A few years ago a survey was done on the deep sea bed, and in parts of the Caribbean found that the sea bed was covered to a depth of several inches with a mixture of clinker and plastic cocktail sticks.  A legacy from the cruise ships in the steam age.  Clinker was the residue from the coal that was thrown overboard every day.

Incredible to think that in less than 100 years we turned vast tracts of the sea bed into a lifeless desert.  What riches of science have been lost forever?

Are we any better today?  We are not.  Go to any river in any country and you will see tattered bits of plastic bags stuck in the trees alongside the water.  Vast quantities are washed out of landfill and into the sea from every country, to top up those plastic bottles and styrofoam fast food containers littered by idle and thoughtless consumers.  Something like 70% of this is estimated to sink to the sea bed, to increase the size of the desert.

Now we all know about the horrors that happen to the pretty animals that mistake plastic bags for squid and swallow them, resulting in seals and dolphins dying agonising deaths, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

You see this plastic does not biodegrade – yet it disappears.  Where does it go?  Well, the action of waves and sunlight causes it to photodegrade, which means it breaks down into to tiny pieces too small to see.  These float on the surface and the action of wind and wave slowly brings them together till they float in one place – pretty much invisible to the naked eye and unrecognisable from the plastic bags and styrofoam cups from which they originated.

These tiny bits of plastic have created what is know as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is so spread out that some sources reckon it is bigger than the United States.  Actually, there are two in the Pacific, and more in all the oceans of the world.  Vast tracts of the ocean surface covered in a film of plastic.

This plastic has two insidious dangers.  First it stops plankton from getting all the sunlight they need.  This means less plankton and less cleaning of the air – for with the rainforests gone, the plankton in the sea is a hugely important way of recycling carbon.  But also these bits of plastic are highly absorbent – to toxins.  They soak up any bits they can find.  And maybe we can’t see them, but small animals can.  Tiny animals, part of the plankton swarms, eat them.  And they get stuck in their gut, killing them.  But not before a larger animal eats them, which collects lots of these toxin rich particles inside it’s guts, till it is too sick to swim properly and gets eaten by a small fish.

Yes, you’ve guessed it, we have also created a great way to poison the food chain and the fish and birds of the oceans!

A number of people are quite rightly active in trying to get this sorted out.  Various suggestions are around, mainly based on cleaning up and preventing plastic from getting into the sea and reducing our usage of plastic bags.  Good luck on getting the fast food industry to comply…..

I am very pessimistic on the chances of this helping.  I think the problem is too vast, and covers too many countries for this to be sorted.  And there are ALWAYS people who don’t recycle, even when so required by law.

Science is where I look for the answer.  Perhaps nanotechnology.  Already they are developing microbes that are able to eat various types of garbage.  It should not be too difficult to create an organism capable of eating these bits of plastic and cleaning the seas for us.  Of course there are nightmare scenarios of the things mutating and getting out of hand, or eating necessary plastic in hospitals or some such.  However these can always be foreseen and the consequences of not acting are that we will slowly drown in our own pollution.

Unfortunately there is little money in this at present to encourage the researchers, but I expect it wont be long before panicky governments are throwing money at scientists demanding an answer – no doubt they will give the money to mathematicians or astrologers instead of biochemists, so in the meantime do think twice before disposing of plastic and do your best to insure it goes into a proper garbage disposal system.  Strangely, you are probably doing the world a better favour by burning it and releasing it’s inherent carbon to the atmosphere than letting it photodegrade and join the vast amoeba slowly poisoning our seas.

He went on to say that he sympathised with the rebels and that they would not of condoned direct assistance in the purchase of arms, but it was  a highly complex situation.

One rebel, Gebremedhin Araya, stated that $95 million of aid money was spent on weapons and the political machine of the rebel party with just $5 million going to help locals, a figure the Director denied, reiterating that it was 20%.

Whatever the amount, it is tragic and shocking.  It cannot help but make donors reluctant to proceed and it makes it harder to achieve the actual ends that most of us would like.

I remember my father telling me that his company was helping flood victims in Bali, but the money was going directly to his employees in Bali who would distribute it as they saw fit.  The employees had specifically requested that this should happen, as they felt that if the money went via head office and the capital, they would be lucky to see 50% of it.  My immediate reaction was cynical, that the employees would take 50%, but my father with a wicked grin told me that he had already told the local headmen of the villages to benefit how much was being sent.  The employees having to live  there would thus be unable to divert any.

