A New World Order?

Sounds like a pretty idyllic setup you have there!

Would you have a problem with it if a bunch of us moved up there and
set up camp on your property? Think how small our collective carbon
footprint would be!

Sorry TickTock but I forgot to mention that we call those other nine months The Rain Festival. Believe it or not, we get about three months of warm, dry, sunny conditions followed by nine months of cold, grey skies and rain, rain, rain, rain with a day or two of snow thrown in for variety. Fortunately, the place is all rocks and Christmas trees so the deluge runs off into the ocean instead of flooding the place. It may sound idyllic but a lot of newcomers can't handle the rain and just leave. During those three good months we also have to put up with a swarm of tourists but we cope. We have to. Tourists are our crop and the summer is our growing season.

So do you feel that the swarms of tourists that invade your lands each year might be completely negating any gains of the 100-mile challenge?

Not really. They stay at institutional resorts and usually eat institutional food. We locals, however, know where to find fresh veg (in season), and locally raised meat and poultry. We also have an abundance of fresh salmon, cod, halibut, tuna, crab, prawns, shrimp, clams, mussels, scallops and oysters. There's a seafood packing plant within walking distance and they operate a retail store so it's just a matter of knowing what's in season when. There's always something and it's fresh, straight off the boat.

Yes, but don't the tourists use a tremendous amount of fossil fuels to reach this destination? And what of the institutional food they are eating? Does it come from within the 100-mile radius? And these institutional resorts - how are they powered?

If one takes a cynical point of view, one might be tempted to wonder "what's the point? Why am I living this frugal existence when everyone else seems to be getting a big slice of pie and living it up?"

Yet, awkwardly, if tourism were to be completely banned in areas such as yours, many who depend on those juicy tourist dollars would likely be unable to continue to support themselves and partake of the fresh local harvests of seafood and vegetables.

I have your point. I'm sure the tourism industry relies on all manner of supplies that are trucked in from thousands of miles away. Produce from Mexico and California comes to mind. I'm always astonished to see imported seafood on menus here when we have such an abundance of so many local species. Yet some people want swordfish or sea bass, enough anyway that businesses are prepared to have it brought in.

What's the point? I know how you feel. What difference can I make. When I look at those monster motorhomes rolling into town towing SUVs or see visitors from hundreds of miles away passing through with really big, twin engine boats to go fishing (most of them aren't very good at it either) or the parade of mega yachts that passes en route to Alaska or California, I understand how miniscule my own contributions are. I don't know. I guess I've always tried to live a highly principled life because I feel good for living that way, it feels right to me.

When I was practising law I was told, a number of times, that if I'd only learned to be unprincipled and avaricious, I could have been very rich. Well, it's too late to do anything about that now! In any case I have plenty and, like all North Americans, so much more than most of mankind. I suppose when we don't see ourselves in the context of them we quickly lose sight of just how well off we are. And, when we choose not to see them in the context of ourselves we begin to disconnect from them, to see them as something different than us - almost as another species. They will pay dearly for that before this century has run its course.

I guess that's the reason to be frugal and to try to act environmentally - because what we're doing is causing immense suffering to the weakest and most disadvantaged. There is a fundamental principle of criminal law that we're all deemed to intend the logical consequences of our acts. If I pull out a gun at a shopping mall and fire into a crowd and someone dies the law will deem that I intended to kill that person. It is not only the logical consequence it's entirely foreseeable.

It's just as foreseeable that our unrestrained consumption of fossil fuels is going to cause enormous suffering and death to others. The difference is that we're doing it collectively, we all have a finger on that trigger. Maybe it's time to take our finger off that trigger even if others won't. That doesn't mean that we have to go live in caves, cloaking ourselves in animal hides. But I think it does mean that we can't turn our backs, pretend we don't see the people who are living the consequences of our wanton consumption. To not see that is to deny them their humanity, to render their lives inconsequential to our luxury and enjoyment. How can we find that remotely ethical?

Outstanding and well said, RDRDRD1.

Keep on fighting the good fight!

. . . . and watch out for those monster tourist mobiles when you're on your bike. I commute to work each day on my little Kawasaki 250 and I'm pretty sure that I barely register on their radar.

(motorcycle wave)

Yes it's open season on deer and bikers. The terrain around here is rather mountainous and all the roads save one are two-lane. They're absolutely wonderful motorcycle roads until the flatlanders show up with their enormous, rented RVs. A lot of these types would have a tough time driving a compact car on these roads much less motorhomes. There are few moments worse than coming around a tight, blind corner with a rock face on one side and a sheer drop on the other only to find a steel box ploughing along head-on in your lane.

