An attempt to conquer the dawning barbarism.
We eradicate thousands and thousands of species every year. Many things about whose existence we are unaware are wiped out even before the process of describing and documenting them has begun.
- Since 1900, 75 percent of cultivated plants have been destroyed.
- Between a quarter and a third of plant and animal species are under extreme threat.
- 88 percent of fish stocks are endangered. In the last 30 years, the population of European birds has been decimated by 421 million.
- In the survey period from 1990 to 2005, 4.9 million hectares of forest were destroyed annually as a result of human activity.
- But our intangible cultural heritage is also under pressure. Of the 6,000 languages spoken according to UNESCO, over half are threatened with complete extinction.
The ILO puts the profits made from human trafficking at 150 billion US dollars. It is the third most important source of criminal income after the drugs and arms trade. It is predicted that around 350 million people will have to leave their homes by 2050 as a result of man-made climate change. Their homes will become uninhabitable, extinct for humans.
Is the extinction of the living part of our humanity?
On disappearance: Hope and longing
What is meant by disappearance? Where does disappearance lead?
In our case, the erasure leads to a desolate stretch of land, a destroyed landscape. The surroundings become a place of disappearance, desolation and decay. A place like many on our earth and a place that could be anywhere. Nature is irreversibly encroached upon everywhere, even the last biotopes, the places of vitality, are not spared.
The driving dynamic behind this action is mercantile addiction, our hubris, an act of unbearable loss of reality: we humans are practising to endure, but nature can no longer withstand our pressure, it disappears. We violently tear something out of its natural existence, out of its natural world. We overwhelm the living things that are our salvation, we devastate and destroy. We do not shy away from destroying our own money, our economic power, democracy, social welfare, care, responsibility for ourselves and others, for the other that has been entrusted to us.
We no longer need anything from "out there"; we produce everything ourselves. The impoverishment of the world occurs in the disappearance of the living, of nature, of human affection and warmth, of compassion, of the feeling for the other and the other that was given into our hands.
Animals, plants and the inhabitants of the oceans are gradually disappearing. Wild species are struggling to survive in their own habitat; to reproduce, to raise their young, to find enough food. We are limiting them everywhere - in the open meadows, in their forests, in the steppe, on the ice, in the air, in fresh water.
Nowhere do we leave them room to live. We hunt, kill, build up, exploit, burn down, pollute, poison, dry up. And yet we watch helplessly as nature disintegrates!
Knowledge, skills, experience, craftsmanship, languages, ethnicities and religions are also disappearing. The universality of man and nature is at stake. We sacrifice what stands in our way and eliminate what is not recognized as ours, as existentially belonging to us. We are slowly but steadily dissolving creation - everything that has been entrusted to us.
Added to this are the enormous changes in land use and climate change - from the global warming we are causing, which will be accompanied by severe weather extremes - as well as the nitrogen pollution of soils and waters from artificial fertilizers and faeces. Neophytes - alien new plant species - are spreading and we don't know what effect this will have.
And last but not least, the increase in theconcentration of CO2 in the atmosphere must also be mentioned - agriculture is one of the main emitters.
Some things disappear. We get some things whether we want them or not.
Loss, even someone else's loss, the loss of others, is always our own loss too, so they say.
If we do not succeed in using and integrating the ecological, emotional, social and spiritual resources in our own lives in a way that promotes and preserves their vitality, we will become poorer and poorer and more raw. The progressive destruction of the resources that sustain our lives is an act of self-negation that ultimately leads to our self-destruction.
We can only change patterns of behavior, understand their consequences, if they are comprehensible, understandable and manageable for us.
For most people in their living situation, the effects of global warming and the catastrophic loss of species that threatens our species are incomprehensible. It is beyond the imagination of many people.
But then there is only one certainty: no one can be won over with apocalyptic prophecies.
And models of adaptation only lead to the optimization of exploitation.
What needs to be done?
We need ways to live responsibility that do not oppress us, not as a yoke, but that give us back the moral freedom to shape our own lives.
And, most importantly, the tools for a new social agreement. For solidarity, a new attitude towards the common good, for deepening opportunities for life and development.
"Sustainable development only takes place when ecosystems, society and individuals are interconnected."
Gregory Bateson
About the author
Werner Lampert (born 1946 in Vorarlberg/Austria) is one of the pioneers in the field of sustainable products and their development in Europe. The organic pioneer has been intensively involved in organic farming since the 1970s. With Back to the origin (Hofer) and Ja! Natürlich, he developed two of the most successful organic brands in the German-speaking world.
