Peak Oil and Senegal
Posted by Chris Vernon on April 13, 2007 - 10:46am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: africa, electricity, peak oil, Senegal [list all tags]
I recently spent a week in Senegal, the most westerly African country. Here I’ll share some observations from Senegal with comparisons made to the UK.
| Senegal | UK | |
| Population | 12 million | 60 million |
| GDP per capita | $1,800 | $31,400 |
| Annual oil consumption per capita | 0.9 barrels | 10 barrels |
| Proportion of oil imported | 100% | ~0% and rising |
| Annual electricity generation per capita | 192 kWh | 6600 kWh |
| Electricity generation fuel mix | 76% oil, 13% hydro, 11% comb. Renew & waste | 37% coal, 39% gas, 18% nuclear |
| Vehicles per 1000 inhabitants | 20.6 | ~500 |
Senegal is a poor country with all per capita metrics of conventional wealth far lower than western standards however the many Senegalese I met seemed, outwardly at least to be very happy people. There are certainly more smiles on the street in Dakar than in London. This does raise the question of whether conventional economic metrics tell the whole story, clearly they don’t but in absence of any standard “wellbeing” or “happiness” index they are all we have.
Oil consumption is extremely low at 0.9 barrels per capita per year. This is some 10 times less than the UK. Not only is the absolute usage significantly less but also the distribution of usage is different. Oil is almost exclusively used for transport in the UK, there being little alternative, most other potential uses of oil have been substituted.
In Senegal 37% of the nation's oil supply is used in electricity generation which in turn represents approximately 76% of the nations electricity supply. As noted above, all of Senegal's oil is imported. IEA energy statistics available here.
Oil storage tanks at Dakar.
This is a critical vulnerability, a vulnerability that was realised last year with price rises and frequent blackouts. The New York Times ran this story in October 2006:
Senegal has increased the price of electricity by 15 percent, infuriating consumers already angry with President Abdoulaye Wade's government after months of chronic power cuts. Regular blackouts, lasting days in some areas, have disrupted the economy and fueled public anger against Mr. Wade's government. The power cuts are largely due to problems purchasing increasingly expensive fuel to run oil-fired generating plants. Residents deprived of fans and refrigerators during the hottest part of the year, when daily temperatures rise above 90 degrees, were shocked by an unannounced price increase on their latest electricity bills. "I thought it was a mistake," said Tidiane Tairou, who runs a small hairdressing boutique equipped with two electric razors. "Sometimes they cut from morning to night, and at the end of the month you still get a bill even though you haven't been able to work."It is likely that it won’t take very much of a price hike for other countries to out bid the Senegalese on the international crude market. The situation could arise where the price of oil doubles with relatively little impact in the West as such a small proportion of total income is actually spent on oil but with massive impact in Senegal. The UK alone will be importing many times Senegal's total imports of ~30,000 barrels per day in just a few years time. Imports, at the expense of poorer countries, that could be avoided with relatively minor changes to UK usage. The lights could go out across large parts of Africa as a direct result of oil scarcity whilst the West continues to drive inefficient cars and frequently fly.
Why does Senegal generate electricity from oil, a practice all but abandoned in the West? In fact a 2004 UK report from The Royal Academy of Engineering titled The Costs of Generating Electricity (pdf available) concluded:
...it is clear that under the Government’s existing fiscal policy, fuel oil cannot compete with other types of fossil fuel used to generate electricity. It is our view, therefore, that the scope for future fuel oil-fired generation is very limited, other than for use as a back-up fuel in plants which have the capability to burn more than one type of fuel.As we know, since then the price of oil has risen still further.
Generating electricity from oil is an expensive business. For example a barrel of oil contains approximately 1,680 kWh (37MJ/L) and costs $60. Generating electricity at 40% efficiency results in a fuel cost of 9 cent per kWh. In reality it will be a little more as this does not include the refining costs to produce the fuel oil from the crude. The fuel component of generating costs may represent as much as 70% of the total cost suggesting a total cost of approximately 14 cent per kWh.