I once worked for an international company that would not allow anyone under the age of 40, or without 10 years experience in-country, work in India in a position of responsibility, as without that the locals would walk all over them.

The trouble is that us old-timers with long experience working in these countries take our time, check out suppliers, careful close all the loop holes and develop trusted relationships with good local people over time.  As the years go by, we get ripped off less and less frequently.  But head offices of businesses and charities in the West are impatient with this.  They want to get aid to the needy NOW, and think we are stupid and irrational.  Whenever they go in-country, they get loads of offers of assistance and want to use them.

Usually, the first to offer help has an ulterior motive.

The genuinely able, caring and honest people tend to hang back and prefer to be approached.  Just like everywhere, really.  It takes a long time to build up this vital network of honest people.

The distribution of aid really needs to be looked after by people highly experienced  in the local conditions.  Somebody parachuted in from another country is welcomed as manna from heaven by the locals on the make – in whatever country you care to name.

Aid is invariably most needed in poor countries, especially in poor areas.  These are areas where the people have their integrity tested by poverty more than anywhere else, and the wonder is how many keep it intact.  There are still going to be large numbers with integrity in tatters who will swarm around aid, viewing it as a bee views honey.  And their cultural viewpoint is very different from ours.

Have you heard of the Cargo Cult?  Pacific Islanders watched in amazement during WWII as Americans and Japanese arrived on their islands, brought vast amounts of goods, built airstrips and kindly gave lots of gifts to the locals.  When they left, they gave everything to the locals – cheaper than taking it away.  The locals decided that these temporary visitors were actually messengers from the gods, and that these gifts were their due.  They wanted them back, so built perfect replicas of airstrips from bamboo, including planes.

When westerners again visited their islands, the locals were delighted and promptly appropriated everything they brought with them as gifts from the gods to the horror of their new visitors.  It took a long time to sort this situation out as the islanders felt that these goods were their due and were very upset that the ‘messengers’ were not doing their job properly.

It does not take a great stretch of the imagination to see people in receipt of aid being able to fall into a similar thought pattern.

We cannot let misuse of charity money stop the donations.  The final outcome is too important.  It is up to the charities first of all to ensure that the money is used wisely, but donors have every right to check how the money is spent – and should.

Sometimes the entire theory is misplaced.  Tortoises, for example, tend not to have a wide range.  If you pick up a Greek tortoise in one valley, and then release it in the next valley, you will probably kill all the tortoises in the next valley because the tortoise you transported in carries a disease to which the residents have no resistance.  This can and has destroyed many resident animals of many species.

Sometimes the methodology is just wrong.  A few years ago, two seals were rescued at a cost of something like $240,000 each from an oil spill in America, paid for by public appeal, cleaned up and released to sea with a full PR exercise going full throttle, CNN cameras whirling.  A passing killer whale was delighted with the unexpected bounty and ate both on live television.

In other cases local people do not appreciate it.  In the UK an organisation in Scotland is very keen to turn their wilderness back to how it was, and with great fanfare has managed to get beaver breeding on the estate, and while the salmon and trout fisherman are none too happy, their disquiet is nothing compared to the feelings of the Scottish hill farmers at the news that wolves are next on the agenda…

Meanwhile, in south Sumatra they are happily releasing tigers into a reserve, some of them man-eaters.  These are wild tigers, and everything should be fine.  Except that these reserves are not well policed and large numbers of settlers have set up home there.  They are delighted.

The community’s leader, Khusairi Raja Muda, said the residents felt they were in danger. “No one goes out at night,” he said.  He said that Agam and Pangeran (two of the tigers)  roamed around and slept in the school compound. “They also attacked our poultry,” he said.

Better poultry than people, but what on earth were the tigers doing in the school?

It turns out that the conservationists in the area are opposed to the tiger release program, which is paid for by a local businessman who just happens to own the area where the tigers were released and runs a tourist and conservation company.    There is a large illegal population in the reserve, who are happy to be moved elsewhere away from the tigers, but there seems to be some difficulty because they are illegally settled.  Various authorities all agree that something should and will be done, and it is the responsibility of another authority.

The agency releasing the tigers cheerfully admitted that one of the tigresses was a man-eater and they were keeping her in captivity until they had trained her not to eat people.  I didn’t know you could do that.  But I am sure the villagers will be delighted to know that the tiger has changed her stripes, to mix metaphors.

“If they see a tiger entering their village, they’ve been asked to notify the forest officials,” said a spokesman.

