Humans Never Learn

The human race is very resilient. After going through plagues and several civil and world wars, it has bounced back with the total population topping seven billion today.

But then is the word “resilient” the correct one to describe the human race? Or is “stubborn” a better word for it?

Dire Forecasts

In the last ten years or so, we have been bombarded by dire predictions of global warming, earthquakes, typhoons, drug-resistant diseases, pestilence, famine, and die-offs. If you take just a few minutes to look at the details, they can be described as being something of biblical proportions.

And while people do acknowledge that some of these predictions are highly likely to occur, no one is doing anything.

Instead of getting together as a race to save this planet and the life it supports, people prefer to close their eyes and ignore the problem. Just like children, the human race thinks that if it doesn’t see the problem, it isn’t real.

Bad News

Well I’ve got bad news for everyone, many of these predictions are already taking place and no matter how much we ignore them, they will not go away.

At this point, you probably think that I’m some religious zealot spouting about the end of the world and I will tell you that you are gravely mistaken.

I don’t need to be religious, nor do I need to be a scientist for that matter, to see that things are getting worse. All I have to do is read the newspaper, watch television, listen to the radio, or just step out of my house.

There is no month that goes by wherein a disaster has not taken place in the past six months

of global warming, earthquakes, typhoons, drug-resistant diseases, pestilence, famine, and die-offs

In my trips to the provinces for the past few years, I have noticed that streams and rivers have been getting smaller.

Once upon a time the cold acted as a barrier to the spread of disease. Cold temperatures helped to kill bacteria and viruses that could not survive the cold. But now, places like Canada have been experiencing warm temperatures that diseases usually associated with tropical weather is now appearing more frequently there.

In the case of Antarctica, mass columns of ice are melting. This has lessened the areas where land animals can roam. And for those living in the sea, the warmer weather has resulted in less food.

A few months ago, places like New Zealand were hit with damaging earthquakes. But the worst of these took place in Japan where it took out a Nuclear Power plant.

In Asia, typhoons have flooded in Thailand killing hundreds and destroying production facilities. And in the Philippines, separate typhoons have been responsible for severe flooding and landslides, causing many to die and thousands to be displaced.

Just this week, I read about the virus strains that are resistant to antibiotics. It is bad enough to concern scientists in India but now the CDC, or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reports that several states in America are facing the same problem.

Then there was the bird flu way before that that hit Hong Kong and other Asian countries so hard, people were afraid to touch anything. Mass numbers of birds were culled in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading.

And while it may have worked, the Bird Flu reappeared again at a later date. And just like the first time, it again jumped from birds to humans with serious results.

Africa has been facing swarms of locusts that have been eating vast tracts of farm crops, making the hunger situation there even worse.

And thanks to changing weather patterns and extreme pollution, there have been mass deaths of fish washing up on the shores of countries all over the world.

For many, science has pinpointed the source as being man-made. For others, science can only surmise that it is an offshoot of human activities.

Don’t Care

I don’t get it, scientists all over the world have already said we are near the point of no-return, yet we, as a race, continue to act like nothing is wrong.

When are we going to stop? When there is nothing left?

Well, history may seem to point to that, but I will tell you, the human race will never learn. We are either too resilient, being able to bounce back from problems. Or are we just too stubborn to realize that we don’t need any of these things, like plants, animals, insects, clean water, and fresh air.

Let’s look at the some of the animals humans have rendered extinct in the past. We were responsible, whether directly or indirectly, for killing off the Dodo, Passenger Pigeon, Bubal Hartebeest, Tasmanian Wolf, Pyrenean Ibex, English Wolf, Quagga, Tecopa Pupfish, Baiji River Dolphin, and Caspian Tiger.

But has that stopped us from killing off anything else? Absolutely not!

At the rate we are going, the Rhinoceros, elephant, and tiger may follow suite. And the sad thing is no one will care, just like they didn’t care when other animals were made extinct.