utopia? a time to reflect

On Wednesday, 7 July, 2021, more than 4 million COVID-19 deaths were reported worldwide during the pandemic, according to USA Today.

I read this article with a heavy heart, shaking my head at the waste of life which seems to be the never-ending theme of the planet we call home. It is always waste, waste, and more waste. More often than not, a reactive instead of a proactive attitude towards the glorious planet that humans have been bent on destroying ever since they climbed down from the trees.

The reported COVID-19 deaths could have been avoided if humans had not played around with bats and coronaviruses, always trying to manipulate what nature created.

I feel each death was a tragedy, and each death was man made. This led me to think about other deaths that may have been avoided had not humans interfered one way or another with Mother Nature, whether on purpose or inadvertently through ignorance.

Take the Spanish flu--it killed somewhere between 50 to 100 million people in the world and while many theories as to its origin are still flying about we have to wonder whether human intervention through manipulation of nature, perhaps via certain animal farming methods, could have resulted in the flu virus jumping from an animal to a human host. I guess this still remains a mystery.

This is not a blog post about COVID-19 and other viruses, however, although this is where my train of thought started, but moving away from the speculation of viruses the W.H.O reported air pollution alone kills an estimated 8 million people worldwide every year. Add to this around 9 million people dying of world hunger per year, deaths attributed to climate change (the 2020 Australian bushfires alone wiped out approximately 3 billion animal and invertebrate species in one catastrophic environmental event which changed the ecology of our planet forever plus contributed greatly to air pollution, which will in turn kill more people). Then there is crime, war, and too many other atrocities to list.

And suddenly we have much more to think about and time to reflect on what humankind has unleashed since the beginning of civilisation--but are we really civilised?

I can only hope, though I am sure this will never happen any time soon (if ever), that humankind will learn to stop trying to manipulate Mother Nature to suit its thirst for profit and power while at the same time work towards a peaceful, cleaner, and fairer world for all.

The dream of a Utopian society, you say? I'm afraid I have to agree.