Essay By Eric Worrall
According to Research Associate Flossie Kingsbury, learning how your ancestors exploited the natives and burned lots of coal helps you embrace the idea of climate reparations.
How taking a closer look at your family tree can help you get to grips with climate change
Published: May 19, 2022 12.17am AEST
Flossie Kingsbury
Postdoctoral Research Associate in History, Aberystwyth University…
Put simply, climate change is the result of two processes: industrialisation and colonialism. Industrialisation is when a society’s primary mode of production shifts from manual agricultural labour to machine-aided manufacturing. Colonialism is when one nation occupies and exerts control over another, usually involving violence and exploitation.
…
Let’s look at some examples from my own family. Samuel Polyblank (born around 1816), one of my great-great-great-grandfathers, was a shipwright from London’s East End. The ships he worked on helped to feed demand for international trade, taking goods to and from the colonies. They may even have been used by the East India Company, the world’s first global corporate superpower, and a key player in colonial rule and exploitation in Asia.
Through his work, Samuel Polyblank found himself caught up in, and working to support, a system whose impacts – including widespread deforestation, pollution, soil sterilisation and biodiversity collapse – continue to be felt today.
…
One challenge of personally engaging with the climate crisis is learning that your ancestors were complicit in things that you would rather be distanced from. But this isn’t about blaming our ancestors, who may well have been exploited themselves.
Instead, understanding these connections can help encourage us to prioritise climate justice and eco-friendly behaviours in our own lives, from cutting down on meat and unsustainable travel to writing to your elected officials about environmental issues in your community. …
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/how-taking-a-closer-look-at-your-family-tree-can-help-you-get-to-grips-with-climate-change-183167
I don’t get it. Why should I feel any sense of responsibility for what my ancestors did? I had no say over their decisions and actions. I feel gratitude that the world they built allows me to sit on my dry and comfortable armchair typing WUWT articles, while a storm rages outside. I miss those ancestors I knew, who are no longer with us. And whichever non-English ancestor bequeathed me the genetics which let me hang out in the tropical sun without getting sunburned, an especial vote of thanks.
“Through his work, Samuel Polyblank found himself caught up in, and working to support, a system whose impacts – including widespread deforestation, pollution, soil sterilisation and biodiversity collapse – continue to be felt today.”
B*ll**ks. What is the evidence? In recent decades there have been and are examples of all, but these are not the result of industrialisation. Marxist China is responsible for a lot and Madagascar, Indonesia and Brazil seem to be pretty good at wildlife destruction without any help from industrially advanced nations.
“widespread deforestation, pollution, soil sterilisation and biodiversity collapse”
Yep, Wind and solar do have that effect !
If the painted each wind turbine on a mega-windfarm a different color, would that solve the biodiversity problem?
Rainbow colours?
> Put simply, climate change is the result of two processes: industrialisation and colonialism.
Columbus and the Robber Barons broke the planet. They reached back 10,876 years and started the retreat of the glaciers opening up new lands for exploitation. Got it.
It helps if you first begin believing in the 60 genders.
“HSBC bank is facing calls to sack one of its top financiers over a climate change tirade he made where he said
‘Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six metres underwater for ages and that’s a really nice place.’
and
‘There’s always some nutjob telling me about the end of the world. I feel like it’s getting a little bit out of hand, the constant reminder that we are doomed.’
Stuart Kirk, the global head of responsible investing at HSBC Asset Management, made an anti-climate change speech at a conference this week.”
Stuart Kirk for the Nobel!
The descendants of those natives are now far better off than they ever would have been had White men not arrived and shown them what was possible.
Most would never have been born and those who would have been born would have endured nasty short and brutish lives against a hostile and implacable natural environment.
Nature is red in tooth and claw. White men have made great strides in taming it.
There is no case for reparations. There is a case for showing gratitude to White men.
“Most would never have been born and those who would have been born would have endured nasty short and brutish lives against a hostile and implacable natural environment” … as well as the hostile human environment.
