(12y) Huge cost in lives - Still, many continue to deny reality

Huge cost in lives

It is estimated that almost a billion (to visualise this: 1,000,000,000) animals died during Australia's bushfires that are still raging and some say trillions (1,000,000,000,000) may die. Elsewhere thousands of camels are shot because they become a pest as even these animals, although specifically adapted to live in desert conditions where water is scares, find it hard to survive Australia's major drought and thus they compete with humans for water in this huge country with only about 25 million humans. Also last year animals were shot, including wild horses, because it was too dry and thus these are mercy killings. Still, it is hard to deny the situation in Australia is exceptional. Similar in California, Brazil and other places where it stopped raining and fires burned while elsewhere it rains too much, both leading to death and destruction.

Many of these events happen as climate change scientists prophesied. However, many powerful people still (pretend to) deny climate is different compared with years ago and thus deny that actions are urgently needed that will eventually also result in a cleaner and fairer society. Or they find the cost to act too high, ignoring the fact that these fires cost billions as they halt tourism in those areas, maybe for years when nature recovers only slowly, but also to rebuild houses. These costs may be felt worldwide because insurance companies insurance each other to dilute the cost of exceptional events such as the increasing numbers of climate change disasters. And thus, too little is done while coal mine exploitation continues as usual.

And while there may be too many camels in Australia and thus people may find it acceptable to shoot them while rabbit and toad plagues may be stopped by these fires, elsewhere trophy hunters pay large sums of money so they can kill endangered animals while they say the money can be used for conservation efforts of the species they kill and thus they do good to society. I find it more courageous when people pay to shoot pictures of living animals. Unfortunately but money also convinces many locals to join gangs that kill animals illegally. Still, where people kill these animals, often fights erupt between people as one side kills while the other side tries to protect, either to maintain their culture or for the love of animals or because animals are good for tourism. Thus, the worship of money really makes people inhumane so they kill, whether animals listed on the critical endangered species list or humans. On the other hand, other people try to help animals such as people dropping food so animals can survive, a hopeful sign.

Short note on Siemens helping coal mine exploitation

I admire these young women climate activists. Greta Thunberg but also Luisa Neubauer and others. How strange it must have been for Siemens CEO when a girl said no to a high profile job. How many of the current generation politicians do this? Few; many accept big payments to sit in boards and vote for laws that benefit those companies. Indeed, politicians can be members of boards but independent as they receive a salary as parliamentarian.

Compare with older generations of whom many remain silent, often voting for established parties whose politicians ridicule their children while can hardly mention actions. Another section and mainly men write really disgusting posts under articles about these young women as they have no spine and are clueless what to do and shout to silence others. Crises bring the worse and best out of humans.

Young men remain more in the background as they are still living in a male dominated world and fear ridicule by friends and adult males who may teach them a lesson. But, when girls are attacked many of these men wakeup to defend the girls against aggression.

While I always voted men/women, in future elections I will search for promising young women in election lists, even at the bottom. It will not be a lost vote as professional politicians will notice change. And the group of young people who can vote will increase while they and adults face climate change consequences to remind them to vote differently.

A method to force change: instead of joining boards that are given and silence people, buy shares in a few big companies so companies have to listen to shareholders and change. Concentrate on a few while forcing change may mean the company has to pay billions of euros to compensate for broken contracts. Only than will companies understand they must change to avoid more disasters. Still, Siemens said they will soon split a spin off so they may prepare that shares in the old company become worthless and thus promising companies also need support. Many companies know what is happening and are preparing without mercy but first gain from dying industries. A pity those actions alienate younger generations from joining potentially interesting projects. Indeed, Siemens offer to the student may have been interesting and indeed future related; but, because of the huge distrust towards industries those concerned with climate may refuse good proposals by companies. 

Don't save individual houses

Firefighters should know and act accordingly as an example to other people that progress of fires can be slow downed and stopped if possible, that firefighters can try to save areas, towns and cities. However, firefighters should also know that when Australia's huge fires reach individual houses, they should let them burn while focus to save the rest of the region, town and cities and sometimes even retract when fire consumes a whole town because sometimes trying to save houses can kill.

Hell on planet Earth but our planet may recover

The fires are hell on earth, destroying and killing plants, animals and even humans wherever the conditions are fine, even creating its own favourable conditions. But, eventually fires will stop, either because nothing is left to burn or the weather becomes cooler and rain falls. Question: As Australia has huge coal mines, can the fires ignite them?

After the fires are finished animals may continue to die when all food is burned in a large area (the reason why food is dropped) but eventually plants will start to grow, certainly when the roots were not burned to become food for animals that survived or move in from surrounding regions or were saved by humans and released back into the wild. When plants cover larger areas also animals will grow in numbers. And, even when all life may be gone, humans can return plants and animals from zoos, the today's Noah's ark. But, in these fires certain plants and animals may be lost, some of them without us having known they existed.

Conclusion

Life on Earth, as everything, is a continuous building upwards, destruction and rebuilding as I've written before - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4.
It is the basis for evolution, including for our species Homo sapiens who finds ways to survive but sometimes refuses solutions when they consider them too expensive. And then, when things go wrong and certainly when food and water become scarce you may expect anger against leaders or scapegoating certain groups in society.

Our time I think resembles the dinosaurs era as they became too big to sustain a healthy ecosystem as large herbivores needed to eat too many plants so space became available for the newer vegetation we know today but dinosaurs couldn't digest while carnivores became sufficiently large and powerful so they killed weaker herbivores. The major asteroid collision with our planet may only be the final disaster dinosaurs were unable to survive while smaller mammals could. We may have entered a time of death as many people understand that we can't continue as we do until fewer creatures survive and peace can return to our planet when food becomes abundant again. By then modern society may eat fewer or no animals but instead protect them: humans - guardians of planet earth.