I must admit that this last sentence made me laugh out loud – I bet they will!  There is an alternative though.

Spells and prayers are all that are needed to keep people safe from potentially man-eating tigers, according to Aceh’s last remaining tiger tamer.  Sarwani Sabi, 65, has since Sunday evening been religiously uttering special mantras in the Jambo Papeuen village of southern Aceh, where residents have been unable to sleep easy after learning that a hungry Sumatran tiger has been roaming their streets at night.

“Tamer Sarwani is doing his best to keep the tiger from descending on the village by using the traditional method of prayers and special mantras. And in the past two nights the tiger hasn’t been sighted,” Syafwan, the head of South Aceh’s Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA), told the Jakarta Globe, adding that southern Aceh was lucky to have an expert like Sarwani on hand.  Syafwan added that Sarwani had also been sent off to East Kluet district where worried residents have also sighted a tiger.

Abu Bakar Chekmat, BKSDA chief, said that the province’s problem was the lack of any other tiger tamers.  “We are facing problems in the form of tigers and elephants.  Sarwani is the only tamer we have and he’s getting old. We’re lucky he’s still so energetic,” Abu Bakar said.

He said that catching the tiger was not part of their plans. “We won’t capture it because we’ll only have to release it back into the wild again. We just chase it off, back into its habitat, using the proper method of prayers and mantras.”

One can readily understand the reticence of local people to having wild tigers prowling around at night.  I had a similar feeling when I was at Camp  Tiamang deep in the reserve and woke at 3am jet-lagged and thirsty and wandered off to get some water without thinking.  I was enjoying the stars till I suddenly realised I was in tiger country and rapidly retired to my hut!

All of this may suggest that I am not in favour of returning animals to the wild.  Far from it.  My concern is that the operations are frequently not properly thought through, and do not have the whole-hearted backing of the local people which is absolutely essential for proper conservation.  Before releasing animals into the wild, you must ensure that the release site is suitable for the animals, it can support them, they will not upset the ecology and they will thrive.  Just like gardening, you have to prepare the ground before planting.  This is what is done in Leuser, and I worry about our excess animals, where we can release them, for we will have to move them on in future years assuming we win our battles with the loggers.  It is not enough just to save Leuser, we will need to expand in future years and save other forests, slowly building up the ecology till it can support the larger animals, particularly the apex predators.  All over the globe we need to save the forests first, then the animals will follow naturally.  But we will always need a solution for the excess animals.  And that will be a huge problem if we are successful in our current efforts.  Hopefully it will be a nice problem.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8523000/852

It concentrated on Borneo rather than Sumatra and showed many of the salient points, not least how damaging the plantations are to EVERYONE on the planet RIGHT NOW due to the massive amounts of trapped methane and carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.

There were a couple of points missed.

Oil Palms are hugely damaging to the immediate ecosystem because they require vast amounts of water – the trees occur naturally in swamps, yet the plantations are frequently in areas which are relatively dry and so require irrigation, water being taken from other areas for the purpose.  The fertiliser placed on the trees gets washed into the water table and pollutes it, so it is a double whammy for the local environment.  Then the fertiliser – urea is the main one, which is manufactured from crude oil.  It takes approximately 10 tonnes of crude oil to make enough fertiliser to create less than 2 tonnes of palm oil.  Wow.  That’s energy efficiency, isn’t it?

The second point was regarding the incredibly sad rescue of young orang utan.  The program said they were being rehabilitated.  You cant.  Firstly the young orang-utan were clearly physically deformed from long lack of arboreal exercise and incorrect diet, so they would always have difficulty moving about in the wild, but the main problem is one I have referred to before.  Baby orang-utan spend the first 5-7 years with mum, learning where the fruit trees are.  For the forest trees live in a resource poor environment, and only gather sufficient energy to fruit every other year, or even every three years.  They are spread out through the forest, so the orang-utan has to be clever and remember where they are and when they will fruit so he arrives at the right place at the right time, not having visited the tree for perhaps 3 years.

If the orang-utan is either moved from his own forest or is not with his mother while he is learning where the food is, then he will not know where to find food.  He cannot move into a new forest and survive – which is why it takes an incredibly long time for orang-utan to repopulate areas of forest which are regenerated.  In the rehabilitation centres, they have to continue to feed released orang-utan, often for the rest of their lives.  This is where you can easily visit and see ‘wild’ orang-utan.

