And why humans won’t save themselves.
You’ve seen the footage, courtesy of wildlife
documentaries or British national
treasure David Attenborough. Wildebeest on the African planes with lions
pacing, watching, prowling, menacing, shoulders rising and falling as the
massive head stays steady. But, not until the lions set their sights on an old
or infirm or young and vulnerable creature and begin to attack do the herd run.
Sometimes not even then. If the one being singled out is sufficiently isolated
the rest move out of harm’s way and continue grazing – sometimes watching just
in case. If the lions charge the herd and alarm them then they scatter,
stampede, panic, run for their lives and maybe one or two become separated –
the lions pick them off and chew them up. The others relax.
That is Nature.
Watching, it often seems strange that the group
don’t take evasive action when they know the lions are in the vicinity. However,
if you think about it logically, there is a biological imperative that makes
real survival sense. If the Wildebeest ran whenever the lions were present they
would waste a huge amount of energy and maybe even risk other random injury.
Maybe that was the same for humans back in
pre-history when Man was more at the mercy of Nature, wild animals, natural
disasters. If you could not accurately predict the danger then, surely, the
best thing was to wait. Wait and see. Wait and see if you were the ones who would
be affected and if not – don’t waste effort or risk other potential harms.
Unfortunately, this no longer makes sense for humans
but we are still behaving like the f’ing stupid Wildebeest.
I know it’s difficult to concentrate on anything
when there is a dangerous idiot in the US playing with the idea of nuclear war
to divert from his unpaid taxes and dalliances with Russia and here in the UK
we have the ongoing chaos of Brexit. But, if the two stupidest spoilt bad-hair
brats on the planet engage in nuclear war at least we won’t need to worry about
environmental disaster. If their handlers manage to reign them in however,
having air to breath and unpolluted water to drink will be a tad more important
for the planet than the US and UK just going down the global credibility sewer.
We may not be personally touched by environmental
devastation yet unlike many other poorer countries but we are already suffering
the effects of less obvious environmental damage like deaths from air pollution.
And just like the dumb Wildebeest – if we look on impervious as other smaller,
weaker, vulnerable countries are decimated, ripped apart, the bigger, badder dangers
grow and will come for us too.
Forget arguments about global warming (if you want
to) even in the face of the record-breaking floods devastating India, Nepal,
Bangladesh and parts of the United States. Pretend that melting glaciers and
the increasing rate of species extinction is something we can ignore. The fact
remains we are poisoning ourselves at a rate humans cannot sustain. With chemicals
in the air, with plastics in the sea (see blog 194. Beside myself beside the sea) we are poisoning marine life we then
eat. We are devastating the seas and forests that provide the AIR WE BREATHE,
we are turning larger swathes of the planet into desert with deforestation,
creating landslides, sink-holes with over development. I won’t go on. We know
all this – and that really is the point.
It’s confusing – because in this analogy we are the
Wildebeest but also – sort of – the lions – or we made the lions (!) But the thing is, while humans – like other
animals – can shift themselves when danger is sinking its huge canines into
their arses – when it comes to the planet we inhabit, that won’t work.
In this age of short-termism, we need to think of environmental
disaster differently - ironically as a huge sea-going tanker (if you are a
regular BGOTR reader you will be used, by now, to my metaphors morphing or
turning on a hairpin bend). What we are doing to the things essential for life
is a catastrophe, a disaster tanker as big as Wales - as folk in the UK like to
say when they are trying to imagine anything large! We humans are all on a
fragile, rocky outcrop in the path of the disaster tanker’s trajectory with no
means of escape. We can see it in the distance. It is about 50 miles out to
sea. We are ignoring it. It looms larger – but, like the Wildebeest we will not
take action until it is very very close. In fact, even then we will not take
action if we think it will get someone else instead of us. The problem is that
this gigantic environmental disaster tanker (the size of Wales [not whales]) –
will wipe us out – and it is going to take at least 60 miles to stop it.
*
See also blogs
236.
Does Edinburgh Need a Tree Museum
188.
Pursuit of Profit is a Terminal Illness
#Save Druridge Bay
R.I.P Kirby Misperton