We are living in an age of mass extinction.
Each Year more than 20,000 unique species disappear from
this planet forever.
This represents more than two species per hour.
Species extinction is the fuel that supports the ever increasing progress of
the machinery of civilization. Individual humans are for the most part insulated
from the reality of species loss. Alientated from the natural world. Guided
by anthropocentric attitudes. The average human being is unaware or non-caring
about the biological holocaust that is transpiring each and every day.
Try imagining. Gone forever are the European elephant, lion and tiger.
The labrador duck, giant auk, carolina parakeet will never grace this planet
of ours.
Lost for all time are the Atlantic grey whales, the biscayan right whales and
the stella sea cow. Our children will never look upon the californian condor
in the wild or watch the Palos Verde blue butterfly dart from flower to flower.
Extinction is a difficult concept to fully appreciate. What has been is no more
and never shall be again. It would take another creation of billions of years
to recreat the
passenger pigeon. It is the loss of billions of years of evolutionary programming.
It is the greatest of all possible crimes, more evil than murder, more appalling
than
genocide, more monstrous than even the apparent unlimited perversities of the
human mind.
Yet no country, no individual, company or government has ever been found guilty.
There is no law in any land against it. Why? because we value financial profit
over life, even human life. And the supremacy of profit cannot be questioned.
Those who cannot defend themselves are the first to go. And the tiger is just
not
financially viable - we need the space to dig a new mine and build another supermarket.
What incredible arrogance!
So what do we do?
The choice is unique to this generation: Future generations will not have the
chance and those that came before us did not have the vision or the knowledge.
It is up to us: remain passive or become a warrior, defender of all species.
Serve the planet and prosper or serve our so-called civilization and find ourselves
guilty of ecocide. The penalty: our extinction.