So once again we have the real answer – preserve the forest to save the orang-utan, don’t let them go in the first place as this is one animal that you CANNOT get back once it is gone.  There are 8,100 Sumatran Orang-utan left, maybe 11,000 Bornean Orang-utan.  7,500 of the Sumatran are in Leuser, which is the largest contiguous population and relatively safe.  We don’t know how many sub-species there were, but the Sibolga one, a beautiful intelligent ape, very red with long fingers, has gone.

It was heartening to read that the supermarket chain Sainsburys is using palm oil from sustainable sources in all its products, though Unilever’s answers in the interview were disgraceful and evasive.  However I am more than a little baffled as to who proclaims the palm oil to be sustainable.  How can it be sustainable?  I suppose if the plantation is in a swamp, there is a chance, but the yield will be fairly low.  And something must have gone before you can plant oil palms – somehow I rather doubt it was farmland.  There is supposed to be an organic oil palm plantation in Ghana, and some more in the Amazon.  Malaysia claim theirs are sustainable and I fear this is where Sainsburys are getting their palm oil from.  The Malaysian forests are virtually all gone – replaced with Oil Palms.  Not all in swamps, either.  They use a lot of fertiliser.  Being the Far East, how can you tell if palm oil from Borneo and Sumatra is mixed in with the Malaysian palm oil?  How can you stop that happening?  I would not like to certify that.  But then I would not consider Malaysian Palm Oil to be sustainable because it is a consequence of destroyed and ravished forests.

The only glimmer of light is that there are alternatives to palm oil, good alternatives which provide cheaper oil without the fertiliser requirements – which is key, but perhaps gives a clue as to why they have not been developed.  Who pays for the research into new products?

Rex Sumner

The wild Indonesian-born mother, Ratu, was mated with Cincinnati Zoo-born Andalas, who nine years ago became the first of three rhinos born in captivity in the past 112 years, International Rhino Foundation executive director Susie Ellis said.

The calf is due to be born in a wildlife reserve on Sumatra island on May 11 after a 15-month pregnancy, Ellis said.

Andalas was moved in 2007 from the Los Angeles Zoo, where he grew up, to the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary where he was gradually introduced to his mate.

The wild Sumatran rhino population has more than halved in the past 15 years and now numbers about 200, Ellis said. Another 10 live in captivity, including five in the 250-acre (100-hectare) Sumatran sanctuary, which is funded by the foundation.

That’s the recent press release and we are delighted to hear about the pregnancy.  Even though the entire programme has been judged a failure (not by us, but by many conservationists).

Andalas was the first Sumatran Rhino born in captivity for 112 years and the result of a scheme in which 40 captive rhinos were taken into captivity for breeding.  At the time, I was very much in favour of this solution, however I was wrong.  They failed to breed and more than 75% died.  7 were sent to the US, three survived and they finally cracked the breeding program, with Andalas born in 2001, Suci in 2004 and Harry in 2007, all in Cincinnati Zoo with the help of special hormone treatments.  The ones in a Malaysian  centre all died, a disease outbreak killing the last ones in 2004.

Three births from 1 female, from 40 specimens taken from the wild, with more than 30 premature deaths.

Sumatran Rhino in Bengkung, Leuser

Back in 1990 we had 100 rhinos in Leuser, while a large reserve in central Sumatra had 500.  Fast forward to the present and in Leuser we have 120 rhino, an EXCELLENT return considering the slow reproduction rate (about 3 years per baby per mum) while unfortunately the other reserve lost all their rhinos by 2001.  In fact, while there is the odd rhino scattered around the rest of the island (they are pretty much certainly gone from Malaysia and Borneo), there aren’t enough to make breeding populations outside of Leuser.

Again, we come back to the one proven way of saving the animals – save the forests.  Get the legislation in place, get the population behind you, patrol the forest, good ties with the police.  Get the police to make the arrests and ensure the poachers go to court.

This may sound simple but it involves huge amounts of work.  And funding.  It is not glamorous work, no running firefights with poachers, no cuddling cute animals, but it WORKS.

This is how Leuser was saved and it is the reason it is the only successful reserve in the area.  We need other conservation organisations to learn from Leuser and replicate it.

Rex Sumner

“We hope that this program will eradicate poaching as a means of
fulfilling a high demand by rich people in Indonesia … who want to
have tigers as pets or dead tigers for their home decoration,” he said.

The animals will remain the property of the State and offspring re-introduced into the wild.

Although I am a little suspicious of this plan, I don’t want to throw it out instantly because it is new and I haven’t seen all the reasoning behind it.  Maybe it will serve to get the wealthy consumers of tiger products to divert their attention from wild animals.  But where will they get the pets from in the first place?

