Think Again
The time has come to think again, to reevaluate the existing feasible course of action, to promote a more hospitable and loving place for ourselves: one that we call home.
Environmentally sustainable growth that you say, is it feasible? Don’t you think that we have come a long way from that mark when economic growth and environmental sustainability could go hand in hand? Don’t you think that the imposition of our numbers is too great to secure environmental sustainability while ensuring economic growth? We have come a long way from the ideal zone, and now there can only be a sustainable retreat: to save ourselves the remaining biodiversity for both our survival and prestige. How many more mass murders would we be accused of? Sooner or later we will find ourselves in the courtroom standing answerable to our posterity as nature reads out its incriminating evidence and as fate delivers the impending verdict of finding us guilty as accused, and the verdict echoing down the extinction of our species: we cannot go on with impunity, not forever.
With the current environmental concerns, we can endeavor to preserve the population of some of the endangered species, who are susceptible to the rampant poaching and the changing environmental conditions. Even with our success in preserving them, they will never occupy the range that they once did prior to the disruptions. Hence, they will barely thrive in the margins.
Additionally, most of the behavior of the endangered species are unknown — simply because of the terrain that they inhabit. Therefore, much more research has to be conducted in order to promote their preservation.
Our inclination to save the visibly larger majestic animals over the smaller insect and reptile counterparts may lead to undesirable results in the stability of the ecosystems; that is once you have already interfered with the natural system, you have permanently disrupted the natural continuation of things, and you cannot fend off the repercussions of your hubris. Every animal in the ecosystem matters as they play their respective roles in their relative niche; all those niches and their benefits may not be visible to our naked eyes, but the consequences of even the extinction of that niche, will reverberate down the natural fabric of order, affecting all the animals that interact in the overall ecosystem. One cannot comprehend the dynamism of the consequences of our actions.
One might argue that with the current technological advancements, we can retrieve any extinct animals by cloning their DNA; however, that is nothing more than a license to continue to wreck havoc as we do now with impunity. The cost of cloning the animals through their DNA versus the cost of promoting environmental sustainability by preserving and protecting the animals that survive yields the answer. Most often the conjured image of our grandeur and superiority cloaks every decision taken by us with immense hubris, precluding any sensible decision and approach based on the need of the hour.
Therefore, it’s high time when we start thinking again; high time when we see the practicality of things, and shred of the shell of callousness that we enshrouded ourselves with so far; high time when we prioritize the responsibilities that we have, not for any honorable feats, but from the shame of our own degradation as marked by the disappearance of so many species in such excessive quantum; high time when we take active interest to ward off the hand of nature from making us permanently inactive.
