Chicken or Egg?

There are currently 39,500,000 people in the world HIV+. (http://www.globalhealthfacts.org/index.jsp)

25 million people die each year in developing countries because of water pollution - 3/5ths of them children. (http://rehydrate.org/facts/environment_at_risk.htm)

What is more important: humans - you, me, the 3rd shift Shell station worker, the child dying of AIDS in Nairobi by no fault of his own - or the Earth that supports us? Which generation is more important? The generation of today or the generation of tomorrow forced to drink impure water
and breathe pollutants because of our selfishness? This question is what baseball enthusiasts would identify as a "pickle." But I believe there is a bigger question to consider. Why have we let it come to this? Why have our mentalities of entitlement and apathy let our world outlook fall to only include the several miles surrounding ourselves and the ones we love? Why do we wake in the morning and fall into our beds at night without once considering the greater impact our general lack of global empathy has on the world? I know, white middle-class suburban college student ranting about apathy, big surprise. But I don't think we have the right to tackle a question such as this until we have realized our own hand in the atrocities, and experience remorse and anger until we are no longer content to bear that guilt. Until we are globally aware, which is only something we can personally develop within ourselves, we are not fit to dictate which parts of God's creation are "more important."

I applaud you if you do not share my faults, but I see shortcomings in myself rather than an answer to this prompt. Score one for Team VanDyke.