Dear Editor
FOR some time now I have been deluded. I thought that there must come a time when the people with the power – the leaders of the big corporations which really run all the human institutions on our planet – would see reason and take action to save the natural world. I have wondered how they could possibly be so stupid, so misguided, as to force us to be continually reliant on fossil fuels, to fumigate our world with pesticides and herbicides, to swill the guts of animals and humans with so many antibiotics that pathogens were bound to grow resistant, to progressively destroy our ecosystems, to cut down forests, to empty the oceans. The more they bound every one of us into being complicit with the natural holocaust, the more I marvelled at how foolish they were being.

I was wrong to think this. All along, they have had a plan. They never intended to save our biodiversity. They never cared that we were losing our tigers, woodlands, insects. They were never worried that they might tip the world over the edge into environmental catastrophe. They wanted it to happen. And now it is nearly here.

First, they intended to reap as much profit as possible from the wholesale destruction of nature. They are still doing this, and there is still a great deal of money for them to make in this way. But it has always been pointless to tell them about the science of climate change. It has always been pointless to tell them that if pollinating insects die out, there will be famines all over the word. It has always been pointless to reason with them about anything which involves taking steps to preserve the natural world.

Why? Because for decades now, they have had their eyes fixed on the further profits which can be made out of a world in environmental meltdown. “Radical trans humanists” will tell you that they have put their faith in technology – that the cybernetic adaptation of human bodies will give our species all it needs to survive when other species have perished. They really do intend to replace the natural world with silicon chips. The multinationals have no such idealism, but they know for sure that the trans humanists are playing straight into their hands; there are more profits to be made.

When we are bereft of our fellow animals, when our forests are gone, when we subsist only on domesticated animals and plants and on food synthesised in laboratories, we as a species will be even more neurotic than we are now. We will be as far from collective mental health as it is possible to be, because we will have been torn out of the natural systems which permitted us to evolve. Pharmaceutical companies will make billions out of their antidepressants as those portions of the human population which do not drown or die of hunger or disease try to cope with their emotionally impoverished existences: people who are sick inside because they have never encountered wilderness. Technological companies will make billions out of implanting silicon chips in people’s brains in order to cheer them up, or by modifying body parts to help make up for the fading mirages on the desolate horizon. The people who are currently running our world will be making a killing, whilst everything else is dying.

You might think that there is one problem with this hypothesis. Surely such a programme for world-destruction and profiteering is very risky? Surely some of those billionaires will die in the epidemics? Surely some of them will back the wrong pharmaceuticals, or the wrong computer programmers, and will end up destitute? The problem here is that you are still thinking like a reasonable human being, and not like one of the shadowy figures who really have the power. One glimpse of the behaviour of the ultra-rich on the Stock Exchange should be enough to set us right. These people love nothing more than a gamble with high stakes, and decades ago, they hit upon the biggest gamble of all: they could gamble the future of our entire planet, and hope for big returns. And that is what they have done, and are doing. None of them will ever be happy, because the money they rake in will not bring them happiness in a world where there are no lorises, or gorillas, or whales, or otters, or owls, or atlas moths, or beetles, but happiness has never been their objective. Happiness is an emotion, and they are not after something emotional; they are after something cold, and hard. Some of them will win, even if for the rest of us it looks like a horrible, Pyrrhic victory. Some of them will lose, but none of them will lose as badly as us, and none of us will lose as badly as the other species which inhabit our planet.

One thing is certain, now that even the United Nations, after decades of dragging its feet, has said that we have only two years to save the biodiversity of our planet: appeals to reason will not stop these people. For them, it is all going according to plan. What are we going to do about that?

Regards
Rooplall Dudhnath