WHO?

The World Health Organisation has made a huge difference to the world, saved and improved countless millions of lives.  But there is a big question-mark. 

Actually, I'd like to throw a bucket-full of question-marks into this blog.  Things to agree with, disagree with, or better still just to chew over.  But most importantly, let's not bury our heads in the sand and ignore them.

So, back to Coronavirus (sorry!)  WHO has recently told us that "the worst is yet to come".  And there is news that another powerful virus has emerged from pigs in a slaughterhouse in China.  No doubt there will be more.  Are we surprised? 

Global warming is now on the brink (over the brink?) of being out of control.  As a result the world is already over a degree hotter, and warming further.  Doesn't sound much?  Good for summer holidays?  Some environmental scientists like Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees, believe that after as little as another two degrees world agriculture will be terminally damaged, causing widespread famine.  Only one degree beyond that the Sahara desert will be encroaching over Iberia and southern France.  And just a degree higher still, human life will be fast dying out.  Much above that all life on earth will be unsustainable.  Why?

Amazing that all this damage has been done to the planet since the Industrial Revolution, and most in just the past 60 years.  Only in the last 40 years about 60% of wildlife has been destroyed.  Things are happening fast.  Why?

Not only are wild creatures dying out.  Coronavirus is now killing us too.  As for our planet... recently we have seen terrible forest fires, storms, floods and mud slides engulfing villages, droughts, locusts and now a new pandemic.  Is that because we haven't obeyed the rules and have upset the natural order or balance in the world?  Is a Creative Power or Balancing Force over-riding us? 

Isn't it time that we began to think of ourselves, the wild and domestic creatures and even the plants, as all part of the same 'us' that must be considered together in our attitudes to the world?

As long ago as 1962 Bob Dylan wrote "About a funny old world that’s a-coming along / Seems sick and it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn / It looks like it's a-dying and it's hardly been born."

Organisations like WHO and our own wonderful NHS have been doing a magnificent job looking after us, but who's looking after the planet that we rely on?  A few lonely organisations like WWF do the best they can.  But are we the planet's main problem?  Along with rats and cockroaches are we unstoppable breeding machines?

Every farmer knows that if any crop (animal or vegetable), is closely grown in vast numbers it breeds pests and disease.  So they increasingly have to use all kind of chemicals to control it.  None of which are good for the health of the final consumer... normally us.  And completely alien to the balance of life on earth.  But is this now a necessary evil to feed the increasing numbers of our own species?  Why?  Are there just far far far too many of us?

If the numbers of Homo sapiens were indiscriminately halved, would there be half the disease, half the famine, half the destruction of the environment, half the loss of wildlife, half the crime, half the industry and half the vehicles?  Half the pollution?  And half the global warming?  Sounds like a golden age?  So what's gone wrong?  Politicians wouldn't dare suggest reducing the numbers of their voters who will be tax payers buoying up the economy.  Businesses are equally reticent because more people means more consumers, more investors and more wealth.  So does the wheel spin faster and faster out of control as humanity races to the bottom?  Taking everything else with it?

In past years before modern medicines, mortality, particularly amongst infants, was much much higher.  So families needed to be huge.  Even in this country, as recently as Georgian and Victorian times, eight or nine children was not unusual.  Poor mothers!  But here comes the WHO again.  Good for them, they hugely reduced infant mortality rates.  But the world went on breeding... and surviving.  And expanding exponentially.  Where does it all end? 

We all have a right to life... don't we?  But Richard Meinertzhagen and Wilfred Thesiger both said, "I have no belief in the sanctity of human life".  Were they right?  Are we too cosseted and self obsessed?  Our generation has fortunately not experienced a World War.  Have we grown soft?  In my book Walks on the Wild Side I describe being pursued by bandits determined to kill us.  They weren't bad people.  They just lived in a society with a different ethical code.

After WWI the Spanish Flu infected about 500 million (one third of the population of the world in those days) and killed over 50 million.  (Source: CDC click here)  Have those figures been conveniently forgotten?  Coronavirus is also a flu.  A very dangerous one.

So what can we do about it?  What should we do about it?  And how could it be done?

I don't know.  What do you think?  Something certainly needs to be done.  We are hurtling towards catastrophe.  What?  How?  WHO?

Sorry to be so bloody depressing.  I promise to loosen up in my next blog!  But question-marks are terribly important things.