A commentary by a retired teacher who is a conservationist and naturalist. He lives near Maple Bay.
Ecocide is again resurfacing as a theme at the COP15 conference as delegates juggle how to save an increasingly doomed planet.
Nature decimated by the smartest (?) and most out-of-balance predator in geological history racing toward the precipice of what scientists not only describe as the sixth extinction with the “Anthropocene Age” label, but Anthropocene extinction itself.
UN reports continue to outline the extent of so many bird, mammal, reptile, amphibian, insect and plant species on the brink of extermination and inevitable combined ecological collapse.
For those not familiar with nature, the idea of such collapse appears abstract and unfathomable. But people do realize the effect on fish as the last of the great bonanza harvests disappear before our eyes, tropical reefs and now salmon gone, whales disappeared along with other iconic poster species — gorillas, orangutans, tiger species, rhinos.
All going, and more hyperbole promises while talk and log plus blah blah continues with very negative evidence of any improvement.
In geological time species develop a working ecology or system of give-and-take that depends on each other just as human economic supply lines do. But much longer, developed over eons. The plague witnessed how quickly a natural insult can overturn the fragile apple cart of such interdependence in a busily frenetic world.
Nature has a natural resilience, but in an atmosphere a mere 20 kilometres thick (less than the distance between Sidney and downtown Victoria) and oceans less than half that at their deepest, there is a limit to what it can bounce back against.
Billions of vehicles with some 100-150-plus white steeds purring under the hood and all that manure disappears – up into the fragile biosphere.
Talk of recycling all packaging and putting the onus squarely on the manufacturer to recapture the plastic they have wrought into bullet- and adult-proof packaging sounds great, but increasingly we no longer have governments for the people and by the people.
They corruptly help themselves and more so the political backer, lobbying funders who almost guarantee their re-election. Into the halls of power and entitlement.
I am an old and jaded naturalist and like many boomers, I have lived to see how our enfranchisement of freedoms has been wrestled away from us in nibbling gradualities.
Corporations paying less and less tax to massively produce more and more profit by stealing from our children and grandchildren’s future. Ensuring their own perpetuation with a lobbied and paid for political process.
Money doesn’t talk, it swears obscenely with paid for votes.
Success in politics is measured in advertising. Posters that say sweet nothings blurbed with idle catchy memes. Empty promises, but exposure and airtime is paramount.
All made possible where the payoff is paid off to re-elect our so-called representatives. Entirely shored up with clever catch phrases and wily attack ads undermining “false news” of any danger to the electorate.
The mere mention and threat to jobs, jobs, jobs acts to throttle any squeamish concerns about nature’s paradise.
Like many I am incredulous at how the melting/shrinking of most glaciers around the planet could not arouse existential concern, but denial is like that for such deep abiding threats to existence itself.
All this courtesy of multinational corporations with revenues of 100s of billions of dollars, far more than the vast majority of nations.
This is not about religious ideology or eco-piety, it is about that survival.
Our survival, our children’s continued existence and importantly the biological denizens of mother earth.
Gazillionaires blast off into the atmosphere frantically searching for planet B as they lay waste, mortgaging our future, and increasingly our present. Abetted by stolen consumer data.
During the plague they and we did not really cut back on oil consumption in a giant reset, or even as Russia tilted the price upwards. It is a junk economy and we have become junkie societies.
Spewing plastics with great abandon into the international waters. We lie as politicians do, we cheat on rules as international fishing fleets do, we manipulate for gain as national hackers do, we fight as massive spending militarily armed nation states do. It’s our nature.
But to save our nature we must do better, and grandchildren hope we can do more than just pray for better luck.
We get the leadership we deserve and corporations exist on the sweat of our aspirations and continued support, even as they bend and rewrite the rules.
