{"id":1398248,"date":"2023-12-18T06:53:47","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T06:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=308052"},"modified":"2023-12-18T06:53:47","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T06:53:47","slug":"in-our-deeply-unequal-world-the-garbage-rises-ever-higher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/12\/18\/in-our-deeply-unequal-world-the-garbage-rises-ever-higher\/","title":{"rendered":"In Our Deeply Unequal World, the Garbage Rises Ever Higher"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Photograph Source: Gunther Hagleitner – CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

The summit of Mount Everest, in case you haven\u2019t heard, has become somewhat of a trash heap, a high-profile embarrassment that some have taken to calling<\/a> the \u201cworld\u2019s highest garbage dump.\u201d<\/p>\n

A half-century ago, few would have expected this outcome. Back in 1976, Nepal, the Himalayan nation that counts Everest \u2014 Mount Sagarmatha \u2014 as its most glorious natural treasure, had created a national park to protect Everest and its fellow peaks. Three years later, UNESCO named Everest an official world heritage site. Nobody worried about Everest becoming a garbage dump.<\/p>\n

But then, in the early 1980s, things started changing. Over the past four decades, as a new Statistica<\/em> analysis points out<\/a>, scaling Everest has become \u201ca lucrative business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Between 1953, the year the climbers Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first conquered Everest, and the late 1970s, no more than small handfuls of adventurous souls annually made the demanding trek to the Earth\u2019s highest summit. Since those late 1970s, the annual conqueror total has exploded, to well over 800 in the year before the Covid pandemic hit.<\/p>\n

What has also exploded in the years since the early 1980s: the world\u2019s population of deep pockets. That explosion has clearly impacted the traffic on Mount Everest. We now have oodles of thrill seekers who can handily afford all the bells and whistles less-than-world-class climbers need to make a climb up Everest.<\/p>\n

The combined cost of these bells and whistles, an analysis earlier this fall calculated<\/a>, can reach anywhere up to $160,000 for a single ascent.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s deeply unequal world we abound with people who can afford that sort of expense. The latest available data place<\/a> the global population of \u201cultra high net worth individuals\u201d \u2014 those fortunates worth at least $30 million \u2014 at nearly 400,000. These super rich can essentially afford to seek out any turn-on.<\/p>\n

And the rest of us, defenders of these deep pockets claim, should be eternally grateful for all the spending this seeking demands. The outlays the rich make for adventure and pleasure, the argument goes, create jobs and keep our global economy humming.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the Himalayas, for instance, an American affluent can engage the services of a local climbing Sherpa guide for a mere $5,000. Other Sherpa locals can make $2,000 plus tips for doing the cooking for a climbing expedition. These sorts of fees can make life-changing differences for families who live on the mountainsides around Everest. But fees like these barely make a dent in Nepal\u2019s overall poverty.<\/p>\n

In Nepal today, Oxfam points out<\/a>, half of all children under age five suffer from malnutrition. Nearly as many Nepalese, 44 percent, live below the poverty line.<\/p>\n

Nepalese above and below that line also have to deal with the environmental damage the small armies of affluent mountain climbers leave behind.<\/p>\n

Climbers on Everest, notes<\/a> National Geographic<\/em>, spend weeks making their ascents, leaving the mountain\u2019s slopes \u201clittered with discarded empty oxygen canisters, abandoned tents, food containers, and even human feces.\u201d That litter has contaminated the local watershed.<\/p>\n

But the show must go on \u2014 for the awesomely affluent. And remember, shills for our deepest pockets never tire of reminding us, those affluents are creating jobs! And they unquestionably are. On Everest and around the world, the rich are creating lines of work we never imagined existed.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigh-net-worth wine enthusiasts,\u201d journalist Cindy Lamothe observed<\/a> last week, \u201coften employ experts to curate and manage their wine collections.\u201d<\/p>\n

These specialists both \u201cselect rare and valuable bottles\u201d and \u201calso ensure proper storage, rotation and auctioning when the time is right, creating a seamless wine investment strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wealthy art collectors employ specialized art \u201cauthenticators\u201d who use forensic analysis and all sorts of other techniques to confirm an artwork\u2019s authenticity, a must in \u201ca market filled with forgeries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without the wealthy among us, we\u2019d also have to do without \u201cprivate medical concierge services,\u201d a line of work that connects wealthy clients \u201cwith top-tier doctors and specialists, offering speedy appointments, and even providing round-the-clock access for consultations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jobs, jobs, jobs \u2014 and only the presence of an enormously wealthy few can ensure these jobs continue to be available!<\/p>\n

In other times, in other places, the numbers of those employed directly by the wealthy have sometimes reached significantly high levels. In the early 20th century, an astounding 1.5 million British people worked<\/a> as butlers, maids, and other domestics for the UK\u2019s rich.<\/p>\n

Our contemporary rich seem intent on recreating that Edwardian world \u2014 appropriately updated for high-end 21st century sensibilities. Our deepest modern-day pockets, explains<\/a> a recent Washington Post<\/em> analysis, \u201care pursuing the optimization of everyday life, supported by entourages of experts \u2014 often managed by a single power assistant \u2014 who help the hyper-successful live longer, do more and pursue a fleeting and intangible perfection in every aspect of their existence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bigger the mansion today, the greater the need for the \u201cnew domestics,\u201d the personal lifestyle experts who keep the \u201cright furnishings\u201d in the lounges and the \u201cright cars\u201d in the garages. Lush home theaters demand projectionists. Estates in Malibu even have \u201cpersonal hospitality directors\u201d who help house guests plan their daily activities.<\/p>\n

Our contemporary societies do not, of course, have to revolve around the needs of the richest among us. Instead of watching the wealthy trek up Everest, for instance, we could be watching kids from average families having a blast trekking up climbing walls in community gyms.<\/p>\n

But public services that imaginative will only materialize if we show some serious political<\/em> imagination, if we dare to pursue tax and other policy changes that keep income and wealth from concentrating in a precious few pockets.<\/p>\n

The rest of us don\u2019t have to serve the rich. We can work to create societies that take a serious shot at serving us all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post In Our Deeply Unequal World, the Garbage Rises Ever Higher<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The summit of Mount Everest, in case you haven\u2019t heard, has become somewhat of a trash heap, a high-profile embarrassment that some have taken to calling the \u201cworld\u2019s highest garbage dump.\u201d A half-century ago, few would have expected this outcome. Back in 1976, Nepal, the Himalayan nation that counts Everest \u2014 Mount Sagarmatha \u2014 as More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post In Our Deeply Unequal World, the Garbage Rises Ever Higher<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398248"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1398248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1398249,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398248\/revisions\/1398249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1398248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1398248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1398248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}