Except those who died of imported diseases.
Those Old World diseases were unwittingly caused by Old World ancestors having
domesticated animals, a price everyone who does that pays. Turn the situation around &
New World diseases would’ve been brought to the Old World. I’d call it a system function.
some have the revenge of a certain Aztec king comes to mind
I’ve also read that this idea has at least been exaggerated and may not be true at all. People from Asia and Europe have been coming to the Americas long before Columbus arrived, even if it was much less frequently. And the transmission of disease would have been a two-way street.
You raise a good point, Joe. Norse from Greenland were trading with native americans.
Disease transmission typically followed transfer of lice. Vikings certainly carried body lice. Why didn’t transmission happen then?
True. One of my professors pointed out that syphilis was likely exported from the New World to Europe.
While I do realize that many people groups benefited from European technology, one should also keep in mind that any forced control over other people groups were grossly wrong. Those peoples would have adopted the technology that benefits mankind, of their own accord, and in their own time frame.
Perhaps they would not have had the idea that western ideals were pushed on them. Though, Islamic countries have blamed the west for any local people who like our ideals. It could also have gone quite badly. One warrior tribe with guns, could easily have wiped out every other tribe in a large region.
“..one should also keep in mind that any forced control over other people groups were grossly wrong. “
It was not wrong in it’s time and there were no ‘civil rights’ or laws against ‘injustice’ until industrialisation and modern farming created abundant wealth and surpluses. In the Western world we can and do go forward with a view that the Babylonian/Mongolian/Roman model of survival built on physical conquest and control of lands and people are but no longer necessary and from our comfortable positions we have the luxury to judge them as wrong. Surely the modern world is a reflection of the values that view traditional empire structures as no longer relevant. It was/is industrialisation and the scientific revolution that brought about this extraordinary transformation and it was not colonialism that drove it, but a myriad of freely associating individuals such as Newcomen and Trevithick. The lunatics that want to switch this world off will create a world where the old empire/colonial rules for survival will be the only options.
What about subsequent waves of Asian migration to the Americas prior to the Europeans, some of whom were war-like and may have displaced the original wave — were the subsequent waves wrong? Or just the white wave?
“Those peoples would have adopted the technology that benefits mankind, of their own accord, and in their own time frame”
There’s a region of the planet known as sub-Saharan Africa. Not only have many places not adopted technology from hundreds of years ago, they’ve rejected beneficial technology that was introduced to them by both colonizers and NGO’s. Most of the population is only able to survive due to technologies forced upon them.
Once people start looking back through time finding irrational reasons to feel guilty they stop looking forward to build the future. The same societies and natural landscapes they claim to protect will suffer immensely from their negligence and lack of critical thinking.
Progressive journalism and research is “All guilt and suffering, all the time.”
The middle school/jr high bullies & mean girls are the woke crowd who have taken over the Western
world. Because they lack morals & virtue, they can harshly judge others first rather than sticking to
judging themselves. They lack a sense of humor decent & based people have because they know
they’re human & don’t take themselves too seriously. They’re driven by perfectionism that won’t allow that & will eventually destroy themselves & everything around them!
Most of us did the same thing when we were that age as it was “profitable” to “throw rocks” at our
parents to get our way versus spending time first seeing if their critiques of us were accurate. The
motivation of both situations is not to help the other person deal with their failings but rather to
reinforce their self-righteousness & to destroy others who are in the way of what they want! This is
why I don’t waste my time on their pompous self-serving BeeEss!
“According to Research Associate Flossie Kingsbury, learning how your ancestors exploited the natives and burned lots of coal helps you embrace the idea of climate reparations.”
And Flossie’s paid to produce nonsense like this! Oy-freakin-vey!
