Robert J. Burrowes
Moreover, this mass extinction event is accelerating and is so comprehensive in its impact that the piecemeal measures being taken by the United Nations, international agencies and governments constitute a tokenism that is breathtaking in the extreme.
And it is no longer the case that mainly ‘invisible’ species are vanishing: those insects, amphibians and small animals about which you had never even heard, assuming they have been identified and given a name by humans.
You and I are on the brink of driving to extinction some of the most iconic species alive today. For a photo gallery of threatened species, some of which are ‘critically endangered’, see ‘World’s wildlife being pushed to the edge by humans – in pictures’. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2016/oct/27/worlds-wildlife-being-pushed-to-the-edge-by-humans-in-pictures
If you want to read more about some aspects of the extinction threat, you can do so in these recent reports: ‘World Wildlife Crime Report: Trafficking in protected species’ http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/wildlife/World_Wildlife_Crime_Report_2016_final.pdf and ‘2016 Living Planet Report’ http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/lpr_living_planet_report_2016.pdf which includes these words: ‘The main statistic from the report … shows a 58% decline between 1970 and 2012. This means that, on average, animal populations are roughly half the size they were 42 years ago.’
And if you want to read just one aspect of what is happening in the world’s oceans, this recent UN report will give you something to ponder: ‘New UN report finds marine debris harming more than 800 species, costing countries millions’. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=55724#.WEdCk1yYrIV
As you read all this, you might say ‘Not me’! But you are wrong. You don’t have to be an impoverished African driven to killing elephants for their tusks so that you can survive yourself. You don’t have to be a farmer who is destroying the soil with synthetic poisons. You don’t have to be a soldier who kills and destroys or a person who works for a corporation that, one way to another, forces peasants off their land. You just have to be an ‘ordinary’ person who pays your military taxes and consumes more than your share of world resources while participating without challenge in the global system of violence and exploitation managed by the global elite.
Of course, some of what is happening is related to the ongoing climate catastrophe and there isn’t any good news on that front. See ‘What’s Happening in the Arctic is Astonishing’. http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2016/11/24/whats-happening-arctic-astonishing/
But not everything that is going badly wrong is well known either. Did you know that we are destroying the Earth’s soil? See ‘Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues’. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/
And did you realise that even nitrogen is now a huge problem too? See ‘Scientists shine a spotlight on the overlooked menace of nitrogen’. http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx?DocumentID=27090&ArticleID=36316&l=en
![animals-endangered-baby-orangutan-jpg](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/animals-endangered-baby-orangutan-jpg.jpg)
Living in Indonesia, one of the most corporatized and politically corrupt nations in Asia, Orangutans are among the most endangered species on the planet. Meantime, Western consumers remain blissfully unaware of their own part in this tragedy.
Of course, military violence has devastating consequences on the Earth’s ecosystems too, destroying land, water and atmosphere (not to mention killing human beings) in the fight over resources. You will get no joy from the article ‘Iraq’s oil inferno – government inaction in the face of eco-terrorism’ http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2988403/iraqs_oil_inferno_government_inaction_in_the_face_of_ecoterrorism.html or the website of the Toxic Remnants of War Project. http://www.toxicremnantsofwar.info/ But every single aspect of military spending is ultimately used to destroy. It has no other function.
While 2.5 billion human beings do not have enough to eat. See ‘One in three people suffers malnutrition at global cost of $3.5 trillion a year’. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=55691#.WETNflyYrIV
As you read all this, you might say ‘Not me’! But you are wrong. You don’t have to be an impoverished African driven to killing elephants for their tusks so that you can survive yourself. You don’t have to be a farmer who is destroying the soil with synthetic poisons. You don’t have to be a soldier who kills and destroys or a person who works for a corporation that, one way to another, forces peasants off their land.
You just have to be an ‘ordinary’ person who pays your military taxes and consumes more than your share of world resources while participating without challenge in the global system of violence and exploitation managed by the global elite.
![Rhinos and elephants are also two of the great mammal species in the extreme danger zone. They could both be extinct in a couple of decades.](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/animals-baby-rhino-jpg-350x263.jpg)
Rhinos and elephants are also two of the great mammal species in the extreme danger zone. They could both be extinct in a couple of decades. Image: Mother and baby rhino.
‘Why is this?’ you might ask.
This is because the primary driver of the human-induced mass extinction is not such things as some people hunting a particular lifeform to extinction, horrendous though this is. In fact, just two things drive most species over the edge: our systematic destruction of land habitat – forests, grasslands, wetlands, peatlands, mangroves… – in our endless effort to capture more of the Earth’s wild places for human use (whether it be residential, commercial, mining, farming or military) and our destruction of waterways and the ocean habitat by dumping into them radioactive contaminants, carbon dioxide, a multitude of poisons and chemical pollutants, and even plastic.
And do you know what drives this destruction of land and water habitats? Your demand for consumer products, all of which are produced by using land and water habitats, and the resources derived from them, often far from where you live. The most basic products, such as food and clothing, are produced on agricultural land, sometimes created by destroying rainforests, or taken from the ocean (where overfishing has savagely depleted global fish stocks). But in using these resources, we have ignored the needs of the land, oceans and the waterways for adequate regenerative inputs and recovery time.
