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talkpolitics2010-05-22 09:05 am
green-man-2010.livejournal.com) wrote in talkpolitics2010-05-22 09:05 am
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The Fight Against Global Poverty.
I want to you to take a look at these maps. They show the state of the world and show that in spite of what we see in the media , the fight against endemic world poverty is being won.
The images are big, so behind an LJ cut to save your bandwidth.
First , lets understand IMR - it stands for Infant Mortality Rate.
If you were to look at Britain since the year 2000, you would find that for every 1,000 live births, less than 10 children died before their 1st birthday. Britain has an IMR of under 10.
Now in some countries, the IMR is 50, or even higher. This means that at least 1 child in 20 will die before it's a year old. Worse still, in some countries, the IMR iis 100 or over - in some cases IMrs top 200 - I child in 5 dying before it's first birthday.
Now, this IMR thing is not some random event. it is closely linked to what we call 'endemic poverty'. In the UK, it may be possible to see some homeless people sleeping rough on the streets of London. There are isolated incidents of people falling into poverty. However, for the bigger percentage of the population, things are different. most people have houses. Most, if not all children have shoes, go to school, and eat enough to stay alive.
In other countries, however, most children do not simply lack shoes, they lack homes wiith running water, proper sanitation, the means to go to school- and whole villages are like this. this is what we mean by 'endemic poverrty' poverty being widespread - it's the norm and out of control. In such countries, diseases like malaria are also wide spread, endemic and are delibitating the efforts people make to rise up out of poverty.
So- now we know this, let's take a look at the maps.
the world in 1960 - you can click the image for more detail, but basically, purple = high IMR and green = below 50.
look at how widespread endemic poverty is.
note that Europe and North America are relatively prosperous, but namy areas suffer IMRs well over 50.
1980
more green areas showing up - but still lots of places where work needs doing.
some counties are a darker shade of green - places like this have very low IMRs.
2000
The world seems to be winning the war against endemic poverty.
Any country that goes below 50 tends to stay there - only North Korea, with a communist Military dictatorship seems to have fallen back to being above IMR 50.
most places that have democratic, stable governments are making vast strides. I hope in my lifetime to see the whole world go below IMR 50.
If we change the way that international trade is conducted, if we back the initiatives of the World Health Organiisation, if we can persuade our own politicians to sponsor world health programmes instead of more expensive weapon systems, if we support democratic movements like those in burma and elsewhere against tyrannical regimes, if we educate ourselves on what's happening and how we can get involved - then that is perfectly possible.
The images are big, so behind an LJ cut to save your bandwidth.
First , lets understand IMR - it stands for Infant Mortality Rate.
If you were to look at Britain since the year 2000, you would find that for every 1,000 live births, less than 10 children died before their 1st birthday. Britain has an IMR of under 10.
Now in some countries, the IMR is 50, or even higher. This means that at least 1 child in 20 will die before it's a year old. Worse still, in some countries, the IMR iis 100 or over - in some cases IMrs top 200 - I child in 5 dying before it's first birthday.
Now, this IMR thing is not some random event. it is closely linked to what we call 'endemic poverty'. In the UK, it may be possible to see some homeless people sleeping rough on the streets of London. There are isolated incidents of people falling into poverty. However, for the bigger percentage of the population, things are different. most people have houses. Most, if not all children have shoes, go to school, and eat enough to stay alive.
In other countries, however, most children do not simply lack shoes, they lack homes wiith running water, proper sanitation, the means to go to school- and whole villages are like this. this is what we mean by 'endemic poverrty' poverty being widespread - it's the norm and out of control. In such countries, diseases like malaria are also wide spread, endemic and are delibitating the efforts people make to rise up out of poverty.
So- now we know this, let's take a look at the maps.
the world in 1960 - you can click the image for more detail, but basically, purple = high IMR and green = below 50.
look at how widespread endemic poverty is.
note that Europe and North America are relatively prosperous, but namy areas suffer IMRs well over 50.
1980
more green areas showing up - but still lots of places where work needs doing.
some counties are a darker shade of green - places like this have very low IMRs.
2000
The world seems to be winning the war against endemic poverty.
Any country that goes below 50 tends to stay there - only North Korea, with a communist Military dictatorship seems to have fallen back to being above IMR 50.
most places that have democratic, stable governments are making vast strides. I hope in my lifetime to see the whole world go below IMR 50.
If we change the way that international trade is conducted, if we back the initiatives of the World Health Organiisation, if we can persuade our own politicians to sponsor world health programmes instead of more expensive weapon systems, if we support democratic movements like those in burma and elsewhere against tyrannical regimes, if we educate ourselves on what's happening and how we can get involved - then that is perfectly possible.
no subject
Short term? As if making people suffer today and for the next 50 years with no increase in food production ever so some Malthus worshiper can smugly sit back and proclaim to be right is twisted.
So if you don't like it, then stop eating and we can reallocate your footprint to someone who doesn't want to starve.
no subject
If we produce EVEN more food... under the current system, people will be more inclined to breed MORE.
no subject
Easy. If someone is hungry because they had no food and then the next day because of the GR they're fed, they're saved.
'With more food we saw an astronmical increase in world population. So the equation doesn't really work, does it?'
No, it does, because even with a tripling of the world's population we've still seen a decline in famine. So the argument works perfectly.
'If we produce EVEN more food... under the current system, people will be more inclined to breed MORE.'
