Three intertwined doctrines
are all the rage among corporate, environmental, government and religious
activists these days - and unfortunately all are condemning the world's poor to
lives of abject squalor.
The first, called corporate social responsibility, argues that companies should
conduct their affairs with more concern for activists' pet causes than making a
profit for shareholders.
The second, known as sustainable development, says companies must restrict
themselves only to activities that "meet the needs and aspirations of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
needs."
The third, dubbed the precautionary principle, requires companies to halt any
activities that may threaten "human health or the environment" even
when there is no documented cause-and-effect relationship.
A hopeless life of hunger and poverty
All of that may sound noble
at first blush, but the truth is that radical activists from affluent Western
countries created these buzz phrases to promote their own socialist agendas.
They - and they alone - define what is "responsible" in a way that
blocks any development that doesn't meet their exacting environmental demands,
even though it may mean locking the world's poor into a hopeless life of chronic
hunger and poverty.
For people in the Third World, the three doctrines are dangerous, and even
deadly. They impose the loftiest of developed world standards on developing
nations, while ignoring the needs and aspirations of people who struggle daily
just to survive.
For instance, few of the more that 2 billion Africans and Indians living today
have access to electricity. Half a billion women and children in Africa, Asia
and Latin America currently spend their days collecting firewood, or squatting
in mud laced with animal faeces and urine to collect, dry and store manure for
use as fuel. Few attend school. Millions die every year from preventable lung
diseases and dysentery caused by indoor air pollution and filthy drinking water.
Ironically, the poor in the teeming slums of New Delhi have the same aspirations
for themselves and their families as Sierra Club members in gated communities in
the Hamptons, La Jolla and Sausalito. Above all, they want to live in modern
homes, determine their own destinies, and enjoy electricity, safe water and
other basics that Westerners take for granted.
"We don't want to be encased like a museum," one Indian woman
plaintively told a television news crew.
They also want to protect their environment. "If people don't have
electricity," points out Gordon Mwesigye, a senior official in Uganda,
"they will cut down trees, and Africa will lose its wildlife habitats and
the health and economic benefits that abundant, reliable, affordable electricity
brings."
Dams in Uganda and Gujarat Province, India, could provide electricity and safe
drinking water. But First World radicals oppose their construction and are
pressuring international aid agencies to withdraw funding. These countries
shouldn't make the same "mistakes" we did by building mammoth
hydroelectric projects, the activists insist. They should opt for wind turbines,
or solar panels on huts. They mustn't dam up good kayaking rivers or use fossil
fuels.
An additional 14 million Africans face imminent starvation. Modern science could
reduce their anguish - through seeds and crops that have been genetically
modified, to make them resistant to drought, salt and insect pests, reduce the
need for pesticides, and save wildlife habitat by enabling farmers to grow more
food on less land.
The U.S. has shipped African countries thousands of tons of genetically modified
corn - the same corn that Americans have been eating safely for years. But
environmental radicals and the European Union are screaming "genetic
pollution" and threatening to withdraw aid and ban agricultural exports
from any countries that plant or distribute the grains.
'Better dead than fed'
One can only wonder if the
activists' cars will soon be festooned with such bumper sticker slogans as:
"Solar for huts - and huts forever" or "Sustainable insects,
expendable people" or perhaps, "Better dead than fed."
For the sake of the world's poor, it's time to ask the eco-activists,
bureaucrats and media elites exactly how their anti-energy, anti-biotech and
anti-people policies are moral, compassionate, sustainable or socially
responsible.
By PAUL K. DRIESSEN. Reprinted from The Sun Herald January 14, 2003
Paul Driessen is a senior fellow at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (click
here), P.O. Box 65722,
Washington, DC 20035.
