Today, over 27,000 children died around the world

[Madspirit]

http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty.asp

Around the world, 27–30,000 children die every day. That is equivalent to 1 child dying every 3 seconds, 20 children dying every minute, a 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring almost every week, or 10–11 million children dying every year. Over 50 million children died between 2000 and 2005. The silent killers are poverty, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. In spite of the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage.

Posted Sunday, May 06, 2007.

[Madspirit]

1. I Want This to Stay Up For A While...n/t

[LeftishBrit]

2. A very important and tragic issue...

If more people believed in the right to life AFTER birth, maybe some of these tragedies could be prevented.

We should all press our governments to do more, and in the meantime those who are able, might consider contributions to charities such as the Save the Children Fund:

www.savethechildren.org

[valerief]

4. I think to some people the perfect world is a super-duper, bank-breaking

mega church with a fetus in every seat.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

3. Those are sobering statistics

And this:

1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world). 640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day).

[wicket]

5. K & R

Thanks for posting this Lee.

:kick:

[Xithras]

6. My proposal: Save the kids, kill the adults.

ZPG. 30,000 children die of easily preventable diseases every day. If we save them all, we add an extra 11 million people to this already overpopulated world every year. That's an additional city larger than New York being added to the planet every single year.

I'm all for saving kids, but I've always had a hell of a time reconciling that with my human population reduction beliefs.

So, my proposal. For each kid we save, we kill one old person. That way it all balances out. Maybe Logans Run wasn't such a bad idea.

Yes, I am being deliberately difficult :)

[Madspirit]

8. Well...this old person says..

Anybody try to kill me; I try to kill them right back.

I remember ZPG...doesn't work with the nature of the beast. I suggest population control, Mars, space, rewards for LESS children, etc. Let's not stoop to killing. Why not kill the less than intelligent, the disabled, whatever. You're on a slippery slope of Not-Goodism...<g>
Lee

[Xithras]

10. I wasn't exactly being serious.

I'm not actually advocating killing old people (hell, the definition of "old" is entirely dependent on the age of the person being asked). I was just pointing out that all of these problems are related, and that one problem impacts many others.

A better solution would be the dissemination of free birth control to most of the world to prevent these kids from being born in the first place. That solves overpopulation AND child poverty in one fell swoop.

[Madspirit]

11. I knew you weren't

Or I would have responded a lot differently. Yes, birth control and then convincing people to use it.
Lee

[ieoeja]

19. What is the difference between those places where pop. grows and those were it decreases?

In those places where children are not dying, where people are not hungry, where people have access to health care ... the native population is ... shrinking.

Both Europe and the United States would have a shrinking population if not for immigration from the rest of the world. You don't need a study to prove this, but one recently did. The poorer a nation, the larger the familes.

Reproduction is a means of staving off extinction. When the threat of extinction lessens, so does the desire to reproduce. If mom & dad know their first kid is going to survive, they are less likely to have a second (and third and fourth and...).

[redqueen]

7. It's so sad that we spend money on so many meaningless and counterproductive things...

but this goes on... and on... and on.

Thanks for posting this.

[Solly Mack]

9. a kick.....a recommend

nothing actions for a problem so vast

:(

[Nederland]

12. Give women control over their own reproduction

...and for the most part they will only have babies they can support.

It's actually fairly simple really.

[Madspirit]

13. Unless religion is keeping them pregnant....

Everyone loves Mother Theresa except me...<g> I think she is awful. She went to one of the poorest, most over-crowded cities in the entire world...Calcutta...and preached against birth control. Blech.
Lee

[cutlassmama]

14. this is a reply I got on another when I posting on poverty in America

"If the person was a contributor to their community before they became disabled people will line up to assist - provided they aren't bled dry by leaches before hand. Neighbors, churches, other charities..."

:mad:

[kineneb]

15. they obviously have never been poor

or they never would say that. I am, and have been, and know better. And people don't line up to assist; they lose interest and the poor/disabled continue to suffer.

We are truly judged by the way we treat the least among us.

[Madspirit]

16. People have such depth and compassion...NOT...n/t

[bleedingheart]

17. then the anti overpopulation folks must be really happy

cuz according to them..each child born is one more earth sucking resource...

sorry...i am in a bad mood...

[Virginia Dare]

18. How can that be? The culture of life Repubs are in charge!..n/t

[Herman74]

20. We must have the BEST priorities...

...the "pro-life" conservatives insist on spending billions upon billions upon billions of dollars to assuage their paranoia about "Islamofascism," all the while millions of millions of people live and die in terrible, excrutiating poverty.

There are opportunity costs inherent in Bush's pet project in Iraq, and these costs are great.

[Herman74]

21. Under Bush, very little has been done to meet Millennium Development Goals...

of cutting global poverty in half by (I believe) 2015. Granted, I seem to recall some increase in spending on malaria prevention, but even that isn't nearly enough.

Ideally we need to elect legislators committed to reducing terrible poverty, as well as to give generously of ourselves in working toward this goal.

[Herman74]

22. One of the 1st wicked things that Bush did upon being installed president

...was cutting off substantial aid to family planning programs of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. These funds should be restored, to increase the likelihood that children come into the world only when their parents are best able to take care of them.

Kicked and HIGHLY recommended.