The IEA calculate electricity generation costs resulting from a survey of 130 power plants (pdf available) with a 5% capital discount rate as:
- Nuclear: 2.1-3.1 cent per kWh
- Coal: 2.5-5.0 cent per kWh
- Gas: 3.7-6.0 cent per kWh
- Wind: 3.5-9.5 cent per kWh
- Solar: 15 cent per kWh for high activity factors
Having highlighted this vulnerability to oil supply here’s one thing the Senegalese do exceptionally well. The cars especially the taxis were triumphs of repair with vehicles the West would have given up on perhaps a decade earlier still struggling on. Sure they were in bad shape, many with no electrics, mirrors, lights, handles, glass cracked, every body panel dented but they continued to work. The majority of the vehicles were Toyotas or French Peugeots or Renaults.
Whilst driving through the country I passed through a few villages which seemed solely based around keeping the cars going, shops selling used car components lined the road and I spotted a horse drawn trailer carrying all the components of a dismantled engine. This degree of reuse and repair is unheard of in today’s developed economies.
This observation is backed up by the vehicle age data from the Ministry of Transport:
| Age in yrs | Less than 5 | >5 and <10 | >10 and <15 | >15 and <20 | >20 |
| Senegal | 8.9% | 8.1% | 22.4% | 30.4% | 30.3% |
| Dakar | 10.5% | 9.4% | 23.2% | 29.0% | 27.9% |
| Rest of the country | 2.8% | 4.8% | 22.3% | 32.6% | 37.4% |
Source: Performance and Impact Indicators for Transport in Senegal (pdf available)
The statistics reveal that around 60% of motor vehicles are at least 15 years old, however it possible that a significant proportion of the vehicles, especially those over 20 years old are no longer in circulation.
Is this car counted in the statistics?
Conclusion
The sorry truth of the situation is that poor countries with little or no fossil fuel resources of their own often rely on imported oil for electricity generation. If peak oil results in substantial and prolonged price hikes, demand destruction from these poor countries is the obvious result. However this won’t only result in the reduced transportation services we typically associate with oil shortages but more critically will result in reduced electricity availability effecting communications, refrigeration, lighting etc. services that are perhaps more important than internal combustion engine transportation, especially in a country with only 0.02 cars per capita anyway.Here is a video I shot from the taxi driving through the centre of Dakar.
And here is my Flickr photo album from the trip: Senegal Photos
I just read your article and saw the video, DISMAL is the best i can say about the place. The place is a pure squalor! Our cattle and horses is the USA have better living conditions! This video deserves to be on Main stream media! CNN, Fox, Rosie O'Donnell,(haha had to throw in her, since so many sheeple watch her) etc. Mogadishu, Somalia, from the movie Black Hawk Down ring a bell here?
I see similarities.
The contrast of western civilization versus Dakar is 180 degree's from the west. Even some of the slums of Jersey and New York City as well as Los Angeles seem like sunny resorts compared to Dakar. Sad, to say the least!
I'll be the first to say, I have no idea where to even start to correct this gaggle. It's soooo overwhelming. But if I were King for a Day! I'd start with bringing business to Dakar. But it would be a slow process for the money to trickle into rebuilding the infrastructure and buildings. Every building I saw needed serious repair. That could be years, many years from now. By then, due to peak oil, it will have been to late. And since Peak oil is here and just getting started, I am afraid it might be too late for Dakar. I would imagine a revolt from the people to correct the corruption is all thats left. It's going to get very ugly!
At least the French had the guts to stand up against the King and Queen on Bastille Day! I'm not sure I can say this for those in Dakar!
Just mindboggling sad!
I'm always fascinated by what people do or don't know about the world outside their own country.
Mind, I've seen shanty towns on the Texan border that looked little better.
Seriously, people live like this in parts of rural China, which is a fast progressing country.
The US has a GDP per head of $40k. I would think the richest African nations have GDP/head of around $2k, and the poorest around $100.
So how would you expect people to live?