Most of the 300 remaining wild Sumatran Tigers are in Leuser Ecosystem, perhaps 250 of them.  It is a large area, over 250,000 sq km, and it is well protected by BPKEL.  The local headmen are behind the reserve and the local people report any poaching to BPKEL who actively prosecute poachers, using the police to apprehend them.  The courts now give out sentences which are successfully deterring poaching and the decline in wild numbers has stopped.  The only problem is funding, which FFTF is attempting to rectify, in that BPKEL do not have enough money to ensure every case goes to court.  They need assistance, either financial or from other agencies who will ensure all prosecutions go ahead – not just poaching but to all the threats to the forest.

There is enough room in Leuser for the expanding population of tigers, and they breed at 3 per tigress per year, BUT what happens then?  Young tigers will leave mum and go off looking for an area of their own.  They will either have to kick an old tiger out of it’s range or claim an untouched one.

So inevitably the time will come when tigers start to move out of the reserve.

What do we do then?  The locals will stop being supportive of the reserve if tigers come out and eat their animals and friends – which they will.

We cannot catch the tigers and move them to an unpopulated part of the reserve for ever – we will run out of unpopulated parts.

Shooting them is not a solution, for it will open the floodgates and we will lose all the tigers.

Do they expect to use these tigers as pets?  Fully adult tigers with a suspicion of people?  I cannot see anybody wanting to keep a tiger as a pet that has not been raised by hand from a cub.

We will need OTHER areas of forest, without tigers but healthy populations of prey animals, to which to move the tigers.  These will need to be reserves where there is strong enforcement.  That isn’t available at the moment, so the challenge to the Indonesian Government, and indeed all governments with tigers, is not to allow pet keeping, but to ensure there are other reserves, secure reserves, where excess tigers can survive peacefully.  This will encourage eco-tourism, re-forestation, prevent flooding and similar natural disasters and allow people to live in harmony with their environment.

And the tiger to flourish.

Sumatran Tiger taken by remote camera at night in Leuser

Let’s take a moment to consider the plight of the Tiger, of which there are barely 5000 of all species left in the wild. There are or were 9 types of Tiger. The furthest east was the Bali Tiger, the last one being shot in 1937 although more were rumoured to live in the reserve till 1963 when a titanic eruption of gas and ash from Mt Agung killed them. It is extinct, gone for ever.

The Java Tiger could argue to be the most important Tiger for the fossil record indicates that Tigers evolved on Java. No matter, they are extinct. I remember seeing the pug marks of one in East Java in 1981 and the park ranger telling me that he still had three, none of which he had ever seen but knew intimately from their tracks. In the 1990’s the rhino poachers rushed out of Udjung Kulon reserve amidst claims that one had been killed by a tiger, but none were ever seen.

The Sumatran Tiger has interesting genetic markers which may mean it is evolving into a brand new species, i.e. not a tiger! It will need to move fast, though, as there are only 400 left. While some are spread out through Sumatra, 300 of them are in the Leuser Ecosystem reserve where they are safe, protected by the laws of Independent Aceh. Poaching has nearly ceased entirely thanks to the efforts of BPKEL and with three cubs a year the tiger can rapidly increase it’s population. The problems will come when the population becomes too large for the reserve – will there be any other reserves that will accept the excess? Can BPKEL continue to keep the poachers at bay as the demand for tiger parts will rise during the Year of the Tiger?

The Indochinese Tiger has a population of 1200 animals, spread over 7 countries, though in 2004 it was decided that the 500 odd in Malaysia were a different sub-species. Because the population is so fragmented, there is little hope for this species in the wild.

The South China Tiger is interesting – maybe a couple of animals left in the wild (there was a huge scandal recently about a photoshopped photo taken by a farmer) but there are 5000 tigers being bred in captivity for their parts. This raises a dilemma. This farming of tigers has undoubtably saved the wild tiger from extinction, by providing the required body parts at a cheaper price than wild ones can be obtained. At the same time there is a large genetic pool to keep the species viable – although no doubt the breeders are busy crossing the different species to gain certain characteristics. However Chinese animal breeders are not noted for their kindness to animals, and it is likely that many of these tigers are kept in appalling conditions, subject to terrible cruelty.

There are perhaps 400 Siberian Tigers left, however their range is contiguous so this is one large population which means that as long as the reserve is looked after, the Siberian Tiger can continue.

