Carl Jung on Humanity and future evil.

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We are systematically destroying the planet out of thoughtless greed.

Global Warming – Cartoon

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As a biologist I’m watching the warming of the planet with great concern. I’m seeing the species creep in the UK as various species of insects are appearing further north than before and plants are flowering at different times.

Globally I’m looking at melting glaciers and ice-caps, thawing tundra and bleaching coral.

I’m observing climatic changes as weather patterns display extraordinary changes – droughts, floods, hurricanes, cooling, heating, forest fires and delayed monsoons.

I’ve watched the increasing global warming of the planet and rising sea levels with some dismay.

We have had tropical ages and ice ages in the past. We would not want either if they can be avoided. Both would be a disaster for civilisation as we know it.

It seems strange to me that a supposedly intelligent species should trigger a set of circumstances that would be catastrophic to its own survival. But that’s what we are doing.

Hopefully we won’t trigger a complete runaway greenhouse effect – like has happened on Venus.

Venus‘ atmosphere consists mainly of carbon dioxide, with clouds of sulfuric acid droplets. The thick atmosphere traps the Sun’s heat, resulting in surface temperatures higher than 880 degrees Fahrenheit (470 degrees Celsius).

Venus was probably just like us at one point – a sister waterworld. I wonder what went wrong there? It wasn’t some intelligent life triggering a disaster was it?

Poetry – Bit by Bit

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Bit by Bit

Tree by tree                                       Pond by pond

Ditch by ditch                                    Field by field

Hedge by hedge                               Bush by bush

Verge by verge                                 Copse by copse

Plant by plant                                    Animal by animal

We chop                                              We cut

We shoot                                            We rip

We mow                                              We fill

We build                                             We burn

We bulldoze                                      We saw

Without a thought.

                A billion tiny acts.

Leaving a trail of corpses.

Opher Goodwin – 23.4.2021

It is non-stop. Every day I walk up my hill to the sound of gunfire. I see a new building plot. I see another tree felled.

Where once were hedgerows, ponds, streams, frogs and butterflies is now a green wasteland carefully sprayed.

Poetry – Take me back

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Take me back

So take me back to the African plain,

Before we all went collectively insane.

With a sweet gourd and a laughing refrain,

Before the kinks in our seething brains

Created god, slaughter and pain.

I want to live in the past and remain

Where possibility exists in harmony again.

Take me back to that campfire,

Before we put the last chimp on the funeral pyre;

Before the concrete and the screeching tyre

And plastic heaven that is so dire.

When the sun set in blazing fire

For the eyes of wonder to admire.

Cos I’ve looked down this road

Where concrete and plastic explode;

To the clash of ideology

Demanding death by decree

And I don’t like what I see.

Give me the virus to end it all;

To send humanity to the wall;

To free the planet from this death thrall.

For if it lives – we make it crawl.

So let it breathe

Once and for all

Seven billion apologies

For why we brought it to its knees,

Axed the once majestic trees,

Destroyed the flowers, birds and bees.

Plastic hell

On a concrete frieze.

So take me back to the African plain

Where I can breathe once again;

Hold the soil and feel its pain,

Feel infinity in a sand grain,

Without seven billion fools

To drive me insane

Opher 22.2.2016

Take me back

Sharing a planet with seven billion, oblivious idiots, who consume, chop and slaughter their way around the planet, is thoroughly depressing. All I see is a slow decline towards an inevitable nightmare.

We destroy it all in a rampage of careless cruelty.

We descend in fits and starts towards the plastic and concrete nightmare of neon heaven.

We replace danger with safety and excitement with security.

We take the wild and tame it.

We take the wilderness and transform it.

We are turning the remainder into a theme park.

We slaughter the wild life and cage the vestiges in zoos, parks and reserves for the day-trippers to gawk at.

Hollywood meets Las Vegas, run by the new mafia, in a desert of our own making.

I want to go back to the start and try again. I want to wipe the slate clean, put the jungles and forests back and repopulate them with the slaughtered beasts.

I want the world to live again.

All the colours have gone.