Sorry if the above seems sarcastic-- too early in the morning when I typed it!
I am just surprised when people think life in these places is like it is. Anyone ever read Charles Dickens? Dickens' London of the 1850s is much like any sprawling supercity of the Third World today (Maputo, Rio de Janeiro, Cairo etc.).
Senegal is Islamic. In my experience, Islamic cities are a little better, due to a Koranic emphasis on personal hygiene, and the relative absence of alcohol.
I think everyone is missing the boat on this one.
Thanks to the music, this brought back happy memories of my trip across africa 30 years ago; though there were far less vehicles then. Everywhere I went people were happy, smiling, and willing, even eager to share. People were far happier, far more content than here in America.
I now live in an old mining town in Arizona, where many miner shacks have changed little in three generations, and where newcomers (rich speculators) think the only thing to do is tear them down and build a modern stucco monstrosity.
Americans think the only way to live is to live in a huge house, with all the comforts, where you never have to leave the front door and encounter neighbors, living lives of loneliness and isolation.
I can assure you that doesn't happen in Africa.
Relatively speaking that's not bad. Take a look at the West Point slums in Monrovia, Liberia.
Indeed, relatively speaking Senegal is doing pretty well. It's described as one of the most stable democracies in Africa. The economy has seen real growth in GDP averaging over 5% during the last decade and inflation of just 2%.
Military spending is less than 2% of GDP (which I’m counting as positively low).
Perhaps the biggest concern going into a resource constrained world is demographics though. The median age is 19.1, 41% of the population are aged 0-14 and the fertility rate is 4.4 children per woman.
Click to enlarge.
This also leads to high unemployment (48%, urban youth 40% (2001 est.)) and a large degree of attempted migration amongst young males. I say attempted as there is a horrific casualty rates amongst those attempting to reach the Spanish Canary Islands by boat.
Yes but there have been some remarkable decelerations in birth rate.
Most noticeably in China, but also India, and apparently even Morocco (not sure about Tunisia and Algeria).
Africa is trickier. Many countries are split between moslem and Christian, and religious leaders on both sides encourage more babies, as a way to increase the relative size of their community.
So where is the "pure squalor" in the video?
I have never been to Senegal, but it is a popular tourist destination - especially to the French and to gays.
Anyone who has been to West Africa for a while will appreciate that the ex-French colonies are much pleasanter than the ex-British colonies. The people are much more friendly and civilized. The French like to claim that it was due to their benevolent (ahem) policies and the British like to say that the French grabbed the places with nicer tribes. Perhaps the slave trade (by the British) brought out the worst in the peoples who they traded with - let us not forget that it was the coastal tribes that enslaved the populations of the interior before selling them on.
The pictures show a place that is a good deal better off and safer than is most of Lagos (the commercial capital of Nigeria) - probably because Senegal has no oil. Indeed, I am sure it is much pleasanter than slums in a lot of other places such as Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro. They do not have the gun and drugs culture that is so prevalent in the Americas.
The article misses out on the two main problems in the Senegal - population-growth and desertification (which is linked to oil consumption).
The population of Senegal has increased by a factor of 3 over the past 40 years. If the US's population had increased at a similar rate, it would now be around 600 million. In fact, the US's population, if immigration is removed, has barely changed over this period.
How wealthy would the average American be today if the US's population were 600 million? So much investment would have needed to go into schools, hospitals and infrastructure that there would have been little left over to go towards technology, research and higher education.
On this website, and elsewhere, I have repeatedly seen the assumption that when people are hungry, they rebel and revolt. Not true. If you read carefully books by the famous French historian Fernand Braudel, you will see that the French revolution had somewhat more complex causes. To take an American example, the revolt against the British was not caused because the British in America (the colonisers) could not afford to pay the tax on tea from India. Quite the opposite.
Hunger causes weakness and apathy. Just try going on a serious diet for a while and you will see for yourself. Indeed, dictators like Stalin and Kim Jong-II use hunger to control entire populations - something that you cannot do as easily by force. Hence the reluctance of North Korea to make deals that include food in exchange for disarmament.
