Tonight I read news from a Canadian newspaper, the Ottawa Citizen: the world has nearly 40,000 nuclear warheads and it would take less than 1000 to decimate all countries back to the stone age (such a popular phrase in the United States these past three months). I wrote last year of Helen Caldicott and the various Social Responsibility organizations who were strongly vocal in the 1980s against nuclear armament. But while the last few years have seen the dismantling of old missile silos in the United States and Russia, still we have magnificent overkill capabilities.
What is that streak in humanity that demands power over something else?
My prayer is that we -- the whole earth -- manages to survive and still have an intact planet, one unpoisoned by massive nuclear radiation, and one that still has a natural environment that can sustain human life in a healthy manner.
I wish New Zealand could export its no-nukes stance to every country (at least, I hope that New Zealand still has its no-nukes policy) in the globe. It's a shame that the United Nations didn't make that their number one priority--a world free of nuclear power and weaponry.
Sometimes this constant underlying threat makes other parts of life seem irrelevant -- or maybe life itself. I can glimpse why teen suicide numbers are climbing, particularly with those who appear content. There is an undercurrent of malaise in America that simply is not addressed, because to address it means to shift our country's entire focus from corporate welfare to spiritual health. I don't believe that corporate welfare enhances spiritual health, even though many would have us think that what is good for the global corporations is good for every person.
Take the ubiquitous McDonald's. The money spent by consumers at MickeyD's would be far better spent on fresh fruits and vegetable and on organically farmed land to grow the same. The millions paid by the US government to corporate mega-farmers for hormonized and anti-bioticized meat and milk and for genetically engineered soybeans and corn would support a healthier nation if it turned those farms into smaller, organically farmed units.
You ask, how are we (the United States) supposed to feed the world if we did that? Well, maybe we need to rethink that whole idea of being responsible for feeding the world. The world would be better fed if people could grow their own food. Our monies would be better spent to prevent desertification and to understand the creation of droughts in order to modify their occurrences (which might have strong ties to global warming), to create organic tilth instead of chemically-fertilized hardpan soil, to improve endemic varieties in ways that enhance their valuable natural characteristics, and to provide assistance to very local economies through micro-lending. Then, "golden" rice (genetically modified to add certain vitamins) would not be needed because people could afford to grow or purchase a variety of foods that would have the vitamins naturally. The need for "golden" rice is based on the premise (and the reality at this time) that many people can afford to eat only rice.
I am also reminded of Daniel Quinn's premise in his book, Ishmael: that as the food supply expands, so does population. If you really want to get down to the nitty-gritty, it is not that the world needs to grow more food, the world needs to stabilize its population and distribute food more equitably. Six billion people is more than enough.
Cherie