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An Inner voice told me, so now I'm telling you.

Simon Willace | 03.02.2006 14:26 | Analysis

Imagine you were a god, any god, pick a deity, BE THE ONLY ONE, go for gold, take a chance, the position is vacant and then you could know everything. Sitting out there beyond the atmosphere you could have yourself a data base of all the global changes ever made.


At the touch of a button you could access time lapse film that had recorded the changes made to all creation after transfers were made and the builders moved away. What would you like to see? The melting of ice sheets and break up of the icebergs which might be interesting, Hurricanes and cyclones, storms and forest fires, but as a god I’d be inclined to be more disturbed about what caused global warming, not see what is far too late to do anything about.

As a god I would know that by design I had created systems and put in place mechanisms and safety guards that dealt with threats to the stability of my world. I would want to know what went wrong to have allowed such a rapid disintegration.

I’d set the time lapse recording to just before Humans started moving, around my biosphere. About 10 000 years ago would be the target, before that humans were in very small groups and scattered, but as they came together their footprints really started to matter.

I’d switch on my little documentary and view the evidence on a great big plasma TV.

Nothing much to see of human activity, I set the speed so the film shows a thousand years every minute, which makes the picture spring into action like a strobe light bathes a dance hall. Dark and light flash between night and day, clouded sky’s obscure briefly but in each frame the planet still seems bright enough to see that no real changes had occurred. I’m glad to see, the planet was just as I left it, as I remember in the plans.

7 minutes go by and the pictures are like stills, forests and sea make up the panorama with occasional breaks in the colour scheme showing deserts and the whites of polar caps. The farming revolution that alters human survival in the films first minutes is quite invisible.

Another 30 seconds creep by as I watch for the change that I feel must occur, I search for the changes which start just like a skin cancer at first. Opening in ancient Greece around Athens, the land changes from green to nearly white as forest start disappearing. Then in an instant the nearby islands in the Aegean change colour as all at once the green turns to the colour of dust.

Briefly I catch my breath and realise as I was witnessing just the opening shots, but little else happens, seconds turn to minutes until in total 9 have elapsed since beginning viewing of just the early stages of a complete collapse.

I realise the film has only 1000 years left to go before it crosses into reality, I slow the frames down just a little so I can fully comprehend what I already know is happening.
Land starts to changed colour, in rapid succession, the carpet of forest in Europe seems to show first signs of wear and tear, as the stress of the ship building age of discovery comes to bear.

Barren topography start to emerge, rivers lose their colour amongst threadbare ground cover and the sea develops a dirty edge as rivers turn to sewers spilling pollution into receptive coastal shallow waters.

Central America seems to develop a mirror image, and rivers though less dark seem not as vigorous and southern China follows suit until from every outer point from Europe the global image is of deforestation winding back to where it all started and the blue of the sea has taken on a distinct discoloured hue.

The date at the bottom of the screen now shows 1950 and humans are too busy with consumerism, to know I'm here, a new god I fear. I take the speed down to one minute a year to really capture the disaster, to really make it clear.

Six minutes or sixty years are left, and already I realise the time is now quite irrelevant. Forests now vanish completely one after another as if Humankind had developed real footprints that smash and clip the forest into instant wood chip.

I look through atmosphere that is now thick with a haze and in some places clouds are worn by the ground like sheets of dirty clothing. Smoke erupts on every continent as vast tracts of woodland vanish from the entire American continent.

I follow the action as the cancer spreads through Asia, but it’s happening too fast, so fast that before my eyes reach Africa the green of its colour scheme has been washed out and now it’s hard to pick between desert and sunbaked pasture. I’m rewinding, cheating, because I cannot take it all in, India has not been spared, Australia is a desert, and even the small islands in the pacific lay bare.

Fires now rage in every distant part of the globe, from Malaysia through to Borneo, thick black smoke funnels sprout where rainforest once stood, drawn across the land by prevailing winds to join those from Indonesia and Cambodia as more forests are consumed by the intentional blazes, nothing seem clear except the hazes.

As Asian clear felling spreads the northern hemispheres just duplicates the progress, distant reaches of Tundra in Siberia and Canada suffer industrial harvesting just as the Amazon fails to offer any timber that can be classed as lumber, smoke from all areas now competes with the Middle Eastern oil disaster.

I have 3 more seconds of film to review the damage and for each I pause, Three fourths of the original land once covered by forest still have some evidence that the land previously had trees, but only 12% of the original forests remain as intact ecosystems. The land mass now offers biologically impoverished stands of commercial timber and isolated regrowth which is considered as weeds of no importance commercially or for nature, because nature no longer exists.

I ponder what this means, the trees were designed to absorb Co2 turning gas into fibre before it was taken beneath the earth where the magma made it into fuel. I had designed the perfect system that fed itself. The design had safeguards, the sea creature shared the task of the forests and each provided a carbon sink in which the planet could store fuel for future planetary use.

The fossil fuel was there to feed life, but now it is gone, so it will kill.

Now in heat waves my forests create as much CO2 as human industry, the plankton in the oceans are no longer breeding so the system is dieing, even the ocean is stagnating, everything has stopped working and humans keep burning, and will until there is nothing left.

I realise my mistake, which is obvious, I should have left a book of instructions, one that dealt with how to operate the planet without voiding the guarantee. Oh well that’s not really my responsibility.

Thankyou for your time

Simon Willace
- e-mail: simonwillace@hotmail.com

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Hidden Comment

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

Hidden ?

03.02.2006 14:49

Anyone explain why this is still on the Newswire when my three posts yesterday concerning the abuse of political prisoners at home in Cuba where removed in less than 12 minutes !

I realise some of the IM moderators don't like peeps knowing the truth about the Castro regime but this editing policy is now reaching the laughable stage

Raul


Hidden Comment

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

This is another world

03.02.2006 15:01

Now yuo hide my comment but keep the original post ? Would you like me to post on the hour every hour pointing out how the post breaks the Editorial Guidelines - No ? Thought not.

Raul

Raul


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