Rain, rain, come again | The Hindu

Rain, rain, come again | The Hindu

Mend the human ‘culture’, save the living world

Sukumaran C. V.

Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drive social decisions. The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable. From birth on we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals,… —Derrick Jensen.

Another World Environment Day is around the corner and it reminds me of the photographed image of an adult rhino with its horn chopped off alive. The image has been haunting me ever since I have seen it. The DFO Sushil Kumar Daila writes: “At dusk on January 23, 2010 in the Jhaoni Island of the Rajiv Gandhi Orang National Park, as soon as the staff heard two gunshots, we set out to nab the poachers. We tried long and hard, but they escaped. We noticed, however, a horrifyingly thick blood trail in several places on the three square kilometre island. Eventually, we were able to locate the rhino. Alive.  But with its horn chopped off. The rhino would have collapsed from the shock of the bullet, but even as it breathed they had brutally gouged out its horn. The animal was in acute pain and was walking in tight circles, in utter distress. We watched helplessly, in total anguish. Grown men—we were all in tears as we watched the magnificent animal writhing in pain.”

The rhino died after suffering the pain for two days. This cold-blooded cruelty is the real symbol of the civilization we are proud of—the industrial civilization. The one and only motive of the so called civilization is profit. To make profit, it will exterminate other living beings, devastate the forests, pollute the rivers and displace and kill the indigenous or traditional communities.

Once in the North America, the passenger pigeons were greater in number than all other birds. They lived together, nested together, and flew together in large numbers. In summer these birds nested in the vast forests of the northern regions of the continent and in winter they migrated into the comparatively warmer forests in the south. In the breeding time, flocks of these birds would land on the trees and would make hundreds of nests even on a single tree. Each flock consisted of at least a minimum of 300,000 birds! The dense flocks used to cover the entire sky for hours as they passed overhead.

When the European settlers reached North America, they started hunting the pigeons for their meat and feather. Even after these birds have been continuously and commercially hunted for many decades, a flock that flew over the Cincinnati town in 1870 consisted of 20,000 lakh pigeons! The flock had been 510 kilometer long and 1.6 kilometer wide!! In 1878, from the 64 kilometer long and 16 kilometer wide nesting area of these birds in the Michigan state, the commercial hunters killed 10,000 lakh of these defenseless winged beauties. 

                                         Passenger Pigeon (female)

                                         Passenger Pigeon (male)

Today there is no passenger pigeon to fly in the skies.  If the fate of the passenger pigeon, that could fly, was to disappear within decades of contact with the Europeans, the harbingers of industrial civilization, what could have been that of the poor Giant Moa that couldn’t fly? Somewhere in the time of evolution, the Moas lost their wings. They grew up to four meter in height and weighed more than 275 kilograms. These wingless birds lived 1000 lakh years in New Zealand, till the 12^th century when the humans reached the Pacific island. The onslaught started, yet the Giants survived until the Europeans (the ‘civilized’ and ‘civilizing’ race) appeared and in the 1850s, these giants were pushed into extinction. The Dodo, the Great Auk, the Eskimo Curlew  and the Clouded Leopard shared the same fate.

                                                 Giant Moa

                                                    Dodo

                                                   Great Auk

                                                     

                                                                               Eskimo Curlew

                                             Clouded Leopard

The list of birds and animals that are extinct and are threatened with extinction as a result of the human 'progress' is endless. Still we believe that someone must pay the price for (our) 'progress' and invariably the Environment (the diverse flora and fauna) and the tribal people are chosen to pay the price—Extinction. 

The very life-style we follow is hazardous to the environment and sustainability. Industrial civilization imposes consumerist lifestyle on us and our consumerist life style encourages industrial civilization to go on with its destruction of the Environment. This vicious cycle goes on and on damaging Mother Earth irreparably. If it is not stopped, we will send more and more species to extinction and at last our turn will also come. Then there will be no chance of going back or coming back.

As Derrick Jensen says in his wonderful two-volume book Endgame, “…industrial civilization is killing the planet. It is causing unprecedented human privation and suffering. Unless it is stopped, or somehow stops itself, or most likely collapses under the weight of its inherent ecological and human destructiveness, it will kill every living being on earth.”