Regards,
Bob
My family has traced our family tree back at least a few hundred years. What we found was a distant connection to the co-discoverer of insulin and not a lot else – most of my ancestors were always dirt poor and exploited for cheap labour, apart from a couple of chaps who were sent to America for involuntary servitude and never heard from again. My ancestors never exploited natives and if there are any reparations to be had, I’d like some as well please!
If I find that my ancestors lived in sod houses in South Dakota, do I get a dividend?
My ancestors DID live in sod houses in South Dakota, but the greenies would say that the sod released a lot of co2 when it was torn up.
near Firesteel ….
Or better yet, if on my other side, my great great great great great grandfather pulled George Washington’s ass out of the fire when Braddock screwed up and got himself and half of his army killed, do I get a lifetime stipend?
Shouldn’t this stuff work both ways?
(No, it shouldn’t work either way.)
To paraphrase FDR, today environmentalists committed an unprovoked and dastardly attack against my ancestors for bettering mankind by creating trade, an infrastructure of rails, bridges, water, sewage and electrical and medicine that eased suffering and many diseases. And now they would have us pay reparations but do not mention those helped should give all that was received, back.
Where climate change is concerned as they define it, a little proof please.
Only those living through enslavement or exploitation in the 18th and 19th centuries should be entitled to reparations. Form an orderly queue there please!
Everyone in past centuries was exploited by the ruling classes – why should the descendants of the white exploiteds pay reparations to the black exploiteds? Are the descendants of the original slave hunters and sellers in Africa, who sold the slaves to the Arab and white slavers going to cough up reparations? Are the descendants of the Arab pirate and slave traders, who kidnapped whites all over the Mediterranean for sex slaves and galley ship rowers and suicide warriors going to apologize and write big cheques?
Amongst my ancestors are crofters from Argyll who lived in townships like this
https://www.auchindrain.org.uk
Others were crofters on North Uist, others still agricultural workers in Lincolnshire.
The Scots ended up around the world Canada, USA, Australia,New Zealand, the few that stayed behind went to Glasgow. The Lincolnshire ones ended up in London apart from a couple who went to Chile and New Zealand.
I take no responsibility for where they went, what they did, when they got there. But I understand why they left, not all willingly, and would have done the same thing
My ancestors were chased out of Ireland by the potato famine.
Some of my line went to America, some to Canada, and my direct forefathers (and foremothers) went to Australia.
Passed-down family history records that the potato refugees’ trials & tribulations didn’t end when they landed in Oz.
Nature was no kinder to settlers there than it had been to the first settlers (Aborigines). Nor what nature had inflicted on potato crops in Ireland.
Over their remaining lifetimes after arrival in Oz (~ 40 years mainly), my great grandfather and great grandmother and his brothers eked out a passable living for themselves and their offspring.
But it was always a continuing battle with nature –
they had landed in the “Land Of Drought And Flooding Rains”.
They did however, get to see a lot of northern Australia as they moved their cattle and sheep herds from region to region to escape said drought and flooding rains.
I reckon the natives owe my forebears reparations for all the roads, dams and cleared paddocks they created that are now closed off under Native Title grants.
I think some of my ancestors are from Loch Sween in the Argyll area, and I’ve got the socks to prove it.
Having seen the gloomy weather, easy to understand why they left.
I agree about the resposibility, but it works both ways.
Years ago we had a speaker at Rotary who was a Professor at Edinburgh University and was Burmese. He claimed he was Scottish by absorbsion because his Grandfather had eaten a Scottish missionary.
“Postdoctoral Research Associate in History, Aberystwyth University”
Aberystwyth was considered a joke university back in the the 1970’s. An RA from a joke university in a subject for C grade students.
Oh no.. although he wasn’t the first to put an edge on a flint, one of my ancestors was the first to bind the flint to a stick and fell a tree with it. Where do I send the cheque?