Personally, I think that places like Senegal are going to go through a severe form of "population destruction" rather than "demand destruction" - through hunger. Their populations drift to the cities because the urban population control the politics and are able to grab resources from the rural hinterland - for example, by having a grossly inflated currency, taxing food exports and subsidising imports. This will eventually come to an end and people will have to go back to the land. They will have to relearn all the tricks needed to keep the desert at bay.
Sadly, I think that their population will eventually stabilize at around one third of its current number.
I was born on the other side of Africa and love the place and its peoples so this makes me really sad.
Hi Alfred, and appreciation to Chris,
Interesting comments, thank you.
Bring business to Dakar? Business has gotten to Dakar. That's why the local economy has been trashed there and in much of Africa. The technology/culture/terms of "business" is a big part of what's sucking Africa empty.
cfm in Gray, ME
Huh? It looks like an ordinary third world city... better than many. The cars looked recent and in good condition in many cases.
You think you can fix things easily and that the whole thing will look like suburbia in a few years just by bringing business to Senegal? Why don't you dig into some details. Go to Senegal and try and start a business. You will see that developing economies are enormous gordian knots of inter-related and sometimes very politically incorrect problems that you probably never expected. You'll also see that in warm countries, as long as people get enough to eat, they get by for the most part and don't suffer greatly by not having pretty fixed up buildings and brand new clothes.
There is a whole field devoted to studying the problems of developing countries. If you're interested in a business oriented take I'd suggest "The Mystery of Capital" by Hernando De Soto.
the ancien Regime, the old French Monarchy may have been corrupt, but what followed it, during the Revolution, was far far worse.
Read up on Danton, Robespierre and the Terror. Or see the movie Danton with Gerard Depardieu. Or the TV series The Scarlet Pimpernel with Richard E. Grant.
The Committee for Public Safety and its Terror was the model for Lenin, Stalin and the Bolsheviks in 1917 Russia.
Honestly? Squalor? My reaction to the YouTube video was 180 degrees away from yours. I saw healthy looking people walking along a bright, lively street. Commerce, pervasive reuse and recycling, women walking safely unescorted with or without full Islamic covering, children playing outdoor games, people engaging in honest manual labor, etc.
You want to see a pit of desperation? Visit my neighborhood of greater Boston. It's one of the few places near the specialized technology work that I do in which a family can rent instead of buy, and we have staunchly refused to get suckered by the modern-day equivalent of tulip mania by taking on a creative mortgage time bomb.
So where can a well-educated, young, single-income family afford to live in Boston without adding credit card debt to our hefty educational loans? I should post some photographs of our neighborhood (hint: they don't call it Slumerville for nothing). As seen from street level, the primary business activities appear to be selling lottery scratch tickets, waiting tables at the local stuffyourfaceteria, and writing parking tickets.
When the house we occupy was built 100 years ago, it was a nice, comfortable single family house in a thriving, walkable community like the one seen in the footage from Senegal. Now it is subdivided into five separate apartments housing a dozen renters who don't care one whit about this place as it rots and falls apart around us. The slum lord who collects our rent doesn't either. There was a tram rail down the center of the main street two blocks away which has since been paved over. I've never seen children playing double dutch here. The streets are filled with trash and potholes and the sidewalks are cracked and shifted like tectonic plates. A family of squirrels have bored into and taken up residence inside the structure of the house across the street, which is now three different shades of peeling paint where it has been subdivided. The side wall bulges out in a slow-motion structural failure. The house around the corner that caught fire in the fall is still boarded up. Graffiti abounds, as does chain link fence.
To be fair, there are also libraries, numerous well-appointed parks, and high-end products and services for the well-to-do or deep-in-debt. For the right price, we have year-round access to fresh organic vegetables, which is a lavish luxury by world standards. We walk to the farmers' market to buy local produce in season. The public transportation is Dickensian and irregular but pervasive. We have easy access to several cinemas playing excellent independent and foreign films that are unavailable to most of the U.S. We have access to a top-notch automotive recycler for used car parts to keep our old car running. We have many high-quality lessons and activities for children in affluent parts of Cambridge. So we make it work, but the fact remains that large swaths of Boston have degraded into places not worth caring about (in the parlance of J.H. Kunstler).
