THE 21st Century: Andrew Abulu considers nature in a different world

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Natural Babies in an unnatural world? Andrew I Abulu Eight Warnings - Eight Reasons to start caring about what is happening to nature in our new century. Is it too late to save the world? Graphic by A.Abulu

20 years from now: A young woman sits in a park thinking about her unbornchild.
It’s 12 weeks now. Yes, I’m pro-life, but I just can’t have this baby. I’m just 25 and not ready to give-up the fun in my life. I have only one option, take the Bear-It pill. I’ve never liked that drug. Developed to hibernate the foetus as long as you want, just like a grizzly bear sleeping off several months of its life, I don’t know if they got that name from the grizzly bear or if they just mean one should endure it. Either way it’s no-way for me. That was all I was thinking about when I saw this little adorable 5 year old blowing up her balloon. She tied the tip and let it go, it shot straight up into the sky. As she picked up another to blow, I thought to myself, when I was her age, that balloon would have dropped immediately on the grass and it would have popped instantly.

What did we turn the world into? Our atmosphere has become very dense. Is life really worth living anymore? Who in her right senses will bring an innocent life into this abused world? All these questions raced through her mind, when a sense of guilt hit her. She was also responsible, directly and by omission, for the destruction of our atmosphere. She sighs. She decides to have the baby because a baby being born into this world is a reminder that Nature hasn’t given up on us. Nature was here before mankind and if it goes, so will man. We must change our nature and not change Nature.

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20 years ago the world was warned of the consequences of an environmental pollution but we were so pre-occupied with solving the menace of world terrorism, in the aftermath of the 9/11, 2001 that we gave very little attention to our environment. We had insulted Mother Nature and now we are paying the price.
While Nature needs us to tend it, we need Nature to survive.
Certainly man is God’s best creature, to whom he has given the onerous task of preserving Nature itself. To do this, we must consider the following:
1. Is it in our nature to nurture?
Is the content of Nature infinite or is it an expendable entity that we can use but must replace? Perhaps it is something we should just admire and be a part of but not touch.
Simplicity is the founding principle of Nature, and man being part of Nature itself should portray this characteristic. Modern man is an intelligent being, but this cleverness often clouds his ingenuity. While Nature applies a simple solution to a complex problem, the modern man seems to always apply a complex solution to simple problem. This may mean that we do not completely understand the problem being solved. For example when someone has a digestive disorder, Nature recommends that he should stay off food for a while just like any animal would do, but man will insist on taking a drug of some sort.
While we should not standby and be blown like a leaf at the mercy of the wind, we should nurture the Nature way.

2. We must collaborate with Nature.
Is mankind destroying the delicate balance between humanity and Nature and endangering the survival of all species?
Man is Nature’s greatest modifier. Anywhere we tread, we leave "trademarks" of good and regret.
In our quest for survival and better conditions of existence we must collaborate with Mother Nature as we journey through the jungle of life.

The delicate character of Nature provides us with endless possibilities to be influenced by us. However, we have chosen to alter not only its course but also its mind, its genetic code, thereby throwing it into a state of confusion. This total transformation of Nature by us has created disorder in its working codes resulting in turmoil in physical events and products.

3. What should we eat?
Is the World population getting too large for Nature to bear? Should eating up our own supplies not be good reason for the creation of faster and bigger growing food species? Shouldn’t we just simply reduce or control our population? If so, how?
Some say the AIDS disease is a man-made solution to the population problem. Are family planning methods failing? What is Nature’s suggested way of curbing population explosion?
Genetic manipulation is the transfer of genes from one species to another in order to give that organism new characteristics. Its purpose is to create species that are more productive and resistant to disease.
Some people believe this new science can be beneficial to mankind by curing disease, improving health, benefiting agriculture, and reducing world hunger. They argue that it will result in hardier foods and help us combat diseases.

With genetic engineering we are penetrating and manipulating the very structure of our existence (DNA) in ways that could never occur naturally. We do not know for sure what effects it will have on Nature and how Nature will react back upon us. As we go on in our search for the perfect food will we recreate the "forbidden fruit"?

