All too much – a poem

Posted on May 22, 2019 by Opher

All too much

There are too many people

Chopping too many trees,

Bringing the world

Down to its knees.

Drilling too much oil

From too many wells.

Too much profit

From too many hard sells.

Too many hunters

Shooting too many beasts.

Too much partying

And too many feasts.

They are trawling

Too many sea beds

For too many mouths

In too many heads.

There’s too much land

Being cleared away

And all being doused

With far too much spray.

There’s too little thought

And too little care

Just too much devastation

Everywhere!

It’s all far, far too much!

Opher – 22.5.2019

The truth is that there are far too many of us. We have taken over too much of the fertile land and are causing far too much damage. We’re wiping everything out.

The natural world is reeling!

There is a War!!

Posted on May 9, 2019 by Opher

Just imagine – if the UK was suddenly attacked by a foreign country, if a powerful nation was trying to invade us and we found ourselves at war – what would we do?

It is simple – we would mobilise the country. We would go on to a war footing. We would enlist large numbers of troops. We would set our factories producing weapons, planes, ships and munitions. The whole economy would move on to a war footing. We would fight for our future. No price would be too high.

But we are at war.

We are battling not just for the future of our country but the future of the world.

The enemy are the capitalists who are presently plundering it for profit, who are clearing great swathes of rainforest, who are spraying the crops with insecticides and herbicides that ruin the soil and kill off our butterflies and bees, who are overfishing our oceans, harpooning whales, hunting for trophies, logging or mining and still using fossil fuels.

These are the people whose mantra is EXPANSION!! Who put PROFIT BEFORE PEOPLE AND NATURE!

The result of their actions are that the planet is warming and biodiversity is plummeting. They are destroying nature.

We have a battle for the future.

If we lose then we are looking at a dire future. Nature will be wrecked with up to a million species extinct. The ecosystems of our world will be ruined. Sea levels will rise putting most of our cities under water along with much of our farmland. Climate changes will cause droughts, floods, hurricanes and tornados. There will be mass starvation, mass migrations, wars for resources, conflict and the end to civilisation as we know it. It could even herald the end of mankind.

It seems to me that this is a war worth fighting – especially when you consider that the means to rectify the situation are no where near as drastic as engaging in a real war.

Anthropocene Apocalypse – the book of the death of nature

Posted on May 6, 2019May 6, 2019 by Opher

Anthropocene Apocalypse – The book.

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Opher

As a child I was a great animal and nature lover. I spent my life up trees and wading through ditches and ponds. I collected caterpillars, newts, frogs, toads, slow-worms, lizards and grass-snakes. I had a big pit down the garden where I kept my wild animals. I had a shed full of mice, gerbils and hamsters, a pet crow, a pet rabbit and forty guinea pigs in assorted colours.

It led me to become a biologist and become interested in ecology and the environment. I became a Biology teacher before moving up the echelons.

I have been fortunate enough to travel all around the world and see many gorgeous animals in the wild. I love them.

It was the appalling destruction that I witnessed first-hand that caused me to write my own experiences down in the book ‘Anthropocene Apocalypse’. In my life-time I have witnessed the world’s wildernesses and wild-life being devastated everywhere I went. Forests wantonly chopped down, wild-life butchered and a population of humans that is burgeoning out of control. Animals are on the verge of extinction merely because they are being used in Chinese medicines of no worth what-so-ever. It is ludicrous to believe that the horn of a rhinoceros will enable you to get an erection. It is keratin. You might as well bite your own nails. It is stupid to believe that the bone of a tiger will endow you with vitality and make you virile. Yet these practices have virtually wiped out these creatures. We are surrounded with superstition and madness.

I have witnessed casual cruelty inflicted on all kinds of animals – snakes cut open alive to remove their gall-bladders which again are thought to give virility, bears and monkeys kept in chains and made to dance. It is callous and unthinking.

I wrote of it in my book ‘Anthropocene Apocalypse’. We have become so numerous we are affecting the climate and destroying the planet. Unless we reduce our numbers and act responsibly we will destroy it and ourselves. I wrote the book, along with the solution, in the hopes that we can prevent it at this eleventh hour.

I wrote this book to raise awareness of what is going on. I would like everyone to buy a copy. Pass it to your friends. Get out on the streets, on the web and protest. We can solve the population crisis. We can stop the destruction and butchery but only if enough people show they care.

