War on Terror or a War on Terra?
70The war is really against Terra
The so-called "War on Terror" that we keep hearing about in the media would be more aptly named the War on Terra because there are constant attacks on all parts of the environment and Terra is another name for Mother Earth.
According to Wikipedia: "Terra Mater or Tellus was a goddess personifying the Earth in Roman mythology. The names Terra Mater andTellus Mater both mean "Mother Earth" in Latin; Mater is an honorific title also bestowed on other goddesses."
Just think about how many forms of destruction to natural habitats and the flora and fauna you can think of!
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Terra Mater
Habitat destruction
There is an ongoing attack against the forests, the countryside, the oceans and the air. Trees are being felled, the land is being given increasingly over to mono-culture genetically-engineered crops, the waterways, wetlands and oceans are being polluted and so is the very air we breathe.
Animals and plants are becoming extinct daily with many species not even yet known destroyed before they have been discovered. Destroy a rainforest or a coral reef and many species dependent on these habitats are gone, and some for ever if these places were their only habitats.
In the UK, once common animals and plants are now becoming rare or endangered. It is shocking to think that the European Eel that I used to see in their millions as elvers climbing up river weirs are now vastly down in numbers.
Once-common moths like the Garden Tiger Moth are vanishing fast. The Common Lizard isn't common any more, and even the Starling that used to form flocks that blackened the skies is way down in its numbers.
Many butterflies that were commonly seen are becoming scarce. The wild flower meadows and food plants of many species have disappeared from the countryside and so too have gone all the insects that depended on them.
And that is just the UK. This pattern is emerging all over the world. There is what has rightly been called a "mass extinction underway" (see link in links section below to see how really serious this is).
Imagine what it would be like if there were no song-birds! This terrible scenario was predicted by Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring but it is becoming a reality.
Honeybees are dying off from what has been termed "Colony Collapse Disorder." Many people feel that pesticides are to blame.
In America, the once commonly seen Monarch Butterfly is vanishing fast too. It is known that pollen from genetically engineered crops created by Monsanto are killing caterpillars of this beautiful insect. The pollen is blown onto the MIlkweed food plants of the Monarch caterpillars and they die after eating the leaves.
The oceans are being filled with plastic and it is killing turtles, sea birds and whales that swallow this rubbish. Of the 22 species of albatross, 18 are now seriously endangered, and most of these birds have eaten plastic they mistook for sea creatures.
Large jungle animals such as the Tiger, and Great Apes like the Gorilla and the Orangutan are also disappearing fast. Habitat destruction is killing off animals and plants worldwide.
The oceans are being over-trawled by fishing boats that throw away a lot of the unwanted catch and rip up the sea-beds as they work. Acidification of the water is killing off species fast. "Dead zones" are becoming more and more common in the once teeming seas.
And if all of that wasn't bad enough we have now got the BP oil spill catastrophe that has killed most of the life in the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes that border it, as well as bringing ruin to the once-thriving fishing communities there.
Meanwhile the media bombards us with news stories about police hunting for "terrorists" and more and more laws and regulations are drafted to "increase security" because of the "War on Terror" that politicians parrot!
How many terrorists do they actually ever catch? Who are the real terrorists?
Isn't there a very real war being waged against Terra, our Mother Earth and her children?
Copyright © 2010 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.
War on Terra links
Crude Impact: The Sixth Great Extinction
CommentsLoading...
Thank you, Lilly, for this great feedback!
So true. I was thinking about this the other day when Hillary was in Vietnam talking about Agent Orange. People, especially right wing conservative war mongers, are fools.
We are killing ourselves and I guess we deserve it.
Thank you, Pcunix!
An interesting consideration is 90% of everything that lived on the earth is extinct... Change is constant. The earth heals itself. There has been numerous catastrophic calamities on earth. About 800 million years ago (before I was born) there was a mother of all mothers volcanic eruption. Almost everything was killed on land and most in the ocean. The hydrogen sulfides and sulfuric acid coupled with a winter year of -5 degrees. After that the earth froze solid down to about 1 mile in the oceans for millions of years... Then Pangaea, the continents collided back together... A huge meteor struck the earth. Most everything died again... On and on... This is the normal earth. I hug a tree as much as most "tree huggers" do, however, given the long-term view, mother earth heals itself. An example: There is micro organisms that will breakdown every known "bad chemical" or even radiation. In Russia, there are organism that thrive on the radiation. They are not radioactive. Man has evolved. The Cro-Magnons early man for the most part disappeared. Although their is recent DNA that matches Cro-Magnon DNA... The more things change, the more they are the same. It is a natural process. Ever see where a forest fire devastated the forest, killing virtually everything? 10 years later, it has grown back greener and more lush..
