So begins a recent and very interesting news article (‘Goals are working: The poor really are better off’) by Gwynne Dyer, a solid, thoughtful writer, concerning progress on the millennium development goals that the United nations adopted 10 years ago.
Dyer touches on improvements in key areas like literacy, access to clean water and infant mortality. He points to improvements related to better leadership and cleaner politics in Africa.
["Neys P.P., Lake Superior, 2007": photo GH]
But about the millennium goals and the future he says the following (see the article for more details):
“It is certainly not an ignoble ambition, and 10 years ago it seemed almost attainable. Today it seems much less so.
“The problem is not the current economic slump. That is cutting into living standards in many places, but even if it lasts for years, it is essentially a transient event. The real worm of doubt is the gradual realization that seven billion human beings cannot all live the current lifestyle of the billion richest without causing an environmental and ecological catastrophe. It is inherently unsustainable...
“Even one billion people consuming resources and producing pollution at the current rate may be unsustainable over a period of more than a generation or two. Seven or eight billion people living like that would be unsustainable even over a couple of decades: global warming and resource depletion would swiftly overwhelm our emerging global civilization and its high aspirations...
“Rich really is better than poor, in the sense that people who are physically secure and have some freedom of choice in their lives are generally happier people.
“But we have to do a serious re-think about how we define the concept of rich.”
Re-define rich.
Re-educate rich and poor.
Reform economic and environmental policies.
(Please click here to read a related post - Climate Change Concerns: I’ve fallen and I can’t get up)
All are worthy goals.
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