Simply put…
Weak minded individuals (Sheeple) are easily swayed into group think (herd mentality)
Wales has become a leading lunatic asylum
“New top team to lead Wales into a brighter future
Climate change, new green jobs and recovery from the pandemic will be at the heart of the new Welsh Labour Government, as First Minister Mark Drakeford reveals his new Cabinet team.”
https://gov.wales/new-top-team-to-lead-wales-into-a-brighter-future
Drakeford is a Corbynista
To be fair, Wales could use a little more climate change, I think. More sun and less rain.
Please note: the spelling of “Wales” has been changed to “Wails” to match the title of the Prince of said country.
Guilty for the sin of existence. Climate change is just another phony religion used to control people with some obscure guilt they were “born” with.
Bill you NAILED it!
A re-imagined version of the Catholic church’s ‘original sin’.
For F sakes, why does the subject of original sin keep coming up with certain people on this site?
If there is no original sin they why do you need baptism to be saved? To save my thumbs and commenting space just Google it.
If you’re not Christian or don’t care what Jesus said, then why criticize a concept you don’t understand. If you think you do understand it, then do you deny people are born basically bad? Selfish, lazy, addicted to pleasure to the point of hurting oneself (obesity, disease strife) even if one is aware of all the problems?
Seriously, read Augustine’s Confessions.
Humans need help, that’s all Original Sin is, and like AA, one has to confess ones problems before they can be dealt with.
Anything in climate change scientology has nothing to do with original sin. But their 7 lively virtues involve trees, polar bears, penguins, reduce, reuse, recycling, and reparations.
And their 7 deadly sins all involve carbon.
Calm down, dear. I’ve not seen a single reference on any of the topics that I’ve read on WUWT to ‘original sin’ so I’d be tremendously grateful if you could kindly point out a few examples that ‘keep coming up’ please? And who, exactly, are these ‘certain people’ you reference?
So is this crackpot asking all of us to re-examine our ancestors or just white Europeans? My idea of climate justice is for all humans to have affordable, accessible, reliable energy. Don’t worry so much about CO2 emissions from smoke stacks, tailpipes or methane emissions from cattle and sheep farts and burps. We can manage all of that.
Except that actually, it is precisely about that. And feeling guilty about it because we have benefited, and at others’ expense. Or something.
If we’re not feeling guilty, we’re doing it wrong.
Wait a minute; don’t we get credit for good ideas? Family lore has it that my ancestors were the first to tame fire and cook food, that one of my forefathers invented the wheel (his name was Bill Wheel), that Bill married Mustang Sally, the lady who first domesticated the horse, cow and chicken; that her family had invented the bow and arrow, and their children invented fishing! Love these family stories.
Cousin!
“According to Research Associate Flossie Kingsbury, learning how your ancestors exploited the natives”
So I looked. The first colonists in my neck of the woods are said to be the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in 1620. Not so fast, and slow down.
I grew up in a place then known as Brookfield Plantation, not altogether very far from Plymouth.
Brookfield Plantation was such a good ongoing operation that it was granted Incorporated status in 1619. Beating the Pilgrims just establishing their colony by a year.
So just who were these hardy souls who established Brookfield Plantation?
Same a Plymouth, they were Puritans. We constantly hear about the Puritans in early American history, for sure. But what were they all about, what did they believe, what did they do? in short, Who Were They?
First and foremost, they were Christians, specifically Catholics. And they were Fundamentalists.
What did they believe?
They took a “Pure” view of the bible. They read the bible literally, as that was Biblical Truth.
They read this bit in Genesis “And God created man and he created man in his own image.”
So they saw everybody as equal. Black, white, brown, yellow, pink, polka-dotted, made no difference to them. They were all equal, because they had all been created in Gods own image.
When they hit the shore of the New World, they brought a whole new way of thinking about things with them.
They *HATED* slavery. They believed that slavery was in direct violation of the Word Of God, as they saw it. They considered slavery to be the work of Satan on Earth. Which needed to be stamped out.
They were the first Abolitionists.
They did not exploit the natives. They always dealt with the locals with courtesy and respect. Perhaps that is why they got along so well.
