I want to refer to the two guest lecturers we had last Tuesday who related fertility to the environment. Recently, I was on the BBC website and and there was an article talking about the food crisis. The discussion last week related perfectly with what I found on the BBC site in that many of the comments on there seemed to relate the food crisis with rising population. I was extremely disappointed to find that the majority of comments to the article blamed the food crisis and rising food prices solely on overpopulation from the developing nations such as China and India. These comments seemed to stem from ignorance and racism. How can overpopulation be blamed when it is the industrialized nations with the highest energy and food consumption? Thinking about the comments on that site reminded me of the pictures the two guest lecturers showed us. While overpopulation does play a role in many of the issues that have been popping up recently, it is not the reason behind them.
I've recently become more aware of this global environmentalism, so reading the rest of the comments provided me with more insight into the issue. One of the commentators was from New Zealand:
"The prices of dairy products have doubled in the last nine months. The cost of bread, poultry and meat have also increased. Many households are experiencing difficulties in providing good and healthy food for the family table due to the increases in prices of fruit and vegetables. Finally fuel prices are spiralling adding to the already heavy burden. I think bad times are coming and it's up to ourselves to grow food in our gardens and learn to live in a more environmentally friendly way."
Robert Busnac, Waihi, New Zealand
The food and energy crisis and global warming all seemed to be the concern of many of the commentators on the website. I also related this to the "Story of Stuff" video and the main concern that we are producing and wasting as though we live on an infinitely available planet. Our wasteful economy needs to be curbed and we need to stop putting the blame on those outside the U.S. We talked about this in class and related it to the whole pace of life argument a couple weeks ago. In order to assuage today's problems, we need to completely revolutionize the current way we are living.
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3 comments:
"How can overpopulation be blamed when it is the industrialized nations with the highest energy and food consumption? "
Virtually every person on Earth would engage in a Western standard of living were it obtainable for them. Judging the sustainable human population has to been done at a high standard of living, unless you want to give up electricity, mass transit, etc.
By reproducing beyond a replacement level, developing nations simply ensure a desperate, exploitable labour pool. Overpopulation creates systemic poverty and every child a poor family adds reduces their collective chance of breaking that cycle. That is not “racism” but the harsh reality of our socio-economic system.
Is the issues of overpopulation and food crisis really just "the harsh reality of our socio-economic system"? I don't think blaming people of China and India for some of environmental issues is not necessarily racism, but it definitely is unfair judgment.
As Nikita wrote, it is industrialized countries, and the companies of those industrialized Western companies that is located overseas with cheap labor, that are producing the most carbon foot print. During the reproductive justice lecture, we saw a picture from a magazine where a girl was drawing water from a well. They are blamed for taking water and depleting it, when actually the reality is that the water source have been privatized by Coke company, and the company is bottling the water to sell it back to the native people.
There was an article on NPR about recycling in Egypt. One of very poor area outside of Cairo, people survive by sorting through garbage to recycle anything that can be recycled and selling them. This act of sorting through garbage, which would be looked down as lowly, is actually protecting the environment. For some reason, Western standard of living have been idealized, and every developing nation eventually adopts the Western way of living. However, is it the best way to live, in long run? The culture of throwing away most of our stuff with in six months versus the culture of recycling and valuing resources. Which one would bring longer and prosperous life to all of us?
Oh and here's a link to the NPR article I mentioned.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89956754
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