Can Someone Please Save The World From Ourselves?

I recently read an article from Time Magazine written by Brian Walsh on March 12, 2012 titled ‘Nature is Over’ which scared the hell out of me. It was coupled with a terrifying picture of an ugly landscape of grey and brown, that included a looming city surrounded by plummaged, developed land. The striking thing about the picture was that there was not a trace of green in the photo or a single lonely tree in sight and the picture was actually a real photograph of somewhere on earth right now. Somewhere you can take a huge panoramic shot and not see any skerrick of ‘nature’. It stirred in me a very real sense of urgency of the need to save the world.

I am not an environmentalist, nor do I buy into the doomsday predictions that float around about the plight of our planet. But you would have to be living under a rock not to realise the environmental problems our planet faces are escalating and intensifying. I wonder if someone from outer space were to look down on planet earth would they see a planet, an organism that was on it’s knees, crippled by the impact that humans have had on it? Would they see it hurtling towards a certain death, without anything seemingly able to stop it? After all, how do we save the world from ourselves?

As I said I don’t buy into doomsday predictions and I do have faith and hope that we humans will find a way through, that we will discover the awareness that we need to have to turn the situation around, to bring it back from the desperate state we are now in and save the world—our world—our planet— from the brink of destruction.

I have never been involved with an environmentalist organisation but I can imagine they spend millions of dollars on trying to educate people about the plight of the environment and do a lot of research on how to reach people, to get more people interested in their various causes. Well, this photo of a land with no nature in sight certainly reached me. My mind for the first time imagined what it would be like, what the talked of ‘end-play’ scenario would really look like. Hypothetically, I started to think of how things called forests would be a distant memory of something that once existed. Plastic flowers put in vases in tall alienated buildings would be the only reminder of  fields of flowers that used to grow wildly that were once on planet earth but are no more. That’s what this article’s title was implying. Nature is over. I don’t know about anyone else but I simply despaired at the thought of a world without nature. Our souls would not last a second in a barren world void of nature. There would be nothing to revive us. Of course, we couldn’t actually physically survive without any nature anyway, but imagine trying to drive out of the city to escape it for a while, but everywhere you drive is the same, man-made, barren and lifeless, with no reprive of nature anywhere and it’s a thoroughly scary thought. A quote from the article says “…there may simply be no room for nature, at least not nature as we’ve known and celebrated it—something separate from human beings—something pristine” (‘Nature is Over’, Time Magazine , March 12, 2012).

Of course our assault has not just been on nature. Tens of thousands of species are now extinct thanks to human influence and if you watch any of the wildlife documentaries you will see most other species still roaming the planet are now in danger of extinction or are deemed ‘endangered animals’. In fact not one wildlife documentary show I have watched in the last year has shown a species that is flourishing.

It comes back to the question or more like a resounding plea, of how do we save the world from ourselves? How far are we really prepared to take it? While environmental organisations are doing what they can I feel it’s not going to be enough. While the state of the world is almost too depressing to look at particularly as it points to humans being terrible creatures who have plundered the planet to the point of changing it’s very balance how are we going to stand back and look at the situation with the honesty and courage that we need to, to bring about a lasting and sustainable solution? In the midst of thinking about this I did a few google searches and I came across a website at 'www.worldtransformation.com'. My skepticism of another superficial attempt to tackle this problem was quickly diminished as I read on. Here was an organisation that seemed to be going straight to the heart of the matter and not shirking around it—the matter being ourselves no less—which I found refreshing and honest and rather than droning on about how bad we are was full of enlightening and dignifiying explanations of our species, where we have come from, why we are the way we are and yes how we can now save the world from ourselves. All the big questions are there, front and centre, and with straightfoward, profound and incredibly thoughtful answers which is rare amongst all the noise on the internet. I was blown away by it actually.

In all great stories just when all hope seems lost something happens just in the nick of  time to save the situation, in this case to save the world. While I think it’s irresponsible to just wait in hope and not do anything, I do hope this is true of the human story and life on earth.