Homo sapiens are a strange species. They self-proclaim their superiority over other species because of their supposed ‘intelligence”, while they are self-evidently systematically destroying all aspects of life on the planet they rely on for their survival. We are, branch by branch, cutting off all the limbs of the tree of life that enables our survival.
One might be forgiven for thinking that those actions of destroying life in exchange for the creation of inanimate objects might be considered the ultimate in folly and stupidity; but apparently this is not the case.
Academics, politicians and researchers continue to promote an undeniably ridiculous self-delusional note that more human ‘progress’ can somehow, in its ongoing destruction of the natural living world , create a new and better world for humans- ( a dead world) Perhaps these Nobel prize winners will continue to get their university research stipends from big business until their lives become unlive-able in their hothouse university offices; part of that newly ‘progressive’ dead world…where slight-of-hand carbon trading, or the wonders of “renewable energy”, allow us to pretend – right up to the last moment- that we are creating a new reality..
A quote from The Guardian about these illustrious Nobel Prize winners…
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the two men had won the prize – which is not one of those originally instigated by Alfred Nobel – because they had “designed methods for addressing some of our time’s most basic and pressing questions about how we create long-term sustained and sustainable economic growth”.
The two men, it continued, had “significantly broadened the scope of economic analysis by constructing models that explain how the market economy interacts with nature and knowledge”.
One of the most recent media releases from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) notes that global warming will certainly increase to 1.5C above previous ‘normal” global temperature levels in the next 12 years, and that that increase will dramatically impact on human being’s survival and many other species . Should global temperature increases reach 2C; as they will without dramatic intervention, then the impacts on all species will be catastrophic..
A previous study by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) noted that species loss is as great a threat to humanity (and the rest of the living fabric of the Earth, as climate change. It does not appear to occur to those scientists that climate change and species loss are part of the exact same issue: the commodification of the living world.
I am always reminded when I go to our local supermarket of this bizarre absurdity- of man making living things into commodities for human beings , when I see the little plastic labels on the fruit and vegetables being sold there. Human beings have somehow created a collective psychosis over many millenia that sees this world we live in as something for use- something outside of us – rather than the reality of being intimately and totally connected to us and essential for our mutual survival.
Few, except some of the South American indigenous communities have retained this essential understanding of how our world actually lives and breathes. Human beings will only survive on this planet if we recognise our intimate and sacred connection to the rest of our living world.
Is it too late to start to re-learn this lesson and begin the re-greening of our world?
Links
http://www.ipcc.ch/news_and_events/pr_181008_P48_spm.shtml
http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/fate-of-human-race-depends-on-massive-greening-effort/
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/10/going-full-circle-growth-planet/
New Antarctica 