ECOLOGY

EMMAUS  OR  BABYLON

Life will triumph

Warning signs

                                                When 69 million years ago the dinosaurs became extinct, human beings didn’t need to take the blame; they were not born yet!  However, like previous eras of evolution, the present is marked by mass extinctions, and this time the major blame goes to man’s depredations, and though these seem to have gone too far, there is still time for action plans to halt the damage and reverse the process. That had better be before D-year 2030, when the guarantee of earth’s sustainability will have evaporated with the waters in all the lakes. The prospect is far from rosy, what with 10 species of fauna and flora disappearing daily, cultivable land declining by 65% in three decades, and vast reservoirs of water, formed over millions of years ago, drying up rapidly. This is the result of having treated the earth as alien and limitlessly exploitable. On the other hand, we need not treat the earth as a sacred super-organism or an untouchable great Mother (“Gaia") or as an inert disjointed entity of land and water. Steering a middle course, a balanced and more rational prospect would see the earth articulating into systems and sub-systems, in which rocks, waters, atmosphere, micro-organisms, plants, animals and humans form a quasi organic and active complex, with relationships of interdependence and “synergy” to guarantee the subsistence of each and every part.

The material situation

                                    How much aggression the earth can stand without losing its inner equilibrium and thus self-destructing is a question that we must face squarely if we are to bequeath something beautiful to our children. Acid rains are denuding forests, chemical wastes are poisoning drinking water and soil, pesticides and metals are entering the food chain. Nuclear wastes are still radioactive and carcinogenic. Arsenals are bristling with 60,000 usable nuclear weapons, capable of inducing a radioactive nuclear winter for a million years. Terrorist groups could gain access to nuclear weapon technology and hold the human race to ransom. The thinning of the ozone layer spells greater exposure to the sun’s ultra-violet radiation, and the “green house effect”, caused by fossil fuels, is reported to cause considerable melting of polar ice. Recent satellite pictures of Mt. Everest clearly reveal a thin sheet of snow where a thick blanket used to be. The 1900s registered a temperature rise by 0.3º C to 0.8º C. The expected rise this century is between 1.5º C and 5.5º C. It is feared that this will cause massive droughts in land locked areas and flooding in the costal regions where 60% of the human population lives. The assessment of the material picture is that even though the earth has great resilience, the present assaults are so cumulative that the physical-chemical-biological equilibrium will snap, resulting in biospheric catastrophes and death. From being homicidal and ethnocidal, we can now boast of the added distinction of being ecocidal and geocidal.

The human scenario

                             On the specifically human level, one can ask how much battering the human spirit can stand. Today, a miniscule 20% of humankind enjoys 83% of all resources, leaving a billion people in extreme poverty. Forty million people die of malnutrition each year; this includes 14 million babies who die yearly within five days of birth. This social cataclysm is neither natural nor innocent, but the direct result of a form of economic, social and political structuring, an inexorable type of development with no thought for its consequences for nature and social relationships. We are confronting a highly predatory and unequal system, maintained through servile fear, harsh military violence and callous economics. As an illustration, the “system” spends $ 1,800,000 every minute on arms, costing in turn the countries of the southern hemisphere a Hiroshima and Nagasaki every two days  -  180,000 people sacrificed on the altar of the god Mammon (read “the global market”), the equivalent of an atom bomb every two days.

                                                Globalisation is competitive and market oriented, in which everything is merchandise, from human genes to information, from sex or abortion, from god men to meditation. Marketing skills are the fetish to induce consumption and produce profit. By the current model of competition and the triumph of the strongest, only one side wins, all the others lose. It is clear that most men and women are bereft of sustainability - their daily life marked by catastrophic insecurity.

We shall overcome

                                                The old summons to change or die takes on a new urgency. What kind of world are we handing down to our children?  What hopes or dreams do we have for their future and their children’s future? Are there signs of hope?

It is inconceivable that 4.5 billion years of earth’s formation should have been a preparation for its destruction. Vertebrates emerged 157 million years ago, followed by “homo sapiens” and now “homo demens”. Since then, planet earth has witnessed 15 great decimations, the worst of them happened last century, in which biotic capital was almost extinguished. But life has always triumphed (cf. S.E. Luria, Life, the Unfinished Experiment), always able to re-make itself, and there are definite indications that biodiversity has grown.

                                                A new paradigm is being pleaded and taking shape: holistic, methodical, inclusive, pan-relational and spiritual. According to this model, the earth is not alien and independent of man, open to exhaustive use. Rather, nature is treated with due respect for its inherent laws, values and demands for replenishment and sustenance. Human agents of development are stewards of God’s creation and answerable to the wider community from whom they hold no secrets. Even though this hopeful paradigm is not dominant yet, we have inaugurated the era of the re-bonding of persons and things among themselves and with the Source of all bonding. Thereby we hope to bring globalisation under the sign of ethics, characterised by universal compassion, unconditional rights, and care for the earth in order to ensure sustainable human development.

                                                We either choose to walk the road to the Emmaus of mutual hospitality or stumble down the road to the perdition of Babylon.