This is also deer-killing time. Many of our visitors are used to city driving. They don't expect to see a deer on the shoulder of the road or in the middle of the lane. Townspeople do expect them and so keep and eye out and almost never kill a deer.

when i see what the results are of tourism on india it is truly depressing. beautiful primitive vistas with plastic bags suspended from the tree branches-cows munching on polythene, etc. the local uneducated pick up the worst habits and behavior of the tourists and have become filled with false ideas about the worlds they come from. they degrade and humiliate themselves for the sake of money. there is a good side as well because they are treated with more respect by the tourists than they will ever get from their own countrymen. they can learn that their lot in life does not make them outcasts in the eyes of the rest of the world. tourism is no better than inviting foreign investment dollars to build factories that have a different set of rules for safety and hygiene outside the borders of their home country. it is truly a matter of ethics.

there are too many things to even mention here, and i am no authority just because i live in india. i can only share some of the few notions i have that strike me as being not understood by the average person in the developed world, since myths abound.

but as for your questions, rd i might touch on a few points. the fault is not entirely with the west by any means, as far as what is wrong in india. individuals have very little knowledge about what impact there is on the environment or what the government is doing. they are caught in fast forward catching up with the rest of the world but by a population so large it is uncontrollable. their lifestyle doesnt work any more with what has been introduced and they dont realize it. once it was fine to throw all their garbage outside the window, it was all biodegradeable...it no longer works with the introduction of plastic. there is no parking allowance and those who can afford to buy automobiles are increasing faster than space to accomodate them. the number of people who own scooters and motorcycles is unbelievable, and the noise level of the engines and horns which are necessarily louder than steamships because of the background noise they are competing with is unbearable, not to mention the fumes. there is very little roadkill in a smaller town like where i live, people are beginning to die in motor accidents in the big cities now. prior to that deaths occurred mainly on the highways between towns where trucks speed along with drivers who may be drunk or asleep and hitting motorcycles whose drivers may be in the same condition. there is no provision for disposing of batteries and electronics-they are simply thrown out of the house. food additives are now over-running the shelves and there are far less controls here for quality and safety-no laws to require listing ingredients or regulating anything. and in india, all laws can be ignored. no consumer protection about financial matters...

people here are certainly facing a water problem. many cities have been without water since april-smaller cities as a rule. they are buying water and having it brought in tank trucks. water shortage means electricity shortage. the monsoon is late and expected to be deficient this year, and will exacerbate all the problems.

the farmers (plug in vidarbha suicide on google) have been sold a bill of goods over genetically modified seeds that cannot produce seeds for the next year's crop so must be bought again each year. when a bad year comes they take out loans to buy new seeds and even if the following year has high yields they have the choice of paying off the loan or feeding themselves. if a bad year follows, they often opt for suicide leaving wife and family behind who have no recourse but to sell the land and become manual laborers or beggars or worse. and as always the government helped create the problem and is denying that it exists.

i have no predicitions and no answers other than to say my opinion is, as to whether or not we will be able to resolve the issues that face us all today, is that it depends on the level of knowledge and ethical standards of human beings as a species. i do believe that nothing short of a major catastrophe can serve as a wakeup call-warnings will not suffice. even the experts can only sit and discuss and argue until the trumpet blows (not referring to religion, only an analogy) and we are forced to deal with it.

this was not meant to be a comprehensive answer, just a small perspective.

Thanks so much for your insights Salima.

The issue of plastics is becoming quite widespread. I have seen much of the Mexican landscape utterly despoiled by discarded plastic bags and bottles. With so much poverty I can't understand why governments, aided by tourist industries (perhaps a tax levy), don't set a bounty on this miserable stuff so that it can be recovered and then recycled?

Water, water, water - what to do? I watched a Canadian television documentary on urban water shortages and how people were compelled to buy water from delivery trucks. Naturally this is where capitalism steps in. It's coming in the guise of the World Water Council, a gaggle of conglomerates wishing to corner the market in for-profit water distribution. If they manage to organize an effective cartel, able to price a commodity essential to life itself, I think it will be a horrible day for the world.

