by Rosemary Redfern

Created on: September 20, 2009

When a butterfly flaps its wings in Central America, a storm happens in Sumatra. Everything each of us does has an impact on our immediate environment and eventually on the rest o the world.

The environment is a concern for many who try to understand how humans affect the habitat they live in. The problem is balancing a natural greed for the good things of life now and not exploiting the earth of it's treasures so that future generations are bereft of reserves and in the process leaving chaos.

It's easy to forget countries which are a long way from our home. We have enough difficulty struggling to pay our way in our own locality. But, if what we do at home has a knock on effect in other parts of the world, then what they do has a knock on effect on our part of the globe. It works both ways.

Thinking like this, it is in our selfish interest to ensure that countries like Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Rwanda are stable and settled. What does that mean?

Every human wants stability in their environment, a job, money to buy goods and enjoy time with family and friends. When we realize that we all have the same needs for shelter, warmth and food we can begin to see that though people live far from us, look different and have different customs, they are the same as us with all that implies.

In polluting their environment this logic says we will eventually pollute our own. Therefore multinational companies need to be made to consider the environmental effects of being lazy with pollution controls. Because they do not respect the people they employ, there is no reason for the rest of us to suffer because of the impact of the pollution they cause. The problem with multinational companies is that they can ride roughshod over local laws because they answer to no one.

We should care about distant countries because the effect of what happens there will impinge on us. Sheer selfishness dictates we start to consider other countries more carefully. This can only be done by respecting local traditions, not demanding our rights over theirs and trying to understand their point of view. In the West we are not always right. We do not have the moral high ground. What we do have is the power to impose our need to make money by polluting someone else's back yard.

Because we are like every other human, affected by the same environmental factors, self preservation says we should care about what happens in other countries.

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