famine denial, Jane Austen, Kyoto Agreement

James Heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Sat Aug 4 01:11:08 PDT 2001


In message <LPBBJPLAGKILMCMINFHDOEEHDEAA.afenelon at zaz.com.br>, Alexandre Fenelon <afenelon at zaz.com.br> writes
>
>
>-Mr. Polya teaches biochemistry in the Latrobe University (Australia).
>He sent me a good answer to a question I made him and, in addition,
>asked me to sent this following message to whoever I can. I decided
>to forward all the message, since it´s quite interesting. Maybe
>someone in the list could add something about India economy during
>the Bristish colonization.
>
> Alexandre
>Fenelon

I though Alexandre's evidence on man-made famine in India was very apposite. But that seems to be a quite different proposition than the one made at Kyoto and Bonn.

It was by its systematic underdevelopment of Indian agriculture that Britain created the conditions of famine. Specifically, the Colonisation of India simply substituted one archaic system of exploitation for another, as the colonial authorities expropriated the agricultural surplus in the form of tax, just as the Indian elites had. That meant that there was no tendency to apply the surplus product to increase productivity.

In the 1970s, with famine re-emerging, Indian scientists introduced high-grain yields ('the Green revolution').

The Kyoto agreement, by contrast, would limit India's industrial productivity, by limiting its CO2 emissions, and thereby limit its agricultural productivity (as agriculture was starved of tools, fertilisers and machinery). Such a process would of course be exacerbated if financial pressure was applied to buy India's emission rights under the Bonn scheme.

The man-made famine is the one that comes as a consequence of limiting productivity, not increasing it. -- James Heartfield



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