Are you ready to give it all away?
Christianity It seems as long as we’re sin-conscious enough, we can identify ourselves as Christians. A […]
Solar Chimney in Australia – Very cool.
Alternative Energy Blog – Alternate-Energy.org: Site Agreed for Australian Solar Tower, Plans for Solar Tower in […]
How to lift the world out of poverty
Grameen-Banking for the poor These good people are doing it.
Join the Kos…
Daily Kos is calling for bloggers to join their no vote stand on Gonzales. I certainly […]
Insecurity
MaxSpeak, You Listen!: INVEST THIS Quotable is Barkley Rosser, Professor of Economics at James Madison University, […]
Wearing black for a few days
In honor of the dark times for democracy…
A Bloody Mess
American Prospect Online – ViewWeb A Bloody Mess From our February 2005 issue: How has Britain’s […]
Great post at Worldchanging on how we can improve disaster relief
What if relief and reconstruction efforts aimed not just to save, but to improve the lives of the victims of this week's disaster? This might not seem like the time to look ahead. The situation all around the Indian Ocean is grim: the bulldozers are digging mass-graves for as many as 100,000 bodies; at least a million people are homeless, hungry and utterly destitute; clean water and sanitation facilities don't exist; disease is beginning to break out; and relief is still far off for too, too many people. This is a full-blown global crisis. But this is exactly the right time for foresight. For one thing, history shows that the world tends to lose interest in disasters in developing world once people stop dying in large numbers. If we don't think now about our commitment to helping these communities recover and rebuild after the immediate crisis has passed, we never will. And the ruined cities and villages lining the shores of the Indian Ocean are now home to some of the poorest of the world's poor. In many places, traumatized people, who had very little with which to earn their livelihoods to begin with, now have nothing left at all. Add to this the long-term challenges they face -- like decimated local economies, massive pollution (and some new industrial accidents), declining fisheries and forests, lack of capital and, perhaps most ominously, the rising seas and catastrophic storms they can expect from global warming -- and their fate may not be an enviable one. But that fate is not written in stone. We can still change it. What if didn't just do something to help, but did the right things, and did them fully? What if we looked at this relief and reconstruction effort as a chance to not only save lives (and of course that must come first) but to truly rebuild coastal Southeast Asia along more sustainably prosperous lines? What if we made the commitment to take what are now some of the most ravaged, destitute areas on Earth, and worked with the people there to reimagine and rebuild their communities to be the cutting edge of sustainable development?
Earthquake and Tsunami
There’s so much destruction from the massive earthquake and tsunami in Southeast ASia, it’s pretty overwhelming, […]
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Iraq Coalition Casualties Shit.