Not our crowning glory

COVID-19?
jumping species or wannabe predator??

Is it funny that every time Man thinks that he has it all figured out, Nature (or fate if you like to call it) just jolts him back to reality? Like Will E Coyote and his spanking new latest invention from ACME Corporation, it just falls flat and blows right on his face again and again, and Roadrunner always goes scot-free, scooting off yet again, screeching "beep..beeep!" 

The latest viral scare of COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) just opens up our vulnerability. All the so-called foolproof systems that we had installed are just scribblings on the sand - they cannot withstand the test of time. And they are so porous. We thought we had all the arsenal that could not only not annihilate our enemies but ourselves in the process too. All these are useless in combating our electron-microscopic size enemy. We are literally crippled by an unseen offending foe. All the King's horses and the King's men cannot put our peace of mind together at least for now. 

In the 1990s, our leaders were hellbent on embracing globalisation. They argued that we were heading to a borderless world where physical borders were an illusion. Commerce transcended boundaries, and we should welcome it with open arms. No one could live in isolation. Now, see what is happening. Countries are scurrying to close the borders as not only diseases spread like wildfire, refugees who bungled up their own nation are clawing through the immigration gates displaying their victim card. Many have opted for self-isolation to keep their people safe.

Over-dependence on particular countries for supplies and over-concentration of the supply chain from a specific region has not been a smart move after all. It looks like when China sneezes, the whole world may get pneumonia.

The democratisation of flying made travelling no more an activity of the bourgeois. Now, everyone could fly. With it came secondary industries and opening of new regions and tourists attractions. Unfortunately, the concept of open skies also opened the Pandora box of international subversive activities and seamless flow of problems. At the time of writing the tagline of one of the most popular low-cost airlines has changed from 'Everyone can Fly' to 'No one wants to Fly' or 'Nowhere to Fly'.

We thought the world wide web of interconnectivity was going to transform the world into a utopia of a knowledge-based society,  well-informed consumers and broad-thinking creative communities. How naive we were. What we have are fake news of questionable authenticity and a band of fist thumping keyboard warriors who type away their hate speeches under the cloak of anonymity without a thought of the effects of their actions. 

Generations before us grew up without any exchange of physical touch or public display of affection. In some societies, physical touch between unmarriageable kins was frowned upon. With open-mindedness, bodily contacts by handshakes, hugging and pecking became the norm. Come SARS, MERS-CoV and now COVID-19, and we are back to our traditional ways of salutations - bowing and placing of own palms together; fear of transmission of pathogens.

Just a thought...

The mighty Chinese armada used to travel to the four corners of the globe. They are said to have 'discovered' the Americas even before Columbus' alternate route to India. But then everything stopped. The Ming Dynasty decided to opt for a closed-door policy of the world. Even the Japanese kingdoms underwent a similar transformation. Was the spread of disease the reason for this move?

(Nerd Alert: Corona is Latin for Crown. Corona also refers to the gaseous accumulation around the Sun (which looks like a crown enveloping the Sun), mainly around its equator. Did you know that there is a field of study dedicated to studying the Sun called Solar Science (Helioseismology)? The suffix 'seismology' is used here because Solar Scientists principally study it via the oscillations of sound waves (?Om - ௐ, ॐ etc.) that are continuously driven and damped by convection near the Sun's surface. One of the puzzling thing about the Sun is that the Corona is hotter than the Sun surface by a factor of 150 to 400. The Corona can reach temperatures of 1 to 3 million Kelvin.)

A future not so bright!

Before the Flood (2016)

This must surely be the follow-up to Al Gore's 2006 'The Inconvenient Truth'. It is an indirect manner of telling that nothing much has changed in the past ten years except that what was known as global warming is now referred to as climate change. The latter seems to be a more appropriate term as the weather change caused by the excessive emission of greenhouse gases also give rise to colder winters as well.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the world used to be in a steady state. Greenhouse gases (water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, fluorinated carbons and ozone) from the perspiration of plants and animals helped to maintain the temperature of Earth which would otherwise be too cold (-18 degree C) for human inhabitance. The corals in the sea and lush green forest act as a reservoir to absorb the extra greenhouse gases primarily carbon dioxide, CO_2. 

Man's insatiable desire to assault of Nature with their economic activities, like burning forests, cutting trees, over-dependence on fossil fuel and even the overproduction of methane by the cattle industry just tipped the balance. Scientists say that a rise in the world temperature of 2-degrees above the pre-industrial era could be disastrous and irreversible.

Leonardo DiCaprio produced and hosted this National Geographic sponsored documentary on this issue. He flies around the globe to investigate the extent of this problem and see for himself what various countries are doing to curtail this potentially devastating problem.

During the shooting of his last film, The Revenant, in Canada, his director had a Herculean time trying to find a snowy mountainous forest for his set. All the snow had melted due to climate change. The Boreal forests had all disappeared.

The biggest polluter in the production of greenhouse gases is China. They, according to the documentary, are taking a concerted effort to offset their bad record. So does India, the third biggest polluter. Many countries are exploiting green energies like wind and solar energies to its full potential. Unfortunately, the second largest culprit, the USA is still in denial mode. Many big companies think that climate change is just a hoax. The real reason for their refusal is their business interests in fossil fuel.  Many American companies, including Koch Industries and many lobbyists for the US Government, are climate change deniers.

Many of Man's activity cause irreparable damage to the environment. Fracking for oil and gas leave a denuded piece of wasteland. Deforestation for palm oil cultivation and open burning in Sumatra release too much carbon dioxide into our air. The beef industry is notorious for emitting way too much of greenhouse gases in the form of methane. Compared to other types of food production, including rice cultivation and husbandry, cattle leave way too much carbon footprint.

History shows that weather change had been a cause for change of government and a reason for a revolution. Hence, the documentary tries to empower people to choose leaders who would listen to them other than the other way around.

Change is on its way. Many European countries are tapping into solar and wind energies. Sweden has become the first fossil fuel free nation. President Barack Obama has endorsed the Paris Accord on climate change. Many countries have imposed a carbon tax to syphon the revenue to develop other energy sources. The producer of the film too claimed to have voluntarily paid his dues in carbon tax for their long distance flying during the making of the documentary.

The film ends with Dicaprio giving an address to United Nations General Assembly in his capacity as a special envoy for climate change.

The scriptures in its various forms have all told us in so many ways of the dark look of the future. Many Eastern philosophies and even monolithic religions have advised us to be respectable of the environment. The picture below appeared quite frequently in the documentary. It is a 15th-century triptych by Hieronymus Bosch called The Garden of Earthly Delights. It probably shows the beginning of our world, followed by our present time and the gloomy future of darkness on the third panel. The trouble with us is that we cherry-pick what we want and use it for own self-interest and self-indulgence.