There are a couple at climate sites where one can take a quiz to calculate the quantity of CO2 each of us produce. According to the parameters of the test, it turns that I’m pretty much a climate criminal. My wife and I share a free standing house of about 150 square meters and travel everywhere by car or by plane. That’s enough, apparently, to tilt the scale towards 11 – 13 tons of CO2 per person, regardless of diet or other factors.
I can add that all my electricity is produced by fossil fuels and a third of the water is desalinated by means of electricity.
If these crimes were not enough, I live in an apartheid state where the majority of the land was stolen from an indigenous people whose descendents continue to be oppressed today; a state that makes a living by exporting weapons and cyber-weapons and whose principal friends are corrupt dictators and war-criminals.
Being human, according to many parameters, is already to belong to a species that acts like a cancer on the earth; invading the territories of other species, de-foresting habitats, polluting the rivers, poisoning the oceans, wrecking the atmosphere and bringing about the extinction of many other life forms.
Our presence is as harmful to our environment as that of the rabbits introduced to Australia, which quickly overran the entire continent and ate up most of the vegetation. Or the European settlers in the Americas, who supplanted the indigenous population.
If we were to be put on trial for our crimes, we could claim innocence. We could claim that we ourselves are victims. We could claim extenuating circumstances and express contrition. But if we pardon ourselves and then repeat the crimes, what should be our punishment?
In the case of those rabbits, the favored solution was control or eradication:
Various methods in the 20th century have been attempted to control the Australian rabbit population. Conventional methods include shooting rabbits and destroying their warrens, but these had only limited success. From 1901 to 1907, a rabbit-proof fence was built in Western Australia in an unsuccessful attempt to contain the rabbits.[2][3] The myxoma virus, which causes myxomatosis, was introduced into the rabbit population in the 1950s and had the effect of severely reducing the rabbit population. (Wikipedia)
In the case of settlers (White Americans? Israeli Jews?), they could be expelled, like the Indians of Idi Amin’s Uganda. But since humans are anyway problematic, maybe they should simply be exterminated, like the rabbits?
There has to be another solution. Extreme retribution is exacted only at the cost of losing our humanity. Murder, capital punishment, genocide, even suicide are all crimes against humanity.
Does humanity actually count for anything when humans themselves are the problem?
I would argue that what we actually mean when we talk about humanity is divinity. And divinity, rather than being a quirky religious term, means the essential existence-consciousness underlying everything manifest. We call it humanity, because to be human is to be what we are. For a rabbit, it would be his “rabbitness”. And the essential in us, as in the rabbit, is the consciousness that binds us all together. The what-we-are is the divine.
I am the gambling of the cheats and the splendor of the splendid. I am the victory of the victorious, the resolve of the resolute, and the virtue of the virtuous.
-Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita 10.36
So essentially, even when we are effectively undermining nature by cause of our existence, we are remaining true to our nature. Because we are part of all nature. We are the thing that we are undermining. We “inter-are”, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say. We cannot remove ourselves from the equation.
This is not to say that we cannot mitigate the damage, offset the environmental costs, or possibly give back to the universe something in return for its generous gifts.
Even by being aware of our connectedness, our behaviour can begin to change. It may dawn on us that birdsong and snow on the mountain peaks are as essential to our existence as the shiny new phone that we lust for, or the new car. We can reevaluate our priorities and begin to make different decisions. The question is whether the changes we make – individual and collective – will be sufficient, and in time.