Nicholas Kristof, in today’s Times, touches on a point that’s been on my mind the last few days. While the response of people around the globe to last week’s Tsunami disaster is wonderful, why do we only respond to situations in such a way after natural disasters?
American giving in the weeks after 9/11 aside, Kristof mentions much larger–in human cost–problems such as hunger, malaria and AIDS which attract some funding but not nearly what’s needed. My inner dialog was comparing the current situation to that of Darfur, where tens of thousands have died and hundreds of thousands displaced during a civil war, an ongoing disaster in which Western attention, aid and intervention could halt further additions to the numbers affected.
Yet not only has there been no public campaign for humanitarian aid donations, the rest of the world has done little but talk at the warring sides and gotten in turn what appears to be little but words. I’m not pointing the finger at America, or the Bush Crew, in particular, because I don’t see any government really driving this issue. Kristof has a point, that public and private giving in America is far lower than any other nation to which it can reasonably be compared.
Here we stand: an outpouring of generosity rarely seen on an international scale for one problem with many other problems undiminished. Humanity, as a whole, has a command over global resources of a level that could cure all the world’s ailments traceable to historical scarcity. Hunger, lack of modern shelter, diseases for which there are known cures could be resolved if the richer nations made a decision to do it.
This can be achieved with minimized ecological impact and positive economic growth if, and only if, our tendency towards greed and selfishness are able to be forced aside. John Robb continues to point out that opponents of change to date, which he labels Global Guerillas, can and are taking advantage of modern resources to wage their campaigns. I’m not here to suggest some Pollyana-ish flight of fancy–there are and will be people threatened by this possibility, including those captured by their own positions of power which are dependent on wealth or religion, who will use the tools at hand to them, economic, political and military to block any such plan.
I watch a lot of TV and have recently noticed architectural flourishes on numerous buildings that simply astound me. One example, in particular, that pushed my thinking on this subject was a Manhattan skyscraper which, tens of stories above the street, has a set of two or three story tall columns just beneath its top. These columns can not reasonably be seen from the street, the angle is too steep given the size of the surrounding buildings, only from vantage points high up in other tall buildings and so can only have been included to boost someone’s ego and pretence of prestige. But how much did this add to the building’s cost?
And this is how I would pay for my proposal: cut back on such unnecessary vanity spending and invest that money in development. Little amounts here and there, a Lexus instead of a Bently, Suave instead of Paul Mitchell, can easily add up to billions a year that used properly–and by properly I mean through transparency and avoiding as much as possible the corruption that’s plagued programs historically–in funding local farms and other suitable economic entities, schools and medical clinics would limit fundraising to no more than ten to 15 years before all nations are self-sustaining.
At this point in my dream I wake up. I read the headlines from Iraq, Israel, Colombia, Russia, China, here in the US and discussions on global web boards. I read the science articles about the coming chaos from global warming, which is widely discussed, and the rising ocean temperatures, which are not but may be much more catstrophic in the near term.
BillSaysThis 