[Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
What about "Draught"? The area around Phoenix Arizona today was a desert long before there was industrialization. How much "draught" can a desert suffer? The primary effect of post-industrialization human activity in the area is the very efficient irrigation system (one of the world's most efficient) in bringing water from far away mountains to enable what is essentially oasis farming (but on a scale larger than what people think of pre-industrial natural desert oasis was like).
Species went extinct every day long before humanity walked the surface of the earth. Sure, some of the scorpions, cacatus and desert snakes may not be happy about the area around Phoenix turning into oasis, and the water is enabling more water-dependent plants and animals taking over their habitat. So? If you are keen about preserving all species, feel free to turn your own body into a habit for smallpox virus, for example.
What does draught or ice melting have to do with Bangladesh? Most of them have never seen natural ice. Sure, the alarmists would like to talk about Bangladesh losing land to sea level rising, but the reality is that Bangladesh has been gaining thousands of acres of new farm land net-net in the last couple decades. Bengal used to one of the richest regions of South Asia before the arrival of British imperial bureaucracy, thanks to the monsoon floods, rivers, and flat land, all being conducive to the local farming methods. The monsoon served as a natural soil enrichment program, just like the Nile floods. The bureaucracy ruined the local economy through over-taxation (the grain from Bengal fed the British troops fighting Boer War, WWI and WWII, leaving Bengalis to starve); and in order to collect that high level of tax, the bureaucracy gradually fixed the population to specific small land plots year-round, so they gradually lost their ability to take take advantage of monsoons by moving back and forth seasonally with the flood line like they used to.
After India and (East) Pakistan gained independence from Britain in 1948, colonialism continued for East Pakistan / Bangladesh: this time with bureaucratic over-taxation and mismanagement emanating from Pakistan instead of London. Another war of independence followed in 1971 resulted in Bangladesh independence, which continued the bureaucratic misery (next door India, which sponsored Bangladesh in the 1971 War, was a socialist bureaucratic state at the time). All sorts of aid organizations showed up in the 1970's and 80's, only to exacerbate the problem by economically destroying local farmers with cheap to free imported grain, while synthetic fiber displaced Jute, which had been the leading cash crop in the region. By the 1980's, the country was a basket case just like Palestine, with everything handed down from foreign donors through the government . . . it is a tribute to the local people that they turned their year-round mass unemployment to love making instead of terrorism.
The 1990's finally saw foreign direct investors willing to "exploit" cheap Bangladesh labor. Bangladeshi economy has become one of the fastest growing in the world in the last decade and half.
See, the truth is a lot more complicated than the silly flash cards. We are endowed with frontal lobes so we don't have to depend on silly knee-jerk reactions.
posted by 24.91.39...
, Wed, 6 Jul 2011 20:21:14
, Thu, 7 Jul 2011 20:49:05, Thu, 7 Jul 2011 15:40:54, Thu, 7 Jul 2011 20:08:31
No Site Registration is Required to Post - Site Membership is optional (Member Features List), but helps to keep the site online
for all Saabers. If the site helps you, please consider helping the site by becoming a member.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
