Blog Action Day: Choices

Whenever we are asked to question our habits we run and hide behind that enigmatic word ‘choices’. Choice is a decision to choose a course of action when presented with two or more options. And then our choices go on to produce consequences. That is in fact, one of the most quoted laws of physics.

So we can choose to make our choices, refuse to accept the responsibility of our actions and ignore everything that brings to notice the consequences of our actions. That is indeed one of the options available to a few of us. Not surprisingly, as a consequence they are largely concentrated in certain parts of the globe.

So while a billion of us are obese, a result of the "English malady" whereby they "have ransack'd all the parts of the Globe to bring together its whole Stock of Materials for Riot, Luxury, and to provoke Excess ... Is it any Wonder, then, that the Diseases which proceed from Idleness and Fulness of Bread, should increase in Proportion...?", a billion of us starve "even though food output per person is as high as it has ever been, which suggests that hunger isn't a problem of production so much as one of distribution."

Can one just dismiss it as a choice they make? They just chose the wrong option didn’t they?

And what about the Dongria Kondh? They choose not to let their way of life be destroyed by a mining company. However the real question is do they even have the right to make a choice? And who arbitrates that some choices are more important than the others?

On this blog action day as we debate and discuss climate change maybe we also need to look at the choices we make because for some people in the world the only choice that is left is one between life and death.