Fair Share Of Responsibilities - Small Steps, Adding Up, And Accounting

I have been looking at news, at sites and at blogs, at debates on the internet and at programmes on information channels. And there is a factor that should make anyone sick but I am not sure anyone has noticed it. It is about responsibilities and evasion of a share where it belongs - more than one individually but collectively speaking belongs is the correct form of the verb.

I remember as long as a decade ago or more when the ozone hole was detected for the first time the media turned around and told people not to use aerosols because that was bad for the atmosphere. What no one talked about but was obvious is - people sued them, but the responsibility was with manufacturers who made them, and lawmakers too who allowed it, just as much. No one talked about it because it probably was perceived as of no use - tell individual users, stop them from using bad stuff, and make it unprofitable for makers to manufacture them, and they would go away.

That was the logic of inviting no trouble in form of industries descending onto one. It is interesting that coming from a powerful democracy no media trusted the lawmakers to protect one if that happened.

Then it was about water that California lacked, and again it was individuals who were told to stop watering lawns with water provided for drinking and use instead recycled water to do so. As a house owner made it clear, it was far from obvious how one was supposed to do that, under the existing infrastructure. So the issue probably took a back seat and I don't know if anything ever got done.
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What was achieved by the media blitz telling people - individuals, house owners, women - to do this or that is that people were individually and collectively made to feel not only responsible but also guilty for causing regional and global problems, and so they did not think of who really was responsible - and so there were no protests and no noise against the real huge culprits.

This use of guilt has been learned from past masters of power who have used it for various purposes by insisting everyone is guilty of some crime or sin - and thus gotten power over their psyche, their minds, and used it for their own, generally nefarious, purposes.
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Should individuals not take responsibility? No, that is not the point at all. Whatever little one can one should do and a collective small steps adding up to a significant change for better is always a good idea. What should not happen is forgetting the main agenda in the trivia of small steps and noises about them and everyone pointing fingers at each other and looking down in guilt - while the real huge culprits are forgotten and no one points at them, either out of one's own sense of guilt or forgetfulness or worse, being part of the design that brought this about so the big culprits could get away.

The fallout of this strategy is what is to be avoided - yes, take all the small steps you can and point out other small steps everyone can take but don't forget the big culprits, those that are responsible on a large scale and intend doing nothing as far as possible and going on making money or clinging to power, no matter if you run short of drinking water or whole continents starve or drown due to warming. Don't forget to hold them responsible, especially when your system is not only democracy it is with pain and troubles that it was so established. It is not for benefit of the powerful alone that you have this system, the precious democracy.
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Water in California was wasted on lawns, and so it was on the sort of agriculture that needed intensive irrigation and needed water that the state did not have - but also responsible were industries that used it for various purposes without a thought of if that was in fact sustainable in the state and no one thought about that either, not politicians and not others who could and should have done so.

Industries all over, not only in California, went on not only using precious water resources that they might have done without by invention or at least been frugal about, but also went on polluting with chemical effluents so whole neighbourhoods were sickening seriously and finding it difficult to fight the industries that could always hire some specialists without conscience to testify about "there being a doubt as to the effect of --- on health", and people kept on sickening and dying.

Aerosols were not just from your deodorants, which are still being manufactured and sold since no one went after the makers, and are still depleting the ozone and contributing to the global warming while people are proud of using them and think those who do not "stink", not realising that "stink" is in fact relative while the ozone depletion and global warming is not.
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And now it is about oil - about global warming, about fossil fuels, about renewable resources, about clean energy. And once again the same tactics are working - this time with much less effort from media, who only have to plant a seed for it to immediately grow into whole forests, make storms out of a gentle wave of a fan languidly. Internet and people eager to go put in their two bits and blog and debate on sites provided for that very purpose takes care of the rest.

