A world teeming with life
Cameron creates a world teeming with life, as ours was not so very long ago. It got me thinking about the millions-strong buffalo herds in North America, hunted almost to extinction by settlers from Europe, and the Newfoundland cod fisheries, which have never recovered since they were depleted by the early twentieth century. It was said at the time that a man could almost walk on the sea, such was the multitude of cod. Then there is the passenger pigeon, now extinct, when in the nineteenth century the sky would be dark from horizon to horizon as they migrated.
These are all examples of anthropogenic extinction, extinction caused by human activity.
And there are countless more. Since 1970 the world has lost about 70% of its wild animals. The UK is right at the bottom of international league tables in terms of our biodiversity - the variety and numbers of wildlife.
What an indictment of our status as the most influential species on the planet. Some will say it's because of the vast growth in human population over the last century. I was born when the global population was roughly 3.1 billion. On November 15 2022 it reached 8 billion. But population is only part of the story. As the old saying has it: "The world has enough for everyone's need, not for everyone's greed". That is certainly true of food, and clothing, and household goods, energy, and more. The problem is distribution, politics, and - yes - greed. We have a rapacious instinct, like locusts, but unlike locusts, we have a choice.
This is complex stuff, and worthy of more than a quick blog post. Many books have been written and many more will doubtless be.
The thing about influence - and the the thing about our status as sentient beings who can think about the past, the future, as well as the present - is that we can choose how to wield it.
Meanwhile, I have a kind of deep nostalgia for a world richly teeming with life. I'm sure I'm not alone. In 2023 I'll be looking for more opportunities to enhance the natural world.