We also participate, almost invariably without question or challenge, in the inequitable distribution of resources that compels some impoverished people to take desperate measures to survive through such means as farming marginal land or killing endangered wildlife.
So don’t sit back waiting for some miracle by the United Nations, international agencies or governments to solve this problem. It cannot happen for the simple reason that these organizations are all taking action within the existing paradigm that prioritizes corporate profit and military violence over human equity and ecological sustainability.
Despite any rhetoric to the contrary, they are encouraging overconsumption by industrialized populations and facilitating the inequitable distribution of income and wealth precisely because this benefits those who control these organizations, agencies and governments: the insane corporate elites who are devoid of the capacity to see any value beyond the ‘bottom line’. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane’. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1402/S00056/the-global-elite-is-insane.htm
If you want action on the greatest challenge human beings have ever faced – to avert our own extinction by learning to live in harmony with our biosphere and equity with our fellow humans – then I encourage you to take personal responsibility.
If you do, you need to act. At the simplest level, you can make some difficult but valuable personal choices. Like becoming a vegan or vegetarian, buying/growing organic/biodynamic food, and resolutely refusing to use any form of poison or to drive a car or take an airline flight.
But if you want to take an integrated approach, the most powerful way you can do this is to systematically reduce your own personal consumption while increasing your self-reliance. Anita McKone and I have mapped out a fifteen-year strategy for doing this in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. http://tinyurl.com/flametree You might also consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com which obviously includes nonviolence towards our fellow species.
One of the hidden tragedies of modern human existence is that we have been terrorized into believing that we are not personally responsible. See ‘The Delusion “I Am Not Responsible”‘. https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/222631/the-delusion-i-am-not-responsible.html For a fuller explanation, see ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’. http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/articles-2/fearless-and-fearful-psychology/ It isn’t true but few people feel powerful enough to make a difference.
And every time you decide to do nothing and to leave it to someone else, you demonstrate why no-one else should do anything either.
Extinction beckons. What will you do?
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ABOVE IMAGE: Ignorance, greed and human stupidity wiped out the magnificent Tasmanian tiger.
What will it take to bring America to live according to its own propaganda?
Soon there may be only one nation left with wildlife. India is the one nation reversing the trend of species decimation. The asian lion was hunted to the point of extinction by Great White Hunters during british occupation, with only 20 remaining. Today there are more than 400, who roam freely in the Gir Forest and in bordering farm communities. The extraordinary return of the asian lion is documented in a remarkable video… The Wantering Lions of India.
Soon there may be only one nation left with wildlife. India is the one nation reversing the trend of species decimation. The asian lion was hunted to the point of extinction by Great White Hunters during british occupation, with only 20 remaining. Today there are more than 400, who roam freely in the Gir Forest and in bordering farm communities. The extraordinary return of the asian lion is documented in a remarkable video… The Wandering Lions of India. Here is the blurb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ4SdAGdrIk blurb: “As India’s population booms, her legendary wildlife has been squeezed almost out of existence. But the… Read more »
Humans are not only persons amoung Earthlings. All sentient animals ( as nonhuman as human ones) are persons.There are scientifical evidences that all sentient animals are a persons. Personality of all sentient animals must be recognised and ordered by The Constitution of each state. Person cannot be anyone‚s property.
It is not the same meaning of these two: ‚‚ all living beings‚‚ and ‚‚ all sentient beings ‚‚. Whoever exploitating and killing sentient beings is dangerous and harmful as well as those who do not distinguish between: ‚‚all living beings‚‚, and ‚‚all sentient beings‚‚. ,,Living beings‚‚ are bacteries ( like Yersinia pestis , salmonella, etc, Micoses, parametium, insects, invertebrates , and no one of these living beings have opportunity to feel fear,pain, sadness, glad and no one human can keep them in the one bag together with vertebrates and Octopod who also are living beings- but sentient ones.. ‚‚Sentient… Read more »
Ahimsa recognizes all living beings as persons. That is not hypocritical. If everyone lived by this simple rule animals would have no problems with man: Ahimsa: Don’t kill any living beings. Don’t try to rule them. Mahavira (Jain Acaranga, 4/23) Jains do not live by ahimsa just to make themselves feel good. They live by ahimsa to benefit all living beings. They work for laws to protect animals and work to end all slaughter. With this in mind, 400 Jain monks staged an action to end all slaughter in Palatina, Gujarat India. They were successful. 250 slaughter houses were shut… Read more »
Quibbling about which living beings deserve to be treated with respect, as persons, only diminishes the chances that all animals, including humans will remain free from harm. According to dominion only man is entitled to this privilege. An effort to establish personhood for only those animals with human like emotions, or a similar morphology leads to rights for some and not all living beings based on the hierarchies of dominion. Ahimsa is a state of mind that seeks to avoid violence to living beings: Ahimsa is derived from the Sanskrit verb root hims, which means “desirous to kill,” and the… Read more »
And humans keep the bag in own hands.