Everyone is telling everyone else what they could do to help, all good suggestions and some obvious, some hilarious and ridiculous too deliberately put forth; plenty out there to go on the other side too - nothing going on, no reason not to go on playing violin still, would rather not stop enjoying liberty of luxuries (not realising the objects are not luxuries but the thoughtlessness is one and an unaffordable one at that) - and there is a lot of noise, lot of sites, some pretending to straddle the fence and calling it a left verses right debate while some are devoted to deny global warming - just as there are those out there denying evolution, and very likely heliocentricity as well.
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In all this noise of course what is forgotten is the real culprits responsible for global warming and those that ought to be reigned in before it is too late, the industries. While most citizens of the powerful democracy are debating it out on personal levels and enjoying themselves hugely at the new game, they are probably quite proud of their nation's various representatives - politicians and industries and those elected for the purpose of governance - telling off all the rest of the world at every global warming conference, telling them how they do not agree with others who are all more or less in accord with the scientists, and that they will continue the polluting and consuming that is their hallmark, no matter it is due a huge chunk of the responsibility for the looming disaster.

All the rest of us dying in tsunamis and earthquakes and starvations will do no good though to the one nation that refused to see the point when you are left alone on the planet either - the doom this time recognises no isolationist nations or people, respects no nations refusing to take part.

Or differences of opinion, for that matter. Soon it is going to be too late.
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There are a couple of things that are perhaps worse - one, some people, some businesses are trying to make money in this too. Selling "Green gadgets" - especially when they do not work or are not green at all. Proliferating "Green" sites where people go on debating - and uselessly, since a large number are merely there for the nay-saying and trashing every fact and everything true down while a small sincere dedicated number go on earnestly and unaware of there all of efforts being perhaps futile.

And then there are the real shockers, part of those that are proposing replacing fossil fuels by bio fuels, for a clean and renewable, replaceable source of energy. Not the ones who are going with organic manure for fuel - that has been done forever in countries where waste of resources has been avoided and held reprehensible, and is a good idea in fact for a portion of the replacing fossil fuels - but the others, those that are proposing burning wood or corn oil or other green stuff, to be grown for the purpose.

Is it not obvious why those ideas are not only bad they are horrible?
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We need forests, not only the existing ones but more, to take the carbon out of the atmosphere - or else we are on a roller coaster to doom that will be soon impossible to stop much less turn around. Cutting down trees for any reason at all should in fact be banned, that is what is needed.

On face of it corn oil or other vegetable oils sound like a good idea - until one thinks a moment and realises it is about food that could be used for the poor, the starving that are not only predominantly in a huge continent but are everywhere, including U.S., and cutting down on food because they cannot afford it. And every one can see where it will lead - while more and more people starve in every continent corn will be kept exclusively for oil for fuels to replace petroleum for cars and industries.

It will never happen, U.S. will not let people starve, Christians won't allow it, the good people of west will never allow it - that is the sop that keeps consciences quiet in the very people who could help and think they do and will. But what did happen really when African situation first came to light - starving in one country after another? People took up donation drives and went on collecting money and used clothes and sent them, and some went personally to organise the distribution. But there are still starving people - and givers are tired.

Meanwhile, through it all, for the last well over two decades, corn and other perfectly good food of human consumption was being fed to pigs in the same countries where people are more and more Christian, proud of their charity, and so on - the food that could have fed Africa was used to fatten pigs so people in U.S. should not be short of fat in their red meat intake. As if!!

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Was it the fault of people? Individually, no.

Were they aware it was this sort of skewed balance and if they were would they have cared, would they have said "send the corn to Africa, reserve it for whatever people need it next, feed the stalks to pigs and the leftovers form all kitchens of the country, let people eat first"?

The answer can only come from the same people. Would you do it now? Would you vote to reserve food for people, and not use it for fattening pigs or running hummers and other fuel guzzlers?
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What is needed is opening eyes and minds and consciences, to see things for what they are, and to go for real measures, for saving our planet - for your children and their children. Not waste time accusing and guilt and small steps while big ones are still going on the same way forever, not waste human food on pigs and cars.
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As for needs of energy, of renewable and clean energy, we do need to put our force and our minds together with solar and wind and wave and tidal sources of energy - all that our planet has always given in abundance and is unlikely to run out in foreseeable future and is clean and forever there most of the time, if not in one form for a while then surely another - and not allow other distractions in the way.

