What should we do first?

[OutrightOJ]

We've got some pretty big issues going on in our world, two of the most serious being global warming and poverty throughout the world, particularly in the Third World. These guys in poverty need energy and water and everything they can to survive, but global warming is getting worse every minute because of waste and fumes from cars and planes and everything else. If we were to give those in poverty our knowledge of energy, and help them to acquire it too, wouldn't it just contribute ever more?

Here's the question. Should we help those without the life essentials - water and energy and whatnot - out first, or should we find a way to deal with global warming - green-technology or an alternative energy source that will be incredibly efficient and that everybody that should and can afford one will have one - and pass this technology on to those in the Third World first?

One way of putting it is 'What or who shall we help first: Our people or our planet?' Personally I'd say that we should try to find something to help with global warming first, but I hate the idea of declining our fellow Earth inhabitants.

You guys will probably come up with some good stuff to contradict me on this, but post your opinions.

[SlappyMcGee]

I'm pretty sure this thread exists, and you made it, and very recently.

[OutrightOJ]

I'm pretty sure I didn't, I didn't, and I didn't. I haven't been active on this forum for quite a while. Perhaps you're referring to The Most Controversial Issue Today?

[scythe]

You can get solar panels for less than a dollar to the watt these days. I'm going to say that we probably don't need any more subsidy to the energy sector -- those prices are low enough on their own and they're still going down.

Also, sending direct money aid to the Third World simply encourages corruption. The people in power can quite easily take the money from the citizens we give it to and in fact have incentive to do so: if they keep their country shitty, they'll keep getting money. Food aid is little better: it lowers food prices and drives local farmers out of business. Some food aid is necessary, but probably not at the scales we've been giving it -- plus, encouraging them to live on rice alone leads to malnutrition. Medical aid, on the other hand, does help: poor African countries have little hope of synthesizing their own chloroquine, isoniazid, or DDT. The best way to aid the Third World these days is probably through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

So, what we should do first is work on ending the Middle East problems by persuading Israel to return to its UN-recognized 1967 borders. Hamas has already indicated they'll accept this compromise. Also, close Guantanamo Bay, and legalize marijuana. I'd like to see a theme of fiscal responsibility this decade.

About healthcare: I support nationalized healthcare, because I live in Georgia. If and when I move to a state that isn't horrible, I'll stop supporting nationalized health care and start supporting state-by-state healthcare. Go die in a fire, Georgia.

[Tunco]

Here's the question. Should we help those without the life essentials - water and energy and whatnot - out first, or should we find a way to deal with global warming - green-technology or an alternative energy source that will be incredibly efficient and that everybody that should and can afford one will have one - and pass this technology on to those in the Third World first?

To prevent something happening or to reduce the effects of something already happened is not to move away the effect of the problem, therefore, the problem will still exist.

So that we should find a deal with global warming first. You can help those without life essentials, but because there is still global warming (which is the main problem here) those people would need your help again and again. The solution is easy to this question, you should find a deal with global warming first then help those without the life essentials, eventually they won't need help anymore.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

So um... humans are actually multiple, distinct entities. Our focus isn't limited to one thing at a time.
In fact, our entire history has basically been simultaneously fixing a handful of independent issues whilst causing two handfuls of independent problem on the side.

[blackson]

My problem with countries with poverty and hunger is that most of the time it's their own damn fault. Don't establish a country in a desert or in an area where getting food would be obviously difficult, and then just leech off of other smarter countries for help. It's common sense, move where the food is. Now with unsee-able disaster provoking-poverty, that's different; for instance, Hati (although at their prime they aren't much of an independent country).

If they are too dumb to help themselves, then there shouldn't be a hand to feed them.

[OutrightOJ]

But Africa is a damn large continent, and the population is pretty big now - obviously people must obviously have been able to live in the current conditions in the past. However, African families tend to have a lot of children - in rural landscapes, certainly. Perhaps people lived more 'locally', or closer together in the past, but overpopulation has forced them to find new homes due to sheer lack of space in the cities they used to live in? Or has global warming affected their landscapes? It's highly likely that global warming will affect the weather for the worst in the future, with more tropical storms predicted and whatnot, so maybe it's this that is already responsible for the desert landscape. However, deforestation for fires and fuel (affecting soil and crop-grounds) is also likely.

So there may be multiple reasons for this statement too, I guess.

Also, I love your sig, Blackson.

