From the BBC, a politician that ours could well advised to learn from.
Laundry is strung outside the house. The water comes from a well in a yard, overgrown with weeds. Only two police officers and Manuela, a three-legged dog, keep watch outside.
This is the residence of the president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, whose lifestyle clearly differs sharply from that of most other world leaders.
President Mujica has shunned the luxurious house that the Uruguayan state provides for its leaders and opted to stay at his wife's farmhouse, off a dirt road outside the capital, Montevideo.
The president and his wife work the land themselves, growing flowers.
"But what are we thinking? Do we want the model of development and consumption of the rich countries? I ask you now: what would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household than Germans? How much oxygen would we have left?
"Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet."
Mujica accuses most world leaders of having a "blind obsession to achieve growth with consumption, as if the contrary would mean the end of the world"."
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Whether or not climate change is caused by man, or is just a normal cycle is irrelevant. Either way, I do believe that we contribute to it. The real problem is man's overpopulation, which feeds the utter disrespect by the majority, to our environment and the world's ecology in general. The days of safaris and the unchecked hunting of Africa's game has depleted and brought them close to extinction. Those that are left are being slaughtered for food and folk medicine by the hungry and greedy respectively. The dried hair from rhino horns bringing $1,400/oz in Viet Nam.
The rain forests are being cut down. The old growth forests here in Oregon with the exception of a few protected acres have been cut and re-planted as tree farms. These forests are not the same , if and when they are replanted. Countless thousands of species do not survive in the interim and what results is a forest that is a ghost of it's former self.
The cities are expanding and all those roofs and pavements collect toxic water. This water unfiltered by the earth, then runs unchecked through the storm drains daily, by the billions of gallons and drains directly into and pollutes the oceans.
Wherever man has reached a certain critical population, he has tended to do so at great cost to the earth's, and his children's future. The days of being fruitful and multiplying are past. The earth has only so much room, and while maybe not as fragile as any one particular species that may go extinct on any given day because of man, all of the earth's biota is interconnected and interdependent.
The twenty acres I once lived on far (I thought) from the city, in Florida, are now surrounded by developments and the small two lane country road has become a six lane highway.
The problem cannot be solved simply by carbon credits, electric cars wind generators and such. The problem is that there are too many of us. I do not know what the solution is. But, if we haven't reached a critical mass yet, we soon will, and I do believe that our growth rate is unsustainable.
OK. Rant over. Now I can go back to putting the second coat of paint on my farmhouse. Actually, the second it has had in it's entire life of at least 100 years.
We do not inherit the world from our Ancestors----We borrow it from our Children. (Kenyan Proverb)
