

Robert Messerly

It is straightforward to differentiate the living standards of various countries by looking at how secure and happy their lives are. For most countries in the world, people don’t have it easy. Unlike the countries in North America or Europe, where basic needs like water and proper housing are easy to access, people in other nations have to walk for miles to access water and live in slums where the surrounding is a health factor.

To raise the living standards of a given place, it is paramount that a lot of changes take place. In today’s piece, we take a look at some of the fundamental changes that need to take place.

How to improve living standards in a given nation

Education

idea

Education is the first step to ensuring that a country’s standard of living is improved. Most people live miserable and hard lives just because they lack the knowledge to be innovative and look for better ways to solve their problems.

When a child is taken to school, they grow up having a background that has prepared them to come up with viable solutions and help handle situations that require critical thinking.

Skill transfer

Even with education, it is pointless to start creating solutions from scratch; it is like re-inventing the wheel. A country can collaborate with advanced nations to get skill transfer. This will enable the given country to jump the hoops of complex development, and catch up with the developed nation.

With the right skills, given countries will have the required expertise to improve everyone’s living standards.

Standardization

One of the biggest problems that underdeveloped countries have to deal with is the lack of standardization and government involvement in the creation of infrastructure. For instance, the creation of a standard for a home building will lay the foundation on which modern homes can be created.

Also, if the standards cover building materials, then it could revolutionize the materials used for making basic houses, including slams.

Investment in infrastructure

Most countries with low living standards usually depend on their government for employment, hence the need for such governments to invest in infrastructure to employ people. Investment in infrastructures such as ports and railways will go a long way in providing thousands of jobs.

Equal resource allocation

For a country to develop equally and improve everyone’s living standards, resources have to be distributed evenly. It is not sound to invest in one region and leave the others underdeveloped. Improvement takes time and should be gradual.

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Wind mill generating electricity
Clean Energy

Best resources for clean energy

Robert Messerly

Global warming is a major concern all over the world, and it is up to all of us to come up and adopt clean energy sources. While the effects of executive carbon in the atmosphere are very well known, it is sad that most people do very little to solve the crisis, in particular with the USA pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement. While governments might have their agendas, some that might not favor climate, it is important to identify all the important avenues that are available to all of us.

In the spirit of preventing climate change and making our world better, here are some of the clean energy sources that every country should be looking forward to.

Clean energy sources

Solar

solar

Perhaps the best known by most people is the use of solar energy to generate electricity, and heat water. Electricity drives most of our systems, both for work and leisure, hence the need to have sufficient supply for it. With a solar system, most homes can have a reliable source of electricity, and in return reduce or eradicate the use of fossil fuel to produce electricity.

Solar can also be used to boil water, typically, using electricity to boil water is very expensive.

Wind

The Wind is also a very lucrative source of clean energy, given that it is straightforward to tap into the power supply. All it takes is the installation of wind turbines. These turbines are rotated by the wind, and in return produce electricity that can be wired to homes.

Nuclear

Most people do not understand that nuclear is a source of clean energy, a product of ignorance on the technology. While failures of nuclear plants have adverse effects on the environment, it is safe to say that modern designs have preventive measures to make the technology safe. For forward thinking countries, this is a viable energy source.

Hydro-electric

One of the oldest and most efficient ways to produce electricity is to harness the power of water. By creating dams and harnessing the power of waterfalls, a lot of electricity can be created from the power of moving water. The water is used to turn large generators.

Geothermal

GeothermalGeothermal is an excellent way to produce electricity. When the earth center heats underground water, it produces high-pressure steam that is used to drive massive electric generators. For countries like the US with abundant geothermal energy, this is an excellent way to generate electricity.…