Tuesday 27 July 2010

Why we do what we do


1. Vandana Shiva



2. No matter how a person tries to frame or revise our culture there's no getting away from it – wealth delivers pollution.

3. Researchers tell us that the level of happiness peaks just above the poverty line, but we already knew this. Any accumulation of wealth after this point disables the adequate distribution of resources in order for local populations and ecologies to self-renew.

4. 32,000 people were treated last year in Australian hospitals for self-harming. The mental health of the country is flailing. An increasingly toxic food supply system is in part responsible. For a culture whose dominant ideology is based on a growth profit-pollution paradigm, figures like this will only increase.

5. The social and ecological costs of liberal growth economics should now be accounted. The world's elite impoverish life for everyone, especially the world's poor. An elite few are currently privatising the atmosphere to create the world's biggest commodity market – capitalising on pollution. This is sold as a solution – emissions trading and offsetting schemes – just as the Green Revolution was sold as a solution – privatised seeds and chemicals – for world hunger.

6. With ecological economics, community sovereignty of food, water and energy resources, and with permaculture principals you don't have to wait around for outmoded governments to reenter the real world; to understand soil microbes; to understand a just and sane way; to understand the profit-pollution paradigm; to understand the relationship between biodiversity and collective social health.

4 comments:

  1. great link!

    great statement!

    keep the faith!

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  2. It would be good to have some figures on the income levels of the 32k who're admitted for self harming, I suspect many would be significantly under the poverty line - otherwise they wouldn't have stats like this taken, they would have the privacy afforded by the private psychiatric/mental health system..

    Nice post, thanks.

    How about the woodworm?
    I hope it worked out?

    xx

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  3. An all time moment of beauty in my life so far was at S11 protest World economic forum, bumping into Vandana Shiva on the street (and relaying the jubilation in trades Hall the night before as 100's watched her speak on behalf of us inside the forum) she wrapped me in her arms like an intimate mother.
    I love her!

    ReplyDelete