Flash forward 150 years.
Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
“Self-Evident” ????
Self-evident to who? exactly?
At the time, everybody was enslaving everybody else because everybody was superior the everybody else.
“Self-Evident” to the Puritans, that is who.
The seed they has planted on these shores had grown to a mighty tree, and now was defining a new Nation.
My ancestors were the exploited natives in Europe, my greatgreatgrandfather was forced to demolish the city walls of his home town Erkelenz in 1674
I have a lot of Puritan relatives from back then. I hate slavery, too. I guess it’s in the genes. 🙂
“burned lots of coal”
So when are these climate grifters going to send me my share of what the world owes me for
burning that coal to make it greener because of all the CO2 it emitted? 😮
Where do these numbskulls come from? I mean, really?
First of all, out of many points of bullshit here in this mindless screed, colonialism didn’t lead to mass deforestation and wiping out of species .. most of the deforestation that took place was in Europe prior to the colonial period, as the population of Europe increased until the great plagues wiped out about 1/3 to 1/2 of the population on the continent. The colonialists themselves did relatively little timber cutting because they didn’t have today’s motorize tools of mass harvest available – it was all hand axes and saws.
What is today’s uptick in deforestation is being done mostly by third world natives in places like Brazil and Ecuador, not hundreds of years ago by Europeans.
Indeed, colonialism didn’t wipe out species but actually promulgated their spread throughout the world, in what historians call the “Colombian Exchange” … the Americas got horses, cattle, hogs, chickens, sugar cane, wine grapes, wheat, barley, and oats, and fruits of all kinds. Europeans got corn, potatoes, tobacco, and chile peppers, etc. Communicable diseases became part of the exchange too, with Europeans accidentally bringing with them small pox, and brought back with them yellow fever and syphilis.
Burning coal goes back thousands of years on all continents and cannot be blamed on colonialist white Europeans.
This screed is mostly just an unholy marriage between extremist left wing environmentalism and extremist left wing anti-white racism.
OT.
“US experiments may have contributed to the emergence of Covid-19, leading economist Prof Jeffrey Sachs has warned, as he called for an independent inquiry into whether the virus leaked from a lab.
Prof Sachs and Prof Harrison also point out that the same group of Chinese/US scientists had submitted proposals to insert a specialist feature into Sars-like viruses called the furin cleavage site (FCS).
Covid-19 is unique in having a FCS, and it is the reason the virus is so infectious to humans. No other coronaviruses have the feature, and some scientists believe it is evidence the virus was man-made. Others think it occurred naturally through evolution.
Leaked proposals showed that scientists from the University of North Carolina, EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology had applied for funding to insert an FCS into a Sars-like virus less than two years before the pandemic.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/20/economist-calls-inquiry-whether-covid-leaked-lab/
P.s. my older brother died from Covid19 infection complications just over 13 months ago.
Gosh Vuk!
Surely you aren’t suggesting that the hard facts about how was caused the last two and a half years of misery and unnecessary deaths, the impoverishment of millions, is even approaching the importance of Flossie’s worries about her possibly naughty ancestors??
Oh No! The Tragedy!
You’ll next be suggesting that the fraudulence and incompetence of the Zero Climate narrative is more relevant to the experience of starving people in extreme poverty today, than what some uber woke self entitled nitwit in Wales imagines!
What are we coming to??
So sorry Vuk.
I’ve commented before that when I began resisting the fraudulent ‘science’ of crisis global warming a decade and a half ago (I’m a geologist who actually studied paleoclimatology in the late 1950s as part of a geology course) it was 98% a man’s vocation. Since, it has become largely a women’s vocation. Nearly all the climate research papers we get to comment on here these days are authored by women. I’m not sure what to make of that transformation. Something has attracted them into the profession in droves. The ‘caring/nurture aspects?
JoNova is a woman. I think it’s just cultural, I used to think male brains were better suited to IT. Then I spent a week in an Asian IT shop.
