The short answer is they kill you. Read on to see what form this justified homicide might take.
The re-emergence of birdsong and other long forgotten natural phenomena are Nature’s Final Wakeup
This morning the sun shone in a crisp, clear sky and the birds sang in a near total coronasilence. As they twittered, I was lifted by the thought that someone had recently come up with a plastic-eating bacteria (also here), and our status not to mention footprint as a festering sore on the face of a gorgeous world might become a little bit smaller.
Only how would they tell the difference? Once the miracle organisms had feasted on the masks and rubber gloves, surely they’d start on our toothbrushes and shirt buttons, after nibbling our laptops, phones and polyester underpants, literally stripping us bear? It’s not an unreasonable worry, as such might be the perils of trying to engineer ourselves out of stupidity rather than working on being smarter.
Notwithstanding the extra masks and gloves, perhaps we should bless the virus that has brought the world to a crawl and killed more than 3 million*. It took such draconian measures, but thanks is due the little pathogen for nudging our species to its senses, if just for a while. If we die in sufficient numbers, or at least are deprived of hair salons and cinemas for long enough, we may come fully to our senses, and elect governments that discipline – hell, dismantle and disband – the corporations that stoke and pander to our love of consumption and convenience. Or perhaps SARS-COV2 will fight back with a mutant that keeps us reliably locked up and, on the whole, consuming and polluting less, allowing Nature a foothold to tiptoe back to where we have elbowed Her out. Or maybe the munificent greed of Capitalism – to cite an approving Prime Minister Johnson – as it slashes and burns forest while we stand and watch, will release another pathogen that will happily jump the species barrier, to wreak the havoc required to get our attention. Would we then rid ourselves of the Johnsons, the corporations and the compulsive greed that they and not the planet or its majority thrive on?
Johnson & Greed – could be the name of a financial consultancy. What an entitled, odious twit we have as Prime Minister.
Is it always necessary to suffer in order to wake up and mend our ways? Or more to the point, fix our politicians? What of the loved ones who have died, the disparity in infection across race and class, and even our own increased risk of death? We must curse not bless the virus surely.
Only the heartless would stand and do nothing as someone lies on the ground gasping for breath. Yet the colossal environmental destruction that we permit is nothing less than our gorgeous Earth having a seizure whilst we stand idly by. Except we are hardly just idle onlookers, but guilty, actively complicit in the spectacle before us, the ones who earlier put the boot in, kicking a defenceless man to the ground to lift his wallet.
Except the outcome is somewhat different when you mug a planet as opposed to a man. Unlike a man, the planet takes so much then leaps up and fights back. If there’s any mistaking it, what we perceive as fires and floods, poisoned rivers and oceans, the great bio-diversity die-off all around us, and this blessed pandemic to cap it all, are the gasps of a life-support-system about to pack up, which we have termed an “environmental crisis”, “climate emergency” or some other doomsday planetary catastrophe. There is no such thing as far as the Earth is concerned. It happily shrugs off one catastrophe after another, eon after eon, species after species, and it might yet still see better than us to come. What happens next may kill us off, but could also be the fertile Earth for a species that thrives on our spoil and waste. Take comfort at least from that.
Perhaps then, worry less about the planet for its own sake and more about ourselves, because already it is us who are gasping for breath. To save the system that supports our lives and as a bonus delights us with its beauty – if you’re into that sort of thing – there is only one way to do it. Politically. Out with governments that serve corporations and the rich, in with those who not only pledge to put the planet first, but visibly and daily work with the scientists and experts who will show them how to do it; just as we see experts right now guiding politicians throughout this coronavirus pandemic. That is the only way to be sure that we are in for a chance of averting a shut-down of our blue-green life-support apparatus.
Recycle and switch off lights if it makes you feel better. But without a genuine political will that has teeth, directed by the truthfulness and clarity of science, the best advice is to eat, drink and make merry, for tomorrow, if not you, then your children will surely die.
The noblest among all the moral fruits of science and that which is peculiarly its own, is Truthfulness; that truthfulness which leads from the sense of personal responsibility to inner Freedom
Max Planck
*As of writing
