I WAS supposed to write a stand-up comedy script about the environment but then along the way it got serious.
On a related note, a discussion I read online came up with a scenario. It is about an observing alien race admiring our intelligence, especially the development of sophisticated weapons. But they are astounded why we are pointing those advanced weapons of mass destruction at each other. Looking closer, they are seriously debating and questioning our collective sanity, why we are purging each other with petty matters of the ego. They are analyzing further if such behavior is necessary for the survival of the human kind but that would make it paradoxical and counter-evolutionary for the survival of an “intelligent” species.
It is one of the reasons why my faith in humanity needs some kind of restoration. It looks like the human race, our race, is gearing for self-destruction.
The other disheartening reason, which is still related to the destructive behavior, is our total disregard of the environment. We consume and obliterate everything natural in our path with no care or respect whatsoever. Not content with the utter destruction, we produce and accumulate unnatural things at an unprecedented rate creating so much waste in the process. Waste that affects our safety, health and wellbeing.
We are talking about our wastes that are currently polluting the land, sea and air. Dishonorable mention is the ubiquitous plastics that we discard everywhere in great numbers suffocating fragile habitats. They are everywhere as near or as far our eyes can see. There is so much plastic around that we are now ingesting it in its microplastic form as it got into the food chain.
We poisoned the air we breathe with carbon emissions and other toxic discharge from the cars we drive and machineries that we use. We are making it worse as we fell trees to widen highways and bulldoze more forests for new roads to accommodate more vehicles and for construction of factories. We kill the very trees that can help mitigate the effects of air pollution.
In doing so, we destroy natural habitats, hasten climate change and drive wildlife to extinction. Then with self-evident contradiction, we audaciously preach for nature’s protection. We brag about it even with our blatant deflagration of nature in many forms. We are even commercializing it just to promote a greedy self serving agenda. It might not be hard to conclude that humanity is just like a big club composed of hypocrites who are bent on destroying the very place they live in.
We have not slowed down. We created big and mighty corporations with legal persona and used it in the forefront of hypocrisy but with broader reach. You might have heard of a big conglomerate with a social responsibility program of planting millions of trees to “preserve and protect” the environment. The travesty was announced with big fanfare everywhere; in print ads, TV advertising and social media. But it is the same corporation that is massively converting lands, actively destroying forests, clearing mountains and natural formations and shredding the water sheds for the construction of their plush subdivisions. The sad reality is that these big corporations can get away with it with impunity. They can get away with it because we are cuddling their hypocrisy with our own.
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