Crops & Global Warming

An unprecedented effort to protect the world’s food supplies from the ravages of climate change will be launched today by an international consortium of scientists. The move marks a growing recognition that serious changes in weather patterns are inevitable over the coming decades, and that society must begin to adapt.

Some Ł200-million a year will be poured into the research by governments across the world to help agricultural experts develop crops that can withstand heat and drought, find more efficient farming techniques and make better use of increasingly fragile soil and scarce water supplies.

The Stern review of the economics of climate change said a 2-3C rise in average global temperatures would put 30-200 million more people at risk of hunger. Once temperatures rise 3C, 250-550 million extra people will be at risk, more than half in Africa and western Asia. At 4C and above, global food production is likely to be hit hard. The British scientist James Lovelock warned last week that such food shortages could trigger a growing number of conflicts this century between nations desperate to find fertile land to feed their people.

Read entire U.K. Guardian article.

Thankfully, these organizations realize this particular effect of global warming, and work to counter it. However, the article says nothing about preventing man-made global warming in the first place. The dangerous gases that certain corporations and people let into our air cause many other problems in addition to global warming.

In fact, the legal immunity with which these polluters destroy our environment shows the governmentally-enforced socioeconomic inequality, which factors into the serious issues of hunger and poverty.

Live and let live. If these corporations and other polluters want to make money, good for them, but they must only do it without offensively harming anyone else. When they pollute our air and kill our environment with poisonous gases and such, they offensively harm us. Let’s defend ourselves, and the hungry and poor.

No Obligation To Give

by Scott Hughes

A few weeks ago, my grandmother told me about the veterans’ charities that asked her for donations. She told me that she regularly gave to a specific veterans’ organization, but that other organizations continued to solicit her. She asked me, “if I give to one, I shouldn’t be obligated to give to the others, right?”

I responded, “you’re not obligated to give to any at all.”

A lot of problems plague the world, and a lot of people need help. However, we still need to respect the right of anyone to help or not help as they please. I define slavery as forcing someone to help. Enslaving others or robbing them cannot help our causes; it just creates needless conflict and enemies. Yes, we need people to help, but we have to ask and persuade them to help, not force them, because nobody has an obligation to help or give, neither morally nor legally.

Indeed, different people have different opinions about what constitutes ‘help,’ and these different people can choice to use their own money, body, labor, and time to help or not help as they see fit.

Everyone has their own moral judgments. Using these judgments against others has caused much conflict in the world. A wise man who we call Jesus said, “judge not lest ye be judged.” And, he said, “let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.” To have a positive effect, we need to focus our moral judgments internally. Focused externally, people tend to use their moral judgments to excuse violence and conflict, and to force their will on others. In contrast, we can use our moral judgments to direct our own actions and better ourselves, rather than harm or coerce others.

I personally avoid using the concept of morality at all, at least in the public light. I try to analyze and describe everything amorally.

Legally speaking, unfortunately many places in the world force people to help or give. For example, consider taxes. Taxation literally involves robbery.

Again, many preventable problems plague the world. For example, 16,000 children die of hunger every day. Just like those children, the world needs help. Nonetheless, we cannot force people to help out or give. Even ignoring my personal disgust with theft and slavery, such offensive coercion cannot effectively solve these problems.

Attacking and coercing people only angers and offends them. It creates conflict. It creates problems, instead of fixing them.

To solve the problems such as hunger, poverty, and non-meritocratic inequality, we must not try to legally force people to help. We can ask for help, but not demand it. We can persuade people, but not coerce them.

We must tolerate the inaction of others. ‘Tolerance’ doesn’t mean ‘like’ or ‘promote.’ ‘Tolerance’ just means allow. We must allow others to do what they wish, insofar as they do not harm anyone else. We need to focus on actually solving our problems, and we cannot do that if we intolerantly waste time and effort using offensive force to coerce people who mean us no harm.

