ANOTHER VOICE murray swart A cold day in hell
HAD it not been for his environmental work, Al Gore would more than likely have gone down in history as the guy who lost the US presidency to the spectacularly dim, George W Bush.
Instead, the Nobel laureate will always be remembered for telling an inconvenient truth.
With the passing of time, the impact of climate change is becoming evermore evident.
Temperatures are rising, as are sea levels. The frequency and intensity of destructive weather patterns is also on the increase, in some parts, at least.
In other areas, prayers for rain seem to be falling on deaf ears as drought conditions, accompanied by unprecedented population growth, equals less food for more mouths.
Slowly but surely, we are killing our planet and ourselves and humans have nobody but themselves to blame for our own inevitable demise.
The fact of the matter is that we have known for years that pollution causes problems but still insisted on placing profit before planet.
We would not accept the inconvenient truth that preserving our own existence meant paying an extra couple of bucks here and there, just to ensure that what we consumed was produced ethically and responsibly.
We sacrificed green living for greenbacks, never thinking that we would live to see our own greed be to the detriment of us all.
We allowed ourselves to be convinced that a life of excess was worth the risk of extinction.
We have forgotten to let truth be our authority by viewing authority as the truth and in the process, we threw almost every aspect of our lives horrifically off balance.
We were so busy congratulating ourselves for evolving that we somehow progressed to the point where we able to explore the far flung corners of our galaxy. Is it really an achievement to be able to go to the moon and look at the world through the hole in the ozone layer?
We are beyond the point of no return and while it is easy to point fingers and blame all and sundry, we are all responsible for throwing the world off balance.
Out of sheer desperation, man has begun to look into limiting the damage we inflict on our surroundings and while it always better late than never, only time will tell if these efforts will be too little, too late.
The irony is that while we are congratulating ourselves for accepting the truth that we are killing our planet, we still find the reason why too inconvenient to comprehend.
By putting self ahead of society, we have destabilised our very existence yet we still put profit before people.
It is not just our climate that has been thrown off balance. We live in a world of haves and have nots and instead of attempting to reduce the gap between the two, we overload one side of the scale by taking from the other.
When one side is punished for trying to feed their families by breaking the law, it is not the perpetrator who is in the wrong but the law.
At the same time, when one side is insisting that the law be enforced, depriving the hungry of food, in order to afford another luxury vehicle, it is not only the law that is flawed but the society that wants it enforced.
We have already disregarded the delicate balances in nature and while we have accepted this truth, we have not learned from our mistakes. Instead of uniting for the greater good, we continue to let greed tip the scales against us all.