Riding roughshod over existence
“I do not want to live on a planet where there are no lions anymore.” — Werner Herzog urs is a pivotal time. The world has lost 60 percent of its animal life in the last two generations. What we have done is demonic and a prelude to oblivion if we don’t save the elephants, whales, the oceans and what remains of the fabric of evolution.
Whales are showing a mortality rate that is scary. And so are insects. Our economy, as a civilization, is riding roughshod over the biodiversity of the planet, and many experts are crying out that the next decade must be the turnaround decade or we will reach climate upheaval — thanks to the denial of the Grand Oil Party. All of us need a mainly plant-based diet or Earth will one day look like Mars. We are not just eradicating species beyond recognition; the heat of the world will soon be asphyxiating.
We allow bunkum and laissez faire aesthetics to dictate our culture, all in thrall to bestsellers. Romain Gary, the remarkable French writer, wrote, “It is absurd to cram our museums with art and to spend billions for beauty and then to let beauty be destroyed wantonly in all its living splendour.” Will our decade be the last for rainforests to have a hope of holding together? Children will soon have only Aslan to
Oread about in school and The Lion King to watch on videos, especially if all the president’s men and children keep blowing the brains out of endangered species. What about the children? They will no longer be children, but appendages to adults who still believe that children need to go to the best schools to make the best of their God-given talents; given a diet of secondhand information and digital pablum they must regurgitate, that has nothing to do with the real world. Ecology must become the mainstay of education, as Thomas Berry exclaimed. The experience of anything real will be all but impossible because most species and ecosystems will be gone. There will be nothing to turn to except Xbox. Who will remember snow and polar bears in 50 years?
Adults, especially since World War II, have valued money and profits more than life itself. “Society cares more for the products it manufactures than for the immemorial ability to affirm the charm of existence,” Nobel Laureate Jane Addams wrote in 1931. Jean Malaurie, writing of the devastation so-called civilization unleashed on Inuit society wrote, “The Earth is living; it can and will avenge itself; already there are portents. The Earth has no time left for man’s ignorance, arrogance, sophistry and madness.” That time has come.
The excitement of Jurassic Park will not be matched by the grizzlies of Alaska and the elephants of Africa because climate change is overwhelming the normal. We kill animals for trophies; in a very sad and ironic fashion, childhood, too, is fast becoming a trophy, a mere figment of what it was.
The U.N. called for a declaration of life to protect the biodiversity of the planet. We have not come close to honoring the Paris climate accord, but supposedly as a species we’re working on it.
Can we fathom the next decade? The planet will be in survival mode as we have never dreamed it. We had a paradise, and we are turning on the spigot to hell. Philanthropists need to keep their eyes firmly on giving to conservation. We in America destroyed the buffalo herds as vast as the horizon, destroyed the first Americans by the millions and then brought slaves from Africa for economic motives that should shame us. And now along with China, we are burning the poles. We need to reverse course. We selected a demon child for a leader. We need to wake up. There is practically no time left. We desperately need a new story.
Marie and Cyril Lysander’s film, Walking Thunder, will soon be going out into the world. They are hoping to publish Lords of the Earth — The Entwined Destiny of Wildlife and Humanity.