Compared to the deplorable condition of U.S. cities, I'm extremely impressed that Dakar is thriving on a tiny fraction of the energy we use in our squalor. It gives me hope that in the wake of peak oil, we can reconfigure our neighborhoods in ways that will make them better than they are now, in which neighbors communicate in ways other than hand gestures and horn blasts exchanged across traffic lanes choked with pollution from SUVs. From the looks of the U.S. today, we need (little 'd') democratic revolution more than Senegal.
Great video. I went to Google Earth immediately after to get a sense of the lay of the land.
Dear Chris,
Thank you for your report on Senegal. I think the visuals were a good idea, a little "real world" in our lives instead of the models and data, we all love so much on TOD.
One can be overwhelmed by the conditions in the third world if one isn't prepared for them. Many years ago I knew a very beautiful, gentle, kind and sensitive "hippy princess" from a very comfortable family, who took of for India, what she saw in Calcutta really shook her to her core. When she finally came home she looked like a ghost and was definitely no the same girl anymore. All told it took about five years for her to recover, regain weight, her smile and a positive outlook on life. She ended up marrying an investment banker.
Seen in a slightly longer historical perspective, the poor in countries like Senegal are actually getting poorer as we get richer. Our paths are diverging and have been for decades. Roughly, the living standard of the average peasant in rural europe at the start of the nineteenth century was about three times that of the average african. Some economic historians would argue that the differences were only marginal, at least if one compares the ammount of food consumed. During the last two centuries the gap in living standards has exploded as our consumption of resources has skyrocketed. Not only that, during the last fifty or so years the rate of increase in our consumption of raw materials and wealth has speeded up considerably.
Dropping economics and history, there's also the question of fairness and morality, which so concerned my ex-girlfriend, the one who went to India. Morally, how can we justify our vastly different standards of living? Can we really defend our staggeringly high consumption of the world's resources, at the same time that so many people are living in conditions of abject poverty? It's not just poverty, they are sick and they are dying, whilst we live like kings, eat like gluttons and party on like there is no tomorrow. The fact that we choose not to share our wealth with the poor and raise their living standards, so they at the very least aren't dying in their millions, must reflect on our "moral standards" and our level of "civilization" surely? What does this say about our humanity that we allow so many to suffer so much? Surely the most elementary concepts of justice and decent behaviour are trampeled underfoot if we just turn our heads away?
And yet...
Chris, would you say that the folk on the streets of Dakar spent more of their time smiling, talking with their their friends, making music, dancing than counterparts in the rich world?
The "atmosphere" on the street was certainly happier (at least to the casual observer that I was) than London. Indeed as we drove along the coast road just to the north of Dakar at dusk we saw several hundred people dancing on the beach. Also in the roadside cafes we ate at the conversation was lively, enthusiastic, energetic and above all accompanied by lots of laughing - again far more than a similar cafe in London.
British social life is propelled by alcohol. You see people kicking back and having fun in London, but they are typically well on the way to blotto...
We Brits have become the worst boozers in Europe, rivaling or exceeding the Scandinavians. If you go to a lot of Eastern European capitals, that are at the other end of cheap Ryanair and Easyjet flights, they have come to hate us for our 'booze cruise' weekend mentality.
One of the good and bad things about developing countries is that the government is not very organized. That means you can go to the beach and have a massive outdoor party without a permit or anything and nobody will really care. There can be all kinds of hole in the wall informal mom and pop shops that are very convenient, etc. People have to rely much more on social ties then the legal system or rules and regulations. People don't travel far from their homes so they are much more familiar with the local community.
