“Greed is not bad,” says Saleem Ali, professor of environmental studies at the University of Vermont, an authority on conflict resolution and author of Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed, and a Sustainable Future, a book on sustainable extractive mining. Coming from an environmentalist, that statement alone can raise eyebrows. However, rather than greed for greed’s sake, it’s consumption within a framework of regulations, with an eye on providing livelihoods, with minimum impact on the environment, that Dr. Ali advocates. Improving a region’s environmental health must also mean providing a livelihood chain for people in those areas, he says. Choices such as large scale mining for diamonds or trading across continents do involve a carbon footprint, but it is an exchange Dr. Ali encourages. “Pollution is one problem but so is people dying of hunger and poverty.”
Hope this intro. catches your attention. I tell you, he's a man worth keeping an eye on. Nobel Peace Prize winner in the making. It's for my very first article for Aramco World Magazine. To get up to speed with Saleem Ali's doings turn to http://www.uvm.edu/~shali.
Hope this intro. catches your attention. I tell you, he's a man worth keeping an eye on. Nobel Peace Prize winner in the making. It's for my very first article for Aramco World Magazine. To get up to speed with Saleem Ali's doings turn to http://www.uvm.edu/~shali.