Once people realise how badly society has been messed up by climate lies, the women will be just as angry as the men.
Did you intend this for Babylon Bee?
Yes: women, also, can both weave tales and deliver side-splitting one-liners.
Do you know Potter, B., mycologist, whose work was recognized, after less than a century?
Speaking of rabbit-holes, the guy – background L – appears unconcerned about your situation.
Blessings continue. John
The lady is converting “History” into a “Climate science”. A tasty word salad.
I think she’s promulgating stupidity through ignorance
I know it’s almost a sin to talk about the real world, but here’s the Dr Rosling video link AGAIN.
Dr Rosling explains the REAL world from 1810 to 2010 and his BBC video plotted 120,000 data points to prove his case.
I think the UK should be paid reparations ( and I’m an Aussie) for starting the world on the path to unbelievable HEALTH and WEALTH and in such a short time.
200,000 years of Human life and always under 40 years of average life expectancy and always POOR and SICK.
But today the global average life expectancy is 73 years and per capita wealth has also increased.
Just look up the data yourself or spend just 5 minutes and look at Dr Rosling’s video.
My ancestors are irrelevant. I am very proud of the many thousand tons of precious, life-giving, beneficial trace gas CO2 that my myriad vehicles have contributed to human betterment. I hope to contribute many thousand tons more.
Eric,
The confronting photo above this post raises indirectly and somewhat amusingly the issue of Human Cannibalism.
All major encyclopaedias point out that cannibalism was widespread until the early 19th Century in parts of West and Central Africa,Melanesia (especially Fiji),Australia,New Zealand, in some islands of Polynesia,Sumatra and in various tribes of North and South America.
The stupidity of the Conversation post can be gauged by suggesting that descendants of unlucky sailors and voyagers may have reparation claims from the descendants of the cannibals.
The whole piece is just ridiculous.
I had a chat to them afterwards. I got the impression Fiji has a lot of problems, none of which are my fault. There is a big problem with young people abusing too much Kava. And street crime in Suva is a total disgrace, we were warned by locals not to walk down the street.
And even more confronting –
the guy on your left is wearing blackface!
(I expect he was banished from polite society there shortly after this outrageous appearance?)
C’mon, Mr.!
Didn’t you recognise the Canadian premiere Jacinda Trudeau?
Wasn’t aware Eric had met him…
That photo is just begging for a non-woke quote from the late Duke of Edinburgh.
Will we ever know the End of Snow? Or did I get that backwards. Anyway, it is snowing in Denver and it is past mid May.
Pay no attention, it’s only weather.
In researching my family tree, I have come across many whom I would love to meet – and some I would prefer not to. There are tyrants and rebels. There are rogues and saints. There are people from every level that you can think of, including slaves and concubines. Most were normal people just trying to make a living. I am not responsible for any of them or for anything they did, but I take a bit of pride from the fact that each of them helped contribute to the next generation of the human race. Perhaps the greatest benefit has been finding and meeting nth-cousins whose existence I had been unaware of. (With a high-enough ‘n’, and it really isn’t all that high, we are all nth-cousins, of course)
The family tree roots expand almost as fast as the branches.
Go back 400 years (maybe 14 generations?) and, baring any inbreeding of the nth’s, you get about 30,000 ancestors.
I’ve been lucky enough to conduct detailed research on all 16,384 of mine and I can say objectively say that only 47 of them of them have contributed to the current societal ills, and the coming last great extinction due to climate change.
The remaining 16,337 of them were of stellar character and high moral integrity.
(Curiously enough, all 47 of the baddies were mother-in-laws of some sort).
There is a special place in H311 for people who dishonor their ancestors like little miss flossie.
“Samuel Polyblank (born around 1816), one of my great-great-great-grandfathers, was a shipwright from London’s East End.”
Good grief woman, he was a working class man who labored long hours to feed his family, for which the little witch should be grateful as her existence is contingent on that labor.
