Natural disasters

Today, Father Perie didn’t talk about the Bible in his homily. He dedicate the whole homily to the victims of the Pakinstain earthquake, urge us to donation money through the national charity to help those victims. I think today’s message is very meaningful, the father as a good example to acted out Jesus’ teaching rather just talk about it.

This earthquake is like the hurricane in New Orleans, most of the damage could be avoided if the growth of the cities are well controlled. An earthquake will not cause much damage to a primitive society doesn’t rely on electroncity or pumping water. In ancient time, villagers could probably rebuild their shaggy home and life back to normal in relative short period of time. The more complicated the society, the better its ability to fight natural disasters. But it also prone to suffer much more damage if it face a disaster it couldn’t win.

We have heard about the damage cause of flooding almost every year in the recent years. The number of damage in dollar value or lives taken is getting higher and higher. These numbers may give an impression that the world’s climate is getter worse and worse. However if we look at a different presective, the area of the flood remains about the same for centuries. Flooding is just part of the nature. It is the fault of man who expand their cities into high risk areas, ignoring the geographical reality.

I havn’t make up my mind whether or not donate to help the victims of the earthquake. If Pakinstain government can spend millions of dollars to develop nuclear weapons, they should not ask for aids from other counties. The people living in Kashamir is different than those who lives in poor rural China. I don’t feel the bond to them, and the obligation to help them. Natural disaster always happens, and the local government always asking for aids afterward, rather having better preparation. If there is some kind of charity insurance fund covering natural disaster in selected poor places, or charity investment fund help poor area to build better infrastructure against the disaster, I will definite donate. Giving money to reward poor planning will only encourage local officials to become more irresponsible about the welfare of their own people. At last, the root cause of all the huge damages is there are too many people. I always wanted to donate money help solving this problem. I have long been searching for to a charity organization that carry out birth control in poor countries.

One thought on “Natural disasters”

  1. wei wei~

    i very much agree with you! good point!! it’s like the downtown incident last wk – i don’t understand why the gov’t can’t do anything to relieve the social problems if ppl are poor, sick, and unhealthy. vancouver is rated even as the world’s first-class city, and yet this is unreasonable/unacceptable since the scene of downtown during nighttime is oppositedly different from that of daytime.

    fr. guy and fr. pierre look so much alike, don’t they? ^___^ don’t forget their names and faces next time!

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