There is always the other kind of bio-fuel for use - manure - that is a good idea to use up either for enriching fields or for needs of fuel. As long as there is life on earth that is a renewable resource too and much better used this way than polluting our water resources or oceans through sewage and so on.
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Let us not have vultures in the way for once - this is too important, and it is not in anyone's interest to let the ever present grab-a-buck-or-a-million-while-one-can-out-of-this-opportunity get in the way of saving the planet. That really is the key. When it is well and assured we are all going to survive, then one can go back to the opportunistic free for all - but this is too crucial now. It is survival of the planet, not one species or one continent or one race.

So don't encourage the fraudulent green-gadget sellers, the big guys who reserve corn fields of million tons for fuel for replacing petroleum, and their kind rule the day. If there is one way small steps should add up and account and demand the rest of the account, this is it.
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Food Shortage, Water Crisis, Industries And Meat

They now say there is a food crisis. And a water crisis.

There are people talking about the food crisis and giving completely crazy analysis, more to do with their trying to stir up people against those recently doing well rather than reality of what the situation is. But the discussion of water crisis is even more of fibbing going on in the belief that no one will notice the facts or the gaps in those arguments.

The obvious about water is all those fresh water resources - lakes, ponds, rivers, and generally water tables - polluted by industrial effluents, and in case of rivers by shipping as well. So naturally there is a "shortage" of water for drinking, cooking, irrigation and other human needs - washing, bathing, cleaning.

That those are really the primary needs for which fresh water should be reserved is blithely ignored, and there is an atmosphere being created of anxiety, panic, terror. Of course no one can or should point at the industries or else they will be muzzled, silenced in one way or another.
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Look at the record on air pollution, carbon excess, ozone holes. People have lived for all these millennia without this stage of danger to the planet, without us getting to this where we are thinking about saving the planet. But no one is talking about what industries need to do, should do, to curb this - instead people are being told not to use this or that.

Well, why not ban the products that people are told are not good for the atmosphere or water tables or other resources of the planet, the environment? The aerosols, the chemical cleaning materials that are bad, why not stop the production? Why not make them illegal to produce, to sell, to keep and to use?

It needed a severe level of lung problems before tobacco smoking was banned in west - and of course those very people often visit Asia and smoke defiantly at airports in countries where courtesy to visitors makes people refrain from throwing them in the slammer - but the question of aerosols and so forth is more than a danger to just those who use them, as in fact was with tobacco, passive smokers being just as much in danger. This menace is to the whole planet - so what is stopping the lawmakers from banning them?

What does it need, another tsunami, this time in a place where it will hit them directly?
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Then there is food. What exactly is the quantity of corn and other food that is perfectly good for human consumption that is wasted by feeding pigs and so on, in U.S. and other western nations? you might think this is of not relevance to the food problem which is in fact mostly in Africa and nowhere near U.S.; but that is not entirely true, is it?!!!

African continent is used for the coffee and chocolate to provide U.S. through various multinationals and other companies, and if you think you are after all paying good money for it think about how little of that actually goes to the Africans, much less the actual people that were disfranchised when the colonial masters took their land away from them and deprived them of grazing and farming land, and think of how many people would be fed by the lands now in use for export crops, and think of if the starving people, the children, can eat the money that goes to Africa for chocolate and coffee, and if they were to ask if they could buy the corn you feed your pigs would you agree or refuse indignantly - and then think if your land were used for luxury products for, say, China, and if your children were starving and you were told your produce of (fill in the blank yourself - cars, gadgets, software, electricity, milk products, fruit, corn) was only this much worth whereas the what food you needed in exchange was not only expensive it was needed to feed Chinese chicken for their consumption. Would you then be indignant? Or does it seem like the way it should be, to those who call themselves Christian?

If you really think African starvation has nothing to do with you find out - at least - if your one pound of meat costs the equivalent of enough corn to feed forty people in Africa, and ask yourself if it is worth the cries of innocent deaths that reach straight up - and at the very least try to stop using the luxury products from African farms that could be used to produce food for them.

Sending money through organisations is not good enough. It merely is a sop for your own conscience - you are telling it to shut up and let you enjoy that chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich.
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As for water, think of what rivers and ponds and lakes are.

Last few days on a discussion too many young people seem to have confused fresh water with that which is piped into your homes by your city or town corporations after processing - that actually is processed and therefore guaranteed by those whom you trust rather than actually fresh water, isn't it?

