Do you know who your Senators are? What about your Representative? How do you get in touch?
Actually it's easy, www.senate.gov and www.house.gov, pretty intuitive. So why am I am giving this civics lesson. Actually it's pretty simple and really just a first step to help take action to combat what I have decided is the root cause of most of the problems plaguing the world today.
"Collapse" by Jaret Diamond is a book you need to read. Jaret is a UCLA professor and an excellent writer. His previous book "Guns, Germs and Steel" was a Pulitzer Prize winnner. His new book is a bit on the long side (525 pages) for people who aren't big readers, but every page is worth reading. His new book discusses the collapse of a number of societies/civilizations (Maya, Easter Island, Greenland Norse, Anasazi) and the underlying causes. He considers modern societies and how we can apply these lessons. The underlying cause of the collapse of all of these societies was depletion of natural resources due to erosion, deforestation and climate change (there are others, but for brevity bear with my simplification). Now these societies were all somewhat isolated, so the environmental degradation that led to their demise was local, so it couldn't happpen to us on a worlwide scale, right.
Consider that we are causing all of these phenomena on a widespread scale, not in isolated locations. Also consider that these people did not have the amazing devices that we now have to cause erosion (bulldozers, plows), deforestation (chainsaws) and climate change (automobiles, burning of coal) on a huge scale. So what can you do. Well quite simply, one thing that is driving this unsustainable use of resources is uncontrolled population growth. If there weren't so many people there would not be a driving force to farm marginal lands, build poorly thought out irrigation projects and cut down forests for fuel, lumber and farmland. This isn't a huge problem in the US, but the US (under the Bush administration) bears a lot of blame for the worldwide problem. That is because Geroge Bush does not allow any US foreign aid money to be used to support programs that involve advocacy or discussion of family planning (i.e. birth control). Somalia is an example of a country racked by hunger due to lack of resources, and rapid overpopulation that has lead to war, attrocities and the collapse of government. There are too many other examples to list. Sending food to Africa only makes the problem worse (it keeps people alive to have more children who will go through life hungry), we need to send education and birth control (condoms). Clearly access to information and birth control can help prevent this (not to mention how beneficial it would be to preventing the spread of AIDS).
Read Collapse. Even if you don't, write your Senators and Congressman. Tell them they need to do something to stop the position of the Bush administration with regards to this issue. This is a simple matter. It is impossible to stop most of the damage that the US under Bush is inflicting on the world, but this is one area where I think effective change can be made if people get the word out and discuss the issue.
Cheers
Matt
Actually it's easy, www.senate.gov and www.house.gov, pretty intuitive. So why am I am giving this civics lesson. Actually it's pretty simple and really just a first step to help take action to combat what I have decided is the root cause of most of the problems plaguing the world today.
"Collapse" by Jaret Diamond is a book you need to read. Jaret is a UCLA professor and an excellent writer. His previous book "Guns, Germs and Steel" was a Pulitzer Prize winnner. His new book is a bit on the long side (525 pages) for people who aren't big readers, but every page is worth reading. His new book discusses the collapse of a number of societies/civilizations (Maya, Easter Island, Greenland Norse, Anasazi) and the underlying causes. He considers modern societies and how we can apply these lessons. The underlying cause of the collapse of all of these societies was depletion of natural resources due to erosion, deforestation and climate change (there are others, but for brevity bear with my simplification). Now these societies were all somewhat isolated, so the environmental degradation that led to their demise was local, so it couldn't happpen to us on a worlwide scale, right.
Consider that we are causing all of these phenomena on a widespread scale, not in isolated locations. Also consider that these people did not have the amazing devices that we now have to cause erosion (bulldozers, plows), deforestation (chainsaws) and climate change (automobiles, burning of coal) on a huge scale. So what can you do. Well quite simply, one thing that is driving this unsustainable use of resources is uncontrolled population growth. If there weren't so many people there would not be a driving force to farm marginal lands, build poorly thought out irrigation projects and cut down forests for fuel, lumber and farmland. This isn't a huge problem in the US, but the US (under the Bush administration) bears a lot of blame for the worldwide problem. That is because Geroge Bush does not allow any US foreign aid money to be used to support programs that involve advocacy or discussion of family planning (i.e. birth control). Somalia is an example of a country racked by hunger due to lack of resources, and rapid overpopulation that has lead to war, attrocities and the collapse of government. There are too many other examples to list. Sending food to Africa only makes the problem worse (it keeps people alive to have more children who will go through life hungry), we need to send education and birth control (condoms). Clearly access to information and birth control can help prevent this (not to mention how beneficial it would be to preventing the spread of AIDS).
Read Collapse. Even if you don't, write your Senators and Congressman. Tell them they need to do something to stop the position of the Bush administration with regards to this issue. This is a simple matter. It is impossible to stop most of the damage that the US under Bush is inflicting on the world, but this is one area where I think effective change can be made if people get the word out and discuss the issue.
Cheers
Matt