What heartbreaks await us next?
Saturday, 22 September 2007
Maswood Alam Khan
LIKE a giant ship cruising on an ocean, our Earth, while rotating on her own axis, is revolving around the sun and continental landmasses of the earth, afloat on some plates called the tectonic plates, are also moving slowly -- as slow as narrowing the gap between two coasts of the Atlantic by quarter of a centimeter a year, for example. To appreciate the scenario let us imagine a giant ship (earth) cruising at a high speed on an ocean and some smaller vessels (continental landmasses) moving at snail's paces on pools of water aboard the ship.
Nobody can predict at what exact moment, to the point of nanosecond, two or more tectonic plates deep beneath our Earth's crust may collide with each other a little hard releasing energy and radiating seismic waves that may shake our grounds with a power of nine or more magnitudes, engulf our shores with tsunami waves and kill millions of lives of humans, animals and plants in a matter of seconds.
That we are living is an accidental coincidence, that we are dying is a natural phenomenon. We, humans, are mere tightrope walkers straining and balancing on a thin wire without safety nets in our crossing over the sky from one mountaintop to another. Some of us make it and many of us succumb to it. Similarly, our Earth on her space journey is also precariously balanced by gravitational pulls and pushes; a little unusual wobbling, a little tilt, a little variation in the trajectories may just evaporate our planet into smoke in a matter of seconds.
Indonesia's Sumatra Island was pounded by an earthquake followed by a number of aftershocks ranging from magnitudes of 4.9 to 8.4 on September 12 and 13, so far the world's most powerful earthquake this year, that killed at least nine people, buried many more under collapsed buildings and injured hundreds in West Sumatra. A huge earthquake measuring more than nine struck the same area of Indonesia on December 26, 2004, causing a massive tsunami and over 230,000 deaths in countries across the Indian Ocean region.
Receiving an Indian Ocean tsunami warning from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in the evening hours on September 12, the authorities in Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh issued their individual warnings advising people living near seashores to take safety precautions.
Like millions of people living on shores of Indian Ocean, our people in Chittagong, Noakhali and Bhola also spent sleepless night in the open on September 13 awaiting uncertainties of their fates in the event of a tsunami that could be sparked off as an effect of the earthquake in Indonesia. This time, nevertheless, unlike last time, we have been spared from the wrath of a probable tsunami maybe due to some mysterious counter moves by other geological bodies deep down in the lithosphere to offset the surge of ocean.
Maybe, God ordered Nature only this time to taper off her rage against injustices being perpetuated by humanity against our Mother Nature. There is no guarantee of such a benign spare next time!
Indonesia suffers frequent earthquakes as it lies on an active seismic belt on part of the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire", a 40,000-kilometer long horseshoe-like area of frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions encircling the basin of the Pacific Ocean. Ninety per cent of the world's earthquakes occur along this Ring of Fire.
Bangladesh, though a little away from the Ring of Fire, sits very much at the foot of the Himalayan through which runs the 'Alpide belt' that snakes from Java to Sumatra through the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and out into the Atlantic. Seventeen per cent of the world's largest earthquakes rocked this belt. A huge tsunami wave raised by an earthquake in any part near the 'Ring of Fire' may lose its onrush strength while traversing a long route and turn into a mere ripple before it thrashes shores of our Bay of Bengal, but a strong earthquake near the Himalayan may toss waters of our rivers, ponds and seas on our homes and fields in apocalyptic showers from blues.
Before the wound suffered in last July flood could be healed, Bangladesh is hit again with another flood in early September with severer intensity boding a bad omen as big floods usually occur in late September. The jolts on September 12, though felt mild in our country, seem to portend a bleak time ahead. A double whammy of two neck and neck floods has already wreaked havoc on our poor farmers. The situation is poised to turn grim if monsoon remains active in the Ganges, Meghna and Brahmaputra basins for long until the end of September. With flood situation still worsening in southern and central parts of our country a flood resembling that of 1988, I am afraid, may again hit us below our belts.
In the early 50s, people fancied to devise technologies to end droughts, banish hailstorms and thwart advances of hurricanes. Scientists tinkered with gadgets and even imagined sending hordes of fighter-like planes to enhance raindrops from clouds through spraying chemicals and bombard areas where a depression was in the making or a tornado brewing with a view to safeguarding humanity from natural calamity. Of late, some fancies about controlling the weather have seen a little bit of daylight, but those are very few in numbers and not economically feasible, like cloud-seeding programmes etc., whose modest successes, though real, are not really wonders to shout about.
Changing, taming or controlling nature to stop disasters has been proved almost impossible except in a few cases here and there like governing flows of some rivers and reinforcing shores of some oceans. Nevertheless, what the world's cleverest scientists could not achieve by design, ordinary people like us are on the verge of accomplishing by accident! Human beings not only have the ability to alter weather patterns, but they are already doing it---through, for instance, emitting tons of carbon dioxide. Each activity of our modern life contributes to the atmosphere's growing burden of heat-trapping gases causing rise to global mean temperature, which ultimately translates into more droughts, more floods, more storms, and maybe more earthquakes.
