A Different Future

A NEW LEARNING
Across the street, my neighbours’ son Matthew turned 18 recently and I noticed that he now has a small car to drive to high school. Perhaps my grandchildren ages 2 through 8 presently will also be able to come of age and own or at least drive a car. The possibility is becoming increasingly less likely. I make that bleak observation based on data I have harvested from the World Health Organization and a Population Media site as well as an informative site on energy and fuels called Transition Boulder County.

In the 21st century our world is facing unprecedented challenges because of peak oil and dramatic climate change which drives food scarcity. 18 million people die of starvation or starvation related diseases annually worldwide. The “Age of Oil” supported huge population growth previously but that capability is declining and the human population is exploding. The globe is receiving 77 million additional net gain humans annually. The projection is that human planet expansion will multiply from the present 6.7 billion to anywhere from 9.2 billion to 9.8 billion people in 41 years, that is, by the year 2050. If humanity cannot feed 18 million people that will die in mass in 2009, how will humanity feed an added three billion in 41 years when oil supplies exhaust themselves? (Source: www.populationmedia.org)
Hyper-population growth is a subject that few or no leaders are wanting to address. This is a patent instance of short-sightedness from leaders who should be visionaries! (Source: World Health Organization)

If we think that alternative energy will solve the energy crisis, we may be disappointed. According to Michael Brownlee, Boulder, Colorado, www.transitionbouldercounty.org , “Alternative energy cannot and will not be able to replace the energy density of oil. Humans burn 85 million barrels of oil daily. That equals a cubic mile of oil annually. In order to equal that vast amount of energy it would take 91.2 million solar panels built every year for 50 years. Or, 102 coal-fired electrical plants built every year for 50 years. Or, 32,500 wind turbines built every year for fifty years. Finally, the alternative of 52 nuclear powered plants built every year for 50 years would equal one year of oil energy.”

Since there is nothing today or in the future that can equal the power of oil, the human race is facing a extremely dissimilar future. We will have to return to basic, simple living, within the energy restrictions of wind, light, water and animal power.

Bread for the World

A NEW LEARNING
6,761,860,106 people live on this planet.

One third of us are well fed. One third is underfed and one third is starving. 18 million people die of starvation or starvation related diseases annually worldwide. Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide. Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger.

3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on US$2/day.

Warren Buffet is an American and at 77 years of age he is the wealthiest man on earth with 62.0 billion dollars. Carlos Slim Helu lives in Mexico and is worth 60 billion dollars. Bill Gates III is American and worth 58 billion dollars. The assets of these three richest men are more than the combined Gross National Products of all the forty-nine least developed countries on the planet. (map is of LCDs - least developed countries)

I am not laying the responsibility for feeding the world's hungry on the doorstep of these three aforementioned men. Each may already be a philanthropist. I am saying two things. There is tremendous disparity between the wealthy and the poor of this world, and there is more than enough money in the world to feed everyone. The world's wealth (businesses and individuals)is estimated at 44 trillion dollars. Nine million people worldwide each have one million dollars of worth.

The United Nations classifies a Least Developed Country with three criteria:
* low-income (three-year average GNI per capita of less than US $750, which must exceed $900 to leave the list)
* human resource weakness (based on indicators of nutrition, health, education and adult literacy) and
* economic vulnerability (based on instability of agricultural production, instability of exports of goods and services, economic importance of non-traditional activities, merchandise export concentration, and handicap of economic smallness, and the percentage of population displaced by natural disasters)

$30 billion per year is what UN officials estimate is needed to eradicate hunger.

Bread for the World has a site with links to countless organizations seeking to relieve world hunger.

ZIMBABWE - COUNTRY IN CRISIS

A NEW LEARNING
When my wife’s family moved from UK to Canada, her uncle’s family moved to Rhodesia now called Zimbabwe. They had a good life in this colonial atmosphere and then things changed. Civil War. Independence. Nationals took over. The family members moved back to the UK, being able to take no more than $2000 out of the country.

Don’t go to Zimbabwe for a vacation. In fact travel there is discouraged. Zimbabwe is in trouble, a state of emergency more accurately. It is facing several crises at once. There is political unrest that is threatening the country’s stability. As the humanitarian crisis deepens, pressure grew for President Robert Mugabe to step down. From June to August last year, President Mugabe banned international charitable organizations from operating, depriving more than a million people of food and basic aid after the country had already suffered one of its worst harvests.

The economy has bottomed and inflation is reported at 230-million percent which puts the price of food out of reach for the underprivileged. Money is worthless. Unemployment is at 93 percent. Cholera, a waterborne disease has spread to all ten of Zimbabwe's provinces because of the collapse of health and sanitation systems. The cholera death toll has topped 1700 and 24,000 others have been sickened since August. The country’s Health Minister warned that the epidemic may grow worse as the rainy season develops. Hospitals are full, floors as well as beds. There is food shortage. According to the United Nations, 5.5 million Zimbabweans need food assistance. Two-thirds of Zimbabweans are living on one meal or less per day. With little relief in sight, the most vulnerable parts of the populace, namely women and children, have been crossing the border into South Africa in hopes of a better chance of survival. Unaccompanied children, as many as 1,000 per month are fleeing. Life expectancy at birth for males in Zimbabwe has dramatically declined since 1990 from 60 to 37, among the lowest in the world. Life expectancy for females is even lower at 34 years.

In view of all of this Mugabe has remained defiant and rejected U.S. President George Bush's demand that he quit and blamed his country's troubles on international sanctions. One wonders whether the Obama administration may have a different outcome when it speaks to this international crisis.

This is where faith mission and relief groups once again demonstrate their value. Aid is being provided by numerous ministry operations. Cholera medication, antibiotics and rehydration medication, water filters, millions of meals. But none of this happens without the financial gifts of ordinary people such as us in the Western world where downturn is being experienced but at a comparatively superficial level.

See this site for a list of groups working in Zimbabwe