19th Commentary - Poverty and Economics

This commentary is on the question, "Give reasons why the poor remain poor. Can you suggest solutions to this?"

Poverty has always been a problem in many parts of the world, especially in many of the African nations. These poor are trapped in a cycle of poverty, often with little or no chance to lead better lives. Reasons for such situations include civil war, corrupt governments, natural disasters, or poor infrastructure. All theses problems would deter investors from investing in these countries, and without foreign investment, it would be hard to improve a country's economy.

The richer countries and international organizations like the IMF or World Bank have given aid of different sorts, but usually, it consists of monetary aid. These goodwill gestures may have been targeted at reducing poverty, but they fail to work. Some of the reasons are the same ones that caused poverty in the first place. With a corrupt government, any monetary aid given would be wasted, as it would just go into the pockets of the high-ranking officials, funding their opulent lifestyles while the majority of the population suffer. Similarly, monetary aid has little effective use in a country torn by civil war. Money would either go to military spending, or not be distributed effectively due to the lack of proper governance. The poor people in these senarios have no chance to break out of the cycle of poverty.

Furthermore, other problems also cause the poverty-stricken nations to remain just that, and they come from the richer nations. When firms from the richer nations go to some of the poorer countries to make use of cheap labour, they do a good thing by providing jobs for the people, and giving them wages. However, some of these firms take advantage of the situation, and force workers to work extremely long hours for very low pay in terrible working conditions. Such exploitation only brings harm to the poor people.

To truly help these people break free from poverty, the richer nations should send more appropriate aid to the countries. For example, a country could send experts on certain industries into the poor nations to help increase the efficiency of firms there. Exploitation needs to be stopped.

Some of the poor countries in Africa actually have large amounts of natural resources, which could have made them rich. However, most of the natural resources are used up by foreign companies, and little can be done with the remaining. If such exploitation did not occur, then the people could have used the resources to save their own citizens, and aid would then no longer be required.

Thus, poverty can be solved, but owing to the large scale of poverty in the world, any attempt would need to have much international support, and not just be token moves. The main step would be to eliminate the main causes of poverty, and free the people from the cycle of poverty.

18th Commentary - The New Quest for Energy

This commentary is on a combination of various news and magazine articles, centred on the renewed quest for alternative energy sources, especially nuclear energy. The main article the nuclear issue is based on it entitled "Push for N-Power" dated 1st May 2006.

In the recent years, there have been numerous reports in the newspapers and magazines talking about the dangers of pollution and the potentially disastrous impacts of Global Warming. Furthermore oil prices have seen sharp rises in recent months. A few months ago, Russia threatened to cut off oil supplies to Ukraine. The threat of an oil embargo by Middle-Eastern countries has always been present. The nationalization of Bolivian natural resources increased oil prices. All these are problems that arise over the control of oil. With so many issues in the recent months, many countries are looking into other sources of energy that is cleaner and more stable.

This is where nuclear power comes in. As a source of energy, it is much cleaner than coal, oil and natural gas. It is also more efficient than wind and solar energy. Furthermore, nuclear power plants can be built in more places, unlike hydropower and geothermal energy, which are restricted by geographical attributes. More environmentalists are also advocating it, leaving behind their past reservations, as the use of coal – a cheap and efficient, but highly polluting source of energy - continues to increase air pollution at a rapid rate.

However, many people are still afraid of the high risks of using nuclear power, as they remember the disaster at Chernobyl in the USSR in 1986 and the near disaster of the Three Mile Island plant in the USA in 1979. The high costs to build the plants are also another prohibitive factor to the increase in the usage of nuclear power as a replacement for sources like coal or oil. Then there are the dangers of radioactive waste, which needs to be located away from people and stored under high security, due to increasing fears of nuclear terrorism. This make the rate at returning to nuclear power slower than what it could be, especially in the US and Europe. The fastest growing nuclear countries at present are in Asia, including India and China.

Another issue related to nuclear energy is the fear that countries would use the technology and develop nuclear weapons. This is the issue that is currently causing tensions between Iran and the West, where one side claims that civilian use is all it wants; while the other insists that there is a hidden agenda behind the push for nuclear power. Nuclear proliferation is a major issue that cannot be taken lightly, especially in the light that the tensions revolve around the Middle East. This is yet another issue that nuclear power users need to contend with.

Other clean energy resources, like wind, solar, and hydropower are also increasingly popular, as new technology has made these types of energy production more effective than ever, although still nowhere near that of using the fossil fuels. Despite that, more countries are using these sources, as they are clean, renewable, and readily available. Of course, these sources have their problems too. For example, there are people who dislike the use of wind energy, as the windmill fields needed take up a lot of space, and often become an eyesore in the landscape, spoiling the scenery. For hydropower, the unhappiness is with the drowning of habitats, both of animals and humans, and in the case of the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, the drowning of beautiful scenery and a waste of water due to excessive evaporation (Lake Powell is located in a semi-arid area). There are many other issues too.

Overall, the quest for energy has reached a new stage, moving from just looking for the cheapest and most effective forms to include environmentally-friendly ones. What a country chooses would depend on which type of problems they would want to face – air pollution, nuclear problems, or lower efficiency and eyesores.

17th Commentary - Population Issues

This commentary is on the question:"It has been said that taken as a whole, the problem with world population, usually manifested in the shortage of resources is not due to population growth as such but to inequitable distribution of wealth and resources. What are your views?"

It is true that unequal distribution has led to problems amongst the people in many places; Some people are extremely rich, while others are terribly impoverished. To solve such a problem is definitely not simple, as the issue is closely linked with many other problems, including rapid population growth. It is not the most important of the issues affecting the problems of world population either. Poverty in some of the poorer African or Asian nations are usually due to the combination of these factors. In these poor countries, standards of living are very low, and basic facilities and necessities are often scarce. In addition to this, the rate of population increase is also usually very high. With these two conditions, the people would surely face a shortage of resources. If the wealthier people used the resources they had to help these poor people, the situation may be improved. However, it would be very difficult, as a huge sum of money would be required. Furthermore, if the poor do not take such an opportunity given to them, the provided resources would only be a short term solution - the problem of poverty itself would still remain unsolved in the long run.

As we know, countries like the US, Australia, and some members of the European Union are wealthy because they are developed countries, with relatively more stable governments and economies. Due to such stability, resources are used better, with most of the people being at least marginally wealthy. In some of the developing countries, the situation could be much more chaotic, as people fight for what little things they have.

In a way, equality in resource distribution is something that the communist ideology strives to achieve. However, such an aim is extremely difficult to reach, due to the many obstacles present. Human greed is an inbuilt trait, and that would be the greatest obstacle to achieving greater equality in resource distribution. Anyone who does any work would want to receive benefits from it. Business would want to make profits and keep it for themselves. Because of such issues, we can see that no communist country has truly succeeded in achieving their goals as yet. Thus if communism is so difficult to achieve, it is thus as difficult to achieve greater equality in resource distribution and resolving the worlds population problem.

There are, of course other problems in the world population as well. In recent years the issue of an aging population has been cropping up frequently, in many areas of the Earth. This is just one of many other problems that countries face, other that the issue of uneven distribution of resources.