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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (40208)	8/27/2002 9:40:16 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Oh, you'll love this one: >>Environmentalist Laments Introduction of Electricity (CNSNews.com) - "There is a lot of quality to be had in poverty," and the introduction of electricity is "destroying" the cultures of the world's poor, according to a U.S. environmentalist, who commented on the eve of the United Nations Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. But a pioneer of the environmental movement who left it because he viewed it as too radical, called the anti-electricity views an example of the "eco-imperialism" of the white upper-middle class who think it's "neat to have Africans with no electricity." Gar Smith, editor of the Earth Island Institute's online magazine The Edge, spoke about what he considers the virtues of poverty during an interview with CNSNews.com. Earth Island Institute, the San Francisco-based environmental group, once popular with millions of school children for its efforts to save Keiko, the killer whale that starred in the movie Free Willy, sent representatives to this week's Earth Summit. "The idea that people are poor doesn't mean that they are not living good lives," Smith said. Smith called the developing world's poverty "relative" and explained "you can't really have poverty unless you have wealthy people on the scene." Smith decried the introduction of electricity to the poor residents of the developing world. "I don't think a lot of electricity is a good thing. It is the fuel that powers a lot of multi-national imagery," Smith said. According to Smith, electricity can wreak havoc on cultures. "I have seen villages in Africa that had vibrant culture and great communities that were disrupted and destroyed by the introduction of electricity," he said. With the introduction of electricity, the African villagers spent too much time watching television and listening to the radio, allowing their more primitive traditional ways to fade away, according to Smith. Smith lamented that "people who used to spend their days and evenings in the streets playing music on their own instruments and sewing clothing for their neighbors on foot peddle powered sewing machines" lost their culture with the advent of electricity. "If there is going to be electricity, I would like it to be decentralized, small, solar-powered," Smith said. Smith challenged Americans to give up their own modern conveniences. "The real question is what personal conveniences and self indulgences are you willing to give up in order to stop destroying the planet?" he asked rhetorically. The U.S. is not a model for the rest of the world to follow because "the level at which Americans consume is unsustainable," according to Smith. He projected that if the rest of the world consumed at rates similar to the U.S., the environmental degradation would require "three extra planets to exploit."<< More at: cnsnews.com\Culture\archive\200208\CUL20020826b.html