"The field of the poor may yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice."
The poor of the world are the most vulnerable, especially when something goes wrong with the environment. We are using up this planet, and the poor are usually the first to feel the consequences. Resources are depleting, our forests are disappearing, whales are dying because of all the man-made noise from things like oil-prospecting airguns, not to mention there is a huge hole in our ozone layer. If every country were to live like North Americans we would need another planet.
However, other countries are falling into this mix of high consumption. China's own foreign policy is driven by it's search and need for resources. This does not mean the poor aren't contributing to the harm of the environment either. Of course, people in desperate situations who are living merely by survival will do their fair share of harm to environment. If there are mouths of starving children to feed, the poor will deplete the soil of its nutrients through overfarming, or kill marine environment through overfishing, and so forth. Still, they are the ones that suffer the most.
Read a bit on "The Land of Garbage in the Philippines" on a blog about global health disparities. Written by a recent BYU global studies student, now graduated.
Demand on natural resouces will continue to increase. As population increases, and prosperity rises in these wealthy nations and emerging economies, the Earth's finite resources will be stressed out. The consumption of these resources will be difficult to sustain worldwide.
Does this concern you at all?
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