We have every reason to legally obligate people not to offensively harm us or anyone. Similarly, we have every reason to use defensive force to stop people from offensively harming us or anyone. Still, we must recognize the difference between ‘harming’ and ‘not helping.’

People have every right not to help if they wish not to. People have every right not to give if they don’t want to. For example, if a person works and earns money, that person now owns that money and can do or not do with it what ever they want, insofar as they do not offensively harm anyone else. Similarly, a person can use their body, labor, and time anyway they please, insofar as they do not offensively harm anyone else. That’s freedom, and we cannot solve socioeconomic problems such as hunger and poverty if we fail to respect people’s freedom.

This isn’t about morality. This is about practicality and effectiveness. If we waste time bickering and battling with others to offensively force them to do what we think they “should” do, then we just create needless conflict and more problems.

We have serious and difficult issues that we need to address, and come up with well-though-out and effective plans to fix. We cannot succeed if we lazily attempt to use the big clumsy hand of an interfering government to rob or enslave others, or “punish” them for acting “immorally.”

Instead, we need to use an open-minded approach to persuade others to help. We need to discuss and address the concerns of others, not pathetically attempt to coerce them to our line-of-thought. Based on voluntaryism, we can create non-governmental organizations and implement agreeable initiatives to actually provide effective help to society and solve the problems facing us, such as hunger, poverty, and non-meritocratic social inequality.

These terrible problems tear my heart apart, to think of the innocent children dying in the agonizing pain and suffering of preventable hunger. Like so many others, I desperately wish to solve these terrible problems plaguing our society. Nonetheless, we must not let that desperation trick us into using offensive coercion. We cannot afford to make enemies of our peers. Instead of working against each other, let’s work with each other. Let’s respect the rights of others, and fight the problem not the people.

About The Author: In addition to this blog, Scott Hughes administrates the World Hunger and Poverty Forums, where you can discuss this article and poverty in general.

Charity: Not Eating For A Cause

Sounds peculiar at first.

You attend a charity banquet with a friend. Maybe you paid to get in. Maybe you didn’t. Your friend gets a full meal at a linen-clothed table while you sit on the floor and share a bowl of rice with strangers.

Not fair?

That’s the point.

It’s called a hunger banquet. And this symbolic event has become an increasingly popular way to educate people about world hunger — and often solicit donations.

The concept was originally conceived by aid and development organization Oxfam. Each year, especially during the giving yet gluttonous holiday season, Oxfam says the number of hunger banquets across the U.S. has grown dramatically.

You may not be satisfied.

Unlike wedding receptions, potluck dinners or other communal feasting opportunities, the goal of a hunger banquet is not to provide participants with a free meal. Instead, hunger banquets aim to offer an experiential glimpse at the statistics of world hunger and poverty.

“Let’s say you invite 100 people,” says Delaney. “As the people enter the room, they receive one of three different tickets. Fifteen of those people receive a full-course meal, sit at a table with nice linens, crystal, flowers, the works. Twenty-five of those people typically sit in a chair. They don’t have a table. They receive a simple meal of rice and beans. And 60 of those people will sit on the floor and share a communal bowl of rice.”

Depending on where you sit and what you eat, a speaker will inform you what role you play in world hunger, whether you’re a starving mother from Mozambique or a Guatemalan coffee farmer who’s just getting by. At the end of the meal, participants are often asked to share their personal experiences.

Read entire West Central Tribune.

I think this a great idea, and an effective way to spread information about hunger. Although hunger statistics shock most people, statistics still lack the emotional realism that an experience such as a “hunger banquet” delivers. The blatant unfairness of such an experiment shows participants the blatant unfairness of world hunger and poverty. Often times people born with opportunity and luxury mistake poverty and hunger as a self-induced phenomenon. No offense to such people; how can one imagine the trap of poverty and inopportunity when one has always had food and opportunity. Many children grow up and often die in hunger and poverty. Even in the U.S. 50% of children born into poverty remain in poverty for the rest of their lives. A “hunger banquet” demonstrates such unfairness to participants.

What do you think?

