Greed is precipitating the end of mankind |19 May 2020
Greed, known as avarice, is the extreme and uncontrollable urge to acquire more food, love, status, power or wealth. Greed, sometimes referred to as cupidas, is also an artificial rapacious desire and pursuit of material possessions. They say that once a man/woman makes his/her first million the desire to make more millions kicks in automatically. The Bible says “greed is the root of all evil” (radix malorumestcupidas) and the Bible ranks greed as one of the seven deadly sins in Christian teachings. The 102nd Sura of the Qur'an, al-Takathur, opens with the proclamation, “Vying for increase distracts you, until you visit the graves.
The next pandemic will be hunger and we can see the beginning of it around the world. COVID-19 will be around for many years just like HIV/Aids and it has brought home to us how greedy some people have been and how our politicians are prepared to throw us into the slaughter house they say “to save the economy” but really it is to save the investments of the rich. Shopkeepers are putting their prices up just when people are losing their jobs which is disgusting. We must not forget also that when share prices rise only the rich benefit. Watching the price of crude oil tumble from US $65.23 (2018) to US $11.26 (2020) and the precipitous decline of American Shale oil industry has confirmed how greedy the oil producers have been.
Throughout the rich nations of the Middle East, magnificent glass clad towering infernos style buildings have been built and unimaginable wealth have been accumulated by selling oil to the poor nations at the highest possible price and clubbing together under the OPEC banner to maintain an illegal cartel in fixing the price of oil. Some people have become so rich that they have cars made from pure gold to drive around artificially created cities that one day nature will revenge and raze to the ground...
Nature has to fight back human greed because the era when poor people can barely find a plate of food to feed their children before they go to sleep has got to come to an end. Planet Earth has been plundered and is being destroyed to feed the insatiable greed of the rich who want to get richer. Our politicians and senior civil servants are well paid while our health workers are paid only a few dollars to save the life of the rich. Our teachers and postmen and other essential workers are also very badly remunerated. The gap is so wide that we must ask ourselves how come we have allowed this situation to prevail…
Greed has created over-farming of animals
Greed is poisoning mankind by over-farming animals in cruel conditions, the result of which is the creation and spread of viruses that create respiratory diseases in humans. Pigs and chickens, mainly, are crammed into small confines and forced fed so they grow big and fat quickly to fetch more money per kilo. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) have warned us of this danger but that has not stopped the greedy farmers from continuing to commit this cruel act.
These unsanitary conditions create ideal breeding grounds for viruses to evolve in these animals then passed to humans when their meat is consumed. Diseases such as E Coli (Escherichia coli), MRSA (Styphylococcusaures), Campylobactor, Salmonella, BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy), Mad Cow Disease and Obesity all create neurodegenerative diseases which are passed from animals to humans, so do not blame the bats because humans eat bats and they do not contract such diseases.
Greed has caused deforestation
The Biodiversity of the Earth and the Ecosystem are being devastated due to greed and the urge to make more money quickly by those who are already rich. Destruction of species of insects necessary to pollinate the flowers of the plants and trees that turn the carbon dioxide we breathe out into oxygen we need to breathe in to survive, are becoming extinct due to harmful chemical sprays used in farming and deforestation of plants and trees to grow crops which can sell at a very high price.
The World Wild Life Fund (WWF) has prepared a Report called The Living Planet Report, the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in Bonn Germany has published a Red List of endangered species and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Gland, Switzerland has also prepared a list of endangered plants and animals that mankind have managed to extinguish from the surface of the Earth. Yet not many people know about these reports and not many people care about it and the politicians will not do anything about it because they need the rich farmers and polluters to fund their re-elections.
Clearly these reports point to the fact that humans are killing the very planet that supports life as we know it in this Universe. Planet Earth will take its revenge, it is just a matter of time. In many countries such as Peru the people cannot drink the water because it has been polluted by oil drilling activities by the rich and powerful. Venezuela has the biggest oil reserve in South America yet the people are starving.
Greed has caused overfishing
Overfishing is the removal of fish stock from the sea faster than the fish can reproduce. In the United Nation 2018 Report, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that one third of the world fish stock has already been overfished. Now, consider the fact that the global population has increased from 4 Billion in 1974 to 7.8 Billion in 2020, that is a lot of extra mouths to feed. Then consider that the average life expectancy of a man is 71.4 years and a woman is 74 years that is a lot of years to feed a lot of mouths. Can we solve this conundrum and if so how?
