Perfect pitch
It would seem self-evident that ‘Lower taxes mean more petrol sold’ (Editor’s letter, Mired in crude, NI 335) with the attendant problems of more pollution and congestion. However, it does not follow that increased tax is the best instrument to restrict consumption. Far from it. Fuel duties give governments a stake in high consumption as they are pitched at levels that will maximize revenue and thus minimize the dependence on progressive taxation.

Economic growth fuels consumption as higher disposable incomes generate increased demand for fossil-fuelled transport.

Paul Thomson
Sale, England

Sudan oil campaign
I was very pleased to see the June issue (NI 335), dedicated to exposing the terrible human-rights abuses, corruption and environmental damage caused by the oil industry.

Christian Aid recently published a report called Scorched Earth – Oil and War in Sudan, which describes how the presence of international companies is fuelling the war in Sudan. Eyewitness accounts show that Government forces are ruthlessly clearing the way for oil over an increasingly large area by killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of southern Sudanese. Roads and airstrips built to serve the companies are also used by the army as part of the war. The million dollars a day that the Government of Sudan earns from oil is equivalent to the million dollars a day it spends fighting the war.

Christian Aid, along with 56 other organizations, has signed up to a European Campaign on Oil in Sudan. The Campaign requests a ban on investment in the Sudanese oil industry and suspension of commercial activities in Sudan, until there is a just and lasting peace agreement.

For a copy of the report call Christian Aid +44 207 523 2248. To get involved in the European Campaign on Oil in Sudan, e-mail PaxChristi@PaxChristi.nl

Georgiana Treasure
Christian Aid,
London, England

A credit to the poor
Your article about microcredit organizations getting too big for their own good misses the point (‘Local heroes’ NI 332). These organizations are getting big because they are filling a huge unmet need – giving the poor access to credit. They are even doing it cost-effectively, covering their costs and becoming less dependent on foreign aid – a radical concept indeed. Many microcredit organizations are improving their delivery methods, cost-recovery methods and ability to target those most in need.

I’m much more interested in whether a microcredit organization is actually providing credit opportunities to enable poor people to help themselves, than the size of the building it operates from.

Maree Nutt
Mona Vale, Australia

Keep it parked
I am surprised that your list of remedies for oil dependence (NI 335) didn’t include reducing the use of personal motor transport. This would also have the advantage of dramatically improving many people’s quality of life.

The use of hydrogen for vehicle fuel would improve our air quality, but it wouldn’t help combat climate change unless it was produced from renewables, and I suspect that for the next few decades we’ll need all our renewables output to phase out the use of fossil fuels for electricity production.

Simon Norton
Cambridge, England

GM optimist
Has the NI become a propaganda tool of green ideology (Essay NI 333)? As much as I admire some of the work that they do, Greenpeace were put on trial for theft, and were found guilty. These people do not seem to realize that genetic modification has been going on in Britain since the Agricultural Revolution, and that the modern scientific method is simply more precise. Greenpeace not only knows nothing about modern GM (they ignore the fact that GM food has been in production for the last 20 years in the US), but they also want to stop people in Britain finding out about it – via criminal methods.

NI has also failed to point out that GM doesn’t only have one purpose, that of nasty corporations making money. People in the Third World are going blind from vitamin A deficiency and GM food is a practical cure. This is one example among many that makes the GM debate a Western luxury.

Nick Collet
Maidstone, England

Faith restored
I was extremely pleased to see you offering Oxfam an opportunity to answer its critics (Essay, NI 334). It seems the media in general find it all too easy to criticize international charities, especially when the nature of their work is often very sensitive and can be remote from people’s understanding.

Oxfam, and a large number of equally vital agencies around the world, are fundamental to the societies in which we live today, as is the public support that those charities depend on in order to carry out their work. As an Oxfam fundraiser and in light of the media battering we’ve recently been subjected to, I wish to thank the NI for rebuilding my faith.

Stuart Riddle
Bristol, England

Beyond South: the debate

1
In NI 334 you request alternatives to the geographically inaccurate term ‘South’ and the vague description ‘Majority World’. The ‘Third World’ cannot exist after the demise of the communist ‘Second World’. All countries are ‘developing’ in some sense.

I prefer ‘less industrialized countries’. This description is not pejorative. It is accurate. It is even hopeful, since the more industrialized countries are finding that industry undermines their futures. While they despoil the planet, the less industrialized conserve it.

John D Anderson
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

2
Jon Sobrino, a theologian and partner of CAFOD, the agency I work for, suggests that we should begin to talk instead about ‘crucified peoples’. Whilst this is metaphorical language it does convey the historical enormity of the disaster which is befalling the Majority World and its meaning for us in the Minority World. The cross means death – and death caused by poverty generated by great injustice, or death caused by war to control minerals and natural resources, is what many in the Majority World are subjected to today. The point of acknowledging the ‘crucified peoples’ as such, is that to be crucified is not simply to ‘die from natural causes’, but rather to be ‘put to death’. It means there are victims and executioners. It means there exists in our world very grave wrong and very grave injustice. It means we must reflect on the extent to which we collude or even actively participate in these executions – and tackle the structures of injustice and evil.

I acknowledge that this terminology could never be of universal application in our secularized society today.

Greg Collins
Dartford, England

3
It all depends on the context. When it is about distribution of wealth, poor-rich is clearly the best terminology. If it is about economic exploitation: exploiters and exploited. If it is about sexual minorities: to say that Muslim gays from, let’s say, Egypt share the same characteristics as those from Bangladesh is clearly ludicrous. Of course there are countries where gay people are oppressed: but what has the North-South divide to do with it?

On the other hand, I feel a bit sorry for you all. We are all ethnocentric, there’s no two ways about it – only you get scolded by your critical readership.

Peter Bontje
Kobe-shi, Japan