Third World Poverty; The Environmental Movement's Forgotten Child

                                     Every night at dusk along comes the trash fires, where people burn their garbage to rid themselves of trash. This is a third world country, and there is no such thing as garbage pickup except in a few exclusive areas. Which means that almost the entire population, millions upon millions of people, have no garbage pickup. The only way to dispose of garbage is to burn it. Much of the trash consists of plastic, which is everywhere. Poor people by the millions eat the cheap poor nutrition foods (full of salt, sugars, hydrogenated fats) offered up by giant food corporations, all of which is wrapped in plastic. There is nowhere to dispose of the non biodegradable plastic, so it ends up in garbage fires or on the ground. When the rains come, much of it ends up in the rivers and waterways, eventually making its ways to the oceans.
                                    Trash is everywhere. And no matter how much burning takes place, it is quickly replaced by new plastic wrappers, Styrofoam, plastic bags, plastic wrappings. Every nightfall along come the toxic fires, with their thick and foul smell. Millions of these fires are set across the world nightly in nations racked by poverty and poor infrastructure.
                                     Poor people live by the hundreds of millions in desperate poverty. If there is wildlife in close proximity, many will not hesitate to kill anything that moves that can be eaten. Most poaching takes place by the desperately poor, driven by hunger, not by greed. If there are trees that can be cut for charcoal and firewood, many will not hesitate to degrade their environment, thinking only of today, not of tomorrow.
                                      The destruction of the environment and the decimation of wildlife has multiple causes. Pretending there are only some causes, such as greedy corporations and people, while ignoring others, does not help. Many poor people say that if family planning were made available, they would use it. Smaller family sizes helps raise desperately poor people out of poverty. Families should have this choice. Instead, strong religious and political continue to decry global warming or climate change while insisting the world is not overpopulated, purposefully making family planning unavailable.  Recognizing global climate change but ignoring overpopulation means there is nothing seriously being addressed - not poverty and not environmental protection. For those that do not believe humans are changing the climate, what is undeniable is that humans are poisoning the environment.
                                       There is not enough toxic pesticides, not enough resources, not enough man made technology to cope with the devastation people are inflicting upon this world. People in cleaner, orderly parts of the world may consider themselves free of the desperation, but they are not. The toxicity and poisoning that comes from many sources has spread, and continues to spread worldwide.  Humans and animals, even wildlife in remote places, have toxic chemicals and substances in their bodies that never existed in previous generations. Thousands upon thousands of species cannot cope with the man made destruction of the oceans and land. People are not exempt from their own poisons.