Collatoral Damage

I write this with a guilty concience. At my feet an electric heater is keeping me warm, while my old computer is hardly energy efficient and although I've replaced all the lightbulbs with energy-saving ones, there are still 2 burning - and a second computer running that the kid's on...

Guilty concience - because this is a Green post. Brought on by an article at Zerofootprint about climate change. It tells of Inuit peoples whose entire lifestyle is changing as the earth perceptibly warms up. The seasons they've followed, the animals they've lived with and off of, it's all changing. And as much as they hope to keep their culture alive, necessity dictates contact with the modern world for things such as now-needed sunscreen...

And then there's the ladybird found where no ladybird should be - in the Arctic.

It's got me thinking about indigenous folk today.

We're very isolated in our "civilized" cities. Seasons pass us by, aircon keeps our temperatures constant as we live indoors most our lives. Food is available year-round instead of by season. Any changes, we simply don't notice.

But imagine if you were an Inuit. Or one of a tribe in the Amazon. Or the central African forests (what few remain). Your life has always flowed with the rhythm of the planet. You have generations of knowledge to tell you just when it will rain (so you can plant for crops to keep you alive), just when it will be dry. You know when the rivers swell and when they shrink, you know the ways of the animals and which kinds live around you. You're instinctively, inbred in tune with the breathing land.

And then, ever so subtlely, it starts to change. One year the rains come too early - the next they're too late, and so heavy that your crops are washed away. In the northern climes the snow falls, but melts right away. The sea ice you'd hunted on never materializes, taking your prey with it into parts unreachable. You're caught in freak storms, or have to watch the vegetation wither and dry out, fires destroying the rest.

It's not your fault. You don't know why it's happening. You're collatoral damage, and those who are destroying you don't even realize it.

That's why I'm feeling guilty for the trappings of civilization. For my part in global warming - from the wasted water as I waited for the hot to flow, to the emissions my car gives off every time I don't plan properly and have to do an extra trip to the shops.

But all too often it simply doesn't affect us. It's no concern of ours that a jungle family is suffering through another year of the unexpected. We couldn't care less about that ladybird in the wrong place at the wrong time. Until we turn open the taps and nothing comes out, until we breathe in and choke on our own poisons, until it costs more to fill our cars than we earn (or only the rich can afford to eat), until there's nothing of anything left - somehow I doubt most of us will do anything.

Not until it's simply too late. And maybe it already is...