And as I said, there's a movement called the VHE movement. Join it. Otherwise support genocide. Your options are a few as long as you see people "breeding" (because westerners "raise families" while foreigners "breed") as a problem that must be solved.
no subject
Er, I don't think we need to go extinct. Just produce enough kids to live within the available resources. we could probably lose a few billion by having negative population growth for a few decades till we get down to a level where we have enough people to do all the jobs like drive the busses and keep the HEP stations open, but this is all we need. a world population of say 4 bilion people could make things last for centuries. Maybe even till it's time to vacate the planet for generation starships.
no subject
People didn't just 'not revolutionize' because they were stupid or something. THEY COULDN'T AFFORD TO. That's the whole fucking problem.
Ok, i'll hoist you up by your own petard. You claim the green revolution saved a billion lives. Also, if the population back then was three times lower than it is now, there were roughly 2 billion people alive. There are over a billion starving today. So both halves of your 2 billion were starving? But only one half were 'saved'? Nonsense.
What we need to do is compare three graphs. One for rates of famine globally over time. One for related population data. And the final one will be the increase in global FOOD AID over the same periods of time.
I think everyone 'breeds'. Thanks for bringing an unnecessary distinction into this discussion. I see neither option as being either viable or 'the only alternative'.
no subject
#People didn't just 'not revolutionize' because they were stupid or something. THEY COULDN'T AFFORD TO. That's the whole fucking problem.#
True - thank you for pointing out that it isn't just simply a case of saying " do it our way.
Alongside the technical advances like agriculture, we also need to adress local issues - like anti malarial campaigns, empoering women, oral rehydration , cleaner water and a whole host of things.
just to say 'we got there because of GR' is oversimplifying things. Britain had more than just an agrarian revolution to put it where it was in 1960.
We also need to realise that the GR in itself will not solve everything like women's empowerment, clean water and sanitation issues, energy gap, and so forth.
no subject
So they're using the methods you desire. They must be well fed and happy then, right?
'People didn't just 'not revolutionize' because they were stupid or something. THEY COULDN'T AFFORD TO. That's the whole fucking problem.'
You argued against the revolution. The Revolution has raised food production well above population growth. The problem we now have is getting food to starving people.
http://contexts.org/articles/winter-2010/the-scarcity-fallacy/
'So both halves of your 2 billion were starving? But only one half were 'saved'? Nonsense.'
As time increased the population increased. The trend up till the rollback of the Green Revolution was a decreasing number of hungry people. It's easy to pick apart off the cuff numbers but WE'd have over a billion less people in the world who would have starved to death and there would still be over a billion starving today if not for the revolution.
no subject
Your gren Revolution gives people food. Great1
But what about clean drinking water? all the food in the world is not gonna save you if you are dying of dysentry.
Sanitation? you got that sorted? how about malaria control? you are going to need that in the tropics, i think you will find.
And then,if there is food in the shops, can you afford it?
how are you going to land a decent job if you can't read and write because you never went to school? getting off of the shanty town is big problem for many Brazilians - not famine , just the problems of endemic poverty.
Agricultural advance is just one part of the answer.
And yeah, as has been said, more food to feed more people will not solve the problem unless family planning becomes available to stem population growth.
no subject
no subject
This was simply one factor in play.Save the Children Fund, Oxfam, Christian Aid and a dozen other NGOs were also haed at work in all those decades - I was in most of the campaigns from 1985 onwards. things like GOBI made as much difference as the GR, maybe more.
GR's big failing in may places was that it required massive investment in tractors, oil, and stuff the locals could not afford. we fought in several places against several things at once.we fought disease, we fought against illiteracy, we fought against deforestation and el ninos. All at once. And we in the West were not 'on the front line' - the people in the shanty towns and rural villages did the lions share of the work. We merely supported them in their struggle by sending in the cash and the volunteers with the expertise they needed.
no subject
What I see as the problem with your solutions are it's the areas with the most need who don't do family planning. Most European countries have less than a static birth rate. So do we use force to insure population control in 3rd world countries?
no subject
DDT was effective - however it wasn't biodegradable. It did not degrade for a long time , in fact, so it started to build up in birds and fish and there was a danger that it would build up in humans to dangerous levels. As it is effectively a nerve poison , this was worrying.
So , a switch was made to pyrethium based insecticides, as well as attacking mosquitoes in other ways.
As far as birth control goes, it iis down to educating women- the longer a girl stays in school in developing countries, the fewer children she has and the later she starts having a family.
In the UK, there was no compulsory programme, women just had access to family planning and spontaneously started using it. my grandma had 9 children, my mother only 2. And neither women were unusual for their generation.
having said that, the Pope does not help when he goes on about condoms bieng sinful, or not stopping the spread of AIDS. Any Amercian President who wn't back Planned Parenthood at home or abroad isn't really helping much, either.
no subject
A suitable replacement will be permaculture methods utilized in a cultural fashion so different from what we're used to that i'd call THAT the revolution.
no subject
And that's how you characterize the Green Revolution. You want people to do these things but that's how they do it.
'Basically, i see the whole project as a failure and something we should and will have to be reversing.'
We've more than doubled our per person grain production even with a growing population. That's not bad. That's good.
'A suitable replacement will be permaculture methods utilized in a cultural fashion so different from what we're used to that i'd call THAT the revolution.'
So we'll have less food and use more land for it. Yea....you really don't care about arable land use.
no subject
Grain production to do what? Feed cows to make burgers?
You don't know anything about permaculture, obviously. It may utilize more man hours, but certainly not more land, and definitely no less food.
no subject
of course, alongside the family planning goes putting the kids in schools, better health care so more kids survive, etc.
once kids are seen as economic liabilities instead of cheap labour, parents have fewer of them. populations go down take a look at the UK, most of europe in fact ...