I just wanna’…
I grew up in a small town called Vidisha, in central India. My family wasn’t poor, but we weren’t rich, either. You might say we were lower-middle class. My father was a policeman, and my mother a housewife. At five-years-old, on my very first day ever going to school, I saw another young boy sitting outside the school gates. He was a cobbler’s son, and he called to my friends and I to see if we needed our shoes repaired. It was our first day of school and our parents had just given all of us new shoes, so we passed him by. But once I was inside, I couldn’t stop thinking about the boy.
All of my friends and relatives went to school. But this boy … this boy did not. It was baffling to me. I asked my teacher, “Why is a child outside the gates and not with the rest of us here in the classroom?” She looked at me and said, “Oh, calm down. Calm down! Poor children have to work. It’s normal.”
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But this still made no sense to me. I asked the principal the same question, and again received the same response. When I got home, I asked my parents, and then their friends. Everyone said the same thing: This is normal. But every morning and afternoon, entering school and leaving at the end of the day, I saw the same boy, calling out for business beside the front gates. To me it seemed clear that this was not normal. And that made me angry.
One day, I saw the child’s father working alongside him, on the doorstep of my school. I asked them: Why is this boy out here working, when the rest of us kids are inside? The boy was shy. He was the same age as me, just five or six years old. He didn’t know what to say, but his father, the cobbler, responded, “I never thought about it. My grandfather, my father, and I, all started working when we were children. Some people are just born to work.”
It has always seemed an obvious injustice to me for any child to have to lose their childhood and freedom in order to work. The spark that was lit inside of me that day has carried me through a decades-long struggle to fight for the rights of children.
I found that idea shocking. Why would some people be “born to work,” just because they’re from a particular community, a particular caste, a certain country, or they’re a certain race or gender. I told the man that I rejected the idea of any child being “born to work” — and I still reject the idea sixty years later.
It has always seemed an obvious injustice to me for any child to have to lose their childhood and freedom in order to work. The spark that was lit inside of me that day has carried me through a decades-long struggle to fight for the rights of children. Right now, globally, over 152 million children are working full-time jobs.
A cobbler asking his five year old son to work alongside him is troublesome, but in India the problem is often much more sinister. Child slavery is rampant. Some kids are simply kidnapped and brought to mines, factories, and agricultural jobs. But often, here’s how it unfolds: A “recruiter” will visit a rural village, saying he’s looking for children to hire at a factory in the city. The children’s parents, destitute and jobless themselves, might unwittingly offer their children, believing it’s a legitimate and worthwhile opportunity. The recruiter might pay a month’s wages up front — 1,000 to 2,000 rupees ($12 to $25) — and promise that more money will be on its way once the child begins to work. After a week in the village, the recruiter returns to the city with dozens of kids in tow.
Of course, the factory never intends to pay the kids for their work, nor return the kids to their parents. They become slave labour. Sometimes the kids might earn 50 rupees a week, which is less than a dollar. And they’ll have to use that money to buy themselves food on supervised visits to a food stall. It’s indentured servitude, essentially. Imagine being a seven or eight year old and having to think about what you need to buy from a food stall each week to sustain yourself — it’s harrowing.
Over time, the children are brainwashed by their handlers. They think that their parents are continuing to be paid as they’re working. The factory managers tell them, “We’re sending money home every week. This is a great thing you’re doing. You’re helping your family.” It’s heartbreaking because many of the kids take so much pride in their work. They think that they’re doing something meaningful for their family, providing opportunities for their parents, their siblings, and themselves, when in fact their family isn’t getting anything. The details are diabolical. Kids are told that back home their mother or grandmother is ill. “You have to work extra hard this week to pay for the medicine,” the handlers tell them. “Otherwise, they will die.” Every week, it’s a different story.
Meanwhile, the families may eventually realize they’ve sold their children into slavery, but they feel helpless, complicit, and ashamed. The local police are often bribed by the abductors and offer little help. Parents feel they have nowhere to turn.
