From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: IF: Text of Castro's Speech in Rio
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 09:23:06 GMT

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Op-Ed Article / 480 Words

Text of Cuban President's Speech in Rio
Fidel Castro
Out-Greens
George Bush

By Fidel Castro
Insight Features

   An important biological species, humankind, is at risk of
disappearing due to the rapid and progressive elimination of its
natural habitat.

   We are becoming aware of this problem when it is almost to late
to prevent it.  It must be said that consumer societies are chiefly
responsible for this appalling environmental destruction.  They
were spawned by the former colonial metropolis.  They are the
offspring of the imperial policies which in turn brought forth the
backwardness and poverty that have become the scourge for the great
majority of humankind.

   With only 20% of the world's population, they consume two-thirds
of all metals and three-fourth of the energy produced worldwide. 
They have poisoned the seas and rivers.  They have polluted the
air. they have weakened and perforated the ozone layer.  They have
saturated the atmosphere with gases altering climactic conditions
with the catastrophic effects we are already beginning to suffer. 

   The forests are disappearing. The deserts are expanding;
billions of tons of fertile soil are washed every year into the
sea. Numerous species are becoming extinct. Population pressures
and poverty lead to desperate efforts to survive even at the
expense of nature.

   Third world countries--yesterday's colonies, and today nations
exploited and plundered by an unjust international economic order,
cannot be blamed for all this.

   The solution cannot be to prevent the development of those who
need it most, because today everything that contributes to
underdevelopment and poverty is a flagrant rape of the environment.
As a result, tens of millions of men, women and children die every
year in the third world, more than in each of the two world wars. 
Unequal trade, protectionism, and the foreign debt assault the
ecological balance and promote the destruction of the environment.

   If we want to save humanity from this self-destruction, wealth
and available technologies must be better distributed throughout
the world.  Less luxury and less waste in a few countries would
mean less poverty and hunger in much of the world.

   Stop transferring to the third world the lifestyles and consumer
habits that ruin the environment.  Make human life more rational.
Adopt a just international economic order.  Use science to achieve
sustainable development without pollution.  Pay the ecological debt
instead of the foreign debt. Eradicate hunger and not humanity.

   Now that the supposed threat of communism has disappeared and
there is no more pretext to wage cold wars or continue the arms
race and military spending, what then is preventing these resources
from going immediately to promote third world development and fight
the ecological destruction threatening the planet?  Enough of
selfishness. Enough of insensitivity, irresponsibility, and deceit. 
Tomorrow will be too late to do what should have been done a long
time ago.

                            -- 30 --

   Fidel Castro's speech was translated by Radio Havana Cuba. 
** End of text from cdp:nfd.ifeatures **

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