I can’t sleep. The culture of cruelty here is overwhelming me.
Arthur C Clarke in his Space Odyssey series (the first book published in 1968), talked about the period we are living in now as our most barbaric. Like so many things he and Douglas Adams predicted (including the internet, smartphones, climate change and overpopulation), he also realised it wasn’t going to end well unless something drastic was done. In the book all the countries get together and adopt global veganism along with drastically reducing procreation. Consequently they don’t get wiped out and life after that becomes a lot better and far more interesting.
Although that was fiction it’s still a very good idea. Simple, costs nothing to implement, and given the options we’re currently following (ie pretending nothing is wrong), probably our only hope.
But first we have to realise how bad things have really got.
That’s the hard part. Government and businesses spend a vast fortune assuring us everything is fine. Take Shetland Islands Council (SIC) for example. Rather than just getting on with it’s job and meeting the needs of its people, they have opted (like the Scottish and Westminster parliaments) to help themselves too, by spending a large chunk of the budget (our taxes) on promoting Shetland to tourists and investors. Consequently, in less than 50 years, instead of enjoying a relatively unspoilt and rich ecology, Shetland today is as species-poor and carcinogenic as anywhere else on the planet, for all the same reasons. Virtually all the land not built on (for housing, roads and speculative industry) being intensively farmed for meat. There is literally not one square metre of Shetland left untouched by the hand of vested interest. Even the hundreds of miles of coastline are littered with marine rubbish, as well as heavily contaminated by the fish farming industry and other toxic waste we dump into the sea.
However, if we stopped treating land (and the sea) as either food or profit, other species as either useful or pests, procreation as a right. Embrace compassion instead, not just among ourselves but for all species, hence vegan and childfree, choices we could make right now, then Shetland would become a far better place to live. Thousands of other species could return, and the ones currently struggling would recover, helping to restore its true biodiversity.
Sadly, Shetland is not unique in being abused, virtually everywhere else is the same. It is just easier to see here because everywhere is so small and contained.
If what I am saying still sounds rather far fetched, especially in the light of the numerous tv programmes and books about Shetland, then think again. In the last 50 years alone each of us has been responsible for wiping out 69% of the wildlife on this planet. We’ve selfishly taken what we want and allowed the rest to be killed without a qualm.
Environmental organisations haven’t been much better either. Rather than focus solely on what we need to do to avoid ecological meltdown, they have been forced by the far more powerful lobbies of government and multinationals to temper their message to something a lot less alarmist. Like how we can each do our bit by rewilding our gardens and recycling. Total twaddle of course. Nature is a global entity, not local. All the bee-friendly flowers, bird food and recycled plastic shopping bags in the world aren’t going to do anything to stop what we are doing to the planet. Nature is all about the diversity and interdependency of as many species as possible. If we carry on taking away their habitats, rendering them no other place to live, killing them with our pollution, hunting them for sport, and selectively culling those we consider to be undesirable or harmful, then we are just going to end up becoming extinct ourselves. Because it is all those other species, including the badgers and feral cats, rather than us, that give this planet its very unique mix of conditions that allow everything to exist. To breathe, eat, drink, and have everything else we need. Destroy that precious balance and we will be next on the list for extinction.
Time to do that is running out. Nature is already exhibiting clear signs of making the necessary adjustments so it can survive, even if we don’t. Rising temperatures are just one of those indications. We probably only have a matter of years left before the environment we need will no longer exist. To have any hope of changing that scenario we have to act now.
Postscript:
Veganism is the only sustainable diet for our species. We have to stop using the land and seas as ours to plunder. We are the least significant species on the planet.
Over-population. Caused by cheap food production and social pressure by governments and multinationals to increase labour and spending, has to stop.
Finally, this is not a problem only in other countries, where the population has risen dramatically recently. Shetland and the rest of the UK have already been grossly over-populated for a lot longer.
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