I come from a place where water is abundant. We're happy to see it pour into the sea for most of the year provided enough precipitation remains in the mountain snow pack to see us through our hot, dry summers. Our salmon return to spawn, each to the river of birth. They mass out at sea and wait until enough freshwater comes out of the river to reduce the ocean salinity. That's their cue that there's ample water in the river to see them to their spawning grounds. When there's too little snowpack there's inadequate runoff and the salmon simply don't spawn. Even after a successful spawn, if the water flow in the stream slows the water can overheat and literally cook the roe. This example illustrates how truly sensitive, even fragile nature's balances are.

With considerable sadness I have to agree that "nothing short of a major catastrophe" will be enough to convince us to take whatever measures are necessary. The eminent British scientist, James Lovelock, who gave a sceptical world the notion of Gaia, a planet that genuinely reacts to our predations as though it was a living organism, thinks it's already too late to prevent a great kill-off of mankind. His optimistic view sees a world reduced to a "few hundreds of millions" of humans populating the northernmost reaches of our world. In effect, Lovelock foresees the deaths of well over six billion people.

My guess is that the Caucasians will claim that bastion of survival as their own and defend it against all others - that is if the world manages to avoid a global thermonuclear conflict in the meantime.

i really dont see a nuclear holocaust being the end of mankind-rather something slow and creepy like plague. everyone will have forgotten what they were arguing about but by then it wont matter. gaie knows best...
reminds me of a part of a poem whose name i forgot-"not with a bang but a whisper"

Unfortunately Salima the Pentagon and the British Minister of Defence do see climate wars as highly probable if not inevitable. An immutable trait of human nature is that the tribe that suddenly cannot feed its people always does the same thing - it raids. I really don't believe we've outgrown that primitive instinct.

I must mention what a real pleasure it is to be able to have this discussion with another so distant and yet so similarly engaged. Just being able to communicate with others actually on the ground in distant spots is a privilege. I expect it's obvious from my writings that I consider most of the current problems, including global warming, to be genuinely global rather than isolated to individual nations according to each country's immediate circumstances. These issues have to be considered globally because only through global consensus will solutions be found.

I have children and am overdue for grandchildren to arrive. Like most of my generation I will probably elude environmental cataclysm but I feel a genuine responsibility for the difficulties we will pass on to our own decendants and to the most vulnerable people in the least advantaged corners of the world.

i am not discounting the possibilities of climate wars-but i think they will not be nuclear. it is only my opinion, call it a premonition. i see in the far distant (after my death anyway) future hand to hand combat over territory that still has drinking water and livable conditions for the few left alive, a true return to the hunter/gatherer days. i was hoping maybe those few that remain will remember how it could have been avoided and maybe a new beginning will have a better ending.

i did have great hopes for the internet-worldwide communication, person to person, no more secrets-concerned individuals joining together to find solutions outside of government. but i think it isnt happening fast enough. the bullet may have already left the smoking gun...

Not yet, IMO; but the hammer is definitely cocked.

William

Rob, as you bring up the notions of Lovelock, I can't help but think of the "self fulfilling" paradigm of prophecy. In "dire straits", once we reach an opinion of such that lovelock presumes, we, for the lack of alternative measures will effort to reinforce that opinion and seek to make it so, sub-consciously. I am not implying one way or the other as to his pronostications only to say they are extreme assumptions considering there are measures we can take on a global scale to offset such prophecies.

If you will note on any global map the extremely small areas of the Earth's landscape that comprise it's greatest number of people and research why they are so gathered. I think you will, as I did, come to the conclusion it is because of "economic" survival. Those are survival centers allowing people to "find" work so they can "earn" money so they "can" survive. There is a vast amount of land we are not using that can easily accomodate all these people who don't need as much as they are programmed to "think" they need. That programming is what is insane,IMO.

We can "compliment" nature once we get our heads out of the "financial" sand that clogs our abiltity to "hear". The only way humankind as we know it, will end is by man's own hand, thus alternatively, it can be saved by that very hand once it is not tied behind the back of deliberate "ignorance" of those who assume control of this planet. Yes, it will probably have to get much worse before it gets better, but I surely hope not.

As I have stated from day one, this Earth is not for sale and once that is permanently imbedded in the mind of us all, then and only then will we become to understand and effort to cooperate globally to alleviate the stress we have caused it.

All of the answers are their in the minds of you, Salima, Rich, Justin, T, Paul, Dt, and so many others who wish to participate and display what is on their minds that will reach those solutions rather than excusing and rationalizing them that lead to such horrific prophecies as Lovelock. We are all guilty of that to some degree or another simply because that is the way it has always been and change is indeed difficult.