Thomas Malthus, the English political economist, in his "Essay on the Principle of Population" published in 1798 predicted: "Our population would grow until it reached the limits of our food supply, ensuring that poverty and famine would persistently rear their ugly faces to the world." The Pollyannas (a Pollyanna is one who finds something to be glad in every situation) of this world say that Malthus was wrong while Cassandras (Cassandra is antonym of Pollyanna) reply that Malthus was right.
There are now 6.0 billion humans on Earth and the UN Population Division expects the world population to reach 9.5 billion by the year 2100. The world is already running out of arable land and fresh water. Whether Malthus was right or wrong depends on how humans fit into this natural world.
Malthus was not perhaps as right in 1798 as he would have been had he written his essay 10,000 years earlier when humans didn't exploit agriculture for their selfish consumption and he would have been more right if he had written the same essay today.
With invention of agriculture, we became the first species in the 3.7-billion-year history of life to step outside the local ecosystem by taking food production into our own hands depriving all other living beings of their birthrights causing interdependence of lives---the very bedrock of balancing ecosystem or the very existence of our life on earth---slide into jeopardy. We have already converted woodlands into farmlands and farmlands into paved lands and are losing 30,000 species of animals and plants a year, out of perhaps 10 million total species, knowing full well that our next generations of humans would cease to produce crops and medicines if the present pace of loss of species continues unabated.
Questions often boggle our minds as to why Mother Nature so often bares her fangs at the destitute of Indonesia and Bangladesh! In terms of poisoning the environment with emissions of carbon dioxide and other inimical wastes, Bangladesh and Indonesia are much less culpable than most of the developed countries in the world. Why should we pay the price of the developed countries' misconduct with the nature? How long would we, Bangladeshis and Indonesians, have to suffer double and triple whammy of wreaths of nature?
Mother Nature has many areas, other than our homes, to take care of in the vast galaxies spread across unfathomable expanses of the universe where our planet earth is just a speck of dust roaming in the space and habitation of living beings a kind of planetary eczema of which we humans are mere germs.
Nature looks at the globe as one home and its population one family. We have to realise that our own survival hinges on reducing the damage we do to Earth's natural system. Unless we bridge our divides and homogenise ourselves -- humans, plants and animals of all the countries -- as one unit of global family to befriend our environment, we must not expect a benevolent reciprocity from the Mother Nature. Sufferings of Indonesians and Bangladeshis and capricious behaviour of nature will cease only when the fragmented families of our planet will stand united in giving back to nature whatever is taken from her -- a scenario quite far-fetched.
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank and can be reached at e-mail: maswoodalamkhan@gmail.com
LIKE a giant ship cruising on an ocean, our Earth, while rotating on her own axis, is revolving around the sun and continental landmasses of the earth, afloat on some plates called the tectonic plates, are also moving slowly -- as slow as narrowing the gap between two coasts of the Atlantic by quarter of a centimeter a year, for example. To appreciate the scenario let us imagine a giant ship (earth) cruising at a high speed on an ocean and some smaller vessels (continental landmasses) moving at snail's paces on pools of water aboard the ship.
Nobody can predict at what exact moment, to the point of nanosecond, two or more tectonic plates deep beneath our Earth's crust may collide with each other a little hard releasing energy and radiating seismic waves that may shake our grounds with a power of nine or more magnitudes, engulf our shores with tsunami waves and kill millions of lives of humans, animals and plants in a matter of seconds.
That we are living is an accidental coincidence, that we are dying is a natural phenomenon. We, humans, are mere tightrope walkers straining and balancing on a thin wire without safety nets in our crossing over the sky from one mountaintop to another. Some of us make it and many of us succumb to it. Similarly, our Earth on her space journey is also precariously balanced by gravitational pulls and pushes; a little unusual wobbling, a little tilt, a little variation in the trajectories may just evaporate our planet into smoke in a matter of seconds.
Indonesia's Sumatra Island was pounded by an earthquake followed by a number of aftershocks ranging from magnitudes of 4.9 to 8.4 on September 12 and 13, so far the world's most powerful earthquake this year, that killed at least nine people, buried many more under collapsed buildings and injured hundreds in West Sumatra. A huge earthquake measuring more than nine struck the same area of Indonesia on December 26, 2004, causing a massive tsunami and over 230,000 deaths in countries across the Indian Ocean region.
Receiving an Indian Ocean tsunami warning from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in the evening hours on September 12, the authorities in Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh issued their individual warnings advising people living near seashores to take safety precautions.
Like millions of people living on shores of Indian Ocean, our people in Chittagong, Noakhali and Bhola also spent sleepless night in the open on September 13 awaiting uncertainties of their fates in the event of a tsunami that could be sparked off as an effect of the earthquake in Indonesia. This time, nevertheless, unlike last time, we have been spared from the wrath of a probable tsunami maybe due to some mysterious counter moves by other geological bodies deep down in the lithosphere to offset the surge of ocean.
Maybe, God ordered Nature only this time to taper off her rage against injustices being perpetuated by humanity against our Mother Nature. There is no guarantee of such a benign spare next time!