In the UK:

In the USA:

Death of a Million – a poem

Posted on May 6, 2019 by Opher

Death of a Million

Death of a million species
Absurdly eclipsed by a Prince.
Ecological crisis across the world
Everywhere has our fingerprints.

Economic growth signals our end
As we put profit first.
Species after species
Fall to our insatiable thirst.

Who cares about the birth of a royal
As our population soars?
With numbers swamping nature
Breaking all the natural laws.

Billions of individuals
Will meet an untimely death.
As we destroy everything
That gives us all our breath.

Opher – 6.5.2019

Today the news that we were putting one million species at great risk of extinction was superseded by the news of Harry and Megan’s baby.
For fuck’s sake – where are our priorities?
Hundreds of scientists have contributed to a detailed survey right across the world outlining the impact mankind is having on the natural world. What they paint is a picture of massive accelerating decline that puts not only one million species at risk but our own future with them. Yet the birth of some bloody royal is seemingly more important!
If ever anything demonstrates how we have got our values wrong this must surely be it!

1 Million Species under threat of extinction!!

Posted on May 6, 2019May 6, 2019 by Opher

Today the UN published it’s report on biodiversity. It is a report that is truly frightening.

‘Compiled by 145 expert authors from 50 countries over the past three years, with inputs from another 310 contributing authors, the Report assesses changes over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of the relationship between economic development pathways and their impacts on nature. It also offers a range of possible scenarios for the coming decades.’

It paints a picture of decline of plant and animal diversity across the world as mankind impacts on all the major habitats. Seas, lakes and rivers are overfished and polluted. Land is cleared for agriculture and sprayed with chemicals. Mammals are hunted for meat, ivory or trophies. Logging, mining and intensive farming; pollution, urbanisation and industrialisation take their toll. Climate change and overgrazing, draining of wetlands and the destruction of breeding grounds are all taking their toll.

What was once plentiful is now rare. 75% of the land mass has been impacted by mankind. 85% of our wetlands have already gone. 57% of our rainforest has been cut down. The human population is soaring to 8 billion – all of whom need food, water, housing, infrastructure, goods and space.

We are in the process of cutting off the very things that keep us alive- the plants and animals that maintain the soil, pollinate the plants, recycle our water and produce the oxygen we breathe.

This is not sustainable. Our greed and constant lust for expansion is destroying nature and will destroy us.

How long can the deniers continue to doubt the massive evidence that is piling up?

Unless we start to take this seriously and take major steps to put it right we will destroy everything that makes life so beautiful. We are in the process of slitting our own throats in order to own a bunch of trinkets. The consumer society and sheer numbers of humans will kill us all.

Surely this is the most important issue of all?

https://games-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/1c572aca-fe3d-4b5f-94d9-1885bfee7e7a/note/7561fdf9-27ed-4fa0-845c-dbef31bb3b0c.pdf#page=1

Laying the seeds of our own demise.

Posted on May 4, 2019 by Opher

We do not seem to be able to use our intelligence either for the good of ourselves, the species or the rest of life on this planet. Right from the beginning we’ve been a complete disaster.

According to scientists the first sign of humans moving into an area is the extinction of all the megafauna – same on all continents – from giant sloths, giant beavers, giant kangaroos to mastodon, mammoths and a host of others. It was madness. We didn’t just hunt for meat we killed for pleasure. We drove whole herds of mammoth off cliffs where just one or two would have satisfied our needs.
We are a flawed species.

With common sense we would be countering the many dangers that could eradicate us – from virus mutation, asteroid strike, climate change and biodiversity. But no. We prefer to deny away, have wars, huge military expenditure and run everything for profit and power.

When the virus comes, the asteroid hits or we die from our own destruction of nature we might wake up to the realisation that we could have done it differently.

Nature will heal. Maybe some other intelligent species will emerge in the next few million years of evolution? And perhaps that intelligent species will not be so driven by a lust for power, greed, selfishness or the defect of gaining pleasure from inflicting pain, agony and death on others?

Once – a poem

Posted on May 2, 2019 by Opher

Once

Once the land lived.

It hummed

With a trilling of wings.

A rustle of green leaves

And the thud of many hooves.

Now it is only the wind

That hums

And rustles brown leaves

And the only thud

Is that of tree trunks.

