Pages

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Give a man a fish ...



With all the talk lately about Australia limiting it's population so we can continue to export food to a starving world, wouldn't it be better if we developed our ability to live sustainably and export that?
I can understand a man like Dick Smith wanting to sure up our nation into a profitable business, selling food to starving billions, after all he is in the business and is happy to declare his Capitalistic nature. But just because supply and demand works in the cut and thrust world of markets and pork-belly production, doesn't mean it is in our best interests, as a nation, to profiteer on the misfortunes of the rest of the people we have to share the planet with.
In line with the irrefutable wisdom, "give a man a fish and feed him for a day, but teach him to fish and he will feed himself for a lifetime", we could do with converting all that land and water devoted to producing unsustainable monoculture, into biospheres of diversity capable of feeding the millions more who could find homes and jobs bringing new solutions to old problems.
Unfortunately, we are stuck with the closed mindset of a over indulged population, intent on only looking at the solutions which allow for the continuation of a privileged few in a lifestyle billions can only aspire to; at the risk of a final depletion of natural resources. Instead of that bleak scenario, wouldn't it be nice to be looked up to as the smart nation, who found the solution to the population problems in new technology, rather than the old greedy reductionism views of population control.

No comments: