Editor;
At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day in countries where income level and urban-rural gap discrepancies are ever-widening. According to UNICEF, each year 22,000 children die due to poverty and malnutrition – 1 in 3 youthful survivors are without adequate shelter; 1 in 5 have no access to sanitation and safe drinking water; and 1 in 7 lack reasonable availability to health services. Nearly a billion people are unable to read books or sign their names.
In our interconnected, rapidly shrinking wwworld, we must learn to love other people’s children as our very own. Changing cosmic priorities demand compassionate non-judgmental perspectives which respect tolerant multiversity, say “No” to greed, fraud, political corruption and uncivil wrongs, and prize cooperation over competition. Easy solutions seldom are, but we must re-think alternative options and re-learn all-too-hasty quick fixes to complex confrontations depending on use of bullyrag imposed force.
With global military expenditures exceeding $1 trillion dollars annually, reducing such spending in poor developing countries as well as overdeveloped rich ones can and must be a central component of the battle to eradicate extreme poverty, alleviate hunger, improve educational opportunities and enhance child survival.
Renewable energy is essential to modern society – slashing high carbon emissions from dirty fossil fuels, reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, switching to cleaner renewable energy sources like solar and water and making each of us more self sufficient while simultaneously creating millions of new jobs.
The fresh water crisis, sanitation and conservation represent the planet’s major environmental problems, roiled by fierce water shortages, access wars, fecal contamination, industrial pollution and outmoded infrastructure that too often fails. The threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, the overreach of industrialization and the destruction of valuable natural eco-environmental resources are other shared concerns to be mutually addressed.
The rich superpowers must stop denying the lonely planet’s poorest and most vulnerable inhabitants their legitimate fair and equal just rights to brighter prospects for future generations, seeking to ensure human security that reaches beyond military might.
Dr. Charles Frederickson
Bangkok