This may be farther off topic, but I feel compelled to toss in a supporting viewpoint. I have noticed in my travels that the less developed a place is, the more civilized it is. It's as if we in the U.S. have the luxury, because of our machines and stuff, to ignore our fellow dwellers. In poorer countries, a tight-knit and socially healthy community is more essential to survival and success, so it is nurtured by everyone. Strangers are assisted in their travels, sought out to be asked about the oddest topics, if not invited inside for tea.
I can't count the number of Americans I know who actively fear to go outside the U.S. and Canada and it is painfully difficult to explain to them how very mistaken they are about how open and welcoming cultures can be in "underdeveloped" places.
Yes, the population growth in these places indicates an impending crisis, but these places are accustomed to getting by on very little. We in the U.S. are in for a colder more upsetting bath if we have to change even a fraction of how we live. I can't help but think the Amish are going to look like amazingly prescient folks, having pinned their culture to a point just before oil started to change things, so when it goes away again they'll just shrug and move along as always.
Depends where.
Some parts of the Americas are very bad: drugs, guns & gangs.
Ditto some 'failed states' in west and east Africa.
Iraq is obviously completely unsafe.
Some places (Uzbekistan) the fear of the government is very palpable and real: people are 'disappeared' and found, tortured to death.
In general I have found people in the Middle East to be very friendly, and very low levels of 'violent street crime' compared to the West. Unfortunately as a westerner, I am now a target in many of those countries, and I would circumscribe what I would do in Karachi or Cairo or Damascus or Amman.
Asia seems pretty safe, but crime is rising with modernisation. India is lovely, but again faces rising crime, and there is much communal violence.
Africa I don't know so well, but South Africa is hell for street crime.
Writerman
Since you bring up morality, I will go ahead and write something I have been noticing for a while here. It seems quite popular to 'religion bash' here when the topic comes up. Many people here like to support evolution, to say we are nothing more than cells and chemicals that climb out of a pool of 'gooh'.
The way I see it, people have to make a decision. There is a God who gives absolutes and sets morality, or there is not and we are all just nothing more than a bunch of chemicals.
If we choose that we are nothing more than chemicals evolved out of some pool millions of years ago, why should we care about if we use more resources than someone else. Hey, eat drink and be merry, we have it better than everyone else! Too bad for them if they can't survive! Suvival of the fittest, remember? So what if PO is about to happen, as long as we can take over the oil, or build a survival bunker and live, who cares about the other guy. If our emotions or thoughts are nothing more than neurotransmittors, then you are being completely irrational by worrying about us using more than our share of the resources.
Writerman
Thats a straw man arguement reguarding the moral practices of atheists and agnostics. I suggest you do a little reading, a good place to start would be Richard Dawkins new book"The God Delusion" or "Misquoting Jesus", I forget the author.
The main reason that the Scientific Method became more accepted by the intellegensia is the insanity, intolerance and brutality associated with religion. The craziness in Iraq, and the hatred in modern America spewed out by various competing and contradictory revelations really give me pause.
I think we need to set our beliefs aside on this blog. Its at best a distraction from Peak Oil and really puts off potential participants.
sorry Writerman, its shawnott I intended to address with my plea to keep it secular
Oilmanbob,
Just a few words. Much of this "debate" appears to hinge on the concept of "God". When we use the word what do we mean? There's surely a paradox here somewhere? What I mean to imply is this; if by "God" we mean an "all knowing" and "all powerful" entity who has created the universe, in essence; time, space, energy and life, then we are talking about a Very, Very... Great Power. How can we, who compared to God are not all knowing and all powerful, "second guess" the nature and wishes of power which has literally created the universe? Surely God is as far above us, as we are to the average ant? God would appear to be infinitely different from us. We cannot understand God. Is God even human as we suppose? Surely God is beyond human, beyond time and space, beyond our understanding? So perhaps God is everthing, or all, or no thing, because God not only outside the physical universe, but outside our ability to even imagine what God might posssibly "be" or "is"? Here endeth the Sunday sermon!
