ARTICLES, PHOTOS AND OTHER ODDS AND ENDS.
Marlboro Man: Deathstyle Posterboy
El consumo de tobaco es perjudical para la salud.
Rough translation: Hey! Not only do I get to kill myself, but also my loved ones, friends, and an entire planet. Plus I donate thousands a year to help the tobacco companies ensnare new innocents and kill them too. Now that´s what I call a real man's vice!
1. The Environment Fights Back
Jeffrey D. Sachs
The “soft” issues of environment and climate will become the hard and strategic issues of the twenty-first century. Yet there is almost no recognition of this basic truth in our governments or our global politics. People who speak about hunger and environmental crises are viewed as muddle-headed “moralists,” as opposed to the hard-headed “realists” who deal with war and peace. This is nonsense. The so-called realists just don’t understand the sources of tensions and stresses that are leading to a growing number of crises around the world.
Article begins:''
Our political systems and global politics are largely unequipped
for the real challenges of today’s world. Global economic growth and rising
populations are putting unprecedented stresses on the physical environment, and
these stresses in turn are causing unprecedented challenges for our societies.
Yet politicians are largely ignorant of these trends. Governments are not
organized to meet them. And crises that are fundamentally ecological in nature
are managed by outdated strategies of war and diplomacy.
Consider, for example, the situation in Darfur, Sudan. This horrible conflict is
being addressed through threats of military force, sanctions, and generally the
language of war and peacekeeping. Yet the undoubted origin of the conflict is
the region’s extreme poverty, which was made disastrously worse in the 1980’s by
a drought that has essentially lasted until today. It appears that long-term
climate change is leading to lower rainfall not only in Sudan, but also in much
of Africa just south of the Sahara Desert – an area where life depends on the
rains, and where drought means death.
Darfur has been caught in a drought-induced death trap, but nobody has seen fit
to approach the Darfur crisis from the perspective of long-term development
rather than the perspective of war. Darfur needs a water strategy more than a
military strategy. Its seven million people cannot survive without a new
approach that gives them a chance to grow crops and water their animals. Yet all
of the talk at the United Nations is about sanctions and armies, with no path to
peace in sight.
Water stress is becoming a major obstacle to economic development in many parts
of the world. The water crisis in Gaza is a cause of disease and suffering among
Palestinians, and is a major source of underlying tensions between Palestine and
Israel. Yet again, billions of dollars are spent on bombing and destruction in
the region, while virtually nothing is done about the growing water crisis.
China and India, too, will face growing water crises in the coming
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