Millennial
fever is largely ignored by mother nature. So are 31st nights and New Years.
Yet, it can be argued that its was nature (or God) that capsuled time and sliced
it up into equal nights and days.
Getting this philosophical at the end of the year, on the other hand, is a common affliction. Editorialists have been going fairly prolix about that fag-end feeling.
The collective refrain among the commentators this year however most notably was that the familiar certainties were all crumbling around us. El Nino and changing weather patterns almost confirmed the avuncular advice that nothing is quite the same anymore. El Nino or otherwise, the changing weather patterns seemed to be felt here, in our own backwater, considering rains that pelted most of the Western (and other provinces) at most unusual times of the year.
Nostradamus might have had something to say, but if the millennial feeling is one of acute angst, mankind probably has to look at things in more perspective for starters.
For one thing, the pervasive feeling at the world environmental parley was that mankind had somehow challenged nature. But, paradoxically, nothing seems to be further from the truth.
Most ecologists would agree that its nature that would eventually annihilate man, and not the reverse. The greenhouse effect has got wealthy countries, particularly, in a hectoring mood.
Cassandra like, the environmentalists have been saying that the emission of carbon dioxide would eventually raise global temperatures to catastrophic levels if “nothing is done about it’’.
On the one hand, this refrain is almost imbued with a self - congratulatory ring to it.
Man calls the shots, we say!
Discharge
more carbon dioxide into the air, and mankind can screw the earth for good.
Never mind that we annihilate all species including ourselves, but at least we
can do it.
The logic is more end of millennium bombast than anything else. Its nature that’s the great leveller, which maintains its own equilibrium despite all the little machinations of mice and men. The threat, quite plainly, is from nature to man, and not the other way around.
That brings us some perspective, at last. But, also it could raise other important questions.
As the most successful species, we may have reached a point where we have over- taxed the earth’s resources . But, each time TIME magazine, Newsweek or Fortune has a graphic of the earth bursting at its seams or busting on its human load, we are probably seeing only part of the philosophical picture that we ought to.....
Words such as “disproportionate’’ rarely figure in the lexicon of international commentary on the ecological crisis. Ecological coverage is also heavy on how the nations of Asia for instance, could court disaster by not cutting down on emissions or heeding the ecological warnings that emanate most stridently from the West.
But, for the first time, we hear the West talking of global survival. Global survival entails global responsibility, and its an argument that can be turned on its head.
The Americans are the world’s most prolific manufacturers of greenhouse gases. America has been so for decades.
But Bill Clinton’s call for Asian nations to bear the cost of being eco-friendly hardly takes into account the American headstart in fouling up the environment. This probably sounds fine to Bill Clinton and his immediate people, especially at a time when American business is incidentally (secretly) happy at the fact that top drawer Asian currencies are crumbling like ninepins.
Anybody who has a conspiracy theory these days qualifies for the nuthouse, but facts are interesting nevertheless. Its almost queer that America has begun to have a policy lever over the economies of Asia, just when such economies were becoming a threat to America incorporated.
Soros and raids on Asia currencies aside, the Asian currencies too have suffered severe setbacks, which assures, accidentally, the American economy its dominant position in the global scheme.
Uncle Sam himself could not have asked for more, but the problem here is that he didn’t ask for it. Global economic catastrophe is something that “just happened’’ it appears, due to mankind’s collective avarice. If the Asian’s have to bring down their competitive edge by spending more on eco friendliness, then its tough, it happened. Besides, the Asians are being stupid if they don’t heed the warnings.
If the millennial angst is global, why doesn’t the Western club knuckle down to looking at some of the disproportionate aspects of the global economy for instance, other than environment? Most world ecological coverage that’s generated in the West, for instance, laments that “water will be a scarce resource in the 21st century communities.’’
Its a doomsayers cry, that has a threat and a warning written into it. It goes out from man to man, its almost as if nature has no place in it. The worst of man’s fears, a prophet said, were imagined.
But, by whom they are imagined, and for whose benefit is something he left unsaid.
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