Opinions
British Green activist Richard Douthwaite interviewed a person who remembers once saying that "in some societies, very high levels — virtually First World levels — of individual and public health and welfare are achieved at as little as sixtieth of US nominal GDP per capita and used Kerala as an example". Richard Douthwaite states that Kerala "is far more sustainable than anywhere in Europe or North America". Kerala's unusual socioeconomic and demographic situation was summarized by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben:
-
Kerala, a state in India, is a bizarre anomaly among developing nations, a place that offers real hope for the future of the Third World. Though not much larger than Maryland, Kerala has a population as big as California's and a per capita annual income of less than $300. But its infant mortality rate is very low, its literacy rate among the highest on Earth, and its birthrate below America's and falling faster. Kerala's residents live nearly as long as Americans or Europeans. Though mostly a land of paddy-covered plains, statistically Kerala stands out as the Mount Everest of social development; there's truly no place like it.
Read more about this topic: Kerala Model
Famous quotes containing the word opinions:
“[Religious liberty was] in its nature an inalienable right ... because the opinions of men, depending only upon the evidence contemplated by their minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a strong relish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind with a very common error of this age—I mean the habit of referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)