when you say that the constitution and laws must declare some animals persons…. you are ‘keeping the bag in human hands’
It is not possible to protect animals when their slaughter is a guaranteed right of human supremacy, established so long ago in genesis… Asking for laws that respect animals as persons in a dominion culture is putting the cart before the horse. Just as a cart cannot pull a horse, dominion cannot lead to legislation that values animals as unique persons entitle to remain free from harm… “The eternal mystery of the world is its intelligibility. True religion fastens to this element of intelligibility and creates a system of thought and action which leads to true harmony and bliss. And… Read more »
I cannot begin to understand why anyone invested in protecting animals sees ahimsa as a threat. To date in the history of man on earth it is the only ethic that has resulted in meaningful compassion for animals and a record of no warfare towards humans.
“In my opinion, the most beautiful word ever written, in any country, in any language, at any time, came from India. Ahimsa: non-violence to any living being” Philip Wollen
that is Dominion humans over all – and it is wrong.
It is not dominion to say that animals be granted full compassion according to ahimsa.
It is dominion to decide that some animals be declared persons and others not.
There seems to be some confusion about the difference between ahimsa and dominion. It is not dominion to say that All Beings are worthy of full compassion, to lead their lives on their own terms as nature intended. Ahimsa: Don’t kill any living beings. Don’t try to rule them. Mahavira (Jain Acaranga, 4/23) Dominion: a hierarchy where some species may be slaughtered and exploited, others not: Dominion is a state of mind that allows for the slaughter and exploitation of animals. Genesis 9:1-3 “The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every… Read more »
Human dominion over all sentient animals manifests like an open and like a hidden form. Open form teach christian, islam, judeo religions, and hidden form teach buddhism, hinduism,jainism. All these religions keep humans over all sentient beings ,one by call sentient animals : property others by identification sentient animals with unicellular organisms and invertebrates. Both ways are wrong, while there are scientiffical evidence that all vertebrates and Octopod are a pesons together with homo sapiens. That must be ordered by The Constitution of each state. That is only way for elimination as open as hidden human dominion and only way… Read more »
There will never be laws that recognize animals as persons with the same rights as humans in judeo.christian nation. Asking for laws that respect animals as persons in a dominion culture is putting the cart before the horse. Just as a cart cannot pull a horse, dominion cannot lead to legislation that values animals as unique persons entitle to remain free from harm… There is nothing hidden about the way that Jains practice ahimsa. They lobbied to have all slaughter banned within in the city limits of Palatina Gujarat, India. 250 slaughter houses were shut down… The Jains, living by… Read more »
It is not clear why someone who seeks to end violence to animals would chose to use the dominion model to do so. Dominion creates hierarchies, with some lives, specifically those who exhibit human like emotions, have a similar morphology to humans or exhibit intelligence. All these criteria are subjective…. Who can measure just how much intelligence is needed to declare an animal as worthy of protection? It is man, claiming to base this assessment on science . When it is man who decides who shall live, whose life matters, that assessment falls under the heading of dominion, where man… Read more »
Human dominion over all sentient Earthlings must be moved out, throwed out: by personality of all sentient Earthlings , which must be demanded, loaded, ordered ,not by law but by The Constitution of each state and not by using false mask: ‚‚welfarism‚‚ nor ‚‚ahimsa‚‚ , Sentient animals are a persons, that must be written in the Constitution, and all laws must follow the constitutional demand.That is only way for save all life and Planet Earth and all Earthling.
Dominion grants humans the right to slaughter and harm animals with moral impunity, based on hierarchies and subjective criteria, ranging from cuteness, to usefulness to humans to cognition, the right to pick and choose who may live. The dream of animals as persons is unrealizable in such a climate.
Creating hierarchies and criteria for some animals, not others is good, old fashioned dominion. Dominion can not be eliminated if some lives matter more..
There seems to be some confusion in the previous statement.
Ahimsa is not welfarism and attempting to create the illusion that it is merely perpetuates the fallacies of dominion. Those seeking to preserve dominion… grant compassion only to spea
cies they deem sentient… i.e…. similar to humans with regard to morphology or cognition. That is speciesism.
Ahimsa seeks abolition of all violence to all beings.
It does not help to muddy the waters with misconception.
Rejecting Ahimsa as the baseline for compassion, granting compassion only to some animals, with morphologies similar to humans is dominion.
Ahimsa rejects welfarism and seeks abolitionism.
It is inaccurate to portray ahimsa as welfarism. This confusion must be cleared up if the west is ever to end the reign of tyranny over animals, known as dominion.
Ahimsa originated in India is lived by the Jains and understood by the culture at large: “For there is nothing inaccessible for death. All beings are fond of life, hate pain, like pleasure, shun destruction, like life, long to live. To all life is dear.” Jain Acharanga Sutra. “These words… are a result of a tremendous but simple spiritual discovery: all life is holy, sacred or God-given. Life, therefore, has intrinsic values – and all that lives has an interestin living.” Prof Andrew Linsey Ahimsa is an ideal which leads to the greater good of all beings in a society.… Read more »