In that time and place Mr. Polybank was ridgidly excluded from political power, public opinion, and the course of events. No one like him who worked with his hands and earned his bread by the sweat of his brow was ever admitted to polite society or asked about his opinion.
He is worthy of the greatest respect and admiration. Condemning him for failure to promote the political causes of miss flossie and her demented companions is loathsome.
You bring up a great point. Ancestor worship, or at least deep respect for one’s ancestors, is common in societies throughout the world. People have great interest in their family trees and great respect for their forbears. Once again we see environmental lunatics corrupting normal society.
OMG! I’ve been chuckling quietly to myself over most of the AGW, etc. crap since whenever. I have a unique ability to spot BS right away. This Flossie person fits the bill along with the rest of the overrated prognosticators of eternal doom.
Where do these nutjobs come from? Wow.
IMO this kind of thing is totally pointless…..whether it has to do with colonialism, slavery, industry or whatever in past history. No one can pick their ancestors nor can anyone change the past (though the left seems to enjoy re-writing it!).
When I was a child, my great aunt did the entire family history on my mom’s side. This was long before the internet was even a thing….
Well, one of my ancestors was the infamous train robber and killer Jessie James. So does that mean that I owe the descendants of the people who were victimized by him?
Sorry folks, I wasn’t around back then in order to do anything about it.
The very idea that anyone should be liable for something their ancestors (especially those long dead) did is nuts!
All joking aside, it’s got very little to do with whether your ancestors were exploiters or exploitees; it’s all about playing the victim and race cards to get free money – much more to do with an instant redistribution of wealth and nothing else.
Rich countries started giving money to poorer countries in the 19th century, and by the 1920s and ’30s countries like Germany, France and Britain were providing regular aid to their colonies in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Colonial powers used their money to build infrastructure—ports, roads, railways—and wealthy American industrialists were also involved in development aid through the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.
Formal government foreign aid programs came into full swing in the 1960s, with billons of dollars being poured into non-aligned (aka, third-world) countries by the East and the West to keep them non-aligned.
By 1984, everyone became involved in ending world hunger with the Feed the World movement. The aid has never stopped. It has now been thirty-eight years. We are currently helping to feed the great grandchildren of the original recipients. Besides food, we have provided huge quantities of medicines, healthcare professionals, cooking and heating devices, agricultural equipment, and disease control materials, like mosquito netting. We have built hospitals, power plants, schools, and water purification facilities, and provided training for all of it..
The former colonies have received much in reparations already. Since they have benefitted greatly from our burning of fossil fuels, there is no debt to pay. To the contrary, it is time to put a sunset law on foreign aid. Decrease it steadily for ten years and tell the countries it is time for them to be independent. As things are now, it is not to their advantage to become self-sufficient.
Monty Python: What have the Romans ever done for us? – YouTube
Colonialism resulted in a civilization that no one who rails against it would trade for anything else.
Certainly the British royal family should be stripped of all its I’ll gotten wealth from colonialism , capitalism , racism and oppression of the masses , made to pay reparations and probably imprisoned . The queen and all her princes are grotesque reminders of a criminal past . There you go Flossie : cut off the head of the snake
Yeah. Keep taking the medication, ok. The current royal family doesn’t go back as far as you appear to think it does.
My ancestors were driven out of the Rift Valley 2,000,000 years ago, they were invaded by Romans 2,000 years ago, Vikings 1,200 years ago, the French 1,000 years ago, and the Germans did their best to destroy my city of birth.
Where’s my cheque?
Sorry Warmunists, my colonial ancestors were most assuredly climate refugees from a freezing cold Europe.
I have the best wishes for low income countries. Spend your scarce dollars on education and research. It is the surest path to wealth. South Korea and Israel are excellent recent examples where the population went from barefoot and hungry to high income during one lifetime.
Handouts in the name of climate – or anything else – are ineffective. Education and R&D make countries rich.