Picking up this morning's Metro on the train platform, I couldn't help but be struck by the front-page headline above the article on the £1.9 trillion bank bailout.
Metro puts it in stark terms. That's:
- £288 for every man, woman and child on the planet
- 10,000 times the total raised by the Band Aid and Live Aid concerts
- 36 times the aid sent by the richest nations to the poorest each year
- 190 times the GDP of Ethiopia
The front page photo is not of bankers in suits or overwrought Wall Street traders watching their positions erode, but rather of African children lined up for food.
Manipulative? Maybe. Political? Yes, in the great tradition of British newspapers. Sobering? Definitely.
A few months ago I attended a talk by Bob Geldof, who passionately and with great clarity reminded the developed world to keep its commitments to the poor nations of Africa and elsewhere. Remembering Geldof's talk, it's difficult not to be struck by how easy we've found it to bail ourselves out while as a society we seem to find it so difficult to meet our relatively measly commitments to our less fortunate fellow humans.
If we let every bank collapse, we would not have it as bad as many of these people who spend their entire lives hoping for a handout or a hand up and often don't get them. And I think after recent events we can finally put to rest the self-serving theory perpetuated by Western governments that vast wealth creation at the top of the pyramid somehow trickles down to those at the bottom. It does not.
Geldof cleverly brought his talk back to his audience's self interest. We're running out of everything, he reminded us. Water. Clean air. Raw materials. We cannot keep consuming at the rate we did in the 20th century. We need to find new sustainable ways of living, more modest ways of living, or we will hit the scrap heap.
Let's hope this financial crisis represents the death throes of the era of consumption without heed for consequences. Let's hope we get some political leadership that encourages us to live responsibly and sustainably. This wasn't a bubble bursting, it was a collective delusion. Time to wake up.
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