Once we stop defending that we need to survive, and concentrate on what we need to do to live, the light at the end of the tunnel will, once again present itself as we communicate "in concert" with each other to solve all our problems. We are all in this together and that is the only way we will reach those solutions. There is no other way. Once we do, then we will come to the realization of what life truly is about and the global "family" we are. IMO, we will reach a point in which we have no choice in the matter. The longer we "wait" the deeper the hole becomes. The answers are there and we will be "shown the way". Allow me to get off topic for a sec.

I have mentioned my inablility to respond to orders or being "told" what to do. In that respect, there was no other way for me to "earn" a living other than that was offered in becoming a "commissioned" salesman. That means my livelihood was dependent on me and only me. I didn't have he "luxury" of depending on others to provide me with a paycheck. For me to receive such a "paycheck" I had to bend to their "dictates" and pattern my thinking around theirs of which I could not do. There are those "sales organizations" that do the same thing and I learned the hard way I couldn't work for them either.

In the two areas that comprised my sales experience, one playing on man's fears (insurance) and accentuating their hopes (advertising) I found my truth as I learned from both which allowed me to gathered a singularity of what I learned from each and earned a respectable income that would pay off in a differen way that was to come. ?????

To be a good salesman it is necessary to learn 'human nature' that will allow you to "see" and be prepared for any objections that might come your way so you will be ready with a solution that will make the "objection" disappear. I became very skilled in such measures to the point that I hated my ability to "control" the minds of others to sway their thinking to mine. It was eating at me more and more this "power" I had that I needed to "pay" my way in the world. I was a parasite taking advantage of the programmed ignorance of others for my own well being, and it began to suck.

Then I began to see I was not alone as I began to notice how many "parasites" there were in the world. My, god, it was infested with them. One bleeding off another for their own well being. Damn! What a mess! I noticed it in all strata of the human landscape from the male to the female; from the parent and the child, from man to man; woman to woman to the parasitic abuse of those natural resources we do so take advantage of sating our egotistical satisfaction. Uh,oh, I realized I couldn't "sell" anymore for I had become that which I couldn't tolerate. I had become a very polished "dictator" capable of manipulating the minds of others. Then I became ill. My heart began to fail.

I tried to make "ends meet" and continue to do that which I was skilled at, but to know avail. I began sinking fast. I could not make ends meet and was evicted from my home because I could not pay the price that was demanded. I managed to put all my Earthly belongings in a storage facility for "safe keeping" yet that also demanded a price. My earning potential was going fast as was my health at record speed.

As I witness all that was my life disappear right before my eyes, I found a sense of relief. Whew, as I finally reached rock bottom and was totally dependent on others in order to survive any further in this world. I had become a burden for others to deal with. Okay, now let's just see what happens? It is out of my hands; let "nature take it's course". And it did as if by magic, it provided a path that allowed me to reflect on all that I had learned throughout my life using others to help me in the solitude I found myself engulfed in. All I had was a computer, (all that I had in storage had gone to the 'highest' bidder or those other 'parasites' that profit from the unfortunate perils of others who couldn't "pay the price" demanded). Hummph!!!!!!

The fog that clouded my mind began to lift as it began to make sense of it all and I began typing away at every given opportunity to express to myself what it seemed to know as it assimilated all the knowledge it held so I could share it with others in hopes to bring peace to the "trouble minds" utilizing my knowledge of human nature and what I had learned.

That has become my only purpose in life as I speak and will continue until I am no longer a part of "this life". Everything that had occured in my life happened for a reason and my mind was now making it all clear to me. I say "my mind", heh!; not by a long shot.

Doors opened, people called and a path was made for me that has enabled me to "dig" my way "out of that grave" of isolation using that "divine" communication of that inexplicable source I share my mind with as it used the minds of others to provide that path. That is what I have noted as "God in motion". I can't explain it, though I know it exists. Beyond a shadow of a doubt.

IMO, Rob, it is that very inexplicable communication that will pull us out before we all reach "rock bottom" like I did. Talk about omnipotence, wow! It is indeed mind boggling. Ha.

William

hey, william-i know what you mean. i used to work for a mortgage bank (talk about blood-suckers) and then a major health insurance company, total of 18 years. i had a child to support and no education or experience after being out of the work force for twenty years, i wasnt the one who was calling the shots. but i felt so slimy doing what i was doing, i am really glad i was able to retire and get the heck out of that.

so part of the new world order is a new morality, i think a new sense of ethics-that would make everything else a lot easier to fall into place. maybe one by one we are beginning to change, i often get the impression there are a lot of people around whose story is the same as ours, and once we reach a certain point we will become the majority. that's just me, the eternal dreamer...

