The Key to Global Prosperity

Monday, Nov. 9, 2009 Posted: 7:13:30PM HKT

At this very moment the rich nations of the world, the affluent peoples of the world, and particularly those in the world who believe the boundless wealth they possess is given to them by the mercy of God; all these individuals, communities, peoples and nations, have together in their hands the key to an era of global prosperity not known since the dawn of human civilization.

The key is simple and is four-fold.

First, all these peoples, or at least vast representations of their communities need only repent of their many extravagant indulgences which are destroying the world’s ecosystem and that even more so at the expense of the developing and non-developed nations of the world and world's poor.

Second, they must squarely resolve to adapt and find satisfied enjoyment in a far simpler lifestyle that is profoundly shaped by an awareness into how the crisis at hand further threatens the world’s poor.

They must do so because it is they— the poor of the word in the two-third’s world, who face the greatest suffering by the coming ecological and humanitarian crises, which is rooted in the past and present mindless carbon footprints— not of the two-thirds world, but by the first-world people of the world.

The crises of global poverty and impending ecological disaster are one and the same. And both crises threaten the present and enjoyed security of the world’s affluent.

We all live on borrowed time. The poor of this world, the world’s oppressed, the hungry and the starving, they suffer not foremost because of those demonically-enslaved forces of terror now unleashed upon both poor and rich alike, but because of our own consumerist-driven extravagances.

For it is our extravagance largely made available to us through wrong paradigms towards our entire created order, which has led and is now leading to a possible world-encompassing and cataclysmic ecological meltdown and financial ruin of many nations.

At the top of this list is the United States, followed by the European Union, then China, and then India. This list is certainly even more astonishing as China and India are set to substantially lead the global economy over the next century.

Furthermore, we must squarely acknowledge that if we take the high road, we must therefore know that in the short run, the rich nations of the world will need to make far greater, biting and painful changes in how we spend our wealth.

It is they who are most responsible for the coming crisis, and it is they who must also make the needed sacrifices and monetary outlay to tackle the crisis. We must do so if we are to avert the coming ecological meltdown and security-threatening crisis of global poverty.

To squarely acknowledge and embrace this cost however, is indeed a high road which can lead us into a new and profound era of global prosperity, not just for the affluent peoples of the world, but also for so many who are now living in abject poverty.

We must find resolve towards this high road, for in one way or another, global poverty as it presently exists, directly threatens the economic security of every first-world community.

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The Rev Monte Lee-Rice
CP Guest Columnist