The title of the hub pulled me to it, Bard. Very well done, too!
I like what Dallas added above, which presents a long-term positive view that eventually everything rights itself & rejuvenation has been the pattern of Earth's long-term history so far. However, if one happens to be a species which disappears, long-term may be none too comforting. The process of ending might be excruciating, too. As an over-all view, it's good to realize that everything is a speck, if that, on the continuum. But that may not relieve specks of taking the available responsibility for our brief moment on it.
While we are here as cogent inhabitants, it matters how we contribute to either the maintenance or the depletion of the resources. Perhaps some of the past cycles might have either been affected one way or the other or averted if there had been awareness of what was in progress and effort to alter or halt the causes.
But another factor is motive. Destructive motives vs. building motives define a species while it thrives. To just ignore, not care and/or to contribute to a downward spiral may or may not have long-term effects on the spiral but it has major effects on the characters and souls of the beings involved, the cogent beings we know to exist and have a some-term significance because they are "us".
Not to get into philosophic implications too much, I have to say that it is the motives driving the actions which seem of greater importance to me than whether or not they can or will alter or interfere with some cyclic predestiny. To contribute is our destiny - either to the betterment or to the destruction.
Anyway - to stand by and allow or to do nothing about obvious destructive practices of the present bit of the cycle over which we have at least some influence seems unwise to me.
When viewed in REALLY long-term, one has but to look at Mars to realize that eventually the planetary resources can & probably will be depleted. There is just so much energy stored up in the system and it will surely run out. We can and must live with that reality. But it's a matter of HOW we live with it - apathetically or energetically. Even finally our old Sol will burn out & there will be no more restoration or rejuvenation for any of the planets it supplies with energy and so on up and down the heirarchy of existence.
Thank you Dallas and Nellieanna, for posting your feedback!
We are a species that writes wonderful poetry and heavenly music that includes Tennyson and Mozart but we are also a race that includes mercenaries which serve the interests of conglomerates. And the latter’s interests are such as to make the demise of our planet an inevitability. If not in our lifetime, then during the lifetime of our grandchildren or our great-great grandchildren. Sad.
I don't think it is inevitable at all but thank you for your comments, De Greek!
If Bees go altogether so do we. Mankind can be so destructive and thoughtless
I don't agree that if bees are extinct so are we although I have seen the much-quoted line attributed to Einstein that says this! If he really said this he was wrong - there are countless edible plants and crops that do not depend on bees at all which makes a nonsense of it! Potatoes, pineapples and bananas do not need bees. Mushrooms and edible fungi do not need them too. Thanks for posting though! I do agree that a lot of plants would die out without bees.
This is a great eye opening hub. It is easy to overlook what's being done to our environment, but we all need to make a contribution somehow towards preserving this earth. People are bleeding earth dry for profit and personal gain, but not returning anything back. Thanks for bringing attention to this topic.
Thank you, mquee!
"Making war" in the name of protection of religion, against terrorism really hurt mother's heart beat ie. nature and thus nature will definitely take revenge where by future human civilization will never spare present human civilization.
Thanks with regrds
Dr. Bonia
I meant to say any kind of negative making war against human existence in anywhere of shared earth in the interest of one's country being most civilized thinking themselves will severely suffer themselves (their country )at the cost their deeds; this nature's/time's norms to continue own duty.
Dr. K.K. Bonia
I meant to say any kind of negative making war against human existence in anywhere of shared earth in the interest of one's country being most civilized thinking themselves will severely suffer themselves (their country )at the cost of their deeds; this is nature's/time's norms to continue own duty. If rivers die, if air vanishes, if green vanishes and so on... from earth how many shinning human civilization with different 'blood colours'( as many think so ) will exist?
Dr. K.K. BONIA
Who knows? I hear what you are saying!
LillyGrillzit Level 1 Commenter 22 months ago
Thank you for being a voice for Mother Earth. I know BLM has tried to take credit from Chief Seattle in his reply to the U.S. The Great White Father in Washington, offered to buy all of the Land from the Natives...a small part of his reply was -
"Man did not weave the web of life, he is but a strand in it. What ever he does to the web, he does to himself."
Each time a species disappears, we are one step closer to extinction ourselves....