Animals, big dams and people - Part III



For this third and final instalment of this piece, I would like to talk about the statement 'It's great to make space for people, but animals lose out'.

I exactly don't know what the commenter meant by this statement but I am interpreting it as deforestation, endangered species and warming up of the poles, which means the polar animals are dying.

This brings me into another point which my friend from a fertilizer company said 'Economic activity triggers pollution'. He meant to say that the better your economy gets, the worse you pollute the place.

Pity he hasn't heard of a new-age term 'sustainable development'. Of all the great philosophies and theories of the 20th century, I would consider environment awareness as the greatest. Somewhere during the mid 20th century, man realized that he cannot mindlessly and greedily expand the territories of his domination. The world 'indeed' belongs to other animals too just like how they belong to humankind. Chaos theory which states that there are unexplainable repercussions if you meddle with the nature and quantum theory helped man stabilize to some extent. The lesson is this: Watch out for the repersussions!

It's great to make space for people. Can somebody please tell me how much of the space the 'people' need? How much sqauaremeters of shopping mall do you require? How wide do you want your swimming pool? How many lanes should your highway have? How many tonns of enriched uranium you want to store? How many tonns of non-disposable garbage you want to dump onto your seas? How many kilolitres of chlorofluorocarbon(CFC) you are going to release to your atmosphere? Who sets these limits?

Penguins are dying. Occean life is depleting. Coral reefs are receding. We are witnessing changes in the migratory pattern of the birds. There's a dramatic hike in the cancer registrations in the city hospitals.

Animals becoming extinct is not going to happen in isolation. Animals dying is indeed a warning to us. Birds changing migratory patterns are indicative of weather getting chaotic which will have direct impact on your rains and winters. Penguins dying, certain primates going extinct will have impact on your pollution levels. Tigers and elephants receding in numbers holds a direct question. Who's next?

Tsunami in Southern Asia would have killed lesser people had we protected our coral reefs and looked after the occeanic life. Katrina and Mumbai would have submerged lesser area had we not dumped non-recyclable garbage in the seas and increased its overall temperature which began melting the polar icecaps. Number of cancer cases would have gone much lesser had we been careful in releasing fossil fuel emissions and CFCs.

It's not great to make space for the people if animals are going to lose out. Because animals dying is a sacrifice to protect us. To warn us that we should be more careful. To tell us that we should start reducing the impact on earth and take precautionary steps for the future projects. If we don't listen, when all of them are gone, the next head to be placed in the sacrificial altar will be that of people.