wombat,
That wasn't an attempt to make it sound as though they should learn to live that way (or even like it).
Merely that dung *has* been used as a fuel through a good portion of human history. Is it a preferred method? No.
I question the 25% uses 75% number of resources as well. Not that I think there isn't room for improvement in usage.
Even if you argue that the 25% uses 75% of what is currently _produced_, that doesn't necessarily equate to 75% of total actual resources. Plus, I would argue that efficiency in general translates to a lower % per capita for the more technologically advanced areas over some of those less advanced (obviously, the very poor are using very little either way).
The question isn't 'should we help', but 'how should we help'. You can't just throw money at it and hope it will get solved. And even if you could perfect a distribution process to allow perfect redistribution of money and resources, then what? Even if you argue that it is morally correct to do this redistribution (a position I disagree with), you're still stuck with how those resources get used. The most efficient will soon surpass the not so efficient, and things will be unequal again.
One thing to keep in mind, is that the most technologically advanced areas show the most improvement in almost all areas of life, including envirionment, percent of resource usage to expenditure, and so on. What this says to me is that the goal should be to provide the framework to translate this technological improvement to these underdeveloped and impoverished areas, thus giving them the tools to improve themselves.
In order to do that, however, there are substantial physical and political hurdles to overcome. You can't fund an improvement if the funding gets coopted before being used for improvement (most often by the governments of the people we're trying to help). We also certainly cannot just replace these institutions carte blanche (no matter how much we may wish to).
There is no magic bullet here. The standard position is that we should take from those who have and give it to those who don't. A very nice feel good position, but ultimately doomed to fail. First, very few will give up enough to actually even the field. Second, even if they did, the economic and incentive engine that drives all improvements would fail (or slow considerably). We would do _more_ damage than we solve. The best goal is to bring them up to the rest of the world. That's going to take several generations, even at the most optimistic. It isn't the money or the resources that the technological countries have that is going to be the biggest help, it's going to be the methods.
Should we help? Yes. But it has to be the right kind of help, or the result may be worse than we expect.
We should set aside and provide for infrastructure improvements, where we can (that will require some efforts to deal with the corruption at all levels, a very difficult task). We should give them true access to the world markets, without arbitrary restrictions, either in selling or buying.
