Food for thought

A survey conducted in twenty-two countries by Globescan Radar, found that few people considered problems such as air and water pollution, species loss, auto emissions, water shortages, and climate change, to be very serious. As John Smol, chairman of Research into Environmental Change at Queen's University, put it. Concern for the environment has always been in competition with the economy. When economic times are bad, people's priorities shift. We have seen this before. When the economy falters, almost always the environment is asked to pay a price." This is mainly because the loss of one's job, or the fear of it happening, seem more immediate than the destruction of the environment, despite the fact that the latter certainly affects the former and, despite the fact that the latter is becoming closer to an immediate problem, both should be viewed as matters to be dealt with now and this can only be done with the establishment of socialism. John Ayers