Fresh water you might have encountered on a trek or camping and you knew the air was fresh, the water from the stream refreshing. Extend that thinking and you will see that fresh water is - it is all the natural water except of oceans, of course. Lakes, rivers, ponds, wells.

For that matter - isn't "source" the word for spring, as in a spring of water, in French? (In case you were not aware English language is sourced from French among many other of its tributary languages, which include not only those that were native of England, but also German brought by the Anglo-Saxons, Latin - and its source, Sanskrt - through the Roman occupation of England, and also west Asian due to crusades and finally various Indian languages other than Sanskrt due to occupation of India.) So think again of where your water is sourced from, and is it fresh - and what is being done to your fresh water.

Of these, while lakes can be most enchanting to some and glacial streams to others, it is clear that rivers are the most ever renewing and therefore most fresh water source ever on earth. Unless otherwise polluted by humans, that is.

And when this pollution is by chemical industrial sources, and not likely to stop because you don't know and you don't care - whose fault is it you don't have drinking water, and are being told bathing is a waste of precious resources?

That precious resource is first and foremost for human purposes of drinking and cooking, bathing and irrigating - but for food grown for feeding humans, first. As for meat eating do the animals need food to be farmed for them or is it that you need them fattened? Do you really think animal body fat is healthy food for you? Especially when it is red (or for that matter white) meat you are paying for, under the impression it is good for your health.
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Long ago a German friend remarked on how the red meat available in U.S. was nowhere near as good as that in Germany because back home he got meat that was lean, not so full of fat - and he further explained that this was literal, that there was too much fat in the meat he bought while at Harvard. He had to explain it further what he meant before I understood - being a vegetarian, I had no idea what he was talking about.

All this was new and academic to me but now it all makes sense in many connections - this is how and why people who look very thin (in my language they can be referred to as "ancestors of sinners", as extremely thin people generally are called in our language), and yet have high cholesterol - and I used to be puzzled; how one can have cholesterol without being far from anything but stick thin!

Now I know - those with cholesterol are actually fat, just with hidden fat that is on the inside and is actually killer fat, unlike that on the people that everyone calls fat because you can see their size - but if they do not have high cholesterol they are not actually fat, only large at best and overweight at worst.

Coming back to the original issue (not that this was unrelated), is it not clear that well fed pigs that are fattened with produce that could feed humans instead - and give life to a whole starving continent, too, - is not good for you, either, for your own food consumption?

You are paying your hard-earned money on fat to put inside your body by going for meat from farms where the animals are neither free to choose what they eat - they would be far healthier if they did have that freedom - and nor are they free to walk about or do any exercise - which sounds funny but in their natural lives animals get a lot more exercise than in farms where they are penned so they cannot move and get fatter so you pay more.

Then you ingest it all, and since people are what they eat according to an English proverb, you sit in one place or another, and are becoming a nation of overweight people where one large section is ridden with problems of how to reduce and then there are young women psychologically so traumatised by it all they are dying of starving themselves.
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If all these ills are corrected - your industries did not pollute your water tables, your rivers and your ponds, if your produce was not fed to pigs instead of humans, if your superfluous food went to the continent that supplies your coffee and your chocolate and is starving in exchange - perhaps the water and food crises would not exist for now.

Instead the guys are proposing - no, actually forecasting, as if there was no choice and this is inevitable future - that forests are going to be cut for farming.

Forests and trees are our one hope of dealing with carbon for now. Global warming is not a joke, nor is the spiralling of our planet towards extinction through the warming of the planet, the carbon in the air, and the melting of polar ice. Already the northern route is ice free in summer for the first time and if it is used for industrial shipping forget your winters; or rather, remember them well, they are memory. And if more forests go, woods are not stopped from being chopped, and there is nothing to absorb the carbon, forget your planet.

Your planet - not someone else's concern. If you are young, if you are looking forward to a good life (and you should!), if you have children and care about their survival and their human experience (of having children and caring and hoping for them), then you have to save your planet.

And for starters, save your water, save the corn for humans, save Africa, the cradle of humanity.

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It is not fresh water or food that is immediately short - it is honesty and thought and perhaps a little humanity.

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