living in an oasis
Nov. 23rd, 2006 07:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI saw a large bearded lizard in front of the house this morning. He (I think it was a 'he' -- was doing the territorial head bobbing thing)... he was a bit more than a meter long from nose to tail-tip. It is hard to see that there would be enough room here for more than one beardy. This oasis is so small. It is just several acres surrounded on all sides by pastureland where cattle graze. It continually astonishes me how much life there is here.
It is hard to imagine how much there would have been before my white ancestors invaded and stole the land, obliterating most of the country in a swathe of destruction that continues today. It is even harder to imagine how much life would have been here before the earlier dark-skinned inhabitants invaded and destroyed the megafauna (4 meter tall kangaroos, wombats the size of volkswagons, marsupial lions...) and ruined the ground cover with annual burning, preventing soil buildup and encouraging fire-loving species like eucalypts.
Yesterday I was talking to Julie (my ex- from many years back). She spoke depressingly of England, where she now lives. There is no wildlife at all, just a handful of species. People proudly take her to what they call a forest, and she is horrified, because it is just a scrap of regrowth almost devoid of life. Oh sure, there are things living there, but the bulk of species were wiped out hundreds, thousands of years ago. There used to be bears, elk, and wolves in England. Nowadays the largest "wildlife" are some deer who remain only because they were cultivated as sport for people to murder for fun. The next biggest are badgers, and goes rapidly downhill from there.
This is what we will do -- are doing -- to Australia if we're not careful. In our relentless drive to build and pave over and "develop" everything we will destroy the most precious thing of all. We will end up with boring, filthy, McCity that looks exactly the same as every other city on the planet... where from cradle to grave you pay others for every breath you take and call that deprived slavery a "normal life".
Oh crap. I didn't want to start my day like this. Sorry.
It is hard to imagine how much there would have been before my white ancestors invaded and stole the land, obliterating most of the country in a swathe of destruction that continues today. It is even harder to imagine how much life would have been here before the earlier dark-skinned inhabitants invaded and destroyed the megafauna (4 meter tall kangaroos, wombats the size of volkswagons, marsupial lions...) and ruined the ground cover with annual burning, preventing soil buildup and encouraging fire-loving species like eucalypts.
Yesterday I was talking to Julie (my ex- from many years back). She spoke depressingly of England, where she now lives. There is no wildlife at all, just a handful of species. People proudly take her to what they call a forest, and she is horrified, because it is just a scrap of regrowth almost devoid of life. Oh sure, there are things living there, but the bulk of species were wiped out hundreds, thousands of years ago. There used to be bears, elk, and wolves in England. Nowadays the largest "wildlife" are some deer who remain only because they were cultivated as sport for people to murder for fun. The next biggest are badgers, and goes rapidly downhill from there.
This is what we will do -- are doing -- to Australia if we're not careful. In our relentless drive to build and pave over and "develop" everything we will destroy the most precious thing of all. We will end up with boring, filthy, McCity that looks exactly the same as every other city on the planet... where from cradle to grave you pay others for every breath you take and call that deprived slavery a "normal life".
Oh crap. I didn't want to start my day like this. Sorry.
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-23 10:44 pm (UTC)The good possibility is that we learn really soon how to control our destructiveness and become custodians of the planet for future generations. Sadly I don't think this are looking good for that one.
One bad possibility is that we screw badly with the planet and don't really wake up to ourselves until almost all the other species are wiped out, leaving us with some garden plants, a small number of standard tree species, dogs, cats, sparrows, pigeons, and livestock. And we'll have a real battle to balance this artificial ecology in some kind of stable way. Monocultures are incredibly vulnerable so we will have put ourselves in an extremely dangerous position.
The last possibility is one I hardly want to even consider. It is the answer to the Fermi Paradox. Given the vast numbers of stars in the universe, there must be countless civilisations of intelligent beings. So why can't we detect any at all? The answer may be that intelligence is too unstable. We all destroy ourselves when we become powerful enough.
Given the gleeful abandon with which our (Australian) politicians want to mine radioactive material for nuclear weapons, the future doesn't look great.