Do you ever wonder how much longer we're gong to be able to pretend there's nothing wrong with the world? I'm not just pointing my finger at the West or America here, I'm talking all of us: from the politburo in China and Whitehall in England, from The Hague to the Black Sea, from The Amazon Basin to The Outback, and everywhere in between and all around.
We've got business interests making as much money as they possibly can this very minute everywhere and anywhere. They don't care if they use ten-your-old girls in their factories or if they're selling those same girls as whores to wealthy clients - it's all money. People like stone washed jeans so we will strip mine pumice from mountains, use sulphuric acid to separate out the impurities, and make lots of money from the jeans for the year they are fashionable.
The factory fishing boats pulled up to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and filled up their holds with fish, canned them, and started all over again. Who needs a catch limit? The fish won't run out. In Japan and Northern Ontario, paper companies used the nice clean water of the rivers rushing by their factories to help clean out the giant presses. They did a great job of washing the mercury out of the equipment and into the water system. It's okay though because the water is moving, so it will clean itself.
The International Monetary Fund decides to give one of the deserving countries in Africa a helping hand instead of a handout. All they have to do is be a little financially responsible and they will get their loan. Cutting all social spending is a good start - people who never had education or health care aren't going to miss it anyway, are they? You can't block foreign companies from owning your national resources either. It's a global economy, now don't you know?
Article comments
1 - Kennie
I take extreme exception to your remark about environmentalists acting like idiots in the desert. I've been living in Arizona on and off for the last 9 years and spend every minute of my down time working to educate newcomers here to the advantages of using hardscapes and landscaping with indigenous plants and stones. Using cacti and palms - not deciduous trees as you claim.
We've had great success with this and are focusing our efforts on business now to fund projects.
I work with caring and intelligent environmental and civil engineers as well as naturalists who do everything in their power to protect the desert and her inhabitants, both plant and animal. Just in my immediate group alone we have a biologist, three ecologists, three botanists, two horticulturalists, and my immediate partner works in Wildlife Conservationism and forestry. Not to mention people trained in limnology and ornithology. The organization has recently brought on board those familiar with addressing problems of hazardous waste too.
I suggest if you want to sound off about how people are burying their heads to the effects of global warming then be my guest. But please don't sit in judgment of something you know nothing about, because obviously you are drawing your outdated information from thirty plus years ago. It's clear to me you don't have a clue what's been going on in Arizona and Nevada and neighboring New Mexico for two decades.
2 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Ah, Richard.....
The conscience of a Jew coming out, no matter what. Tikkún olám (repairing the world) strikes again! A well written piece with only the spelling errors that a spell checker wouldn't pick up, like "they're" instead of "there".
Too bad you didn't probe a little further and get the root of the issue - exploitation and the desire of one human bing to exploit another that is at the root of all the poison you write about.
That exploitation summarized in the Hebrew term yétzer har'á - evil inclination - IS the root of it all. And it won't go away until it is on the verge of destroying our "civilization" - which it appears to be on the verge of doing.....
3 - The Haze
tell me about the verge,Ruvy. you hint we are close,but we can stop it. and it's "being" not "bing".....my brother.