Slimebeast on 14 June 2007
Crono said: tombi: I believe all he was saying is that massive starvation and spread of aids on the scale of the doomsday predictions has been taken care of, and Africa is improving (slowly but surely). Its just a matter of education and progress. |
Thanks. Exactly. You all remember Bob Geldof and Band Aid, don't you? It was in 1985 I think, and the initiative came as a reaction to the mass starvation in Ethiopia due to a disastrous crop failure in the country. Since then those catastrophies have largely been taken care of. Crops simply don't fail as often, due to many reasons. And food transportations to dry regions have improved. Yeah, but people still die of hunger you say. Yes they do, but the reason for that today is not that the rich world is too selfish, and it's not a question of money or resources like food. Today it's a problem about politics and military conflicts preventing people (mostly refugees) in specific regions from getting food for limited periods. A serious problem nevertheless, but it's not the same type of "worry" that the world saw in 1985 about over-population and not enuff food in Africa or even globally. Today we know there's plenty for everybody, it's just difficult to distribute sometimes.
And about AIDS, cheap medicines are coming into Africa as we speak. Not very fast, but still. AIDS will probably kill a few more million people, but again, it's not the same worry as in the '80s or '90s when people in the west were afraid of the disease to spread all over the world.
