We only have one Home. And it doesn’t belong to us, any of it.
You can’t own Nature – the indigenous nations everywhere know this, they understand they are the stewards, protectors and guardians, and they behave accordingly, with respect and gratitude. But we, the civilized people, seem to have forgotten the true order of things.
I love Brazil. It is a country of beautiful people and amazing culture and history. It is colourful and contrasty and incredible in a million different ways. But the Amazon rainforest doesn’t belong to Brazil or their people, same like Syberian tundra doesn’t belong to Russia or Great Barrier Reef to Australia.
We are hurting Earth in many ways, almost in every single area where there are humans or their activities, and that is bad enough, but there are places on this planet that are of vital importance to every living being, everywhere.
What gave us the right to think of Earth as ours in the first place? How can we own something that made us and without which we simply cannot exist? How does a rainforest belong to a group of people that just happened to arrive there at some point in their past? How does an ocean belong to a nation that claimed some land on the shores it touches? How can a mountain belong to humans if it has been there long before them, and it will stay there long after?
We have claimed bits and pieces of this Earth, gave them names and borders and national identities. We fought and continue fighting for the land that “belongs” to us, by the right of birth, history or ideologies we created over the course of time. But this land was here long before us. These forests have nurtured countless species, long before we learned to use our thumbs and declared ourselves “special”. We have been given the right to live and use this amazing Garden, but only if we take care of it. She certainly took care of us all this time and continues to do so.
It is not our rainforests burning at the moment. It is not our oceans warming up. It is not our glaciers melting. It is our humanity dying its slow death. We are burning the cradle we sleep in, blinded by ignorance and ridiculous ideas our ego’s and vanity created. If we allow the rainforests to burn, we allow our greed to burn our future.
It is beautiful that we have grown into many different cultures and nations. That diversity is a pinnacle of human creation, a testament of our desire to belong and create. We did amazing things in our short time here. And we can do much, much more, but only if we start acknowledging everything that binds us together also; everything that makes us human, brothers and sisters, children of this beautiful planet, tucked away in the corner of the Milky Way.
We are a part of Earth, and She is our Home. In our greed, we see everything around us either as a resource, building material, fuel or food. Whether we see it yet or not, everything IS connected, and we are a thread in that fabric. Earth can’t sustain our greed for much longer, and some kind of balance will need to be restored, and soon.
I am not worried about Earth’s wellbeing. She will do just fine without us if that is the path we decide to take. After all, it existed just fine for billions of years before little humans emerged, like ants on its surface. But we have an amazing opportunity here; to come back to our true nature, to embrace our place and responsibilities on this marvellous planet.
I hope we take this chance and step up. I hope we realize that watching the forests burning on TV does nothing to help. Same with thinking that we as individuals can’t change anything. I hope we finally understand that our neverending desire for comfort made us lazy and greedy, to the point we are jeopardizing our very existence. We have already annihilated countless species, destroyed habitats and damaged ecosystems millions of years old. We kill animals for food and then we burn rainforests to grow food for our food. Endlessly and needlessly.
Change might be scary to some, but it is our only way out of this maze of destruction. And, when our governments don’t understand this, it is our responsibility to make them understand. Don’t lie to yourself, thinking you can just go on with your lives as you did all this time. Don’t even try pretending this will just go away if you ignore it. Don’t think it’s someone else’s job and you are too small to do anything anyway.
It is time to be loud. It is time to flood the streets with our presence and our voices; not for better jobs, not for earlier retirement, not for more money at the end of the month, but for the very survival of our species, for our children to enjoy at least a fraction of what we had all these years. For the future of Earth that includes humans in it.
But, most of all, because it’s the right thing to do and it’s the least we can give back.
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