The blighted star we inhabit

There is not much to be happy about the world we inhabit in these times. There are no good reasons to be optimistic about the future, for on that future hang heavy and increasingly thickening clouds of gloom. It is not just particular regions of the globe which cause this feeling of unhappiness to take hold of us. It is an entire planet which is in deep trouble, the very condition which assails all of us in every continent.
In Australia, steps have just been taken by a provincial government to rescind rights granted to the aboriginal community not long ago. There will be a review and a revision of the provisions of the move that sought to ensure the place of the aboriginals, Australia's original inhabitants, in the modern scheme of things. And there you have a cause not to be happy about this world. Why must people who have been living in regions for aeons everywhere around the world be pushed into conditions where their sentiments do not matter?
You sit back and reflect on the predatory instincts of man towards man. Suddenly you realise, even as you reflect on this Hobbesian condition, that it is our planet which you have put in jeopardy by your thoughtless actions over the past decades and centuries. The temperature of the world's oceans, we have been informed, has been rising. It is now 21 degrees Celsius, which is an ominous reflection of the damage being done to the natural shield which has always protected the earth. The ice shield is breaking down everywhere and no one in government anywhere knows how to prevent this slide into disaster.
The warming of the oceans is cause for grave concern and we are already seeing signs of the troubles which lie ahead for us. The irony is that even as we have gone out beyond our world, with the James Webb Space Telescope and other such space vehicles, in our ambition to comprehend the nature of the universe, even as space flights are being promoted by the super-rich in the West, even as a good number of nations have set in place plans to launch spacecraft into outer space, it is space which is shrinking for us on earth.
The ubiquity with which forest fires have burnt down nature in places like America's California and Canada as also other places speaks to us of the heat which spreads below the ground, enough to ruin lives and habitats everywhere. People have lost homes, indeed have died. And then imagine the millions, perhaps billions of animals which have perished in all this disaster caused by nations around us. Birds which were around only five years ago have gone missing. Animals which once roamed the earth are, most of them, rare species now. Every assessment will speak to you of the many forms of animal and bird life which have gone extinct.
That is as it ought to be, for in these many decades we have done our utmost in ruining the world's forests. Brazil's President Lula understands the plight his country is trapped in. Significant portions of the Amazon forest were wiped clean of trees under the rule of his unenlightened predecessor; and it is now for Lula to recover or restore, if at all he can, what the Amazon has lost. That issue of forests disappearing is not Brazil's alone. It is that of others, including ours here in Bangladesh, where woodlands have been stripped clean of trees and plants and therefore of animal life.
Climate change is the priority for governments everywhere these days. But how many of the world's powerful governments responsible for this dire situation are seriously engaged in making their contributions to reversing the bad situation we are all caught in? The less developed or poor nations, those with minimal responsibility for the climate disaster have been bending over backward to do their bit in arresting the decline. But obviously that is not enough. Those countries responsible for polluting the atmosphere look the other way when you ask them to do penance by doing more to correct a situation their actions have caused.
We look everywhere for reasons that will light the lamp of hope in our souls about the future of our world. That lamp is yet out of reach. And there are the reasons. Observe the torrential rains which have battered historically dry landscapes like Balochistan's. A region which traditionally has had little rain and much snow and ice in winter must today grapple with rains that wash away the mud huts of the poverty-stricken men and women who live in them. And it is not just Balochistan which must tackle floods but cities and states in the world's prosperous regions.
You could call it the new normal. But, frankly, how does one describe occurrences that leave lives ruined, that are an abnormality, as a new normal? When people from Africa, from the Middle East, from Asia take those huge risks of migrating or trying to go out in search of better lives in Europe, you know only too well it is not ambition they are speaking of. Desperation burns in their eyes.
They take to rickety boats in the belief that they will happily reach the shores of Europe. Many of these boats capsize; thousands of these men and women, having promised their families back home they will soon be privy to happiness with the money they will send from Greece, Italy, Germany, France and Britain, drown in those raging waters of the sea. And we can do nothing more than grieve.
These people in search of a good life are contemptuously called illegal migrants. That makes you think. In a world which belongs to every one of the eight billion-plus global population, space which under the laws of nature should be shared by everyone anywhere and everywhere, these men and women turning their backs on their home countries owing to reasons of poverty and hunger and unemployment are brusquely brushed aside, lodged in tents or ships, made to feel contemptible.
European nations once seized the lands of these people, brutalised them into submission for centuries, exploited their resources for generations. And yet when these very people make a reverse journey to the lands of their old colonisers, they become non-people. They will not be allowed to mingle with people whose skins are fairer than theirs. In that rejection of these 'illegal migrants' you smell the odour of subtle racism.
It's not a happy world when you arm Ukrainians to the teeth to beat back Putin's Russia. It is a gloomy world when millions of Afghans, abandoned to their fate, go hungry, when their children show the ravages of deprivation. It is tragedy limitless when the Rohingyas do not know if they will ever go back home.
We inhabit a blighted, doomed star in the universe.

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