Source: A Nobel Peace Prize Winner on the Economics of Slave Labour | Wealthsimple
Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout – video with comments
Dr. Moore makes a great case for the truth and I don’t suspect he is bought off by the traditional energy sector (much), considering his legitimate ecology and ‘social engineering’ background as a former executive of Greenpeace. The Michael Crichton quote about “being certain there is too much certainty in the world” just nails the whole issue. I also liked his reference to Gaia: that we are all part of her household and maybe Gaia intends for us to pump out as much carbon as possible to sustain her. Great notion and his nuts and bolts facts were a pleasure to behold! Finally some simple language. Great short talk. He’s obviously carried these ideas around with him for a long time and is able to articulate them very convincingly.
That being said, and I realize it was only a 20 minute talk, he did gloss over many issues regarding our treatment of the planet, its people and the flora and fauna that fill up the spaces around us. ie: how to mitigate forced migration of populations; how to protect wildlife migratory routes; and protecting workers from dangerous working environments. Traditional tech like coal, hydro and wood fibre production all have huge knock on effects that are well documented and papered over very easily amidst the absurdity of the time scale we are talking about which he uses adroitly to his advantage. IMO he does this in an effort to be that guy with the correct answer to the big questions. With his background he probably has more than one chip on his shoulder. He does not seem to have considered that when we insert these meat suit issues, as above, into the calculus of planetary survival, we introduce variables that can quickly spin projects like mining for coal, developing huge hydro projects and artificially trying to manage carbon redistribution, out of our control. (see forest fires, tailing ponds, war). But rest assured the poor, sick and vulnerable will get the short end of the stick for the sake of shareholder value and the bragging rights for the winning idea.
Certainty is a powerful tool in the hands of the uncertain. On the other hand someone has to throw ideas at the wall to see what sticks and a certain amount of bravado goes a long way to increasing chances of a hit. So, it’s a fine balance between certainty vs overreach and uncertainty vs no reach at all. Look at the banks. They are certain I am a credit risk as I can’t show a steady income as a freelance professional. I’m a musician, a builder, a writer, a software developer, a legal advocate and I like to work with plants. But I still don’t fit any cell in their spreadsheet (think Caribou on a pipeline route) so they are certain I must be culled from the herd: no car loan for me. No car, no work. No work, who knows. Major uncertainty for sure. But I’m not a Caribou. Thanks mom and dad. But maybe Gaia wants me to keep reminding their lackies that there are individuals out here that do work hard, that do contribute to the community and that will defend their right not to be an virtually indentured servant just to put food on the table. Maybe Gaia wants me to confirm my certainty, to them, that there is more than one way to live a life, more than one way to solve a problem, more than one way to corner a market. Maybe my job is to keep them guessing, be a ghost in their machine. Cause there’s just too much certainty in the world. They want to call me sub-prime because of my life choices. And they are certain that is where I belong. Then Greenpeace is sub-prime too and so are Dr. Moore’s conclusions. If the banks, governments and corporations can’t fit you into their box, considering themselves to be judge and jury, you are de facto sub-prime until you prove yourself otherwise, ie: bend to their will and to their definition of what is prime, otherwise you’re a pariah. I didn’t give them that power over me and I don’t accept their assessment. Likewise Dr. Moore doesn’t accept Al Gore. But who’s the pariah? Not certain.
We need to continue to fight the tide of of bad energy production and distribution whether it is ethereal energy or energy that comes out of a hose or in the form of cash from a bank. Positive flow only. We can’t continue to talk and live in a world of abstractions. It’s obviously not working for us. Dr. Moore, like the banks and the oil companies, is more concerned with his own right-itude than with the messy details inherent in making a safe, happy world for all. The difference is, I believe, that Dr. Moore’s ideas are based on facts (with some omissions), whereas the banks, gov’s and corp’s ‘s ideas are based on greed and attaining more power and capital. I’m not writing him off. But on the face of it, the hypocrisy is a bit much.
-dg