BY FR. SHAY CULLEN
THE PLANET as we know it today will never be the same tomorrow or in the months and years yet to come. Life on earth is diminishing with the massive loss of biodiversity due to the environmental effects of logging, deforestation, invasive species, mass chemical-based agricultural production, climate change and many other reasons.
The COP25 (Conference of Parties) attended by all nations in Geneva is trying to agree on ways to protect every form of life on earth and stop the extinction of thousands of species of plants and living creatures. To succeed, wise people and moral leaders with a love of nature have to be elected. The wise must educate and convince the human species that its survival is not to be found in excessive consumption and exploitation of the natural world by polluting the environment but in its protection and conservation.
Many species are becoming extinct 100 times faster because of us humans. We are the most deadly, most destructive force ever to evolve. We are the T-Rex dinosaur of our time. Our bigger brains have evolved to be able to eliminate all other living creatures and they are busy doing that.
What drives human destructive lifestyle is the uncontrolled desire to possess, exploit, consume, and dominate nature. What the complacent, unthinking human population, living in a fossil fuel-dependent world, does not understand is that life on earth depends on a healthy balanced relationship among all species in the natural world and to live and let live in a sustainable climate; that this respectful relationship with nature is the only way to preserve healthy food sources and sustain all life. Our global warming activity is destroying that balance.
Due to human activity, populations of wild animals have more than halved since 1970 while the human population has doubled. Never before in our planet’s history have so many species and so much biodiversity been lost as quickly as at this time. The fifth extinction event was when the dinosaurs were wiped out. Now is the sixth mass extinction of creatures on earth and it is taking place before our eyes. The loss of biodiversity today is ‘biological annihilation.”
People living in cities are unaware of this great loss to the planet although indigenous people in remote communities see it happening all too quickly. While many of the delegates at COP25 struggle to get agreements to preserve the biodiversity of the planet, there are hidden forces working against them.
The lobbyists for business interests are doing their best to prevent COP 25 from passing strong resolutions that would, for example, limit the use of pesticides that destroy the biodiversity of the land and rivers and pollute the sea. They hopefully might advise a greater reduction in the use of palm oil in the industry to save biodiversity.
The expansion of the massive palm oil industry in Southeast Asia is a root cause of the damage to biodiversity. Political corruption destroys biodiversity on a huge scale. Corrupt politicians abuse their power and give their relatives and cronies in the industry so-called “rights,” claims and permits to exploit the lands of poor farmers and the ancestral land of indigenous people. They work in cooperation with local and multinational mining and agri-corporations. They allow them to deforest and plant palm oil trees. The mining corporations cut the forests for destructive open-pit mining. This is happening on a large scale in the African and Amazonian rain forests and in the Philippines, too. (To be continued)/PN
