I have to admit that I am impressed, Cecil the lion is still in the news and the public has not let up on the verbal assault against those responsible. Sides have been taken and lines are drawn all over the internet in regard to the death of this lion. The side I’m on? I’m against killing any endangered species for the sake of feeding somebody’s ego. Cecil was not taken to a village to be eaten by the locals. Cecil was not butchered and put into coolers to be eaten later. His head was cut off and his pelt was taken. The body was left to rot in the desert. People have argued that the hunt was legal, I have to say I don’t care. Many things over time have been legal and illegal and then legal again. A group of guys in suits sitting around writing laws does not dictate the morality of a situation.
The world has changed. I’m happy to hear this week that the Obama administration is going to be the first to mandate CO2 output for the United States. The public is in an uproar over the death of a rare animal that was protected by the government of Zimbabwe. I’m hoping this is the mental change the general public has needed to make in order to wake up to their situation.
For a few years now I have thought about the coming collapse that will eventually happen to western civilization. It’s not until recently that I have realized we are in the collapse. I could have been in a denial state and I think most of the world was in that mental place.
Easter island was once covered with trees. The natives there had created a civilization that depended on constant growth. The population went up and as they expanded across the island the trees came down. The resources of the island started to dwindle and the population topped out. Food became scarce and as the population started to decline the natives resorted to cannibalism. Before the natives started to eat one another I have to wonder what was going through their minds when the last tree was being taken down? Was there a panic? Had some of the people contemplated that moment?
I would have to expect that just like our population today there were a few who were thinking ahead. There might have been a few people protesting. If they were smart there would have been a panic. Even smarter would have been removing the people in power who said this type of behavior was acceptable. Looking at Easter island we know things did not change in time.
My hope is that Cecil the lion is one of the last trees on our island of the earth. People are more vocal about what is being lost on our planet. Currently there are four white rhinos left. We lost one last week because of a ruptured ovarian cyst. Animals I grew up learning about will not be around for my kids to see in their lifetime. Scientist have called this time in the planet’s history the 6th great extinction. People are happy that there are 7 billion people on the planet. There has never been 7 billion people on the planet at one time, ever.
The planet is not out playground. Human’s do not have a right to dictate what the world is supposed to look like. When the population becomes too great and we have a massive die off the person responsible is the idiot who placed man at the time of the food chain. Man is not the master of nature. Regardless of what the book of genesis says humans are just another species on the planet and we are susceptible to the same laws of nature as any other species.
When you look at a Petri dish there is a set supply of food inside. Add some bacteria and you can watch as the population expands. Eventually the bacteria fills the dish but then the food runs out. The earth is becoming a Petri dish and food is now running short. Cecil was a minority species that has suffered the loss created by another species that won’t acknowledge it’s own limits. Looking at the span of human history the population has fluctuated between 500 million and 1 billion. Using traditional farming methods and depending on the seasons, humans were able to expand to the 1 billion mark. Once oil was added to the mix and we were able to trade sun light for oil our population skyrocketed.
The balance of humans with the earth is off and we are starting to see the other end of the scale that hovers above us. The ends of the Petri dish are all around us on this ball we live on in space. We have reached every corner of the planet and yet we have not learned that this is our only home. The people of Easter island had their own little world in the middle of the ocean. This was an isolated piece of land in an vast ocean. Essentially this was earth in the middle of the universe.
We are reaching the end of a lot of things on this planet. Peak oil is still a reality. Animals are becoming extinct in record numbers. Plants that have not been cataloged or saved are disappearing before we know what they are. Droughts are becoming longer and hotter. Fresh water is disappearing. Ocean levels are rising. It wasn’t until now that the public has physically seen the results of what is happening. Cecil the lion has become our last tree on the island. The public is finally waking up and asking why we are still acting like there are endless resources on the planet. The sport hunting culture of a hundred years ago needs to disappear like Jim Crow laws and women not allowed to vote. There isn’t a vast jungle of animals to hunt anymore. We have protected areas and preserves for a reason.
I have seen the comments of people like Ted Nugent on the internet who support the Dentist that hunted Cecil. With his adolescent intelligence Ted thought it would be funny to show a picture of a wild boar he hunted and name it Cecil. I’m not sure if I would consider Ted a true hunter. He owns his own fenced in preserves. He drives through his land and shoots his bow at a caged in animal. There is no stalking, tracking, or waiting involved. This is the level of skill I would expect from a man that shit his pants to avoid going to Vietnam. Now he thinks it is ok to open his mouth and yell at the vegan hippies who don’t give a shit about the weekend warrior. I gave my two cents to Ted on his face book page and never got a response. It’s difficult to make an argument against someone that says “from one hunter to another, shut up.” The logic on this topic is simple. If there is no planet, there is nothing to hunt.
When looking at collapse people like to discuss different events that will ultimately do away with the human race. Global warming, economic collapse, nuclear war, pandemic, artificial intelligence, the loss of fresh water, rising sea levels, and the list goes on. So which one am I the most concerned about. All of them. They are all linked in one way or another. It’s been happening for a long time. Many of the steps nations have taken over the decades have only delayed the inevitable and will make the end result even more disastrous as the population increases. Expect economies to crumble. Watch wars over water rights in the next hundred years. See disease spread as food becomes rare and sanitation is not taken care of. Cities will disappear under water as the rich continue to not give a shit about anybody but themselves.
I hope, with Cecil, more people are becoming aware and we can finally wake up before that last tree is cut down and we look into are wallets and ask “why?” after it’s too late. We can’t bring Cecil back and we can’t bring a planet back either.