Sunday, September 21, 2008


my parents said they do read my blog - horror of horrors. this also shows you the intelligence (or lack thereof) of putting your blog address in your msn personal message 24/7, and having your mother as a contact.

but since they do read my blog, perhaps it's time i said something, to them.

if you're an environmentalist, humanitarian or just anybody with a heart and a bit of common sense, i should think you would agree with what i'm saying.

the thing is that i don't believe i have to say this to my parents.




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i don't really understand why we need to waste resources the way we're doing now.

one clear example is the amount of food we buy.

to me, i don't really see the point in buying 5 packs of rice for 4 people (which we can barely finish), a large bowl of soup (which, on a really taxing, no-lunch day, we might just be able to finish) and to top it off, adding some dessert or other food, which invariably has to be chucked into the fridge.

oh, and about the fridge. some of the food in the fridge have been around for weeks. months, even. and what do we do at the end of it? throw half of it away, having eaten half of it when we actually realised that we should not waste it a few weeks ago.

that doesn't come around too often, by the way. our microwave and toaster seem to be terribly underused.

i don't understand why our fridge has to be filled to the brim 90% of the time, the other 10% being the transitive time between meals and shopping trips. isn't it much better to have a spacious fridge where we can actually see the back of the drawers and can rummage around freely without any fear of knocking over or spilling something with just a slight twitch?

fine, maybe we'll not focus on the fridge anymore.

back to the meal then. we actually didn't include the fruits which you so often advise us to have in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

how much of those do you think we can have without (trying to) dump some dinner into our 2 packed fridges?

more than a few things irk me about this whole issue.

for one, we waste hundreds of dollars every year buying all these unnecessary items - not including things such as clothes, household items which we buy regularly, but use rarely.

it's especially bad when it comes to food.

imagine how many hungry children around the world you could have fed if you had donated the money to charity, or better yet, donated the actual food items to these causes.

it also doesn't help that i'm the one who, most of the time, plays "hungry scavenger" on weekends in order to not waste the food which may seem to us like nothing more than a daily necessity, but yet, to the millions of famished across africa and parts of latin america and asia, is a gift from heaven.

if i didn't do all this, we might as well have donated our rubbish bins to these poor people.

"that's fine." you might say.

but NO. our rubbish bins do not go anywhere near solving famine.

instead, they go to incinerators and landfills, taking up vital energy and resources to dispose of things which really could have been put to better use somewhere else, putting ever more strain on the frail back of mother nature.

the last, and perhaps the point i find most incredulous, is that you go back on your word, time and time again.

you tell me and my brother not to waste money, because "we don't know how hard it is to earn it" and "there's no point buying things we don't need", among many others.

we accept that. so we don't spend excessively, unless it's absolutely necessary, or on rare occasions which call for such celebrations.

but let's put these words in a different light.

granted, "we don't know how hard it is to earn it", and you do know - and i don't doubt it, having scrimped and saved and grown up from poor family backgrounds to continuously provide for us. i appreciate that, really.

but you say "there's no point buying things we don't need" - so why do you do the exact opposite of what you preach?

we don't need to consume anywhere near upwards of 3,000 calories a day, because we don't expend that much energy (leave that to top-draw athletes like michael phelps), and because other people need it more.

just look at the 80-20 principle, and you'll know what i mean.

if we could even reduce this to a modest 75-25 or even 70-30 in the next 10-20 years, think about how many people will be so much better-off.

does the 80-20 principle not demonstrate the developed world's selfishness and greed? and simply because we arguably live in the 20% who siphon 80% of the world's food for themselves - does that justify our desire for more to eat?

some people out there are nothing more than a pile of bones, for crying out loud.



yet we over here need to deal with obesity and related diseases? why?

the entire situation, and what you said, just smacks of hypocrisy.

i'm sorry if it's harsh, but there is no way, and no point, to soften the blow.

and if you thought that photo was familiar, here's why.



it almost sounds typical of what we might do. and that's the truly scary part.

perhaps after all this, the main point really is that we're wasting resources.

what the world has to offer us is limited, but yet what we want is unlimited.

the thing is that i don't really want to live in a world where we can no longer live life the way we used to - comfortably.

for once, i would like to live without the worry of an unsustainable future.

call it selfish, but perhpas being the older generation, you might not really see what is in store for the earth in the next century, and you might not really care, because you don't really need to.

but i do. and the world is, slowly, perhaps even not at all - but eventually it must.

so let it stop. even the smallest step is a step nonetheless in the right direction.





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to end off, here's a video of a speech given by a girl of only 12.

this is the kind of people the world needs more.

but you just have to wonder whether the leaders of the world present were really listening to what she said, whether the applause was mechanic and instinctive, whether the serious looks were merely facades for dismissive ones.

but still, it's a truly remarkable and impactful speech.



here's some food for thought:

this speech by Severn Suzuki was delivered in 1992.

it's been 16 years since it was heard.

but has anything really changed?

don't waste this food for thought at all costs. if not, we will pay the true costs.

I stopped to rest at 6:25 PM

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