[Universezero]

To quote the movie 2012, the second we stop caring about the wellbeing of other humans is the second that we lose our humanity.
I think that we should help the third world countries first. As for global warming, I think that the world will find its own way to balance out, one way or another. It always has.

[Kablizzy]

Burn Pat Robertson as a witch.

Also, for those who don't think that Global Warming exists or that Climate Change is a big deal, I simply point to the Dust Bowl era. We can fuck this planet up something hardcore, and we'd do well to humble ourselves a bit and start trying to think of ways *not* to kill the whole species.

[Neil_Bryan]

Take care of global warming first before the Third World People. Yup. So that, once global warming has stopped, we won't worry about much anymore. Just take care of the people afterward.

Or, wait: if we Do take care of the people first, what's gonna happen? Ah, yes, for some reason, maybe we can stop global warming after taking care of the people. I'm not sure but maybe we can take care of both the people and global warming.

Or can't we? I'm confused right now.

[im_bad_at_n]

Well, I have mixed opinions about that =/

Firstly, developed nations should focus on themselves more than others. The governments take their eyes of the home front and that causes anger in a lot of eyes of the civilians, on many different aspects. Plus large nations have a ton of problems, why should they feel the need to help others first? Is it some noble reason? I think it has to do with a "responsibility" reason: we have to help other suffering nations, even though this leads to problems starting with their dependency on a larger nation. Maybe they would not be third world nations if they could help themselves rather than accepting help all the time.

However global warming is a natural trend of the earth. It follows a very slow trend of global warmings and ice ages. Currently we are seeing the global warming part of that cycle. Saying that humans are a cause of it is not accurate. saying that humans influence it slightly is more accurate. We cannot fix global warming, it's is not a huge switch that we have to get everyone to pull down on. Telling people to use less energy is great, and I support that, but saying it would stop global warming is inaccurate. It would help it a little, and the ozone hole would stop getting bigger at the rate it is, but mostly using less energy and natural resources like oil would make cities more pleasant too look at rather than gray clouds of pollution over cities like Chicago or Los Angeles.

So back to the question: who to help first? Well, i think the world needs to focus on a certain issue instead of taking them all on.. not smart. Take them down one by one. The first of those two would be pollution, not because I do not care for third world nations but the fact that larger nations need to set a positive example on the world. Lending a helping hand is not always beneficial.

[Neil_Bryan]

Take care of global warming first before the Third World People. Yup. So that, once global warming has stopped, we won't worry about much anymore. Just take care of the people afterward.

Or, wait: if we Do take care of the people first, what's gonna happen? Ah, yes, for some reason, maybe we can stop global warming after taking care of the people. I'm not sure but maybe we can take care of both the people and global warming.

Or can't we? I'm confused right now.

So, okay. As a contradiction to my own statement, global warming should be taken first. So that, once global warming is gone, there's not much to worry about climate changes happening around the world to destroy it.

My problem with countries with poverty and hunger is that most of the time it's their own damn fault. Don't establish a country in a desert or in an area where getting food would be obviously difficult, and then just leech off of other smarter countries for help. It's common sense, move where the food is. Now with unsee-able disaster provoking-poverty, that's different; for instance, Haiti (although at their prime they aren't much of an independent country).

If they are too dumb to help themselves, then there shouldn't be a hand to feed them.

I agree. However, we should still help them. We can't just leave them finding food for themselves, we have to help. Because a good society helps.

Or is it? I'm still a confused person regarding this topic.

[origami_alligator]

Education first, solving the world's problems second.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Education first, solving the world's problems second.

Middle Eastern martyr academies are in fine working order. Any more bright ideas?

[Cheez]

We Americans need to get our economy out of the garbage before we start spending millions upon billions of dollars trying to fix everyone else's crap.

[Neil_Bryan]

We Americans need to get our economy out of the garbage before we start spending millions upon billions of dollars trying to fix everyone else's crap.

Agreed.

The economy should be in a better state before doing anything else, because funding on things to stop global warming, food/other materials to be given(?) to the people, and some other problems all involve money. And since the economy is not at a very good state, what will happen if we give off more money? What then?

[Tunco]

We Americans need to get our economy out of the garbage before we start spending millions upon billions of dollars trying to fix everyone else's crap.

Agreed.

The economy should be in a better state before doing anything else, because funding on things to stop global warming, food/other materials to be given(?) to the people, and some other problems all involve money. And since the economy is not at a very good state, what will happen if we give off more money? What then?

