[DEBATE] : What's the Best Course of Action for People and the Environment?

[Dominic Tweedie]

Yoshie,

The article you are posting here is wrong from the start. There is no
food shortage crisis, or not yet, and there may never be. There is a
food price crisis, whereby prices have shot up and left millions of
people who were on the margins of affordable life, now in the realms
of starvation. The Pharoahs have nothing to do with it. They are a
diversion, if not a deliberate deception.

By the way we in South Africa do produce oil (from coal), as well as
maize and wheat, but that does not help us price-wise because of the
new (allegedly) global system of "import parity pricing". You are out
of date in that regard.

Your statement: "Climate change won't have the same impact on
everyone." is questionable in another way. Of course it is bound to be
true on the face of it. But what it conceals is that the system by
which climate change is to be reversed will have to cover everybody,
whether they like it or not. That system, whatever it is, and whether
it works or not, will be imposed on all of us, just like the
"load-shedding" of South Africa's state-monopoly electricity
producer/distributor, Eskom. And it will not be imposed by your
friendly neighbourhood green mong-bean-eater. It will be the same old
state that taxed and fined you all along, wearing the same old
uniforms and wielding the same stick.

To quote from Nick Davies' definition of "Flat Earth News": 'A story
appears to be true. It is widely accepted as true. It becomes a heresy
to suggest that it is not true – even if it is riddled with falsehood,
distortion and propaganda.'

In Davies' book it is revealed that in 2006 the USA supported just 141
overseas correspondents in all media (i.e far less than one per
country, on average). No doubt that included quite a few who are
uselessly holed up in the Baghdad Green Zone. What the heck do you
think the US newspapers know? Why are you quoting US newspapers about
other countries? They know diddly-squat!

You should rather use the Internet and quote people from the countries
themselves. Provided that you don't simply look for the ones who are
ready to see things the way you do, because that would only be Flat
Earth News.

Yours in struggle,

Tendai that shook the world, VC


2008/5/3 Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com>:
> On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 9:30 AM, Dominic Tweedie
> <dominic.tweedie at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Aren't you being a trifle, shall we say, Malthusian?
>
> Climate change won't have the same impact on everyone.  The most
> vulnerable in the near future are the countries that don't produce
> oil, depend on import to meet large shares of their food needs, and
> have high population growth rates.


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