Dear Aime,

I admire your big heart and passion, i really do. It seems to me despite what you say- quote"" Well, I'm not much good at this type of thing but I'll give it a shot.""On the contrary your doing a great job making people think and maybe feel a bit guilty.

I am with hasbeen Yabby &Bazz however- . Who was that Australian PM that was very popular until he said we shouldnt interfere with nature referring to aid for Indonesia back around i think the 1940s? Does anybody remember.Seems to me he was pretty dam right.

Amie, even if we started all over again- took food 80% wouldnt reach them. & if it did we would have even more next time. If you want to lobby for birth control plenty would *support it.+ We shouldnt give them anything until they agree religion or not. You must also consider animals were not meant to be used as pawns as they are anywhere on earth even in Africa.

...Sadly, I must depart the thread for a few days. The responses have been interesting but by no means surprising. If a fix was possible, this event would not reoccur on such a regular basis.

...My real question is, how do we view the inevitable suffering and death dispassionately? It is not human to do so. Sorry, but to me this is a haunting event that I cannot see past.

...It is always painful to watch, and I have often thought of the similarities between us and the early settlers that bore witness to the mass extinction of the Australian native under the circumstances of disease. What can we do?

It is very sad Diver Dan, but I have decided what I will do.
When the Red Cross or whoever calls at the door for a donation I will refuse and tell them why.
I believe we are being cruel by extending their starvation and then
repeating it again and again.

They have large families so that there are children to support them
in their old age.
We do not use children for that purpose, we have a pension scheme.
However you have to build your economy first, but you must not keep
trying in a desert.

Aime,

You seem to have bought the argument that there are plenty of resources to go around, if only they were distributed more fairly. This might have been true in the 1930s or even the 1950s. However, it would now take the resources of three Earths to give everyone in even the existing global population a modest Western European standard of living. See this graph from New Scientist

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2624/26243101.jpg

According to the tables in the Global Footprint Network 2010 Atlas, the top billion in the richest countries are responsible for about 38% of total consumption. It is easy to see that the average global citizen would still be poor, even if all the resources were shared equally. Additionally, any benefit would be strictly temporary, because the global population is continuing to grow at about 80 million a year.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/ecological_footprint_atlas_2010

Divergence, for a moment there I was trying to be compassionate and yes, as for resources, I was clutching at straws as far as equal distribution goes for in reality I'm only two aware that we, as human beings, have a very poor distribution of assets and wealth and the divide between rich and poor is getting worse by the day.

Consumer Nations are rapidly stripping our once beautiful world of resources that took billions of years for the earth to accumulate and you're quite right Divergence, there is no longer enough to go around. So despite the good intentions of the original author of this post, there is no way the rich, or even the lesser people of the developed world will give up what they have just so as a few million starving Africans can break free of the bonds of eternal woe.

I feel as helpless as anyone else, but I think we must also face the reality that there will never be enough for all and as the world's population rapidly races into overshoot, we should stop and reflect on the fact that we too might soon end up just like those starving people of Africa.

Aime

Truer words never said & thats where Australia is headed sadly

Take care your a very nice young lad