Chip wrote:
I see some posters trivializing this and posting in self justification. Maybe there are bigger problems in the world, but this may be a perfect metaphor for man's greed and vanity, killing off the planet's most majestic animals so they can hold a piece of what killed them in their hands. While 99.9% of the animal is wasted ...
There is nothing ... pretty about this.
This is an unjust accusation that i cannot let stand like this. I do not have the impression that anyone here "trivializes and posts in self justification" the issue of illegal ivory.
On the opposite - i argue that demands for a blanket boycott as you and others here propose lead to the same result the decades of the drug wars have resulted in: the problem is only getting compounded while root causes are not treated. It's a knee jerk reaction that results from a fanatic tunnel vision and lack of education of a very complex problem.
We are in complete agreement that the illegal trade of ivory is despicable. Yet i propose solutions that are practical and sustainable and take factors into consideration that for the sake of convenience are completely dismissed and ignored by proponents of blanket boycotts - such as cultural and economical ones. The world does not circle around the whims of the 2% that have the luck to live in the developed world. If you want to find solutions than you have to consider the problems of the remaining 98% of humanity.
You fall for PR (e.g. a melodramatic "the planets most majetic animals"), while ignoring that the illegal ivory trade is just one small part of a much larger problem.
Do you, for example, eat ocean fish? The fishing industry's wholesale slaughter of fish has potentially far more devastating effects on the world than the potential extinction of elephants. And in that business the major culprits are in the developed world - Europe, the US and Japan, both as perpetrators and as end users. But of course - some small slimy fish is neither majestic nor cute. There are many more such examples i could cite.
Even the use of personal computers and mobile phones by us automatically contributes to African wars, which directly contributes to the extinction of species. Just look up blood Coltan.
The illegal ivory trade is one small issue which is part of a much larger context - and that context is the way you and i are living. Indignation over the illegal ivory trade, proposing blanket boycotts, while at the same time ignoring root causes which all come to down to one point - unjust distribution of wealth in the world - of which you and i are clear beneficiaries. Raving and ranting about ivory may give you the comfort of being able to shift blame, but it is no solution. It even makes things worse.
But of course, what i say here is off-topic glibberish...