Annan Says Youth Is Key To Poverty Fight

With less than two months before he steps down as secretary-general after a 10-year tenure, Kofi Annan is disappointed that the international community is lagging behind in its much-touted Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including a 50 percent reduction in extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

At this rate, he warns, many of the goals will not be met, “so we need to re-affirm our commitment to these goals,” which also include achieving universal primary education and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

s part of this process of re-commitment, the United Nations has turned to the world’s younger generation to increase awareness of the MDGs, and to help spread the word at the grassroots level.

“The older generation of leaders from around the world endorsed the Millennium Development Goals for 2015,” said Djibril Diallo, chair of the summit, “but it will take the full commitment and talents of the younger generation to help achieve them.”

According to the United Nations, younger people represent one-fourth of the world’s six billion people, of which 86 percent live in the developing world.

The United Nations estimates that one in five youth live on less than a dollar a day, and about 45 percent live on less than two dollars a day.

Read entire FinalCall.com News article.

I agree with Kofi Annan that positive change in the world depends on the youth. The youth suffer the worst from the terrible effects of social injustice, inequality, hunger, and poverty. Further, the youth possess a stronger sense of justice and idealism, and they lack the cynicism and institutionalization of older people. When the youth inherit the world, they can change the world and finally put an end to the hunger and poverty epidemic.

What do you think?

Manufacturing World Hunger

A recent article on ProgressiveU.org points out a main factor in world hunger, the destruction of food:

If all food produced worldwide every year was counted, there would be enough to feed double the world’s current population. So why is it that 36 million people die of malnutrition every year? World hunger is a vast and complex problem and no single action or practice can be pinpointed as the true cause. Similarly, no single solution exists to solve the issue in its entirety. However, ending the practice of destroying food products with the intent of increasing prices would be a crucial step in ending global malnutrition.

The act of destroying or withholding crops in order to drive up prices has occurred since the Great Depression, during which 257 million bushels of grain were stockpiled in order to raise prices. Today, the United Nations reports that many governments and corporations commonly destroy food to create an artificial scarcity. For example, in the United Kingdom, 17 million tons of food are plowed into landfills every year – more than five times the amount needed to feed the three million starving people in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to the Laws of Supply and Demand, as the supply decreases and the demand remains stable, prices must increase, thus allowing corporations to amass a significantly higher profit when a portion of crops are destroyed. However, this practice is unacceptable when one in every seven people globally suffers from malnutrion.

The article also explains the cycle of poverty:

A critical issue that must be faced when addressing world hunger is the cycle of poverty in which many become entrapped. Starvation is a trap in and of itself. According to the World Hunger Education Service (9/9/06), malnutrition causes poor health, low levels of energy, and even mental impairment, and thus leads to even greater poverty by reducing a person’s ability to work. Simply, when an individual is starving, he cannot maintain a job and support himself or family. Without a job, he makes no money to buy food, in turn, further deteriorating his health and ability to work.

I agree. And, with so many people getting stuck in this horrible cycle of poverty, I find it disgusting that corporations and governments would destroy food just to increase profits.

What do you think?

Nelson Mandela: While Poverty Persists, There Is No Freedom

The below is a letter written by Nelson Mandela, of whom I am a great admirer.

While poverty persists, there is no freedom
BY NELSON MANDELA
khaleejtimes.com
7 November 2006

[I have posted the poem he mentions, From the Republic of Conscience, below]

IN JOHANNESBURG, this week, in the warm company of friends, like Nadine Gordimer, I became an Amnesty International ambassador of conscience. It was a joy for me to receive this honour from the members of the world’s largest human rights movement. It was heartening too that the award was inspired by the great Irish writer Seamus Heaney’s poem From the Republic of Conscience, which reminds us all of our duty. Their embassies, he said, were everywhere but operated independently and no ambassador would ever be relieved.

Like Amnesty International, I have been struggling for justice and human rights for long years. I have retired from public life now. But as long as injustice and inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest. We must become stronger still.