Not much is known about the Caspian Tiger, which had the widest range through Central Asia, though recent reseach indicates it was actually a Siberian Tiger. It became extinct in the 1950’s.

The Bengal Tiger has the largest remaining wild population of tigers, over 3000 of which the vast majority are in India. This is thanks to the huge worldwide conservation programme started in the 1960’s which really did save the tiger. Many tiger reserves were set up with draconian laws – today there are shoot to kill policies in these reserves. If you don’t have a permit and you are in the reserve the rangers will shoot you without any questions. It is still not enough. Some of these Tiger reserves have no tigers in them. The reason is quite simple – the reserves are too small, there is no corridors from reserve to reserve and the people are not involved. Instead the reserves have become enclaves, surrounded by starving, land hungry people. The great lesson here is that you must involve the local people in conservation – they must want and back it. This is not hard, but it needs careful planning and execution. This is also how the west can support conservation in tropical countries – by helping to support economies that support conservation. We are starting to do that with Fair Trade brands, but we need to expand these to include conservation of the forests – something the whole world needs.

Please take the time to write to Fair Trade brands and ask them to also work with communities that promote conservation of the forests and the animals within them, avoid products with palm oil content (palm oil is a dreadful force for the destruction of forests and animals) and get involved with Force for the Forest, and other conservation organisations with a similar message, in getting this message across.

Rex Sumner
Force for the Forest

However, as is the way of Hollywood, the points are made in broad strokes that will be missed by the main offenders and upset many major supporters of the forest!  Western Industry is very, very rarely the bad guy when it comes to conservation.  Indeed, the Leuser Ecosystem would not exist today if it were not for Exxon Mobil and the sponsorship they provided to Mike Griffiths in the 1980’s – and they still help Leuser to this day.

The big industrial companies are highly regulated, not just by their own governments but also by the governments of the countries in which they work.  They need to be whiter than white and are constantly in receipt of blame for the actions of others.

The real bad guys are two types – the Western Consumers who create the demand and the unregulated companies.  These companies are often family run and in western eyes corrupt.  They are very single minded in their approach, rarely look to the long-term future and if there are laws and regulations blocking their path, consider these simply to be ways of increasing the cost of ‘licences’ to extract the resources they require, or build a road or a damn.  And of course they wouldn’t dream of ‘wasting’ money by repairing the damage afterwards, but leave gaping wounds in the earth.

There are many tragic stories of native people who have lost their entire culture thanks to exploitation.  One of the saddest is that of the Iban people of Sarawak, who maintained their way of life right up into the Eighties, still living in Longhouses in the forest although speaking fluent English (a legacy of the rule of the Brooke family) and being well educated.  But the forests have gone from around them, there is nothing left and they have to go to the cities to find work as they cannot live in the traditional way without the forest.  Avatar could almost be based on them, except the loggers won.

But don’t forget that the rainforests and natural resources of the world would not be over-exploited if it were not for the demand created by Western Consumers.  Meranti or ‘Philippine Mahogany’ was widely used for squash court floors and is straight out of the rainforest.  Palm oil is responsible for vast tracts of deforestation.  The list is endless.  Watch your consumption to save the rainforests and prevent the real life occurrences of Avatar….

Understandably.

The reality is that mankind has busily been polluting the planet in which we live while at the same time happily removing all the self-cleaning mechanisms.

This is not something new.  The ocean floor in many places is covered to a depth of several inches with clinker, the ash thrown out by the steamships as they used up the coal.  Who knows what species became extinct as a consequence of the steam age?  Vast reaches of the ocean bed are now a desert.  What impact does this have on the ocean cleaning itself?  This isn’t something we as a race have worried about, because we haven’t seen any consequences.  Or have we?

Right now we are pumping into the atmosphere more and more pollutants, and cutting down the forests, both tropical and temperate, that used to remove pollutants from the air.

It’s all very well cutting down our carbon production, but would it not make more sense to help the earth handle the pollution more effectively by re-planting the forests?  Or, perish the thought, even both?  Tackle the problem from both sides?

Meanwhile, the northern hemisphere is in the grip of an arctic winter and thoughts of global warming evaporate as few realise that the southern hemisphere is undergoing a heatwave.  And herein lies the dreadful proof of what we are really doing to the planet – we are removing it’s ability to regulate temperature and climate.  This is why we are seeing extremes of climate, extremes which are only going to get worse.

We need to not just reduce the pollution, but to increase every countries ability to absorb and cleanse the pollution i.e. forests.