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Dear visitor and fellow
citizen!
If you are concerned about the future and of the
grandchildren, we invite you to follow this thoughts:
Man is facing two important forces: The Growth of
Population and The Growth of Consumption. You will hardly
find an ecological professional denying the serious treat
from these combined growths.
It may be a question of time schedule, but the signs are
that sometime in future too many people will be desperately
poor and ready to undertake dramatic measures to have food,
water, shelter and some of the goods advertised on our
TV.
There is no fence for the impact of poverty and terrorism
developed by starving people. Thus, if we can not stop both
these growths, our civilization is at stake.
The people with entrusted or acquired power - the
politicians and the wealthy - are pursuing the goals of the
voters respectively of their own. These groups are more and
more growing parts of the problem instead of contributing
decisively to its solution.
The only solution seems to be an international
revolution, crossing ethnical, religious, professiona and
national borders. We would like to cite the Australian
scientist Richard Eckersley:
So the impetus to change will not come from
our leaders, but from ordinary people. This is where the
'big picture' intersects with our personal lives. This is
from where we draw our power. Change will come about from
choices, individually taken as citizens and consumers,
parents and professionals, which reflect a collective
will to think and do things differently. (The
Australian Financial Review, 29 January 1999.)
(Richard Eckersley is a visiting fellow
at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population
Health at the Australian National University, where he is
working on aspects of progress and well-being).
This opportunity for and by concerned people is just here
and now, in cyberspace. You are invited to a
peaceful "cyber revolution" for
stopping growth of population and consumption.
Are you interested? Please drop some words and your
address.
Yours very sincerely
Flora and Fundus
PS
If you are hesitating in follow our proposal, please read
pages 142-153 of Garrett Hardin: The
Ostrich Factor. (Starting at The history of
humanity´s treatment.... It takes about 30 minutes
of your valuable life). We plan to introduce an excerpt in
the Free PowerZine. Generally,
this is a remarkable book which your child or children (if
you have any) would love you for reading. Just some few
sentences:
The preeminent question for modern humankind
is this: can we assemble a new deus ex machina that will
ensure the survival of our species? This new miracle
worker must be internal to humanity itself - inside our
heads, nestled within the commitments we make to society.
It is clear that reproduction will have to have its
rights trimmed. Many minds will have to contribute to the
planning of the commitments that must modify the
unqualified reproductive right if humanity is to survive.
This is the population problem of our time - not
collecting and playing with a plethora of ambivalent
data. I think we human beings can manage this - provided
that we rid ourselves of certain assumptions that have
served us well in the past but that cannot do so without
the spice of a blessing á la Tertullian. ... This
"problem of problems" will demand humanity's most
imaginative attention for a long time to come.
(Garrett Hardin is Professor Emeritus of
Human Eology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The founder of the field of human ecology, he is the author
of the seminal essay "The
Tragedy of the Commmons," which
has been reprinted in over 100 anthologies. and the book
Living
Within Limits (Oxford), which won
the 1993 Award in Science from the Phi Beta Kappa
Society.)
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