Indonesia suffers frequent earthquakes as it lies on an active seismic belt on part of the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire", a 40,000-kilometer long horseshoe-like area of frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions encircling the basin of the Pacific Ocean. Ninety per cent of the world's earthquakes occur along this Ring of Fire.
Bangladesh, though a little away from the Ring of Fire, sits very much at the foot of the Himalayan through which runs the 'Alpide belt' that snakes from Java to Sumatra through the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and out into the Atlantic. Seventeen per cent of the world's largest earthquakes rocked this belt. A huge tsunami wave raised by an earthquake in any part near the 'Ring of Fire' may lose its onrush strength while traversing a long route and turn into a mere ripple before it thrashes shores of our Bay of Bengal, but a strong earthquake near the Himalayan may toss waters of our rivers, ponds and seas on our homes and fields in apocalyptic showers from blues.
Before the wound suffered in last July flood could be healed, Bangladesh is hit again with another flood in early September with severer intensity boding a bad omen as big floods usually occur in late September. The jolts on September 12, though felt mild in our country, seem to portend a bleak time ahead. A double whammy of two neck and neck floods has already wreaked havoc on our poor farmers. The situation is poised to turn grim if monsoon remains active in the Ganges, Meghna and Brahmaputra basins for long until the end of September. With flood situation still worsening in southern and central parts of our country a flood resembling that of 1988, I am afraid, may again hit us below our belts.
In the early 50s, people fancied to devise technologies to end droughts, banish hailstorms and thwart advances of hurricanes. Scientists tinkered with gadgets and even imagined sending hordes of fighter-like planes to enhance raindrops from clouds through spraying chemicals and bombard areas where a depression was in the making or a tornado brewing with a view to safeguarding humanity from natural calamity. Of late, some fancies about controlling the weather have seen a little bit of daylight, but those are very few in numbers and not economically feasible, like cloud-seeding programmes etc., whose modest successes, though real, are not really wonders to shout about.
Changing, taming or controlling nature to stop disasters has been proved almost impossible except in a few cases here and there like governing flows of some rivers and reinforcing shores of some oceans. Nevertheless, what the world's cleverest scientists could not achieve by design, ordinary people like us are on the verge of accomplishing by accident! Human beings not only have the ability to alter weather patterns, but they are already doing it---through, for instance, emitting tons of carbon dioxide. Each activity of our modern life contributes to the atmosphere's growing burden of heat-trapping gases causing rise to global mean temperature, which ultimately translates into more droughts, more floods, more storms, and maybe more earthquakes.
Thomas Malthus, the English political economist, in his "Essay on the Principle of Population" published in 1798 predicted: "Our population would grow until it reached the limits of our food supply, ensuring that poverty and famine would persistently rear their ugly faces to the world." The Pollyannas (a Pollyanna is one who finds something to be glad in every situation) of this world say that Malthus was wrong while Cassandras (Cassandra is antonym of Pollyanna) reply that Malthus was right.
There are now 6.0 billion humans on Earth and the UN Population Division expects the world population to reach 9.5 billion by the year 2100. The world is already running out of arable land and fresh water. Whether Malthus was right or wrong depends on how humans fit into this natural world.
Malthus was not perhaps as right in 1798 as he would have been had he written his essay 10,000 years earlier when humans didn't exploit agriculture for their selfish consumption and he would have been more right if he had written the same essay today.
With invention of agriculture, we became the first species in the 3.7-billion-year history of life to step outside the local ecosystem by taking food production into our own hands depriving all other living beings of their birthrights causing interdependence of lives---the very bedrock of balancing ecosystem or the very existence of our life on earth---slide into jeopardy. We have already converted woodlands into farmlands and farmlands into paved lands and are losing 30,000 species of animals and plants a year, out of perhaps 10 million total species, knowing full well that our next generations of humans would cease to produce crops and medicines if the present pace of loss of species continues unabated.
Questions often boggle our minds as to why Mother Nature so often bares her fangs at the destitute of Indonesia and Bangladesh! In terms of poisoning the environment with emissions of carbon dioxide and other inimical wastes, Bangladesh and Indonesia are much less culpable than most of the developed countries in the world. Why should we pay the price of the developed countries' misconduct with the nature? How long would we, Bangladeshis and Indonesians, have to suffer double and triple whammy of wreaths of nature?
Mother Nature has many areas, other than our homes, to take care of in the vast galaxies spread across unfathomable expanses of the universe where our planet earth is just a speck of dust roaming in the space and habitation of living beings a kind of planetary eczema of which we humans are mere germs.
Nature looks at the globe as one home and its population one family. We have to realise that our own survival hinges on reducing the damage we do to Earth's natural system. Unless we bridge our divides and homogenise ourselves -- humans, plants and animals of all the countries -- as one unit of global family to befriend our environment, we must not expect a benevolent reciprocity from the Mother Nature. Sufferings of Indonesians and Bangladeshis and capricious behaviour of nature will cease only when the fragmented families of our planet will stand united in giving back to nature whatever is taken from her -- a scenario quite far-fetched.
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank and can be reached at e-mail: maswoodalamkhan@gmail.com