Showing posts with label Socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Socialism. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Progress, Reality and Cynicism: Lessons We Learned From Millennium Development Goals

by Nomad

Back in 2000, the UN brought world leaders together to draw up a plan to make the world a better place. This year, fifteen years later, that effort was analyzed and the results might surprise you.


When the Paris Climate Change Summit came to its conclusion recently, it was easy to be a little skeptical about the level of commitment of the nations that pledged to address climate change. 
Preventing global destruction is not going to be a piece of cake.  
In fact, it will require nothing less than a re-tooling of the world's economy and the energy industry. 
Who knows if it is possible given the time constraints? It's easy to be cynical and defeatist when it comes to tackling such a huge problem. 

Critics claim this is all merely window-dressing. Just a bunch of timid self-serving bureaucrats making useless paperwork that's not even legally binding. There's no way, critics say, to confront and punish violators. 

Of course, this view automatically assumes that global progress can only be achieved by force, by a threat of punishment or by intimidation. 
But, to turn the tables on those critics, where is the evidence that that has ever worked? Simply because something is difficult shouldn't mean we ignore our responsibility. 

President John Kennedy, during one of the darkest periods of the Cold War, once warned about allowing hopelessness and defeatist to overwhelm us. (In this case, world peace.)

Thinking something is impossible makes it that much harder to address in a rational manner. In 1963, he told the graduating class at the American University that we must stop thinking war is inevitable. Mankind is not doomed, and we must not yield to the idea that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. 
"We need not accept that view. Our problems are man-made — therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants.
No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable — and we believe they can do it again."
Even though the dream of world peace has not implemented universally even today, Kennedy's hard-nosed optimism is not wrong. Peace, he once said, is not a warm and fuzzy dream. It is a process. We make things harder by thinking that overnight we can solve all of the problems in the world, just by wishing and praying. 
While that may be a proper point to begin, just wishing for a better world isn't going to be enough.
It calls for a practical approach.

One of the problems is defining what it means when we say "a better world." What does that mean? Much better for a limited few, or slightly better for the majority?
In 2000, the UN General Assembly drafters of the Millennium Declaration had their specific notions and were determined to see progress in fifteen years. In that declaration, the representatives of all of the member nations recognized that:
"...in addition to our separate responsibilities to our individual societies, we have a collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level. As leaders we have a duty therefore to all the world’s people, especially the most vulnerable and, in particular, the children of the world, to whom the future belongs."

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Short Changed: Why Americans Are No Longer The Tallest People in the World

by Nomad

A study reveals that the height of Americans on average is being outpaced by other countries for the first time in its history. The reasons are surprising.

Precise measurements of the living standards of any country can be a tricky business. In the past, economists have relied on a variety of tools to chart a nation's development or decline. 

One method that has found a lot of support in the last few decades might seem a little unorthodox. By its medical name, it is known as auxology, the study of growth.
By merging two seemingly unrelated fields, the study of medicine and the study of the economy, researchers began making some interesting discoveries. They found that the average height of a citizen can say much about the overall living conditions inside a nation. The analysis can be applied to the bones of ancient Romans or to the records from modern nations. 
And working on that basis, what they found when they looked at the US was intriguing but a little disturbing.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012