William and Salima it sounds as though you have both made a path for yourselves through great adversity and it's plain that it has imbued both of you with hopeful optimism. If only your perspective could become universal.

I'm sorry to be negative on this point but I believe you cannot overestimate man's ability to act against his own and his community's self-interest. Our modern institutions - political, economic and journalistic - are masters at manipulating us to act in someone else's best interests, invariably their own.

Media were once the watchdog of the political class but government control and licensing of the astonishingly lucrative public airwaves has allowed the pols to transform the media into their lapdogs. The information world has slipped seamlessly into a vehicle for propagandizing and proselytizing. People have lost their ability to discern when they're being lied to or manipulated and in that debilitated state they've become capable of believing almost anything provided the message is repeated often enough.

So many Americans I've met seem to believe that capitalism and democracy are conjoined. They equate even mild socialism with totalitarianism because it expresses the will of the people, both majority and minority alike, rather than the will of the individual. Even today with the outsourcing of so many American manufacturing jobs to China, they don't see that capitalism actually finds democracy messy and inconvenient and clearly prefers to operate within a less than democratic regime.

If Lovelock is right and the die are already cast then the new ethics will not arrive in time to reverse our several crises. Ethics is discarded as an unwanted luxury to those unable to feed their children.

If James Hansen is right, we have not more than 20-years in which to shut down all the world's coal-fired power plants and yet China is bringing one online each day on average. Doing what Hansen demands would require the world's major emitters - the industrialized world and the emerging economies - to accept the need to launch an emergency effort to begin bringing renewable and alternative energy sources online within a decade. After that, it would take a global effort of Herculean proportions to race toward a fully renewable/alternative energy grid in the span of just ten years.

Gwynne Dyer points out that the window to reach this breakthrough global consensus is very, very small. Once the warming and water crises bring a cataclysmic result to food production in just one or two nations, the likelihood of consensus becomes almost nil. Once nations begin to fall like dominoes to famine war will be almost impossible to prevent or contain. The UN already lists a number of "wars of survival" or "wars of sustenance" being waged in the Third World. Many see the Darfur tragedy as one.

If we cannot bring ourselves to respond promptly and effectively to a limited conflict such as Darfur, what hope do we have for preventing greater conflict throughout south, east and northern Asia?

Rob,
My common sense proposal. Assemble a consortium of the best minds who have excelled in all fields of endeavor other than that in which wealth and power control and allow them safe passage to assemble without interference. I assure you they do exist. Those who have excelled in climate, environment, manufacturing, distribution, waste management and elimination, ecology, natural and renewable resources,
human resources, linguistics, global communication, natural, renewable and unlimited energy, and so fourth free of the constaints of "affordablity" A MUST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Create an "economic system based on abundance, but benevolently managed to ensure all people with the needs each and every one is entitled not to overwhelm their sensibilities, eliminating opulence and the ability to amass wealth to be used to buy the life of another, such as a global identification card encoded with the individuals DNA using something as simple as a point system that will allow individuals access to what they need. Competition will be eliminated in lieu of global "cooperation" utilizing the ideas of all for it's implementation. All of this will be predicated on the new and developed resources not stifled by financial equations.

It's goal is to balance of all the Earth's resources to reach a solid equillerbrium including it's most valuable one-the unfettered human mind.

Rob, this is just a rough outline of what I think needs to be done. I do not have all the answers, but I think this outline has a lot of merit and with the help of other's much more gifted than myself, we can achieve that equillibrium. I know it has a lot of bugs if you try to "rationalize" it and find fault with it. That is not the attitude to take, IMO, yet it will be attacked especially by those who stand to lose their power, prestige, status and influence in the world of which they have always "contolled". Hopefully, there is the intelligence out there that will be established by this consortium that will bring that EGO of power to a common sense in the realization of global harmony is the only way left to save humankind. If it can be "perfected" any antagonism will be obscene and heard by all eliminating it forever.

As I said in the above post, we will be shown the way through the mind at peace using serendipity that is that universal connection that connects us all. I know it exists as I said, "beyond a shadow of a doubt".

