
Vietnam’s Empty Forests - mykowebhn
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/travel/vietnam-wildlife-species-ecotravel-tourism.html
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cageface
Vietnam is a stunningly beautiful country but unfortunately a love of nature
doesn't seem to have really taken hold there. At least not yet. Missing from
all the gorgeous photos of Mekong Delta waterways and pristine beaches is all
the trash you'll find strewn in heaps everywhere.

My guess is it will take another generation for people there to appreciate how
blessed they are to live in such surroundings but by then it will
unfortunately be too late. To some extent this is just the inevitable
consequence of a small but populous country hurtling into modernity but there
are also some important cultural attitudes that need to change.

~~~
baolongtrann
I'm a Viet, born and raised. My country is blessed with incredible scenery,
diverse and natural. The coast line is as long as the country itself ffs. Now
I won't claim that I'm an avid traveler, but from my limited traveling
experience (only been to Australia, Korea, Japan and Hongkong on vacation,
nothing too fancy), I have never been to a place that I would rank higher in
terms of beautiful, natural scenery.

However, the one thing that always caught me off guard from the few oversea
trips that I've taken is that _everything is so clean over there_. That's
literally the first thing that I always noticed when I get there and when I
came back. Makes me feel sad, envious, and shameful.

~~~
trickstra
Western tourist also immediately notice it when they come to SE Asia. It's a
pity that this is such a strong memory.

As a Vietnamese local, why do you think the plastic pollution is so widespread
here? Sure, everything is packed in plastics, but so is in Japan. Why do
people just not think twice about throwing their waste in a ditch or a river
or leave their picnic at the beach? Or is most of it coming from the sea? What
could change the mentality?

~~~
leejoramo
As a child growing up in 1970s USA, I remember the vast amount of trash along
our roads, city streets, parks and beaches. It was fairly common to see people
throw trash out of their car windows.

What changed? I have never studied this, but I know we implemented large scale
clean up projects, passed new laws and made a cultural shift in attitudes.

~~~
thaumasiotes
What changed was the environmentalism movement, usually symbolized by the
crying Indian commercial.

[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CryingIndian](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CryingIndian)

>>>> My guess is it will take another generation for people there to
appreciate how blessed they are to live in such surroundings but by then it
will unfortunately be too late.

This in the parent comment is strange. It wasn't too late everywhere else, and
it obviously won't be too late in Vietnam either. A clean environment is a
luxury you can afford when you're rich. Poor places are dirty, but it's not
like they _can 't be cleaned_.

~~~
ams6110
Yes, I was a kid in the 1970s and the anti-littering campaign was pervasive. I
was too young to remember/notice the litter itself, but definitely remember
the "Crying Indian" commercial, Woodsy Owl[1], and others. You always saw
these in the Saturday morning cartoons, in particular.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodsy_Owl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodsy_Owl)

------
revskill
Japanese people are taught in schools: We have nothing naturally, so you have
to overcome yourself to beat the disadvantages of nature.

Vietnamese people are taught in schools: We have everything naturally, our
forests are gold, our beaches are silver. We're proud of it.

Results: Blindly and stupid education is a serious problem in Vietnam. Large
percentages of past generation is lazy, not productive.

I don't even mention politics here. A hell.

Shortly, to be successful and rich in Vietnam, you don't need talent or hard-
working. You just need relationship.

Who is Ho Chi Minh ? I don't even know if he was Chinese or Vietnamese.

Most of what was told in schools are lie.

Yes, it's a shocking truth: Most of things they taught us in schools are lie.
To protect that communist party.

Polices are to protect that party. No bad voice is allowed here.

If you shout out bad things at the party, you'll be caught and get killed
silently. Noone knows where you are.

~~~
chinhodado
> Most of what was told in schools are lie.

Do you have actually examples rather than hyperboles?

~~~
revskill
OK, for example, they taught very bad things about Vietnam Cong Hoa party, but
the fact is that: Vietnam Cong Hoa party doesn't harm anyone. Who was the bad
guy here ?

The point here is that, as we grew up, we try to find out what the fact was,
and it's not the same thing that they taught us.

I don't even care what's the actual truth is, i just care that, they taught us
the untruthy things.

~~~
chinhodado
> Vietnam Cong Hoa party doesn't harm anyone

There is misinformation from every sides, but be careful with blanket
statements like that, because they're almost always false. For example, look
up the 10/59 Decree where they brought guillotines throughout the southern
rural areas and executed people on the spot if they suspected them of being
communists.

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coconut_crab
I have tried my best to educate people around me to care more about
environment to no avail, because to them "it's another guy's problem if we
litter on the street, so keep doing it". What the government is doing ain't
helping either, people want to make more money, to buy a car, bigger house
etc... why should they care about some random monkeys in a forest that they
will never see in their life? It's really depressing, maybe I should find an
NGO and join them to protect the wild life.

------
Spooky23
Perhaps it’s time to campaign against Chinese medicine, which seems to drive a
lot of animal slaughter.

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Halluxfboy009
Mankind must find a way to curb our population growth and our greed. We are,
and have been blind. Not only are we destroying the natural world, we will
ultimately destroy ourselves. Let us somehow find a way to limit our
population growth and give those that are then born a first rate education so
that they are capable of seeing and appreciating the big picture. Knowledge,
objectivity - the realization that life on this planet is precious and rare
and, irreplaceable.

~~~
adventured
We already are dramatically curbing our population growth. The rate of global
population growth has plunged since ~1970. The rate will drop from a peak of
about 2% per year in 1970 to 0.2% by ~2060. We've already roughly cut the
growth rate in half in 40 some years. By the late 2030s, we should have the
rate of growth returned to pre industrialization boom numbers (when the rate
began to rapidly increase). It takes time to bring the numbers down, we'll be
near population contraction by the time we're into the 2050s.

~~~
lotsofpulp
The metric that matters is resources consumed per person. If people's goals
are to achieve consumption levels similar to upper middle class in USA or
Europe, then it doesn't matter if the total population growth is slowing down,
or even contracting, as resource consumption will still very much be
exploding.

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Chico11Kidlet
It's funny the way things have gone. Vietnam is supposed to be a communist
country. The Vietnamese people are some of the greediest nationalities I have
ever come across and the government officials and politicians are the
greediest.

~~~
dang
Nationalistic slurs will get you banned here. Please don't post like this to
HN again.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
leandrod
This is socialism for you. People are so poor they resort to illegal
breadwinning. It happens in my native Brazil too, even if were are not overtly
socialist (but heavily influenced).

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

