Mini-Manifesto (see Issue 12) Correspondence

Harry,

I looked at your 7 Part Save the World recipe. If implemented it would be a total disaster. It has been tried - it is called communism. Do you really think people like Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe or Saddam Hussein could save the environment or the world? Under communism i.e. Soviet Union, China, East Germany, Poland you would find the world's worst man-made pollution. In about 1991 National Geographic showed a photograph of a town in Romania. Everywhere was black with soot. It is ironic that after the Berlin Wall came down, western dollars and marks (now Euros) are still being used to clean up the socialist mess. The UN (look at Rwanda, Darfur, Kosovo, the Congo etc) is useless at keeping peace or keeping the environment clean. I am with the US on this i.e. don't trust the left-wing bureaucrats and do it your own way. Environmental laws in the US are as tough as anywhere. It is difficult to bribe officials in the US, but it is rampant in areas under UN control. –Roger

Dear Roger,

Point 7 is questionable certainly in that it does appear to advance communistic ideals. Redistributing wealth could be troublesome but a global tax to safeguard the environment as managed by that global body of point #1 might do the trick. It's the extreme greed, the addiction to senseless greed which I challenge. Checks and balances will have to be looked at if bullying countries and corporations don't restrain themselves.

China is realizing in its current state of galloping growth that it will need to make changes to protect its environment - not, interestingly, because that would be good for the environment or the people but because it is necessary to sustain their economic growth/peoples' health. Same situation with other countries. Canada now finds itself being cornered by a musician who makes the point from a moralistic perspective to protect the human environment from the devastation of extreme poverty whereas Canada would have to get the point eventually anyway from the perspective of the capitalist - do the environmentally correct thing to protect the economic growth/peoples' health.

The Yanks, under Bush (busy secretly changing the wording of the clean air/global warming treaties), will likely be last to see the light, particularly from the moralist's viewpoint.