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:
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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:
“Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and on credit.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity I have wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices. I have flattered no ruling powers; I have never concealed a single thought that tempted me.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Opinions are formed in a process of open discussion and public debate, and where no opportunity for the forming of opinions exists, there may be moods—moods of the masses and moods of individuals, the latter no less fickle and unreliable than the former—but no opinion.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)