Post by papiliotheona on Jun 20, 2021 15:40:07 GMT -8
it wasn't white Westerners clear-cutting the rainforests in tropical countries for oil palm plantations, cattle fields, or the international lumber market.
To be transparent and open on all issues, the oil plantations, cattle fields, and lumber exist largely to provide for "white men"- Americans, Europeans, and European-descent foreign markets in other countries. That has changed, but only recently, to include the Chinese, some rich Africans and rich Asians.
The foreign leadership and even the villagers are only responding to a market economy- a Western market economy. Trade trees for outboards. We do the same in USA.
Scientific papers that jump on the trendy PC bandwagon serve two purposes: first, to gain clout amongst a strong, and growing stronger, group. Second, and related, to ensure the author recognition and revenue. So he can buy lumber and an outboard too. And, in being PC, oft-antisocial scientists gain friends. In fact, I'm surprised we don't see more papers like these from Coleopterists
The biggest problem is that the environmental (mis)management, like almost everything else, is a racket. A revenue racket. The US president can put the brakes on drugs, pollution, and ecological destruction in Brazil by lifting the phone and calling INDOPACOM. Or, a bit slower, he could leverage trade to do the same thing. But nothing happens. Status quo wins.
Truly, the smart person jumps on the bandwagon. You've got 80 years here, might as well enjoy it. It's our descendants that will suffer, but oh well.
Chuck
Chuck,
I think the Asian and specifically Chinese market eats up a whole lot more share of burgeoning demand than the "white" West, and our all-benevolent PC overlords have deemed that any criticism of China, and the PRC/CCP regime in particular, is racism that will get you canceled or un-personed (it's funny that criticism of Taiwan is never "racist", but I digress).
Blaming Western markets for dysfunction and sometimes outright evil in the developing world gets to be a copout after a while. If there was no market at all for lumber would Brazilians be paragons of the Amazon? Would Indonesians prioritize the orangutan if there was no need for palm oil--or, would they continue to rape their rainforest for other reasons?
We always hear how American appetite for drugs and cheap services is why Mexico is such a violent, awful place. I don't recall Americans being a thing when the Aztecs were ripping out each other's hearts and piling up mountains of their human sacrifice victims. Drug trafficking or not, drug legalization or not--Mexico has a whole lot of deep, fundamental issues that our internal demands and needs won't touch. Or, do we really, magically believe that completely sanctioned and permitted cartels that could openly sell any kinds of drugs they wanted on American shelves* would suddenly become nice, tolerant people?
The same goes for Russia--would the world's biggest country, singlehandedly taking up half of the massive continent of Asia and possessing the greatest share of its oil, natural gas, and nuclear weapons be a bastion of democracy and a free market if the West wasn't so enslaved to its fossil fuels? Russia and the other great Asian powers have had a culture of emperor-worship and totalitarian authority going back for millennia. Japan and South Korea aren't extreme dictatorships today only because of the U.S. victory and occupation.
People have free will. Everyone knows right and wrong, everyone can decide how they want their culture to be like for better or for worse. I'm not saying you, personally are saying this--but to me it insults the humanity of indigenous people/people from the third world when we say they are powerless in the face of choices of Western powers.
*I'm not at all saying the war on drugs is right, or has worked. I'm saying that Mexico's problem with (narco-) warlords and savage lawlessness goes way beyond drugs and our craving for them.