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.

Our wonderful NHS

May 8th 2020 was the VE Day 75th anniversary.  An epic event.   In Europe it has long been celebrated with a public holiday, so it was good at last to have one here.  It was also the birthday of a national hero, Sir David Attenborough, a man who would empathise with my recent book Walks on the Wild Side.

Unimportantly to anyone but me, it was also my birthday!  So, in that glorious sunshine, unable to go anywhere in the lockdown, Mo and I sat in the garden to enjoy lunch of smoked salmon and champagne, with a special supper planned for the evening.

But we didn't get that far.  Half way through the afternoon I had a medical 'blip'.  I had suffered the same thing a couple of times before over the past five years, so knew what it was.  I use the word 'suffer' but there was no suffering, no pain, just a little strangeness.  Friends say it must have been scary.  No, not scary, just a bit unsettling.  I knew what real scariness meant from the adventures related in my book.

I felt better in less than 15 minutes and as I knew what it was, and as it was a holiday weekend in the middle of this awful Covid pandemic, I phoned our surgery at the next opportunity to discuss with a doctor, who decided to arrange a hospital appointment for a check-up.  So, despite the pandemic, two days later they put me through a rigorous programme of tests.  They were incredible, kind, efficient and helpful.  Fortunately the tests all came up clear.

But what really was scary was seeing the colour coding throughout the hospital marking the levels of risk from the virus, and walking down corridors past doors to wards with large yellow warning signs saying COVID, and even 'safe area' green signs sometimes marked MAY CONTAIN COVID.  That brought me up sharp.  Yet throughout all this the NHS staff were going about their work looking relaxed, a normal day.  At one moment, when a trolley was pushed into a ward by masked porters, though still a long way off, the nurse walking with me put out a hand to hold me back.  A very poorly patient.  Very up-close and personal.  The moment when a normal member of the public, 'one of us', suddenly becomes a danger to life, 'one of them', almost like a terrorist?  Yet our nurses and doctors deal with them all day, day after day, literally working on the edge of life.  With devotion and kindness. 

I had felt that I was a distraction from their more important duties, but they were determined that I had the best care and thoroughly pursued every possible test.  In spite of everything, the NHS are still there for all of us

 In my book I often talk about the extraordinary bravery of people in very dangerous situations.  But none showed more courage than our own precious NHS staff.  How brave they are!  Having been so close to the reality, our respect for them has increased beyond measure.  We clap on Thursdays with renewed vigour.  Please honour these magnificent people!

Lockdown

Good Morning, it’s April 29th and we’re deep in lockdown.  Hope you are faring well and coping?  This awful pandemic has thrown up all sorts of questions about our relationship with the world around us and our place in it.  Whoops, a heavy subject I know.  But the world is getting smaller, and people like me born in the middle of the last century are old enough and ugly enough to have seen huge changes.  Many good ones of course, but also some serious worries.... did you know that in the 40 years since I made my lengthy treks through the volcanic desert of East Africa (Walks on the Wild Side published by eye-books.com), 60% of the wildlife on this planet has been destroyed because of human activity (WWF stats).  Young people are inheriting a mess, and I pray that they will be up to sorting it out.  In the 1960s my generation was deeply critical of the ones before it and the mess they'd made with two world wars and the pollution of the industrial revolution, and we were determined to make the world a better place.  But as we got older a lot of people seemed to forget these ideals.  We produced Trump!  It's so important to follow ideals.

40 years ago much of the world was a simpler, cleaner place.  Tribal East Africa was sometimes an extremely dangerous place to be with lots of raiding and even gangs of bandits keen to aim a spear or AK-47 at you.  Yet there was also a strange kind of decency about it.  The wealthy West was happy to look down its nose at these half naked, and sometimes starving, people and call them 'savages'... but hold on just a minute, who are the ones who have been ruining this planet?  Not them.  Time for a mirror please.  We are the savages, fountain pens and keyboards instead of spears and automatics. 

So, will we all come out of this pandemic a more responsible kinder world?  I would so much like to believe that we will, but greed and corruption are hard to conquer.  What do you think?