It’s hot and getting hotter
And there’s little we can do
As our ecosystems totter
And we sit at home and stew
Do we rage against the greed
That has delivered us this mess
Or should we consider what we need
And tone down our own excess
As one of 7 billion
Is there really any point
To curb our wicked ways
While the others trash the joint
The problem with this thinking
Is that no one takes a stand
But we can slow the global sinking
If we work hard hand in hand
Behave not as others do
But as you wish they would
It is not what you can do
But about what we all could
What does it really mean to be stewards of the world? Spare
a thought for the animals living with consequences of our actions and you may get an inkling. I recently had a discussion about this with a religious friend
with a human-centric point of view. He truly believed that the
planet and its resources were created and gifted to us by God. He felt that we must be grateful for our gifts and be
responsible stewards but humans should and must come first. He was not overly worried about climate change.
The problem with this thinking is how much can we take? Obviously there comes a point where the natural systems that sustain
us will collapse if we take too much. This is the point which we go beyond at our peril. It unfortunately looks like we have reached this point even if we are not quite at the point of no return. What does it take to shake people out of their complacency? Even the news that 93% of the Great Barrier Reef is bleached is of not real concern to most people, or the collapse of world fisheries, or the global loss of biodiversity. They simply don't get it. They don't understand that the collapse of the natural world heralds our own demise. We can still retreat from the precipice but there are few signs of it happening. It's time we took this seriously.
