Who Burnt Down My Home? By Anonymous
What does it mean to support the killing of our home? Imagine the world as pristine as the Holocene. Forget machines, forget every large scale extraction, use, abuse, production and consumption. What would we do with our world if we could start again? Would we repeat our decisions, continue to support the killing of our home? Or would we change our behaviour and redesign our systems? In the spirit of hope, trust and imagination, I would say yes.
To some extent we already live in paradise. The more I learn about Earth, the people, the animals, the plants, the ground, the more I am amazed by the fact that I am a part of this. In this amazement for the complexities and beauty that Earth has given us, I see us destroying it. I see climate change fogging up our atmosphere, roasting us like tomatoes. I see plastics creeping into the smallest nooks and crannies of our home, hiding even inside of us. I see animals being killed for land, for resources, for food, for our houses and for our dinners. I see ecosystems suffering for our developments, our wars, and our need for more. Will it ever stop? I don’t see an end.
Perhaps, we have to think back to the beginning. Environment, ecosystem, nature, home: in the context of the last few hundred years, these are hard topics to untangle. Nonetheless, the human is so obviously in the centre of this mess. We have become so caught up in ourselves that we no longer feel nature as our ancestors used to. We no longer have that gut feeling of right or wrong in our daily lives – or do we? We know straws are bad, wasting water is bad, eating meat is bad, buying from Shein is bad. How often do we know something is bad but do it anyway? It has become the norm to live in comfort, to take everything we can afford to take. It is no coincidence that the richest people are the ones that are consuming and polluting the most.
So much must change, and quickly, but who really has the power? This is not just in the hands of some uni students. The real culprits are the policy makers, the politicians, the CEOs, the landowners; the minority. I know everyone has a part to play, some are just a bit bigger than others. In an ideal world we might get to start afresh on an unharmed planet, but a realist would see that humans are too greedy, forgetful and selfish to not repeat the same patterns. It only takes one selfish person to abuse our ecosystem. But to all the helpless people that are left to wonder, ‘what can I even do?’: we are still the majority. Although we have been abusing Earth for some time, we cannot forget how strong this planet is. There are still so many lives to fight for, so many ecosystems still holding on. We do not need an untouched planet to achieve change, but as the majority, we need to hold the individuals with the most power accountable and push for better.
Some might see humans as the boss, perhaps an organizer, or even the steward of earth and its inhabitants, but to such a large degree we are just another organism living under this roof. We should never forget that we are only a small piece of the complexity of life on this planet: one with maybe an above average ability to destroy, but nonetheless an ability to heal, reverse and adapt.
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