Opher 1.5.2019

I truly despair at the massive destruction we are causing all over the world as we casually cut down the rainforests for profit.

Places so full of life are reduced to deserts.

Finding room for Nature!

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Opher

A farm is an industrial complex. It is artificial. By its very nature it disturbs the balance of the ecosystems.

Of course nature, in all its forms – from weeds, insects and animals – impacts on farming. That is why pesticides and herbicides are used so greatly.

To a farmer nature is a pest to be controlled and eradicated.

For instance – a farmer a I happen to know of in Texas created a large lake and was perturbed that nature, in the form of beavers, has done damage to the artificial structures that he has put up. It was costing him money. He declared the beavers a pest and shoots them on sight. He thinks beavers are vermin (along with wild boar and coyotes and any other animals that intrude on his land).

He enjoys hunting and killing these animals and aims to kill them all.

He looks at it from the viewpoint of farmers, economics and humans. His solution is to eradicate all nature that doesn’t conform to being helpful to his enterprise. He labels anything that disrupts his farming or costs money as being a pest in need of eradicating.

There’s the problem.

Right across the globe – Africa, South America, America, Indonesia, Australia – farmers are clearing natural habitat, spraying crops and killing any creatures that dare to ‘intrude’ on to ‘their’ land.

Except it isn’t ‘their’ land is it?

I look at it from the viewpoints of the creatures that were there first. And I think that instead of killing everything (which many farmers obviously greatly enjoy) we should be learning to live alongside nature and respect it.

The huge areas of land that we are clearing from natural habitat to farmland is killing huge numbers of animals. They are literally starving to death.

On top of that we have extensive hunting and overfishing.

The intensive spraying with pesticides and herbicides is killing off all the insects and polluting our food.

There is no doubt that we are systematically destroying nature.

I believe there has to be a healthy balance. We have to give enough wilderness to the animals and plants so they can thrive too. We not only share a planet with them and should respect them but we are dependent on them!

To me it sounds fair that we preserve half of the planet for nature, in the form of national parks and conservation areas, and have half for humans.

We should respect nature and learn to live with it!

Chimps with Large Brains – a poem

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Opher

Chimps with Large Brains

Chimps with large brains

And capricious natures

Stomping across the world

With no limiting legislature.

Out of control;

Without limits or empathy;

And for the rest of nature

There’s no sympathy.

Clearing the land

Of all that has life,

To create a plastic jungle

Where only problems are rife.

What are we doing?

Creating such ruin?

Is there no way out of this cul-de-sac?

Is there no way back?

Opher – 29.4.2019

We might have large brains but we sure don’t always do things intelligently. We are our world’s worst enemy.

With burgeoning numbers and careless disregard we are leaving a heap of problems in our wake.

Have we the intelligence to put it right?

The Will, the Means or the Might? – a poem

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Opher

The Will, the Means or the Might

Gigantic cerebral power,

With electricity jumping neurones

In creative ways.

Huge invention and

Problem solving ability –

A progressive maze.

In a dichotomy

Of good and bad

Creating uncertain days.

We’re on the edge

Of disasters of our devise

And could go out in a blaze.

Can we use our giant brains

To solve the problems we create?

Or are they all too big?

Is it all too late?

I’d like to feel that we have the ability

To make it right.

But do we possess the will,

The means or the might?

Opher – 29^th April 2019

I am always amazed by our ingenuity and ability to solve problems. When I look back over the last three hundred years what we have achieved is stupendous.

But in the process of developing our world of technology and science we have impacted greatly on the natural world and put our own future in jeopardy.

My frustration is that I am sure we possess the ability to put it right. I just don’t think we have the will.

While it doesn’t directly affect us we will remain complacent. When the impacts finally manifest themselves it will be too late

conservation

All too much – a poem

Like this:

There is a War!!

Like this:

Anthropocene Apocalypse – the book of the death of nature

Anthropocene Apocalypse – The book.

Like this:

Death of a Million – a poem

Like this:

1 Million Species under threat of extinction!!

Like this:

Laying the seeds of our own demise.

Like this:

Once – a poem

Like this:

Finding room for Nature!

Like this:

Chimps with Large Brains – a poem

Like this:

The Will, the Means or the Might? – a poem

Like this:

conservation

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