The FAO also estimates that we have already overfished 33.1% of our world fish stock mainly in the Western Atlantic Ocean. The Mediterranean and Black Sea have suffered the highest level of overfishing due to the high density of surrounding populations with the East China Sea being disastrously depleted. It is now so important that every nation vigorously police their fish stock because greedy fishermen are out there stealling your fish while you are asleep. It is worth noting that before the COVID-19 pandemic a carangue fish in Seychelles sold for R400.00 (Seychelles Rupees) but now during the COVID-19 pandemic you can buy the same fish and size for R100.00. Greed had consumed our fishermen now COVID-19 has regulated the price of fish in Seychelles.
Greed will bring about the end of Mankind
It is easy to think that we are born, we live a life and then we die and the cycle is repeated for every human, animal and plant sustained by Mother Earth. But what about Mother Earth? It has a life too, with a beginning and an end. No one knows for sure how we humans came to live on Earth in the first place so since the Earth is our home, our life giver and protector we must not damage our one and only home, would you not agree? So let us examine, with the scant knowledge that we have, how Mother Earth was created and why we must stop pillaging and devastating our one and only home.
The reality of Climate change
Since the early Greek and Egyptian astronomers studied the universe they have told us that the Earth, the Sun and Moon go round each other in elliptical cycles which means the Sun will get very close to the Earth during this journey (intense heat period) and then go very far from the Earth (Ice age period) when at the extreme ends of the elliptical cycle. Do you understand? We are not talking here about day and night cycles, we are talking about relational ecliptical cycles. This has nothing to do with carbon emission, pollution or the number of cars on the road or planes flying in the air.
Carbon emission adds to the layer of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and can reduce our visibility and affect our respiratory system and weather systems but it has nothing to do with real climate change. Right now the sun is getting near the Earth in its elliptical cycle so the Arctic and Antarctic snow caps are melting, the wind currents are changing creating extreme weather conditions and this will continue with or without mankind’s activities on Earth. So please put away the cow dung we see on our TV screens and the rubbish our politicians like to use about climate change to scare the hell out of us when they want to be re-elected.
Mother Earth will eradicate mankind
We are told by Scientists that Mother Earth is 4.643 billion years old with a margin of error of around 50 million years, (less than 1.1%). We are also told that we humans (Homo Habilis) evolved on Earth 2.8 million years ago. Our predecessors, the dinosaurs lived on this Earth 240 million years ago and they ruled the Earth for 175 million years then the Ice Age caused by the relational elliptical cycle of the Sun and the Earth occurred and killed off all the dinosaurs, except the avian (bird) dinosaurs. How do we know all this? Well, our Scientists have carbon and radio dated dinosaur bones. Are they right? Who knows?
We are also told that the Earth has undergone four main ERAS namely, the PreCambrian, Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic (the latter is the current era with mankind). The Hollywood film Jurassic Park was brilliantly made and it gave us a fictional insight into what the interaction of mankind would have been with dinosaurs and the stupidity of man’s behaviour. Each ERA shows how the Earth eradicates a species of life form or several species when the balance becomes dangerous, for example the end of the Palaeozoic Era killed off 95% of marine life and 70% of life on land when the climate changed. That is when several continents joined together to form Pangaea. They did not have cars and planes in those days that created climate change. The Mesozoic ERA came when the Sun was furthest away in its elliptical relational rotation with the Earth and a massive ice age killed off the dinosaurs then the Earth warmed up and mankind appeared and we are who we are here today.
The next catastrophic extinction
Can we predict the next catastrophic extinction? Well think about it and based on the recent images on our TV screen, either hunger or a virus, or both created by man will cause unimaginable harm to humans. The dangers and inequalities we have created, the greed of the rich to get richer while the poor continue to suffer can no longer be sustainable and tolerated and Mother Nature will take care of matters like it has always done throughout its history. Do we have time to change our destiny?
Contributed by:
Barry Laine FCIM, FInst SMM, MCMI, MBSCH
Seychelles Civil Society
The Wishing Well
Anse Des Genets
Mahe, Seychelles
Email: barrylaine@hpcgroup.sc
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Seychelles NATION newspaper.