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/artic ... id=3750579

[Neil_Bryan]

We Americans need to get our economy out of the garbage before we start spending millions upon billions of dollars trying to fix everyone else's crap.

Agreed.

The economy should be in a better state before doing anything else, because funding on things to stop global warming, food/other materials to be given(?) to the people, and some other problems all involve money. And since the economy is not at a very good state, what will happen if we give off more money? What then?

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/artic ... id=3750579

Okay, I get it now. At the time I wrote that I didn't pay attention to what economy really meant. (Damn I didn't pay attention)

[Yoshimo]

Definitely help the planet first. In the grander scheme, humanity is a small spark of life that has somehow developed higher thinking. But, if we fuck over our planet to badly, we'll wipe out our species for the most part anyways, and prevent other higher-thinking organisms from developing. Helping the third-world countries is short-sighted problem solving, fixing our mark on the planet is more long term, even if we may not see it's results.

[jinxed_07]

To quote the movie 2012, the second we stop caring about the wellbeing of other humans is the second that we lose our humanity.
I think that we should help the third world countries first. As for global warming, I think that the world will find its own way to balance out, one way or another. It always has.

*laugh* If something like that minus the actual asteroid began to happen today in our world, we(as humans) would all be facing extinction. Mother Nature isn't what she used to be. Also, islands are slowing disappearing off the map as we speak. How can we try to help other countries if it won't matter in a while because it's too late? Hunger applied to one person is short term. As unhumane as this sounds, this person will die at one point or another and will move on. In general, hunger is a problem that affects third world countries as a majority, while global warming is a problem and threat against us all. I'm for fixing global warming first all-the-way.

[Kablizzy]

Parenting. Solve that, and world fixes itself.

[squibbles]

Parenting. Solve that, and world fixes itself.

Hah! I think the title of this thread implys that the action we take has to be at least possible.

[Tanner]

I agree that we should "solve Parenting". Now what does that look like?

[formica]

My problem with countries with poverty and hunger is that most of the time it's their own damn fault. Don't establish a country in a desert or in an area where getting food would be obviously difficult, and then just leech off of other smarter countries for help. It's common sense, move where the food is. Now with unsee-able disaster provoking-poverty, that's different; for instance, Haiti (although at their prime they aren't much of an independent country).

If they are too dumb to help themselves, then there shouldn't be a hand to feed them.

Pretty sure every third world country was exporting more than enough grains to feed its people during every major famine the last 50 years or so. It's not a problem of there not being enough food, it's a problem of the food getting to the right people (say, Ethiopia instead of exporting to Europe.)

Besides, neoliberal economic reforms forced on developing countries by the conditions of the WTO and IMF exacerbate poverty and hunger for the country's poor in a huge way. And this has nothing to do with what the people governing the country pick, but with what a bunch of mostly American economists think would be best.



Anyway, what should we fix first? Depends how we fix hunger.

If we get rid of this idiotic idea that the way to decrease hunger in the third world is to increase purchasing power (rather than, say, giving land back to people so they can grow shit) and stop pushing everybody to integrate into the global market rather than try to meet there own needs, then a couple cool things would happen:

#1. Much less hunger because people are growing food/ raising livestock again

#2. Less pollution and therefore less global warming because there's a nice shift back to local production for local needs rather than local production for global needs. No more shipping, no more heavily polluting industry, so the planet benefits, too.

Alright, that's a hugely flawed solution, but anyway. Insofar as I have a point, it's that global warming and global hunger aren't two mutually exclusive problems; they're different sides of the same coin. And as soon as you get rid of the idea that the way to get rid of hunger is to 'develop' a country along industrial lines (raising GDP by encouraging investment and industry and hoping for some wealth to eventually trickle down to the poor) then you can see that you don't have to fix one at the expense of the other.

Take, for example, the socialist line and say 'that coin' is capitalism: People can't eat because they don't have purchasing power. Even though there's always enough food, they can't access it because others profit from witholding it. Pretty much every modern famine ever is a good example of this. Similarly, heavy pollution isn't necessary. Heavy pollution is CHEAP. If businesses were focused on what the world needs instead of profits, then we wouldn't be in this mess anyway. ABOLISH CAPITALISM and we'll fix everything.

It's a rubbishy solution, but it's a nice example of ways we could fix both at the same time and, maybe, that there are the same root problems feeding both.