Through the work of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, I am continuing my struggle for human rights. These three charitable institutions operating in my name are tasked with continuing my work in important areas I have been concerned with throughout my life: children and youth, memory and dialogue, and building new generations of ethical leaders.

It is my wish that this award should help all activists around the world to shine their candles of hope for the forgotten prisoners of poverty. Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is people who have made poverty and tolerated poverty, and it is people who will overcome it.

Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of fundamental human rights. Everyone everywhere has the right to live with dignity, free from fear and oppression, free from hunger and thirst, and free to express themselves and associate at will.

Yet in this new century millions of people remain imprisoned, enslaved and in chains. Massive poverty and inequality are terrible scourges of our times – times in which the world also boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation.

While poverty persists, there is no true freedom. Amnesty International is right to stand up against the rights violations that drive and deepen poverty. People living in poverty have the least access to power to shape policies – to shape their future. But they have the right to a voice. They must not be made to sit in silence as “development” happens around them, at their expense. True development is impossible without the participation of those concerned.

Take the right to housing. Three million people in Africa have been evicted from informal settlements since the turn of the century.

We have also seen in Africa the scourge of HIV-Aids, decimating the lives of our people, especially those living in poverty. All of us – rich and poor, governments, companies and individuals – share the responsibility of ensuring that everyone has access to information, means of prevention and treatment. And our starting point must be respect for individuals’ rights.

We know that it is the already marginalised who are most affected by HIV-Aids. And we know that, within this group, women are marginalised yet more and bear the most significant burden. As daughters, mothers, sisters and grandmothers, every day they experience and live out the reality of this pandemic.

Women are also being killed by other preventable causes. One woman dies every minute from conditions relating to pregnancy. And where do almost all these women live? In the developing world — in poverty. Amnesty International is working to make rights real for women, through its work on poverty, and through its campaigning against the violence they face.

Women and girls need safe environments to learn and to work. At the moment, discrimination and violence exacerbate their lack of access to the very tools they need to make their own rights a reality. If girls do not have a safe and non-discriminatory environment to pursue education or gain employment, the consequences reverberate throughout their lives, denying them the choice and freedom we take for granted.

Women and girls living in abusive relationships, for example, are unable to flee the violence because they are financially dependent on their abusers. This balance of power, and the broader one it represents, must be shifted.

I have spoken before about the need for a turning point. I see this ambassador of conscience award as one more step towards that turning point. Nadine Gordimer has recalled a conversation she and I had in 1998, when I said: “What I want to see is an environment where the young people of our country have a real chance to develop the inherent possibilities they have to create a better life for themselves… That is what development is about.”

If all human rights activists around the world believe this, and act on this, and get others to believe, we will have our turning point.

From the Republic of Conscience
by Seamus Heaney

When I landed in the republic of conscience
it was so noiseless when the engines stopped
I could hear a curlew high above the runway.
At immigration, the clerk was an old man
who produced a wallet from his homespun coat
and showed me a photograph of my grandfather.
The woman in customs asked me to declare
the words of our traditional cures and charms
to heal dumbness and avert the evil eye.
No porters. No interpreter. No taxi.
You carried your own burden and very soon
your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared.
Fog is a dreaded omen there but lightning
spells universal good and parents hang
swaddled infants in trees during thunderstorms.
Salt is their precious mineral. And seashells
are held to the ear during births and funerals.
The base of all inks and pigments is seawater.
Their sacred symbol is a stylized boat.
The sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen,
the hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye.
At their inauguration, public leaders
must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep
to atone for their presumption to hold office –
and to affirm their faith that all life sprang
from salt in tears which the sky-god wept
after he dreamt his solitude was endless.
I came back from that frugal republic
with my two arms the one length, the customs
woman having insisted my allowance was myself.
The old man rose and gazed into my face
and said that was official recognition
that I was now a dual citizen.
He therefore desired me when I got home
to consider myself a representative
and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue.
Their embassies, he said, were everywhere
but operated independently
and no ambassador would ever be relieved.