charity

""There is no box. That is the mind-set we need if civilization is to survive."
Lester Brown

In “Ishmael”, Daniel Quinn used the character of a gorilla to get outside of our politically correct, green-left box of humanitarianism, as conditioned by a heritage of agrarian-born “Sky-God” religions, socialism and feminism. Seen from a gorilla’s point of view, our social and environmental problems could seem open to solutions that our Judeo-Marxist inhibitions will not allow on the table.

"It is definitely the view of humanity from a non-human point of view, so that our perceived virtues are not necessarily virtues when they're perceived from the outside," Quinn explained. "The food race is a good example, the race between growing more food and birthing more people. We perceive generally that this race can be won by agriculture, so we cheer when we hear that agriculture has made some advance to support a growing population ¬ whereas in fact the race is unwinnable. It's like the arms race of the '70s and the '80s. ... There's no winning of the arms race. There's no winning of the food race either."

I would add an amendment to Quinn's dictum:The food race is a race that humanity cannot afford to win. The capability of continuing to expand the food supply to meet a growing human population which in turn would demand more food would be as calamitous as the discovery of a cheap energy source that could fuel all of consumption needs and wants. We are in desperate need of limiting factors, and nothing is more limiting than hitting a brick wall called “Imminent Mass Starvation”. The lack of food is the only effective contraceptive on the market today. We talk of voluntary family planning, or a One-Child Per-Family law miraculously applied world-wide, but the fact is, this is like betting your life’s savings on a lottery ticket. We have run out of time and haven’t the luxury of wishing on a star that a vast grassroots constituency for population reduction will emerge and rise up to impose their will on governments. The politically incorrect fact is that the balance of birth and death must be restored by working on both sides of the equation by being aggressively pro-active in preventing life and passively determined not to extend it at all costs.

So Mr. Brown, it is not too late to get out of your box. You must consider the possibility that civilization is not "sustainable", and that your quest to find a way to feed 9 billion people is a fool's errand. We cannot sustainably feed 9 billion, or 0.9 billion people for that matter---and trying to do that will only degrade our environment to a point where the prospects for species survival are even further diminished. You must come to realize that it is a matter of historical record that, like other species, left to our own devices the number of humans will expand to meet a higher level of food supply. Calling that realization immoral or callous is like railing against the Law of Gravity. A cap on food supply will be applied whether we like it or not. If it is done by nature, billions more people will suffer starvation down the road than will perish now if we reflexively resort to food relief without strings attached, that is, the implementation of an effective birth control regime. I suspect that even that condition will not suffice to bring population levels down quickly enough. As Peter Goodchild observed, lower birth rates must combine with higher death rates to avoid full catastrophe. The question may be, which is more valuable, our Judeo-Christian sensibilities---or the continuity of our species itself? So far the answer has been "Virtuous and extinct".

Tim Murray
September 5, 2010

Madeline Weld wrote,

"The population was 60 M when I was there in the 1960s (my dad was a diplomat), 180 M now and headed for 335 M by 2050. Two-thirds of the country is less than 30 years old, fewer than 30 million of 70 million kids between 5 and 19 in school, and a female illiteracy rate of 60% (male 32%), desired family size 4.1, 22% of married women use birth control and only half of the non-users would like to use it in the future."

Would you give money to a drunken panhandler or a drug addict? Would you continue to feed a man who has sired 6 kids despite having no means to support them? Is open-ended charity a virtue---or a vice?

If your object is to actually solve the problem of poverty, then you must focus on the consequences of your charity. But if your object is to perpetuate and worsen the problem and inflict misery and hunger upon the next generation in even greater proportions, then by all means, wear a blindfold and keep on giving. Keep giving to Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Phillipines, Haiti and Central Africa. Follow Sir Bob Geldoff's example and feed a young generation of potential people-breeders in the mid 1980s and then see Ethiopia double its population in 25 years with three times as many people stalked by hunger now as then. After all, this is really about White Guilt and salving a Christian conscience, isn't it? It is not about addressing root causes but feeling good about yourself. If you may not get a knighthood out of it, but maybe you'll collect enough brownie points with the Big Guy in the Sky. That way, you can sit back into your 4 bedroom home with its two car garage and feel that you have paid your dues. Congratulations, you are a Good Person. You are off the hook.

