How to save our beautiful blue planet

We live in an era of extremes. For decades scientists have been alerting the world about the dangers of climate change. Yet unfortunately, mankind's greed is such that words like economy, profit and growth continue to outweigh any discussion. And that's a shame really, because as a species, mankind has found a way to unlock their potential. Yet what we do with it is nothing short of deplorable.

We have the ability to learn, yet we fail to learn from mistakes from the past. In fact, the only thing mankind has learned over the course of its existence, is how to repeat the mistake and increase the scale and gravity of the errors we make.

hundreds of thousands of years into our evolution and yet still we have not learnt to live in harmony with ourselves and all other animals. When you look at nature, there is a hierarchy. In that hierarchy, we should really be at the bottom of the food chain. Yet through the use of our brainpower, we have established ourselves as the dominant species. The sad thing is, that we treat that roughly the same as a locust treats the land it occupies. It completely devastates it, destroying all possibility of life and then moves on to other pastures green. The unfortunate thing about that approach is that eventually you run out of green space to forage on.

Mankind finds itself currently at that very point in time. Since the 1970s, we have wiped out about 60% of life on this planet. We have at the same time grown population to such an extent that we use up the planet's natural resources in roughly about 8 months. That means that every year, for 4 months, we further pillage what's left of this planet.

This behaviour has almost certainly contributed to the effects of global warming. And while the majority of mankind now acknowledges that this is real and that it is affecting life on a planetary scale, we have so far not taken any real action against it. There are those who argue against that by pointing out global agreements to reduce our carbon footprint. But when you look closely, these measures are almost pointless because the major contributors do not subscribe to them. In actual fact, one could argue that all we've done about climate change, is to create yet another economy around it, where entrepreneurs try to profit of a "hot" topic, preying on those that actually believe that change is upon us.

The sad reality is, over a decade of talks and negotiations have amassed to absolutely zero positive results. Scientists keep claiming that we still have time to turn this around. There, I would have to disagree. The jetstream has already shifted and still continues to change. And that is a change that I can't see being undone. As a result of that change, we see an increase in devastating forest fires, bigger and more powerful hurricanes, heavier storms and last but not least, it leads to warmer water finding its way to the poles. Currently there is already a breach ongoing on Antartica where a block roughly the size of the British islands could break away. Predictions are this won't happen for anytime soon, but as this is uncharted territory we can't be sure given that we don't fully understand how all these patterns fit together. And it's safe to say that all the scientific models so far have been proven to be far too conservative compared to reality, so why would this be any different.

The really sad part is, that while the evidence stares us in the face on a daily basis, that we still do not give this problem the attention it deserves. There are still those that continue as if nothing has changed. The amazon and Indonesian tropical rain forests are disappearing at an incredible rate. China continues to build on fossil fuel and coal, while the US are as well returning to more polluting ways of creating energy. We continue to flirt with ecological disasters by trying to look for oil in parts of the ecosystem that would never be able to recover if we were to make a mistake.

The global pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns across the planet were an ideal opportunity to learn. We saw first hand the difference of a planet where mankind doesn't get involved...The water around Venice cleared up in a matter of days. Blue whales were spotted in places where they weren't seen in over 100 years, wildlife could walk around freely without being hunted down or driven from its natural habitat. Everyone was hopeful to see these things happen. Yet, as soon as lockdowns were lifted, mankind returned to its old ways. Travelling to far destinations, showing a blatant disregard for our environment by polluting every place we visit.

If you put it all together, the objective conclusion can only be this: if we're really serious about saving this beautiful planet, the only feasible solution is to remove mankind from it. And who knows, if mother nature managed to wipe out the dinosaurs, she will surely be capable of doing that to mankind. But she had better hurry, because soon there won't be anything left to save.