As we all
know, the rain forests of Indonesia are burning. Corporations
are laying waste to its jungle and they invite the peasant to do the same.[i] The
common people of Indonesia find themselves trapped. They’ve been convinced the
jungle is a blockage on the path toward wealth. They’ve been convinced by
necessity that thousands of acres of oil palm, sugar cane, rubber and cattle is
the way to money and the way to self-determination.
It’s no surprise. Indonesians endured
hundreds of years of colonial abuse – Europe’s wealth was built on it. Today
they, like us, want a good life. She and he want to have a daughter at college,
a house with a fan, drinking water on tap – simple little things we in the West
often don’t even think of.
I understand their position, the need to
look after their own at whatever cost, but I can’t accept it. We can’t allow
the Indonesian rainforest to disappear, along with its unique and boundless
wildlife.
We as the people of the West have some responsibility.
It took us 500 years to destroy 99% of the once-great forest that was Europe. We
leapt over the great pond and whacked 95% of North America’s one billion acres
of towering primeval forests by 1998.[ii]
Science brought the message that we were committing suicide
and we cried ‘forgive us, we didn’t know.’ For a while. But nothing changed and
consumerism including the sweatshops that imprison much of the Indonesian
people to provide us with cheap clothing continued.
In our apathy we decided and have decided that this life of greed
is grand, and that the sacrifice of forests far away, which unsophisticated
people cut for less than a dollar a day, is worth it. We ridiculously told
ourselves that the atmospheres are different, that our air is ours and South
East Asia’s is not. We instructed the giant corporations to do what they must
to feed our appetite, all the while thinking ‘my smart grandchildren will fix
things, anyway.’
And now we sit in a pickle. The lungs of our earth are
disappearing. What solution? A petition rises in my mind:
We the ordinary people of the West go
down on bended knees and apologise for what we have done to you. We beg of you
to stop the burning, the chopping, the destruction to manufacture
unnecessaries, to stop planting stuff we don’t need (and waste anyway) and stop
the digging and sifting for oil.
In return we promise that we will
immediately make sure the IOI and Nike-like companies of the world start paying
a fair price for what you produce for us, and we promise to pay every one of
your citizens a monthly cash amount that will at the very least be enough to
allow something of a life for them and their families.How much
do you need? Does Indonesian Rupiah 6,500,000 (US$480) per month sound okay?[iii] All we ask in return is that you look after the jungle as you do your own
children.
We appreciate it will not be an easy
task to ban the corporates and business units that are in themselves more
powerful than your own government but we, the overwhelmingly concerned public
of our one world, will help. If they break the rules we’ll boycott them, their
products, their executives and their families, just as we have successfully
boycotted public enemies in the past.
We’ll do all of that because we know
the jungles of the world are our unpaid, previously unappreciated oxygen
factories. We need them to stay alive, never mind live.
An idealistic picture, but it’s not farfetched. American and European agriculture exists only because of
the exceedingly generous government subsidies paid to their farmers.[iv]
Since WWI the Americans have been subsidising farmers both to produce and not
to produce depending on where the political parties and economists wanted the
price of farm goods to be. The same applied at the formation of the EU.
Just as some in the world –
South Africa, China, Germany and even the USA (to name a few)[v]
- have woken up to managing their game parks for our endangered animals, why
can’t our rain forests be afforded the same protection? We know now that to
prevent human extinction from reaching a point of no return within the next 300
years we need to plant 10 billion acres with 200 trees per acre, at minimum within
30 years.[vi]
The world's on fire and something
needs to be done, something new. And of course, it isn’t just Indonesia that we
need desperately to put on our payroll.
[i]
http://m.greenpeace.org/international/en/high/press/releases/Palm-oil-giants-fuelling-forest-fires-in-Borneo/
[iii] http://knoema.com/WBPS2015Jan/poverty-and-inequality-statistics-january-2015?country=1000680-indonesia
[iv] The American farmer has
been subsidised circa WWI. It has become such an incredible source of money for
nothing for the already rich-few of farmers, insurance companies and other
support services. When Obama suggested trimming wastage they found they were
‘no match for the farm and insurance lobbies, which spent at least $52 million
influencing lawmakers in the 2012 election cycle’ not just to keep the same, but add money-for-jam and now (at the
time of writing) ‘Congress is poised to funnel billions of dollars more …’ $52
million was spent buying votes.
That’s South African R 680,388,800.00. A few months ago it was disclosed that
between 2007 and 2013 €11.7 billion has been distributed to Irish farmers under
the Common Agricultural Policy. The big picture is more extravagant: European
farmers are given €50bn every year as subsidies; some is given not to farm,
thus – correctly - supporting prices and cutting wastage[iv],
and some is awarded to (dangerously) farm marginal areas more. The common
linkage is ‘the more you own (in the case of British royalty, stole) the more
you receive.’
[v] The debate is on right
now about turning over American parks t business. Here’s one reference …
indefinitelywild.gizmodo.com/national-park-vs-national-forest-your-pub...
