Greener/Organic lead to world econmic collaspe???

tr3mor

cazrobinson wrote:

I laugh when you say we don't rely on the third world for anything - we rely on the third world for EVERYTHING! and to protect our own home industries, we enforce trade conditions on imports, to make the foriegn impports seem more expensive than they actually are.

You're terribly confused. The parts of China, India and Brazil we rely on are by no means living by third world standards. We rely on their industry - we get goods, they get jobs.

I'm not sure how you can say we rely on these countries therefore we have an obligation to Africa.

I notice you hadn't answered my question about the responsibility for the huge rise in the population of Ethiopia!

Cardew

cazrobinson wrote:

okay - look at your supermarket purchases a little closer:

cotton shirts come from cotton made in the USA, shipped to India/China to be made and then shipped back to the west.

all electronics come from China for domestic goods and computers and cars etc

rainforests in Africa and South America - lungs of the world - are being chopped down for coffee and other mass produced foods.

Bananas/Coconuts/Palm Oil (in most products food and medicine) in the Carribean.

Beef farming from cutdown rainforests.

Cheap beef from America.

Cheap steel from South America and Africa.

Petrolium Oil from the Middle East to run your car, make your shampoo, make most plastics.

Gas from Russia to heat our homes and cook our food.

lots of Western people in need of a transplant are now exploring china as a cheap resource of HUMAN BODY PARTS!! because of their fiercesome approach to justice and the death penalty, thus lots of cheap body parts! yuck!

we employ hundreds of cheap medical staff from abroad, becuase we don't have to train them. imagine if they all went home - who would look after your poorly aunt when she's in hospital?

I laugh when you say we don't rely on the third world for anything - we rely on the third world for EVERYTHING! and to protect our own home industries, we enforce trade conditions on imports, to make the foriegn impports seem more expensive than they actually are.

The only silly posts on here are those which are knee-jeck reactions to the times et al propoganda. I'm not a intellectual - I just listen, read widely.

expand your horizons and you'll see how dependant we are on international trade and co-operation.

getting back to the original question about size of families - aids has more or less made big families in Africa and beyond much less of a 'problem'. Man, Woman and Child are dying in droves, without painrelief and age expectancy is now for most 28 years. Many children are now heads of the household.

Since we depend on them heavily, do you not think that their problem is our problem?

It would rather help if you read my statement(below) before replying.

We are not dependant on the Third World for any essential produce or services.

Translating that statement to:

I laugh when you say we don't rely on the third world for anything

demonstrates the level of logic you have brought to this discussion.

Firstly, although there is no definitive definition of ‘Third World’, if you think it includes the USA then you are on a different wavelength. Russia, the Caribbean and most of the oil producing countries might also baulk at being described as a Third World nation.

Secondly, in the context of this discussion, the term ‘We’ means the Western world not the UK! ‘Essential’ you can look up!

Thirdly I have not stated, or implied, we do not trade with the Third world! I disputed your statement that it is only our self-interest that, for instance, we help fight Aids because we need a large African population to provide for us in the West.

Although it is undoubtedly true that Aids has decimated the population in sub-Sahara Africa, and China has an evil regime, I fail to see the relevance to this discussion.

Of course I feel we have a moral obligation to help the Third World. I can’t see anyone seriously suggesting we should leave them to their own resources and let millions of innocents die of starvation and disease.

What I questioned originally is the effectiveness of the aid and charity that is given. We have little control on how our money is spent. We tolerate regimes that openly misappropriate aid to provide weapons and ensure the ruling elite live in luxury.

Whilst it is understandable why a population, fed from aid and charity, will continue to expand, this over-population and/or lack of effective Government is the crux of the problem and must somehow be tackled.

For all the justified criticism of China, they faced up to and tackled their problems by drastically reducing the growth of the population.

IvanOpinion

Would oil count as 'essential'? I was readnig a few articles a short while ago, some made it clear that the UK is no longer self-sufficient in many things (including food), others said that it would only be a matter of a few decades before we would not be self-sufficient, so in the context Britain either can or will soon no longer be able to feed itself. Every year thousands of farmers leave their land to seek employment elsewhere. We may soon be much more dependent on the some third world countries for our own food. That leads to an interesting question (that already happens) ... do we take their food while leaving them to starve?

cazrobinson wrote:

lots of Western people in need of a transplant are now exploring china as a cheap resource of HUMAN BODY PARTS!! because of their fiercesome approach to justice and the death penalty, thus lots of cheap body parts! yuck!

I have read a few similar articles but have never found something that I would be able to use as proof of thios (most articles I have read 'believe' it to be happening). There is a large and growing trade in voluntary donation of body parts but is there definitely a forced donation process?

Ivan

Cardew

Surely the reason Britain is not self-sufficient for food and Farmers are 'leaving their land' is because it is cheaper to import food than grow it at home.

However that food is not generally imported from Third World countries, but USA, Canada, Australia, NZ etc etc.

IvanOpinion

I think more and more is being imported from third world countries (but have nothing to back that up with) .. I just know that more food imports are coming frmo Asia (I am sure some will be first world countries while others will be third world).

