‘Rampant’ society upsets natural order

People are failing to wake up to the fact that if the planet suffers, we all suffer, argues Fazlun Khalid. In this week’s Green Room, he says we must respect the delicate nature of the Earth or risk leaving a toxic legacy for future generations.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has spoken, the politicians have uttered their platitudes, environmental activists call for action, the flat earthers remain in denial and the rest of us go shopping.

The IPCC has unequivocally confirmed for us what we have been feeling for years. Climate change is here to stay and will “continue for centuries”, thus increasing the probability that the curse of future generations will hang forever on this marauding civilisation of ours.

It had been said that the human species is an “environmental abnormality”. We rationalise the destruction of the planet as if we live somewhere else – the Moon, perhaps?

It has not entered our consciousness that if the planet suffers, we suffer, and that we have nowhere else to go. We have lost sight of ourselves as being a part of nature and that destroying the natural world means we destroy ourselves. We have reduced nature, and by extension ourselves, to an exploitable resource.

BBC