A commentary
Volunteering in Laos and Papua New Guinea for the entire decade of the '70s and traveling the globe since then have made me more aware of the urgent unmet basic needs—for food, water, housing, fuel, education, employment, and health care—of the poor and disadvantaged people around the world. Now, free time that comes with retirement has opened another opportunity for me to make a contribution, however small, to meet these basic needs.
The world is replete with examples of individuals and organizations attempting this: Habitat for Humanity, Mother Teresa, Peace Corps volunteers, Doctors Without Borders, Operation Smile, Heifer International, Marie Da Silva, and countless others, giving of themselves, often beyond the glare of the spotlight.
But before embarking on this new journey, I needed to decide in what direction I should head to ensure that, however small my impact, it does benefit the poor. Any resources (expertise, manpower, funding, and time) I might share with the poor should improve their quality of life, be sustainable by them, and serve as a jumping-off point for their continuing development. If this is not the case, I would then have to question whether I was achieving anything worthwhile and enduring under the pretext of "helping the poor".
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While I sat down to consider options for my personal involvement, other issues vied for my attention. Peering behind national and international headlines, I increasingly encountered indisputable warnings of troublesome worldwide trends with grave implications for us all—decreasing per capita acreage under cultivation and reduced food production; mounting fresh-water deficits; growing vicious competition for dwindling supplies of minerals, oil, food, and other products as the burgeoning global population increasingly exceeds the earth's carrying capacity; failing nation states; rising unemployment and despair; decreasing genetic diversity and extinction of species; polluted land, air, and water; recklessly over-fished oceans, desertification; etc.
My first grim realization is that any benefits derived from my sharing resources with the poor to help them satisfy their basic needs is ultimately overwhelmed and cancelled out by the impact of an ever-growing global population and steadily deteriorating environmental trends. For example,
While we claim to be assisting the poor, we are not seriously addressing the adverse demographic and environmental pressures that obstruct their progress and success. Rather, our efforts are merely delaying the day of reckoning, and, in the meantime, doing little to help the poor permanently escape a life of despair. My second grim realization is that expending hard-to-find resources to meet immediate needs of the poor diverts these resources from, and dilutes the commitment to, finding sustainable solutions to far more pressing challenges confronting humanity: reversing menacing demographic and environmental trends that threaten the collapse of our civilization. High priority must be given to address these challenges; otherwise, every effort we make to meet the basic needs of the poor—as well as all of us—will be frustrated and ultimately rendered ineffective. Unfortunately, my third grim realization, the most frightening, is that over the ages, political leaders have generally shied away from resolving situations that appeared too complex and overwhelming, no matter how threatening these might seem. An obvious example is reversing burgeoning global population growth. We largely refuse to acknowledge the certainty that we face global collapse if population growth continues. Yet, rather than adopting remedial measures, development organizations around the world continue proposing interventions to keep pace with population growth! Or leaders pass the buck to science and technology, promoting false expectations that these will, in the end, come to the rescue. They fail to recognize that each new technological "fix" is often accompanied by adverse impacts that eventually exacerbate existing problems or introduce new ones. Or people shy away from taking the necessary remedial measures when these require unpleasant and therefore unacceptable sacrifices on the part of their followers. Through the centuries, human history has been fraught with examples of civilizations—the Mayans, Easter Islanders, Sumerians, Romans, etc.—whose leadership failed to address or, perhaps, even failed to recognize threats to their societies that eventually led to their demise, collapse, and disappearance. The Easter Islanders, for example, must have been aware of their heavy reliance on the luxuriant forests they originally discovered on their small, formerly tree-covered South Pacific island. From these forests, they extracted firewood, fruit, wildlife, and a range of building materials both for their homes and boats as well as for moving massive stone statues from the quarries to their final resting places. Over perhaps half a millennia, the population, which burgeoned from several dozen to at least 7,000, kept felling trees as if there were no tomorrow. But there was. One day, the last irretrievable tree fell, triggering the collapse of their society. Inhabitants eventually reverted to warfare and cannibalism, with remnants of this previously sophisticated society finding themselves beholden to the arrival of 18th century European explorers for their eventual rescue from ultimate destruction. (To see a short story of this civilization, click HERE). Today, we too are over exploiting our resources, destroying our environment, and not adopting serious measures to reverse population growth. We are walking in precisely the same footprints left by earlier failed civilizations. Unless we bury our heads in the sand, it is easy to foresee our civilization's disastrous finale over our lifetime. But unlike the collapse of earlier and smaller civilizations, this time we will have no second chance. No deus ex machina will be waiting in the wings to rescue us. Continuing ignorance of the seriousness of worsening environmental trends on the part of all of mankind or our failure to address these head-on will likely lead us back to the Dark Ages or, worse yet, to a new extinction event. In addition to the seriousness of the adverse trends previously noted, the not-yet-understood but menacing impact of global climate change could seriously, further exacerbate problems facing mankind. But these have not even been broached in this commentary; the situation is threatening enough without doing so. I started this journey searching for a niche where I might make a meaningful impact satisfying the basic needs of the world's poor. Instead of finding this niche, I came to realize that efforts to contribute to fulfilling these needs, however well intended, are largely outweighed by the adverse impacts of demographic and environmental trends such as those enumerated at the beginning of this commentary. If we are to have a sustainable impact in meeting basic needs of the poor—my original objective—we must more seriously strive to reverse population growth and associated adverse environmental and societal trends. This is also true if mankind is to have any hope of surviving beyond the next several decades—with an acceptable quality of life This commentary is not to denigrate efforts by those dedicated to helping the poor or to suggest they give up. Rather, it is to increase awareness of obstacles preventing the long-term sustainability and success of their efforts to aid the poor so that these efforts are not taken in vain. Achieving these objectives will require an urgent and massive coordinated mobilization by a good portion of the world's inhabitants under enlightened leadership. Without success on this front, anything else we do, including providing for the basic needs of the poor, is just treading water, waiting for the inevitable, rapidly approaching collapse of our civilization. A study of past civilizations reveals that their leaders or their followers generally seemed incapable of taking actions necessary to sustain their civilizations. Are there any indications our leaders of today will be any more successful in preventing collapse of our (global) civilization? The earlier we all wake up to the new realities, the sooner will we have a chance to charge course . . . if it isn't already too late. Allen R. Inversin Email: allen.inversin@alum.mit.edu Posted: 8/13/2009 Comments welcomed
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Warning for our times
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All in the same boat,but no hands on the oars.
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