Two-thirds of Earth's ecosystems at risk: UN
(scroll down to watch the video clip, too)
"A new United Nations report says we are using up our natural resources too fast and are in danger of destroying about two-thirds of the Earth's ecosystems. The Millennium Assessment, released Wednesday, warns that 15 of 24 global ecosystems are in decline and that the harmful consequences of this degradation could grow much worse in the next 50 years. The UN study is a synthesis of the work of about 1,300 researchers from 95 countries. It is being hailed as the most comprehensive survey ever into the natural systems that sustain life on Earth."
As Ronald Wright would say, when we 'progress' to the point where we are self-destructing, it can no longer be called 'progress'. As of late I've really been pondering how great the 'ease' of our civilization really is, given that we now kill more people in wars than ever before, are suffering from diseases our own capitalistic endeavours have created, and are killing the very earth that Allah has set up to sustain our existence.
...Sometimes I feel like walking away from all of it...to a remote mountain in Turkey...where I could milk my goats all day and glorify the Creator of those beautiful mountains (and goats)...
Thank you for posting this informative and sadly, unfortunate piece. I personally liked your own reflections very much. It is true that we have "progressed" to such an extent that we have actually regressed! How ironic indeed! You're right: more people have died, more lives ruined and a countless number of other atrocities, both to the natural environment and the human soul, ever since human civilization became "rational": thanks to the enlightment's faith in scientism and an objective universe! What a load that is, and thankfully, the postmoderns have also shown the absurdity of this position too, although their own positions often lend themselves to many foolish absurdities, which often reduce the meaning of human life to a form of subjectivity which does not allow itself to argue objectively about anything at all: and, thus, even a question like the environmental issue, for postmodernity, can be taken seriously, but because postmodern discourse allows for multiple interpretations, the human hermeneut, interpreting the text of the universe, can read into it whatever he/she likes. This is also undoubtedly a problem.
ReplyDeleteBack to my earlier point: is it not that once we as a civilization becom some rational and objective (or irrational and subjective, following today's popular line of discourse), when God is abstracted from the universe to the enth degree, that we are able to destroy the environment and pretty much everything else which has meaning in existence? Could it not have something to do with the loss of the Sacred, the lack of which allows man/woman to think that they are in charge? Indeed, when you leave humans to their own whims and caprices, a lot of good may happen, but an equal, if not, greater amount of bad will inevitably take place as well. This is what characterizes our human existence today. A return to the Sacred is what we so
desperately need. Only through Divine grace can we be delivered from the dross that taints the mirrors of our souls.