OIlman,
please elaborate on how you view the "scientific method" takes only an agnostic viewpoint. There are many scientific undertakings that follow that method, but has someone once told Einstein. "quit telling God what to do". Religion is not spirituality, and a belief in a Supreme being has nothing to do with the scientific method. If so how do you explain Creation with the scientific method. Once you do that, get back to me.
http://www.dvhardware.net/article14548.html
the "earbud" is a road
ever seen this. Funny how nature works sometimes. Accident of "time" or was it more.
Quid Clarius Astris
Ubi Bene ibi patria
oilmanbob
I generally do not post much, though I read here everyday. And I never try to initiate a religous conversation, only respond to something I see. I even tried to keep it high level by saying God though I believe in the God of the Bible.
I can understand your plea to keep it secular, but in fairness that should also include a plea to writerman to not speak about morals and what is right or wrong.
My only point was , out of frustration, to mention something I see here that people like to talk about what we 'should' do or what is 'right' to do, but at the same time profess we are nothing more than evolutionary apes. I say you can't have both. Other wise one persons morals of selfishness and greed are no worse than someone elses morals.
I'll be quite now. :)
You said it Shawnott. Spirituality is not "religion". Take Native American spirituality, it is something most white people know nothing about. In fact are surprised when they hear what the "concept" they live their lives as, what they "know" and understand.
People go to "church" and build bigger churches to prove they are moral. Not all. But as a wise man once taught me,..
Turtle, if man has his hand in it, its F'd up, its not perfect, it has flaws, such is his nature.
I don't bring this stuff here because its not part of the subject. Though I would say, if you listen to what the Native Americans are saying about the future right now. Plus the Mayan spiritual leaders, and many other ancient civilizations, go ask them. YOu may be very surprised to hear and understand their viewpoints on life and the "universe'> Listening to STuart and others and noticing what is happening. Taking steps now is not a guarantee, but is still wise. However my view of those steps is more than just money, food, and other. material matters.
edited to add
Squalor etc. Been to a reservation in the US. Shameful what this country has and is doing.
Walk in Peace PO brothers.
and yes
Creator is Chief.
Quid Clarius Astris
Ubi Bene ibi patria
Shawnott,
Thank you for your comment. I'm not sure either, about a lot of things, especially about "God"! I've written a tiny reply to Oilmanbob, which might or might not interest you.
I'm not sure if I'm guilty or not of "dissing" religion on TOD. Sometimes when one is confronted with the psuedo-religious views of some people one overreacts.
Personally, I think finde this whole concept of "God" difficult. If we accept that God is all powerful and all knowing and God created the uninverse, time and space; this has profound consequences for our attempts to concieve and perceive "God".
At the same time as God is all powerful and all knowing, God also apparently gave us free will; or if one prefers the right or ability to makes mistakes and fool ourselves that we "understand" creation. If God gave us any part of "himself" than "free will" is probably the most important of "his" gifts. This, of course, implies that we have an independent conciousness apart from God.
God doesn't mind us getting confused about ourselves, the universe or even the "nature of God", this is perhaps part of our learning curve.
On the other hand, perhaps God has created an environment for us which serves a purpose we do not, as yet, understand. Learning to understand, or attempting to understand probably has an important function. Let's accept that God created the universe as a gift and challange for us. Maybe God did this in order to create consciouness out of nothing, just to see if it would arise of itself without his intervention.
Perhaps even God's most violent critics, even those who become famous by denying his very existance, are part of God's plan. God is trying to give us a gift, which we may not be able or ready to accept or fully understand.
God isn't worried about our theories or our puny science. God wants us to try to understand what we don't and can't. God may have an ironic sense of humour. The more we think we know, the more we deny the existence of God, the happier God is, at least this shows we're making progress, after all God doesn't need us or our aknowledgement. God just is, has been, and always will be, long before and after our planet and sun have vanished from the universe.
