A Dream for a Better World

Many people focus on South America, and Brazil in particular, as the major culprits of deforestation. But Africa is losing forest land just as quickly and mainly due to the desperation of the poverty stricken population. Coal is lighter, cheaper and easier to produce than other forms of fuel. 80% of fuel is still coal based in Africa, which leads to a huge amount of legal and illegal logging to supply the demand for fuel. And people will continue to log the forests until the find an alternative cheap fuel and income.

While travelling through South America I continuous came across, what I consider, the worst type of forced child labour. Child begging. Obviously, people are more willing to give money out to a poor suffering child than an adult and if that poor child is homeless or with nothing it can be heartbreaking. But a regular thing that I came across was 2 or 3 children going from stranger to stranger begging while their mother or older brother or sister waited sitting in the shade. Not only will this make people lose faith in the plight of the children, the parents of the children are, to me, the lowest of the low.

What’s the point spending millions trying to stop the export of drugs from South American countries if we glorify the use and image of drugs in the US? How many music or movie stars do we see that either talk about using drugs, recovering from drugs or have been arrested because of drugs? While the rich and famous still hold on to their selfish desire to be junkies, it will always be profitable enough for those that want to push their evil products in our country. And it is normally the little people that get caught in the War on Drugs, not the high profile buyers and sellers