Moral of the story? I can live a middle class lifestyle with all of its entitlements- the two kids, the Mexican vacations, the cottage in the country--as long as I have paid my indulgence and been granted dispensation for my charitable donations and cosmetic green living habits, habits that don't represent any real sacrifice or challenge to my middle class station. Lenin said it more than a century ago. Philanthropy is just a cheap ticket to heavenly bliss for the bourgeoisie, a class that will never threaten to undermine its privilege with fundamental structural change to society. Bill Gates has challenged the world's billioniares to match his ambition and donate half their wealth to charity. A bold and magnaminous gesture to be sure. Now, let's see him challenge billionaires to give up the system of economic growth that allowed them to generate that wealth at the cost of our life support system and the well-being of so many who cling to it. Don't hold your breath. Charity is a small premium to pay to keep us in the cockpit. So let's keep our guilt-trip alive. Ready? Now repeat after me:

" We're white and we're guilty. We're the irresponsible consumers on a oil-fueled binge who have imposed climate change on the hapless billions who must survive on $2 a day.We're the junior partners of global corporations who have fattened our portfolios with the dividends and profits made from their despoilation of the developing world. One quarter of the world's natural capital has been liquidated with little recompense to those who live at the scene of the crime. Most of the wealth has flowed north. Yep, we're guilty as hell." Alternatively, "Here in Canada, where charity is bred in our bone, we must set those optics aside, give as best we can, and therefore provide the Taliban and al-Qaida no room to take credit."

But throwing money at the symptoms of overpopulation---mass starvation and displacement---will not cure it but promote it. And neither will opening our borders to what can only be a fraction of those affected. There is not a shortage of food, water and housing but as Garrett Hardin would say, a longage of people. Few ever ask, "Why have so many people chosen to live on a flood plain?" And even fewer people ask, "Why is there no room to live elsewhere?". If making foreign aid conditional on family planning is playing God, is not growing misery by unconditional aid not also playing God---but on a much more grandiose and egregious scale?

Overpopulation is one problem that where, ultimately, the ball is their court as well as ours. There is enough guilt and irresponisbility to go around, and it is high time that those who are breeding themselves into an even deeper hole shared a slice of it. Habitat destruction, deforestation, poaching, pollution from cook-stoves and the reckless fecundity that drives much of it--- is not all down to us and our corporate proxies. In its quest for a subsistence, humanity's bottom billion has accounted for much environmental damage, even enough perhaps to offset our sins of emission. If they are to free themselves of this vicious downward cycle, it is imperative that they take charge of their numbers----and it is imperative that they not be encouraged to avoid doing so.

As they say in the Self-Help business, to be helped, you must first be willing to help yourself. Birth control begins at home. Need help in that? Then my wallet's open.

Tim Murray

One of our CanDoBetter commenters, 'RichB', has highlighted the site Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. This is a visionary site! The movement seems to have gone to some considered endeavour to explore the issues. I like the question toward the bottom of the site:

'What will the world be like when our population starts getting smaller?'

As more globally-aware people begin to question the 20th Century 'growth-only' tenet, alternative ideals such a 'Low Population Planet', deserve to be considered and debated. But where to start?

One practical moral campaign that would immediately start curbing the out-of-control human birth explosion would be to lobby against the funding requests of charities supporting countries that have high birth rates. Now before readers jump to questionning the morality of this, this is not to stop funding emergency life support needs, but to make non-life-support funding conditional on recipient self-change.

These are some dominant charities in this field.

* UNICEF

* World Vision
* Feed the Children

* Save the Children

* Food4Africa

While it would be callous to allow people to die from hunger and malnutrition, the charity donation system seems to only perpetuate welfare subsistence and not address overpopulation poverty in undeveloped countries. For time immemorial, the starving of Africa and India have been dumped on our television screens to make us feel guilty.

Why has the problem not been resolved since television was invented and before?
The starving message has become a cliché to the point that it has become a permanent human condition. This is unacceptable. The charity system needs overhaul.

Charities need to be held accountable for fixing the problem not perpetuating it.
Donations need to be channelled through independent organisations that require conditional offerings. Donations can end up anywhere and do, like in arms purchases. The charity donations must stop and be replaced with:

1. Physical shipments of emergency food, shelter and medical supplies

2. Conditional relief funding linked to population control measures - family planning and birth control measures should be advocated - female education, contraception, changing cultural traditions of excess children (more than 2), and UNHCR funded free and professional male vasectomies. Perhaps even a free dwelling could be offered to male heads of families that undertake vasectomy and have only two children. Think of this as an incentive in impoverished countries!

On issues of fundamental cultural change, financial carrots seem more effective and ethical than punitive sticks.

Until then those donating should boycott charities until donations are conditional on and accountable for birth control.