But none of this means that we should just cynically turn our backs on the poor or their suffering. This is an absurd concept. We have to do what we think is right, not because we think this is what God wants, but because it's right in itself. God enjoys these subtle differences. The fact that we can think and debate and question morality, is perhaps what God was aiming for when he created the conditions that eventually produced us. Perhaps God wants us to look at Senegal and the people who live there and the children playing in the dirt, and maybe he hopes we won't forget them and let them suffer needlessly, and at some stage we'll understand that God is Love.
On a very simple level it's hard to imagine God being afraid or irritated by anything we do or say, becaue God is way ahead of us in time. God knows more than we do and God is waiting for us to catch up!
God isn't afraid of "evolution" or Charles Darwin's ideas, after all he "created them" and knew they were coming, after all God is all knowing.
God doesn't mind when we screw up or make total fools of ourselves. God isn't vindictive or petty. God doesn't advocate ethnic cleansing or genocicde or stealing someone else's land. This is a profound misunderstanding on our part. We may try, but it's in the very nature of things that we must fail to understand God.
Writerman
Thank you for the reply. My apologies, I did not intend to say you directly has 'dissed' religion here. I was just making a more general comment about how the topic is viewed here.
To change the subject back to where we both agree, and this was lost in my hastiness to reply, I do agree with your original views. I have traveled many parts of the world and do know there is a world outside our borders. I do think it is sad that we use so many resources at the expense of others, that I have to watch how many calories I eat each day so I don't get fat while someone else just worries if they will have any calories to consume.
To Chris: Thank you for the post and the video clip (with the music added). I do find it fascinating to see and understand other parts of the world.
http://www.lightinfo.org/maitreya/bswalkam.htm
this basic story has been told for centuries, handed down verbally across many campfires.
Show of hands of people that knew this.
Beuler, beuler.
Quid Clarius Astris
Ubi Bene ibi patria
Writerman,Shawnott and others,
I have no answers regarding God , nor was I asked to supply any, but I have a few ideas about the 'searching' part that I would like to share, after many many years of searching myself, first through enforced church attendance,then a great falling away, then over time returning to the 'fold, then after many years seeing the outright corruption ,ego and strife within organized religion , finally pitching it all far away and beginning to search on my own.
My path finally seemed to work for me. I would suggest that this method, if one surely wishes to discover anything, might yield a few worthy results.
Ok...First understand that Christ did NOT come for us. He came for the 'lost sheep of the tribe of Israel'. Christ never wrote ANYTHING down. He told his disciples to NOT go to the gentiles. Christ NEVER left the bounds of Israel(meaning Judea as well and never went to the lands of the GENTILES).
Ok. Got that off my chest to put it in perspective.
God..chose the Jews. He created man but chose the Jews,who knows why but it appears he said this over and over.After all ,all the books of the bible are pretty much written by Jews.
Therefore if one might wish to understand something about God and his workings one might like to read the Torah. The messages he gave to Moses to give to the Jews. The first five books. Forget the greek nonsense and the names. Thats what we the gentiles did to it. The real names are not the same. I mean the names of the books. Genesis,Exodus,,etc.
And in the New Testament you run into all the greek nonsense once more. Its get very confusing. I therefore stick mostly to just the Torah.The important stuff, so to speak.
Jews have been studying the Torah(and the rest of the old testament) far far longer than any blowdried yahoo bigmouth preacher Televangalist.
I suggest a book titled 'The Five Books of Moses'by Robert Alter. Read his bio first and his credentials before you buy the book. Its somewhat hard to find except in very large bookstores. Be prepared to have much of what you might have been taught proven wrong. For instance there is NO satanic involvement with the serpent in the garden. None whatsoever as the Hebrew is translated. The serpent is NOT the devil. Not as per the Hebrew. Its just convenient for the christian dogma to say it is. Not a shred of evidence. None.
Nor does the woman 'booting' the head of the serpent foretell of the future coming of Jesus Christ. Not in the least. Not in the translation. Again just Christian dogma.
One last. God never never never promised eternal life in the old testament. Never did. Not once. He never laid it on the table and since it was a BIGGIE you would have thought that like Christ he would have pounded it home over and over. He never spoke of it re