Ivan

SusanCarter

gizmoleeds wrote:

There is something of a catch-22 situation when it comes to purchasing food products (especially fruit and veg): those which are made in poor countries have to be flown thousands of miles to reach our plates, but those which are made locally by British farmers have to be produced by subsidising them with EU money and levying taxes to limit poor countries' ability to compete.

If we all ate fresh, organic, locally produced foods many third world economies would collapse.

Or maybe they would have enough food for themselves? In the 19th century during the potato famine in the Highlands, grain was being exported to England by the landowners while the Gaels starved because they could get a higher price for the grain in England. The Gaels were in such a desperate position because they were dependent on the potato harvest due to "improvements" imposed on them supposedly to make their lives better. A while back I read about farmers in one African country (I forget which) who could no longer make a living selling their tomatoes as prices had plummeted due to imported tinned tomatoes imposed on them from Europe.

I'm not trying to make a point one way or the other but just throwing in a bit of information for consideration.

fredelliott1978

On a simple note. Human beings are designed to become more and more efficient. You may baulk at this i.e. 4x4 but i'm talking about the longterm and how everything and anything becomes more efficient over time.

We may (in the west) create more and more means of expending energy but the aim is always to make our lives easier (i.e. the internet through PC's, think how hard it would be for the green movement without it).

I think that luckily though when you think about green products and technology, they offer in the long run more efficient means of production and use of resources. Ethical investing through the stockmarket is becoming more and more widespread. One possible reason is that companies HAVE TO respond to consumer wishes or they die so green now affects the balance sheet.

Lord D

HappySad

Please bear with me I have just read 1/2 othe thread so far and I am commenting on what I have read.....

caroline1973lefty wrote:

an interesting contribution to this debate is 'so shall we reap' by colin tudge, which looks at issues around food and sustainability. he says that population is projected to reach 10 billion but it will then peak, and that there's enough food / land to feed everyone, if we had a more sane and equitable political system.

this is really interesting that it has been seen that there is enough food for everyone dispight (spelling???) our growing population.

Education and also equality for girls and woman is also very important. I heard on Tv someone saying that to have sex with a virgin would cure them from aids. Education, Education.. But also equality for all round. Many countries are rules by very selfish people who keep all the wealth/oil to themselves and leave their people fighting amoung themselves or off at a radiculus tanget in a very extreme religion or just kept down poor with force.

We (represented by our governments) have allowed this to happen and in may cases supportted those who are in our own financial and security interest without being too bothered about the effects on the people of that country.

We are also very greedy ourselves. We ( & I include myself here) have far too much of everthing and still want more.. and our government ensures that we keep what we have and have more by keeping trade rules that make sure we have the upper hand in trade etc. If you just look at those who are richer then yourself you would feel that you have not much.... but you ignore the majority who have nothing and less than nothing. I remember a program over 15 years ago .. about the Top 10 richest families in UK. Each program had 1/2 hour each week on one family.. I very much remember that 3 of the 10 when interview said that they were not that rich and there were many others who where much richer than them.

While educating and giving our condoms is extremely good and vital. What is the use of having 2 children like we of the west can happily have knowing that they will all dye by the date of 10 because you can't feed/support/treat when ill? And you need more hands to work your land to provide more food for everyone....

tr3mor

HappySad wrote:

While educating and giving our condoms is extremely good and vital. What is the use of having 2 children like we of the west can happily have knowing that they will all dye by the date of 10 because you can't feed/support/treat when ill? And you need more hands to work your land to provide more food for everyone....

Aye... So what is the point of having 10 kids?

Aliktren

Wow interesting debate.

We seem to have gone a little off the point though. The original question was if we all went organic/green would it lead to economic collapse.

Well, first of all we couldn't, organic food accounts for a tiny proportion of the agri sector, so even if we all decided to eat organic tommorow we couldn't.

If we all decided to use green energy tommorow we couldn't, not enough is being generated.

So we'd have to be talking about a slow move towards organic food and green energy.

This would lead naturally to discussions about the carrying capacity of the biosphere, and whether 6 + billion people is sustainable long term (which I dont believe it is)

If you're asking if you and I could all live green and organic in the UK then I think the answer is yes, I'm sure I read somewhere that if 2/3rds of all buildings had solar panels on them, we wouldnt need power stations, not sure where I got that from, perhaps someone can correct me if thats hogwash (it might be) but in essence with some relatively modest lifestyle changes (like growing more of your own produce at home) and some key technological changes that are required to remove the reliance on fossil oil then I think we could all go green and organic, I have no time for the arguments about the damage to the economy from going green, those are the same arguments used when the IT industry was still fledgling and I'd like to see the evidence that IT has produced a net loss of jobs - going green will need technology, for power production, for improvements to our homes and the devices in them, lots of opportunities to "make a buck".

The biggest problem we face is getting enough people to make the move, not the move itself.

The later part of the thread had some strange points about the 3rd world. We dont rely on the 3rd world, we merely use them to produce goods cheaply that we could produce here if required, if they werent around things would simply cost more and we might have to be more careful in our discretionary spending to accomodate it, bad news for designer brands (shame, how are they actually "designer" anymore anyway) and worse for the people depending on the jobs, but we are not dependant by force, we have merely made choices, which could always be reversed.