SUICIDE WATCH

SUICIDE WATCH

Imagine if the history of life on this planet (all 3.85 billion years of it) could be represented by one calendar year, beginning one second past midnight on New Year’s Day, ending at the stroke of midnight the following New Years’ Eve. We would have had to have waited eleven months until November 11th (3.32 billion yearlater) for that life to have found the wherewithal to drag itself out of the primordial soup and onto land. The continents would have begun to split apart on November 24th (400 million years ago). The dinosaurs would have put in an appearance fourteen days later (December 8th) and checked out on Christmas day. We humans would have arrived on the scene about 2 million years or four-and-a-half hours ago at about 7.30 pm on New Year’s Eve. The last ice age would have ended 1 minute and 38 seconds ago. Jesus would have walked the earth about 16.5 seconds ago. And within the last two seconds (since 1825 in fact) our population would have grown from 1 billion to 6.5 billion people, with a predicted rise of a further 3 billion in a split second from now.

In the time that it takes to say ‘Happy New Year’ to your nearest and dearest another two seconds or two hundred and forty years would have passed. No one can accurately forecast the future, but if scientific predictions are correct, the world would already have been in the grip of climate chaos for at least a century. The earth’s average temperature would have increased by at least 3°C, melting the ice caps, warming and raising the oceans. Many low-lying islands would have disappeared under the sea. All of the planets coral reefs would have been bleached. The last of the world’s forests would have been either torn down or incinerated in huge forest fires. Millions of species of animal would have been driven to extinction. Heavily industrialised countries such as China and India could have made themselves uninhabitable by poisoning their environments with toxic waste. Much of Africa could have either been inundated by desert or sea. Perhaps 100 million environmental refugees could be wandering the earth. Entire regions, such as the Middle East, could have gone to war over water.

While the prospect of climate chaos is truly terrifying, these already dire impacts could themselves be exacerbated by a number of other prevailing factors - a population explosion, increased urbanisation, increased militarization and nuclear proliferation.

It is only when we escape the fine detail of human history, the power games of church and monarchy, the petty intrigue of politics, the blow by blow account of human conflict, the revolutionary bullet points of human endeavour, only when we step back, get over ourselves for a few minutes and stop playing God, only then can we begin to truly appreciate what our dominion over nature has meant for every other living thing around us, for the air, the land and the sea, for the viability of life on this planet. Only then can we begin to finally understand our true history, the Green History of the Planet. Only then will we see that our contribution to natural history, by accident or design, has been and continues to be almost entirely malignant, that the human race has become one vast cancerous growth, consuming biodiversity, eating away at the planet’s life support systems, that nothing short of drastic surgery, the cutting away of human arrogance, greed and vanity will save us from our ultimate and inevitable extinction, and the destruction of every living thing around us.

But hey! Wait a minute! Let’s throw ourselves a bit of a bone here. Since the 1960’s there has been an unmistakable shift in our collective consciousness, a radical change in our relationship to the planet. I suppose you could call it the birth of modern environmentalism. Some people put it down to those early Apollo missions to the moon, that first glimpse of our fragile planet – a beguiling blue jewel of loveliness suspended in darkness – our limitations, our solitude, our miracle.

We are evolving – slowly. Attitudes are improving. The conversation has changed. I remember a time when you would be hard pressed to find half a dozen books on the environment in a bookshop. Now, there are entire shelves devoted to GM, climate change, animal rights, habitat loss etc. Where once we had to take non-violent direct action to reclaim our streets for cyclists and pedestrians from the car, many towns and cities throughout the world today have car-free days, cycle lanes, bus lanes, congestion charges, fully integrated public transport systems.

Today, eco-documentaries win Oscars. A-list heartthrobs are warning us about the ‘11th Hour’. We are evolving. Attitudes are improving. The conversation is beginning to tell it as it really is.

Yes, there are still a lot of people out there who think that global warming is all about a hole in the ozone layer. But the very fact that ordinary people are using these terms is evidence of a tangible shift in our collective consciousness.

Recently I have learnt to accept that it is not necessarily about winning or losing, so much as trying our best, of being vocal and visible as much as we can. Every time we raise our issues in public we are changing consciousness. People may not agree with what you are saying, but they can never again deny that a fuss has been made. And I believe that it is our job as eco-fusspots to continue making it.

Happy New Year!