What are we actually saving the planet for?
So, most people think we’re trying to save the planet from frying. What are we saving it for though? More of this? The Human Race is like an ensemble of warring factions down a mine. Every so often they stop to shore up the roof, to stop it falling on their heads. Then they continue with their warring, exploitation, bullying and destruction. Who is going to tell the oppressors to stop, once we’ve “saved the planet”? We’re not “saving the planet” to allow them to continue with their criminal, morally corrupt regimes and violence towards ordinary people. I thought the first picture was touching. A destroyed and abandoned child, its destiny dictated in the womb by a violent and destructive regime, being cared for by a woman with a heart of gold. Why save a world as rotten as this?
November 10th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Nice poetic post.
I have been reading Robert MacFarlane’s excellent book – The Wild Places and one of the things that he notes is the occasional indifference of the wild. We invest it with a personality sometimes that is inappropriate. The planet will continue with or without us. Humans might suffer due to climate change but the planet goes on.
Slightly related, I was thinking about “climate change” the other day when looking at a photo of Glen Coe, reflecting on how it had been cut by a glacier that had melted. The climate changed and gave us what we now see. Not to get into the whole argument about whether or not man is causing climate change but it is interesting to think about how things have – undeniably – changed in the past and what that has meant. I was thinking that in Glen Roy the other week, looking at the parallel roads, shorelines of old glacial lakes, long since disappeared.
We are messing up the world and I hate seeing photos of the way we have scarred it. Last week the Guardian had a photo of an albatross, dead with its stomach full of plastic that it had mistaken for food. So sad:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/nov/03/albatross-plastic-poison-pacific?picture=355118658
November 11th, 2009 at 9:24 am
yes, it’s strange to think that a stray asteroid or another ice age would probably see the end of the human destruction machine. I suppose it’s the equivalent of giving up life’s luxuries to “save the planet”, only to be hit by an environmental bus.
Who will say to the dictators and environmental destroyers: “excuse me, can you put that down please? We’ve just saved that.”