By LAYAD EKID
www.nordis.net

One of the reasons I joined Nordis is to force myself to write including the thoughts I say to myself when a storm rages through the night and sleep is hard to come.

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I thank God, I still can make do with pen and paper.There are people who say the thoughts are hard to come without the keys to punch. A laptop that can reserve energy for several hours is thus a necessity and that is, if one can afford.

Afford is a key word in today’s world where everything has a price.If you have the technology that enables you to communicate to someone oceans away like he is just beside you, you would think human society has reached the apex of development.

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But a super typhoon is roaring.

You know that out there experiences of human horror are unfolding because majority of people are vulnerable to disasters both natural and man-made. To them, the amenities of life, including protection in an imminent disaster is hardly affordable. We are sure, after the storm, we shall be counting the dead and those who would go hungry for days to come.

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Human development actually retrogressed.

The earth, we call home, has turned fragile from human activities that it can hardly absorb the battering of a Signal Number 4. It has become the victim of a culture of increasing affordability that knows no limit and with no regard for others and the environment. It has spread into a deadly stage from an individual level to that of a nation and race.

Thus the Homo Sapiens, the creature that likes to imagine they have dominion over all, has created a George W. Bush who refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol, a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC), aimed at fighting global warming . His reason: the American lifestyle is non-negotiable. Never mind if that lifestyle is spending trillions on cosmetics and armaments which can be more than the amount that third world nations spend on food.

Yes, development has reached a remarkable stage. But its benefits has been limited only to those who can afford. And for every person who can afford, there are millions who cannot.

Such is the tragedy of human development. We have optimized the limits of the earth but we have not learned to share.

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After we piled the dead and surveyed the extent of the destruction caused by Super Typhoon Juan, expect another disaster purely man-made.

Our political leaders would take the opportunity to grandstand with powerful rhetoric, probably accompanied by tears.

But behind the rhetoric and the tears are actually figures on how much could be had from the calamity fund to be able to add more to what they can afford including fooling the public. # nordis.net