Battle Against African Poverty A Strike Against Mother Earth

By James Donahue

July 3, 2005

The pure logic behind the massive world movement to convince the G8 Summit to end poverty and stop the dying of African children appears right at first glance.

We all love the children and cringe at the thought of so many innocents succumbing to starvation and the ravages of AIDS under such impoverished conditions.

But there is another bigger issue facing the G8 Summit when the leaders of these big industrial nations gather this week in Scotland. Stopping global warming is a much more important and almost unmentioned issue in the media. At this most critical time, the emphasis by world religious leaders and angelic-driven do-gooders is directing our attention in the wrong direction.

Strange how the media is paying so much attention to 200,000 marchers in Edinburgh and the big name bands, actors and political leaders gathering in big cities around the world in advance of the summit to collectively call for an end to poverty in Africa.

This same media is ignoring the fact that the United States has forced the summit leaders into a deadlock over the global warming issue at a time when world scientists are warning that it may already be too late to stop a catastrophic heating of the planet.

It is as if the world is in the denial stage of a sentence of its own death. Rather than collectively face the real issue lying exposed in front of our eyes, we are turning all of our energy and attention on starving children in Africa.

Those children have been dying of AIDS and starvation in Africa now for a long time. The people there have overpopulated in areas where there has never been enough food to feed everybody. And the AIDS epidemic has been ravaging the continent to startling degrees, largely because there is a lack of money to pay for medical help and a public education system for controlling that terrible sexually transmitted disease. It is truly a tragedy of our time.

But why now? Why is the world directing the G8 Summit to focus all of its attention to this thread-worn issue at this particular time?

We believe it is because the people that don’t want to face the consequences of global warming need another issue to capture the attention of the manipulated masses of the world. And who can resist an appeal to help save starving and dying children?

The solution to global warming is harsh. It calls for strict control of emissions from factories, coal-fired electric plants, cars, aircraft and all systems burning fossil fuels and a heavily funded and calculated search for not only alternative energy sources, but other technical solutions to a runaway heating of the planet. It also calls for a strict control of population growth.

Already we are seeing the great glaciers of the world and polar ice caps disappearing in massive melt-down and drastic weather changes that are ravaging the land, destroying crops and property, and putting the world food supply in jeopardy. Disease once related to the tropics are migrating northward with the birds and animals. We are seeing the rapid extinction of many species of animals. Good potable water sources are disappearing. And the world has reached the peak of its known oil supply.

If we wish to save ourselves from total extinction, the human race must act immediately to fix this looming disaster. But instead of looking at the problem head-on, the leaders of the eight most powerful nations of the world are being urged by thousands of marchers and concert goers to fix their attention on starving children in Africa.

The scope of this vision is much too narrow.