The Economic and Ecological Collapse We Helped to Create on Valentine’s Day.
Colette O'Neill
Any financial system that is based on debt is doomed to failure.
A good analogy is to look at one’s own household.
Do you consume more than you produce?
Keep borrowing and eventually the crunch will come…payback time, with nothing in reserve to pay what’s owed.
Many people refer to this as, living beyond one’s means.
If this is what you are doing, then it’s time to take control of your own micro economy.
Leave your government to continue paying bankers grossly inflated sums of money and try to re-calibrate your own finances.
I was enjoying a long conversation with my mother on Monday.
Growing up through WW2 was the greatest lesson in personal finance for her. (This is her, aged 80, at Bealtaine Cottage).
If one did not have money, one could not buy goods or services.
That proved to be enormously enabling for that generation…one of the healthiest and most empowered ever known in the modern world.
Mum still has all her own teeth…sugar was rationed!
She has never been over-weight, birthed 11 children and did not own a washing machine until I bought her one. (My elder brothers never quite got their heads around why she would need one!)
Mum has always lived within her means and helped all of her children as well.
If Mum ran the economy, the bankers would be paid according to their productivity…and politicians also!
Today is Valentine’s Day.
Many people of limited means have bought flowers for their loved one…flowers grown in Kenya in Africa by using water from Lake Naivasha.
The water levels have dropped.
This has had a devastating effect on plant, marine and animal life.
Hippo numbers have fallen by more than 25%.
The lake is now quite polluted with pesticide drain off.
University of Leicester environmentalist David Harper told the March 28, 2006, British Times: “Almost everybody in Europe who has eaten Kenyan beans or Kenyan strawberries, and gazed at Kenyan roses, has bought Naivasha water.
“It will become a turgid, smelly pond with impoverished communities eking out a living along bare shores … As the lake becomes smaller and shallower it will become warmer, fueling the growth of microscopic algae.
“It is only a matter of time before the lake becomes toxic.”
The Food and Water Watch report said: “The pesticides applied on the farms and in the greenhouses eventually end up in Lake Naivasha and in the groundwater, endangering the area’s people and wildlife … http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/49188
Kenya is the largest supplier of cut flowers to Europe, providing more than a quarter of imports.
These are mostly roses, and a third of annual production is for Valentine’s Day.
For less than the cost of a cheap bunch of flowers, you can buy a fruit tree and plant it for the one you love.
Each tree planted will provide oxygen for two people for the rest of their lives.
