In the News
Getting it into perspective (a personal view)
All the efforts of the wildlife conservation bodies worldwide are in vain unless something can be done on a global scale to combat the terrifying changes that are happening. It is sickening to contemplate where these changes are taking us. Virtually the entire human community is now locked into a system that is guaranteed to bring catastrophe.
That system is called capitalism. It is based on the assumption that growth can continue indefinitely. With growth comes "development". Strange, isn't it, how such a positive-sounding word has come to mean its complete opposite: the capitalist's "development" is, with very few exceptions, the conservationist's "destruction".
That so-called "development" has wrought such havoc upon wildlife habitats and destroyed countless thousands of square miles of wilderness worldwide is bad enough; but there are worse worries than this. Global heating is now accelerating at a very scary rate and the signs are there for all to see. Within a very few years we can expect to see a world that would have been unimaginable to our grandparents. Amazingly, even otherwise intelligent and well-informed people seem incapable of grasping just how bad the situation is. We’re not talking simply about having a bit more nice warm summer weather, with swallows arriving a few days earlier than they used to. The potential is there for the most grievous consequences – not just for wildlife but for all of us as well.
Any child of five can tell you it doesn’t make sense to squander all the money in the bank, without making sure some more is coming in soon; yet that’s exactly what we’re doing with our precious deposits of oil and gas. A child of three could probably tell you it’s a bad idea to pollute the air with our effluent; yet that’s precisely what we continue to do and - with China and India now big players in the growth game – at an ever faster rate. Glaciers worldwide are melting, threatening the water supply of millions; extreme weather events are commonplace; vital resources – especially energy resources – are starting to fail us as we insist on continuing to plunder them.
OK, so we're agreed the situation is bad. What on earth can we do? Many eminent scientists think we have already left it too late and that nothing can now prevent a slide into the abyss: climate chaos and resource scarcity will bring unthinkable hardship – starvation, pestilence and quite probably war on a scale we can scarcely dare to visualize.
And that, of course, is our fundamental problem. Living creatures are born with extraordinary optimism and although we see death all around us, we can't quite get it into our heads that it's going to happen to us as well. We don't want to think of horrible things so we just pretend they're not going to happen and carry on with business-as-usual.
Personally, I am with those who fear it's already too late and that, as history clearly shows, all civilizations crumble sooner or later. Fortunately not everyone is quite the pessimist I am. So, for those of you out there who think there might still be some hope, why not log on to:
4C – Concerned Citizens about Climate Change
and sign the petition.* And why not write to anyone and everyone – particularly politicians - about it. Above all, if we have a cat in hell's chance of saving ourselves, we need to get everyone realizing the enormity of the problem. So keep talking about it. Forget Eastenders, forget football, forget Christmas and all the other petty preoccupations of our trivial lives. Get Real. Otherwise the party's over.
Ray Hume
Hear! Hear!! Very well said! - Ed. (* I have!)
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9 APRIL 2008