4. Environmental pollution and solution.
Who are the real culprits, are we chasing shadows?
Why all the fuss over man's contribution to the greenhouse effect when at any given moment millions of tons of carbon dioxide are expelled into the atmosphere by methane gas through the ocean floor, volcanoes and swamps. How could man's mere contribution of carbon dioxide ever equal that of Mother Nature? Was it not Nature that wiped out the Dinosaurs? (Or at least a very large comet?)
Can what we put into the earth hurt it more than what we take out of it?

What happens when we drill for oil, or mine Uranium? What imbalance do we create and do the benefits of the generated products outweigh the pollution? Is there a viable alternative?
Radiation in any amount is harmful to the human body. Though nuclear power does not produce carbon-dioxide pollution, the reality of its potential hazard in case of an accident and the unavailability of a suitable mode of disposal of its harmful radioactive waste make nuclear power unacceptable. It is said that these human contributions to pollution are additions to Nature’s and are therefore something like the last straw that broke the camel's back.

Is there a link between pollution and weather changes?
Man-made chemical compounds have changed our lives. Our homes, offices, and factories are filled hundreds of them. Mercury, a useful but potentially toxic chemical finds its way into the environment through sources ranging from industrial smokestacks to billions of fluorescent lights.
While chemical technology has given us many helpful products, we use and dispose of many of them at considerable cost to the environment.

5. The destruction of Nature's Pharmacy.
Over the years we have continually ignored the fauna and flora around us and paid more attention to synthetic chemicals in the development of medicines.
Many effective medicines have come from tropical plants. Aspirin was originally derived from trees that grow in Peru. Natural quinine is used to treat cramps and fever. Even cocaine used to be a local anaesthetic. An anti-leukaemia drug has been developed from the Rosy Periwinkle, which grows in Madagascar. In Nigeria several plants reduce blood pressure, cure hypertension as well as boost immunity. (But every day another species of plant is made extinct due to global warming. Perhaps the one plant we needed to cure cancer?))

6. Effects of Globalisation?
In a Globalised world, there should be no one person in charge. However, being a system involving expanded economic, and sometimes political, interdependencies, rich states or groups such as the United States may become dominant; and the richer they get, the more their dominant power.
The fear now is, can we trust these corporate capitalists to be responsible enough to restrain themselves? Not being human, corporations do not have morals or altruistic goals and so for a corporation engaged in commodity manufacturing, its profit would come from converting raw materials into finished products. A part of Nature is taken from its natural source and processed into a new form. After depleting that resource the corporation moves on to another place, environmental preservation least in its priorities.

7. The Ozone question
Ozone is a gas that floats high up in the atmosphere, where it helps to shield the Earth from ultraviolet radiation from the sun. It is produced any time you have an electric current running through the air. Our Ozone layer now allows more sunlight to reaches our Earth surface. Skin cancer, now commonly called the uv tone is a common phenomenon. That is why we now have to wear special uv coats to make up for the weaker Ozone shield.
The guilty chemicals that cause Ozone deletion are the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the halons (used in fire extinguishers), methyl bromide (a pesticide), carbon tetrachloride, methyl chloroform, and many more. CFCs are used in aerosol cans as propellants, to make Styrofoam and car seats, as refrigerants in air conditioners and refrigerators. The chlorine and bromine molecules eventually break off in the upper atmosphere and react to destroy Ozone.

Now with the Ozone layer heavily devastated, amphibians and other primitive life forms are unable to reproduce due to the high levels of ultraviolet radiation, and soon man may follow. Even if we stopped their release now, it will be fifty years before the Ozone layer can even begin to fix itself

8. Warming Due To The Greenhouse Effect
If we do not do enough to stop Global Warming, the oceans may start to rise.
One way to reverse the trend is to reflect sunlight back to space. This you could do by putting lots of sulphur particles into the atmosphere, using rockets or supersonic transports to get the sulphate particles up to the correct height in the atmosphere. The problem with this is that the human race would be playing God. What happens if you miscalculate and put too much reflecting material into the atmosphere and send the Earth not only into nuclear winter but also into an ice age?The future is in all of our hands.

© Andrew Abulu Jan 2004
abuluandrew@yahoo.com

Andrew is a graphic artist making a 3-D animated movie in his home country of Nigeria and always thinks about the future of mankind.
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