Stop Chopping Down the Bloody Trees!
Climate Change is one of those great big ugly controversial topics in polite conversation for me, as too many people I respect or call friend disagree on whether it is happening. I can’t say who is right, and certainly I don’t need to be. It is a fact the science is sometimes wrong. If one argues that the Climate Change/tree huggers have it wrong, then so too may the naysayers be wrong. I am sure in fact, both are right. It is not an either or supposition. (I have since writing this learned of the IPCC manipulating data and using unverified data. See Inglorious Basterds.)
Frankly, I don’t care for the argument. I care less for carbon trading and offsets and entire new financial sectors being spawned in the rush to profit from governments needing to at least be seen to be doing something, however ineffective.
The science of why aside, these things seem pretty real to me:
• Deforestation is happening at an unprecedented velocity
• Ice caps are thinning and shrinking
• Islands are sinking in rising oceans
Old growth forests are the lungs of the planet, the recyclers of carbon/greenhouse gas emissions. They give us oxygen and the humidity that creates water vapour that in turn creates clouds that result in rain. Want to reduce emissions? Want rain rather than drought?
STOP CHOPPING DOWN THE BLOODY TREES!
There in just one line is the solution to air pollution, global warming, rising sea levels, thinning ice, extreme weather, and drought. The easiest, fastest, most effective solution; no emissions trading system; no new financial instruments; no major government investment required. Nada. Rather than heed the logic, we do nothing to stop the plunder of the forests in the Amazon, Borneo, Papua New Guinea and elsewhere.
Keith Farnish, on his The Earth Blog, puts it this way:
This beautiful continuum, of which we are such a physically insignificant part, takes some imagining. The numbers are mind-numbing – individual nematodes alone stretch into the quintillions, and bacteria are many orders more numerous – as is the complexity of the ecological nets that link together different animals, plants, fungi and the countless other organisms that actually constitute the great majority of all life on Earth. We sit as a delicate flower waiting to be blown away in the next breeze of extinction; yet what do we see as the most important factor in our role as human beings?
Money.
Our values have become outrageously skewed in favour of whatever benefits the onward march of the global economy. We do not see the rise and fall of habitat viability on the television news, instead we see the rise and fall of the markets in the capital economy; we do not count specie extinctions in newspaper bar charts, but we urgently count companies going bust; we do not map the catastrophic breaks in the energy flows between different parts of an ecosystem, but we do acknowledge every time a budget airline discontinues a route, or whenever a main road has “severe” delays. As if it matters…
But, of course, it’s not only the animals or plants you eat (and that they may eat or utilise in the form of soil and “waste” products) that you are dependent upon, but the crucial role each of these organisms plays in the various natural processes that take place on Earth: regulation of the climatic-oceanic system; soil formation; water purification and enrichment; nutrient distribution…in the world we live in today we would not survive without all of these processes operating at a high level of efficiency. Interfere with these processes at a local level, and ecosystems can collapse; damage these processes at a global scale, and the entire biosphere is forced to readjust. With humans at the very top of the food chain, and so dependent upon everything else, we will be some of the first casualties of any global extinction.
However smart we are, however high in the food chain hierarchy we are, we remain dependent upon every other living organism for survival. And yet, we put corporate needs above those of … well, all else. We exist as if life is forever, nothing will change, the birds don’t matter, the rivers will run forever, the rain will keep coming, destruction doesn’t matter. But it does. We could choose harmony and balance and the right way to do things, but for the most part we don’t. Hardly living up to our reputation of the ‘smartest ape’, are we?
If you still need convincing as to a need to change the way we do business, please watch the movie called Home, by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, GoodPlanet Fundation President, co-produced by EuropaCorp and Elzévir Films and supported by PPR Group.
In 200,000 years on Earth, humanity has upset the balance of the planet, established by nearly four billion years of evolution. The price to pay is high, but it is too late to be a pessimist: humanity has barely ten years to reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of its spoliation of the Earth’s riches and change its patterns of consumption.
It puts the linkages into perspective with fabulous cinematography, succinct copywriting and five-star production. It may chew up your bandwidth, but it is well worth it. Grab a coffee, click the image above, put your feet up, and prepare to be inspired. Please?
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© 2009 – 2010, editor. All rights reserved.
Category: CSR & Sustainability, Reputation Management
Update: Having read the emails that were made available to the public in November 2009 that show the shocking lack of ethics, fudged numbers, deleted data, amateur sources and the concerted campaign to discredit scientists that would speak out against global warming, I am no longer a supporter of the global warming alarmist fraud. See http://www.reputationreport.com.au/2010/02/ipcc-shame/.
I do believe, however, that we absolutely have to stop taking our environment for granted, stop this way of doing things that puts economic and monetary outcomes above those of environmental and social (it should be a triple bottom line measurement), and stop chopping down the bloody trees.