William

"Media were once the watchdog of the political class but government control and licensing of the astonishingly lucrative public airwaves has allowed the pols to transform the media into their lapdogs. The information world has slipped seamlessly into a vehicle for propagandizing and proselytizing. People have lost their ability to discern when they're being lied to or manipulated and in that debilitated state they've become capable of believing almost anything provided the message is repeated often enough.

So many Americans I've met seem to believe that capitalism and democracy are conjoined. They equate even mild socialism with totalitarianism because it expresses the will of the people, both majority and minority alike, rather than the will of the individual. Even today with the outsourcing of so many American manufacturing jobs to China, they don't see that capitalism actually finds democracy messy and inconvenient and clearly prefers to operate within a less than democratic regime.

If Lovelock is right and the die are already cast then the new ethics will not arrive in time to reverse our several crises. Ethics is discarded as an unwanted luxury to those unable to feed their children.".........................RDRDRD1

i think you are describing the media and reaction to it as it was, not as it is or as it is becoming. this forum is part of the new information world, and previously as when i was younger, i knew the newspapers were full of lies and propaganda so i just quit reading them. i had few alternatives. but now there is the internet.

and previously i would have agreed with you about the americans and their love affair with democracy-ergo, give me liberty or give me death-but seeing how many americans on this forum are awake to the fact that democracy is only one possible government and not necessarily the best is a big change from what it was. things are changing there is no doubt, it is only a question of how fast.

and what i would say in response to the third paragraph i quoted above, is that one may be forced to step over their own preferences when they are forced to consider first feeding their children-but that too is an ethical matter, so ethics are not being compromised, only limited. in many ways it can create a fierce desire to find or create alternatives.

"If we cannot bring ourselves to respond promptly and effectively to a limited conflict such as Darfur, what hope do we have for preventing greater conflict throughout south, east and northern Asia?"...........RDRDRD1

i wish i could respond to this but the power just went out and i have only enough battery backup to shut down!.....

William. I agree with your outlook. We absolutely must take an omni-disciplinarian approach to this because, troubling as carbon emissions may be, that's merely one of a host of interwoven threats including overpopulation, desertification, deforestation, air-land-water contamination, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, resource exhaustion, species extinction (and there are others).

I realized when I began putting that list together some time ago that the only solution is the one that addresses the common thread that runs through them. We have to approach them as a warning that we've overstepped our bounds, that we have to focus not on gimmicks such as carbon capture and sequestration or other technological quick fixes but on identifying how we need to change our attitudes, each according to his own lapses, in order to find an equilibrium with our biosphere that addresses our need to live in harmony with each other.

We in the West cannot consume the lion's share of the earth's resources forever. That is simply unsustainable. But the emerging economies also need to understand that the supposed quality of life (materialist) enjoyed in the West was based on consumption of that lion's share and so they should never aspire to that because there are not remotely enough resources on earth to support anything approaching that.

Mankind's consumption of earth's renewables maxed out in the mid-80's. I think our population was in the mid 4-billions at that time. Since then we've employed a gamut of technological parlour tricks to delude ourselves that growth remained sustainable. Thanks to a bevy of short-term fixes we launched things like the "green revolution" to bleed our farmland dry, to turn it barren. For two decades we have been defying gravity ecologically.

When I was born the earth's population had just passed two billion. Now we have two countries alone that are half again that number. In a world with an ecology capable of sustaining barely more than four billion, what business do two countries have in swelling their population to three fourths of that capacity? What fairness is there for them to come forth angrily demanding that resources be shared per capita? If we have food for only two but I weigh three hundred pounds while you're barely a hundred, does that give me the right to demand three quarters of our food?

Many of us are willing to concede that we were unfair in our excessive consumption of renewable and non-renewable resources. We were wrong and created a measure of injustice. But those who now point angry fingers at us need to consider how they too have wronged humanity and prejudiced our collective future. I have yet to hear anyone from India or China acknowledge the predicament they have foisted on the world by their overpopulation.

What I'm trying to say is that finger pointing is little more than an unaffordable distraction. We all need to find solutions to resolve the manner in which each of us has beggared the planet. That can only be achieved by a very holistic approach founded on honest collaboration rather than adversarial negotiation.

India's total population in 1961 was 464-million, not all that much larger than the United States today. How was it ever allowed to swell to 1.3-billion? Was no one considering the ramifications of that to India and to the world generally? How is India now to take responsibility for what it has done? Certainly pointing fingers at the West is rather self-serving.

Sorry but I have an appointment. Must run. Will try to conclude this tomorrow.