As for wealthy developed nations with high birth rates, they have the financial means to address their own population excesses. Any country over 3% annual growth rate is irresponsible and so a target priority.

According to Nation Master website, the top 20 highest ranked developed countries by population growth rate are:

We should refer to them as the G20 - 'The Greedy 20'.

Rank Country Growth Rate (2008)
1 Maldives: 5.566%
2 United Arab Emirates: 3.833%
69 Saudi Arabia: 1.954%
81 Malaysia: 1.742%
82 Israel: 1.713%
107 Bahrain: 1.337%
114 Australia: 1.221%
116 Luxembourg: 1.188%
124 Ireland: 1.133%
131 New Zealand: 0.971%
137 United States: 0.883%
139 Canada: 0.83%
140 South Africa: 0.828%
144 Iceland: 0.783%
151 Liechtenstein: 0.713%
153 Thailand: 0.64%
154 China: 0.629%
156 France: 0.574%
160 Hong Kong: 0.532%
165 Netherlands: 0.436%

These wealthy countries extravagantly impose a selfish disproportionate burden on the planet's capacity. They have wealth capacity and as global citizens and members of the UN, have an obligation to pay a Greedy Population Levy to fund underdeveloped countries in controlling their excess population growth. The wealthy with an excess problem need to be supporting the poor with am excess problem, because the poor do not have the means to do it themselves. Let's make it means tested and charge say 0.01% of each countries GDP.

As for those poor displaced peoples caused by civil unrest and arms conflict, why does not the UN with the support of developed nations impose a 10% levy on each item of weaponry sold globally, so that the revenue is channelled to allow the UNHCR manage humanitarian and peace-keeping operations for the civilians affected?

International arms sales is the world's largest and richest discretionary industry. It can easily afford such a levy.

A case in point is the plight of millions of Yemeni refugees having fled civil conflict and currently starving in al-Mazraq camp, Yemen:

'Millions of Yemenis starving as donors fail to meet pledges, says UN'

• £70m needed this year and next to feed poor and hungry
• Traditional donors, including Britain, have yet to offer aid

Animal advocate Suzanne Cass claims that RSPCA Tasmania has lost the plot.

‘When I became involved with the RSPCA Board after the last AGM, we made a number of promises, including that we would cut the costs of an expensive bureaucracy, and differentiate from that model followed in other states and territories, and that we would spend any available funds on Tasmanian animals and their welfare’, Ms Cass said. ‘We also promised that it would no longer be a ‘secret society’, yet this Board has re-introduced confidentiality agreements’.

Top-heavy, unnecessarily secretive, and expensive with little improvement in animals' lives

‘Far from carrying out these promises, it is my understanding that the Tasmanian branch, through the current Board, has advertised no less than five administration positions, in addition to the two long-standing staff, making seven in total.

Moreover, the Society has been, or is, paying, the CEO of the ACT branch, Michael Linke, thousands of dollars to run the Society while the newly appointed CEO is on very extended sick leave and will be for a lengthy period. This Board has spent far, far more on administration than the previous Board, and that was the main reason for it being deposed. I have seen little or no real improvements in the lives of the animals.

Promises of additional funding for the Inspectorate and for Prosecutions have gone absolutely nowhere; in fact, two Inspectors have quit’.

Ms Cass is especially concerned about the Linke appointment, which she feels was done with no proper process, and she is unsure of his suitability to run the Tasmanian society. Mr Linke supported large scale kangaroo culls in the ACT, and when community outrage saw donations fall away, the ACT branch was promised a $100,000 donation from the Stanhope government if it was re-elected.

‘I am especially concerned about Mr Linke having influence on the Tasmanian inspectorate’, Ms Cass continued.

‘In the year 2008-2009, RSPCA national statistics indicate that of 912 complaints in the ACT, there were just 6 prosecutions and just one conviction. According to those statistics, the ACT inspectorate carried out no ‘routine inspections’ of intensive farms or indeed anything else we would have expected’.

‘The current administration of the RSPCA is looking like heading for disaster when this board will be held to account for all the broken promises by its members and supporters at the Annual General Meeting, only a couple of months away. I am terribly sad for those few board members who really did have the welfare of Tasmanian animals as their first priority, but now the administration seems wholly ego-driven and clearly out of control.

'The animals are being used as nothing more than a vehicle for bringing back the bureaucratic model and secret society mentality’, Ms Cass concluded.

Source: Newsflash,
26.07.2010

For further information, please contact Suzanne Cass 0420 988221
PO Box 252 Email: [email protected]
BRIDGEWATER TAS 7030 www.stoptac,org
Phone 0420 988 221