survival

yup. still reading my hippie book.
some of the stuff's really interesting.

i mean, i know people are just out to get a dollar, but to some extent it's simply wasteful and ignorant on how they go about it.
sometimes all people need is a fresh outlook on a subject.

take cattle for instance.
people in want to find a niche and make a living.
in south america, namely brazil, people are turning to cattle ranching.
in doing this, they must burn the forests and turn the land into something my botany class called a primary landscape. meaning grasses and things that easily grow in barren landscapes, as opposed to trees and large bushes that grow in secondary landscapes.
nonetheless, they do this, and one would think that with all the mickey D's around the world that this would be a profitable venture. well. it is, but not because the it makes a lot of money selling the beef, but because it's highly subsidized by its governments. in just over a decade, starting 30 years ago, the business received over a billion dollars to compensate. it's been claimed to be the "biggest known subsidy in history for ecological destruction, unrelieved by economic gain."

i guess clearing forests only gets you about $1,000 per hectare (2.5 acres) and $3,000 anually from the cattle themselves, minus costs of weeding, feeding, and animal care. all for that tasty royale with cheese.

now. if these guys were thinking, and kept the trees or used the land for fruit and rubber plants, the annual income from that is $7,000 per hectare, AND it doesn't leave plots of land devoid of life.
but since you want your damn hamburger (and i do too), brazil ends up burning down $40 billion of forest, which is one-third of the country's foreign debt. hm. it could eventually pay itself off with a renewable resource, or i could have fast food.
...First World needs win out.

so if you're still in meat mode. you need your protein fix.
well there's another solution:
Iguana is starting to catch on in tropical locations. apparently, like everything, it tastes like chicken.
...wouldn't know...

but, for every hectare, these green bastards will produce 20 pounds of meat per year. this is compared to the larger, but more needy cow at 13 pounds of meat per hectare per year.
ontop of this, iguana don't dessimate the landscape, and within 3 years you can have your own iguana farm, and in 5 you can have them eating off your fruit trees that you've planted.
renewable sources, and you still get your steak.

it's time to start looking for new ideas before we kill off everything.
there's so much shit out there.
where we use about 20 common plant species for our subsistence, there's been an estimate of about 35,000 plant-food possiblities out there.

tropical jungles that we're raping contains so much that's unknown. the guy who wrote The Future of Life, Edward O. Wilson found on one peruvian tree in the amazon 43 species of ants. that's about as many as there are on all the British isles. ... just one tree.
and now cures for cancers, diseases, and potentials as natural pesticides are all being burned up or paved over.
i'm not too sure how they classify every species, but the books claim is that every day 54 tropical species are lost, and every year 20,000 species will never be seen again.
plants like rosy periwinkle which is now used to combat leukemia cures 4/5 patients, where the disease used to claim 4/5 lives before rosy periwinkle discovery.
there are 6 species of this periwinkle, 5 are unstudied, and one of the 5 is facing extinction due to the deforestation of Madagascar.
right now, 99% of tropical plants haven't been screened for medicinal purposes, but i guess it time that percentage can drop as the number of plants do.

so i can preach all i want, but what can i do?
i don't know. there's that shit called peace corps, but i finally met someone who as the same apprehensions for signing up as i do.
no, not cuz they'll ship you off to albania or some other hole in the wall, but because they're self-serving.
all they're out to do is to westernize the rest of the world. not necessarily better their situation using their original lifestyle.
i sat back as turi explained her own feelings on the matter. i said nothing til after she was done. finally. someone else who thinks they're full of shit.

but how else do you get out there to help?
this book lists off a few NGO's: Friends of the Earth, National Wildlife Federation, Environmental Defense Fund, World Watch Institute, Rainforest Action Network, Third World Network, and then the ones you might recognize, World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace.
but all these guys seems to only want donations or letters to the government.
...political action. i guess that's how they thrive/survive.

and damn does the world need it.
the third world gets fucked over.
they get all the poisons that are still being created, but no one else wants.
the US itself exports 200,000 - 300,000 tons of pesticides. 25% of those pesticides aren't even allowed to be used, or are strictly restricted in the US.
that's 50,000 - 75,000 tons!
it reminds me of when i was in guatemala and this older woman in our group who lives on a farm in ohio sticks her head out of the moving car to get a better whiff of the air.

"oh that's pesticide. somewhat similar to DDT. they haven't allow us to use that for 40 years."

crazy that shit we knew that was dangerous 40 years ago is still being used in guatemala.
crazier still that she could identify it by its smell.
i guess smell is the thing closest linked to memory...

anyway. not only are pesticides pushed on the Third World, but they're also being pushed to take our toxic waste.
waste disposal in the US runs $1,000/ton.
hm. let's check with Africa: $40/ton.
ok. let's ship west Africa 24 million tons in 1988 alone.
problem solved.
oh. you guys are now pissed about it?
um. you're still poor, even after the "$960 million" we gave you in 1988.
(i'm sure some of that got "lost.")
grow us more coffee.
where?
you've got more backyard without erroding toxic waste barrels. go plant!

but now the western governments are figuring out that we're kinda fucking up the world.
and in doing so, we're now trying to impose factors on the rest of the developing countries because of our mistakes.
take China and India. both developing.
both see refrigerators in every home as a sign of industrialization.
but this was right around the CFC scare, where a fat whole was found over Australia in the late 1980's.
so Western governments pushed these two developing nations to wait on this plan until a sufficient alternative was available.
at first India and China were pushed to foot their own bill, but they stood up for themselves and eventually got a fund that would help the research and also keep the patent-rights to the CFC-free technology.
wouldn't it suck after all that prodding by the West to wait only to get fucked over by having to pay for higher prices for the new technology that these two countries didn't want to wait for or invent in the first place?

says Chinese environmental commissioner, Liu Ming Pu:"CFC's are indespensable for the daily life of the masses. China needs CFC's for its economy."

but no one would really do that, would they? take advantage of poorer countries? pull profit right out from under poorer countries' noses?
oh wait. not only have they been doing that for centuries, but the US is doing it to India right now. they've put a patent on the neem seeds which has been known to have pesticidal uses for hundreds of years. and now the US wants total control of that market.

in both these cases each country is just looking to bolster their income and image as a growing nation.
in china's case, you'd think that they'd be ignorant at this time and age to not care about the causes of CFC's. but there's been other cases, like back in the 1930's where egyptian currency had images of smokestacks simply because they saw that as something to strive for in becoming an industrialized nation.
thank god they changed the egyptian pounds to pictures that better represents their culture: pyramids, temples, sphinx, etc.

so everyone wants to industrialize and be like the First World.
but the First World unfortunately find their past mistakes and needfully, but selfishly, impose corrections on everyone else.
i guess the good thing that came from it is that there are now CFC-free refrigerators.

but i guess that's the way it's always gotta be. somebody on top.
and when there's money to be made, all the shit (pesticides and toxic wastes) will run downhill.
in 1989 the world needed its 157 billionaires, 2 million millionaires.
who cares about the 100 million homeless and the 400 million malnourished.
well, i don't really even know what to say to that.
if everyone lived like we (i) did, we'd be sunk.
it's just kind of a bitch that so many people have to take the heat for some to live luxuriously.
like say, what if everyone in China and India also decided to use toilet paper.
2 billion asses to whipe.
how many forests would that whipe out?
(i couldn't figure out how to leave it on a good question to ponder, so this is all you get.)