Great set of questions. 

There is of course a difference between what people need (and what they say they need and what others say they need) and what they want.

What people everywhere need is (a) adequate and safe water; (b) adequately nutritious and safe food; c) a certain level of primary health care. Electricity is an energy source. The question is how energy can contribute to (a), (b) and c) (I don't write the left bracket because the phrase is turned into a copyright sign. An partial answer is that (b) and c) do depend on local cooling below ambient temperature, and this is currently only achievable through using energy. That may well be true of (a) also; I don't know. 

But (b) also depends upon social interactions that are facilitated through communication and indeed commerce. Commerce is now possible through the introduction of cell-phone payment systems; and through the communication which makes remote negotiation with remote suppliers possible. If it takes two days to reach you, you can only get enough safe meat and veg if you can negotiate it remotely and have it delivered once a week, say, in a truck. The truck uses energy, and some of that can be used for cooling; but when it gets to you you need to cool it for the next week until the next shipment arrives. 

Such distribution systems are likely the only way people can avoid the pervasive use of bushmeat and thereby exposure to zoonotic disease such as Ebola, and whatever is coming down the pike ahead of us.

But then there is the question of the resilience of these systems (raised by others). Roger Kemp ran a workshop for the RAEng on “Living Without Electricity” (available from their WWW site), about the Lancaster Christmas outage a few years ago. He pointed out that we were much more resilient concerning such events 50 years ago. You lost lighting, and TV, but everything else worked. But now, everything seems to depend on a reliable electricity supply. 

Gotta go. But glad to be part of this conversation

Great set of questions. 

There is of course a difference between what people need (and what they say they need and what others say they need) and what they want.

What people everywhere need is (a) adequate and safe water; (b) adequately nutritious and safe food; c) a certain level of primary health care. Electricity is an energy source. The question is how energy can contribute to (a), (b) and c) (I don't write the left bracket because the phrase is turned into a copyright sign. An partial answer is that (b) and c) do depend on local cooling below ambient temperature, and this is currently only achievable through using energy. That may well be true of (a) also; I don't know. 

But (b) also depends upon social interactions that are facilitated through communication and indeed commerce. Commerce is now possible through the introduction of cell-phone payment systems; and through the communication which makes remote negotiation with remote suppliers possible. If it takes two days to reach you, you can only get enough safe meat and veg if you can negotiate it remotely and have it delivered once a week, say, in a truck. The truck uses energy, and some of that can be used for cooling; but when it gets to you you need to cool it for the next week until the next shipment arrives. 

Such distribution systems are likely the only way people can avoid the pervasive use of bushmeat and thereby exposure to zoonotic disease such as Ebola, and whatever is coming down the pike ahead of us.

But then there is the question of the resilience of these systems (raised by others). Roger Kemp ran a workshop for the RAEng on “Living Without Electricity” (available from their WWW site), about the Lancaster Christmas outage a few years ago. He pointed out that we were much more resilient concerning such events 50 years ago. You lost lighting, and TV, but everything else worked. But now, everything seems to depend on a reliable electricity supply. 

Gotta go. But glad to be part of this conversation