What a Wonderful World

Hello children, are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

As a true believer you will not be shocked to discover that evolution, not creation, is my considered opinion on how we got to where we are and that the world will continue to evolve until we either evolve ourselves out of the picture or the sun explodes and we all end up as crispy critters on some planetary fritto misto.

Science continues to find new ways of prolonging human life, the Catholic church continues to aid in the population growth around the world and the planet is shrinking beneath our feet.

More and more people arrive and less and less depart - it's going to get crowded and the demand for space and for food can only mean one thing - other species will have to get out of the way.

Trees will be cut down, animals will become extinct, birds will disappear, insects (especially cockroaches) will thrive and still scientists will be helping us all to live longer lives.

Why?

Do we really think that the value of a life can only be measured by the number of days in it?

Next week I will conduct a funeral for a boy of 15 and this week a man of 37 - were their lives less valuable because they were cut short?

When we lose someone at a young age we mourn that loss and we mourn the future that we had hoped and planned for. But where do we get the idea that life is supposed to be long?


As a species we used to live shorter lives, we used to succumb to our surroundings and dangers of life - we evolved and we learned to manage and mitigate that danger out of the equation in million different ways, meaning millions lived longer. That's good isn't it?

In South Africa life expectancy is 52. In South Korea it's 80. Is a South African less valuable than a South Korean?

I hope you get my point by now - we live in a diverse world and people live very different lives just by accident of where they are born.

An orangutan might live 40 years in the wild if it isn't killed by poachers or people chopping down its habitat for a variety of reasons and yet in captivity it lives for 60 years.

Tigers might get to 15 years of age in the wild, 30 years in captivity.

I'll let you into a secret - if I was a tiger I'd prefer 15 years in the wild to 30 years in a cage. What do you think?

Now think about the small space that man will eventually be forced to live in and remember that requirement for space would have displaced all the tigers, in the wild or captivity.

Science fact is scary - science fiction or fantasy might be our only real hope of salvation.

Will we become a wandering tribe, roaming the endless depths of space fighting Cylons or Klingons?

I don't have an answer for this - but I decided today to donate to the WWF.

It might not save mankind from its own self induced sleepwalk to mass extinction, but it might mean that  I don't outlive the last tigers, leopards and polar bears.

When my life ends they can feed me to the animals in the zoo for all I care. It might be the best thing man ever did for the animals.





2010 - The Alaotra Grebe (Tachybaptus rufolavatus) is declared extinct.

2011 - The Eastern Cougar was declared extinct.

2011 - The Western Black Rhinoceros was declared extinct.

2012 - The Japanese River Otter (Lutra lutra whiteneyi) has been declared extinct by the country’s Ministry of the Environment, after not being seen for more than 30 years.

2012 - "Lonesome George," the last specimen of the Pinta Island Tortoise died on June 10 2012.

2013 - The Formosan clouded leopard, previously endemic to the island of Taiwan, is officially declared extinct.

2013 - ?