Sometimes I feel lost … helpless … inadequate. As though I’m faced with a blinding inevitability.
The Word Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is advertising on TV at the moment. Underneath their strap line of ‘What we need is you’ it states that 50% of the world’s wildlife has been lost since 1970.
READ THAT LINE AGAIN.
Their website adverts state one in six species is at threat of extinction due to climate change. One in six for Christ’s sake.
The Butterfly Conservation (BC) states that on UK farmland butterflies have decreased by 58% over the last decade. Pesticides appear to be the problem; specifically, neonicotinoids are being pointed at!
The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) UK breeding bird survey shows a decrease of 46% over the last 20 years. Some areas of the UK show a larger percentage. European numbers of Curlew have declined by 20% in the last 15 years.
There’s a small porpoise in the sea of Cortez off Mexico called a Vaquita. Due to them being caught in fishermen’s nets as they compete for fish there are now less than 100 left.
The extinction date of the Polar Bear varies depending on who you listen to. Many set a date at 2055 as they run out of summer hunting grounds on melting sea ice,
Do you want me to go on? … because I can … endlessly.
If you have young children or grandchildren chances are they won’t see a Vaquita, a Polar Bear or maybe even a Curlew.
For F***s sake what else do we all need to know and how many times do the people that matter need to be told? These things are the canaries in the mine … WAKE UP … and smell the gas! The planets dying and we’re not immune. We will die with it.
Unbridled human populations, the rape of the earth’s natural resources, synthetics compound production, the burning of fossil fuels, the use of insecticides but above all the oblivious blind nature of us all, is leading us like the fool before the abyss. It appears that who wins Strictly Come Dancing is ‘more important’ than the well-being of the planet. And those of us that do care are led into thinking that our tiny little energy saving bulbs and separating our rubbish into two or three different coloured bins will save us. The things we are currently doing make little difference. It’s like pissing in the sea and saying it’s deeper.
Even world governments cant agree on anything sensible when they get together to talk about climate change. The political will to make meaningful change is just not there. It never will be, because we vote the decision makers in and ‘we’ would never vote for the draconian changes that are now required. We are a selfish species.
God help the earth and all that lives on her. God help us.
I think I need cheering up!
… sorry for the bad language, but I feel passionately that governments should be listening and doing something. Frustration creeping in.
Letter From Norfolk 