TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Kids, animals answer to climate change
When humans behave badly, especially violently, why do we say they are “animals”?
Change Size
Students are seen during the global school strike for action on climate change outside New Zealand's parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019. (AAP Image/via REUTERS/Boris Jancic)
R
ecently Anita, one of my best friends in the United Kingdom sent me a photo of a sign she saw in a pub: “Dogs welcome with a well-behaved owner.” It really made me laugh!
When humans behave badly, especially violently, why do we say they are “animals”?
First of all, humans are animals. However, nonhuman animals, even the ones we call wild, do not behave in the despicable way humans do — gang rape, forced robbery, torture, individual or mass killings, war, genocide or mass shootings like the one we witnessed in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15. Nor do animals destroy the environment; in fact they help to save the planet by maintaining its ecological balance.
Recently, I came across two environmentalists who really inspired me, Anna Breytenbach and Greta Thunberg who respect animals more than most of us, and for a very good reason.
Anna is the 50-year-old protagonist of a fascinating 52-minute documentary The Animal Communicator. But it was her 15-minute video on the great white shark that really struck me. Sharks keep the ocean and reefs healthy by eating weak or dead fish and keeping the population of certain fish species down to maintain the ecological balance. Humans fear sharks, but in fact it is sharks that should fear humans, who have decimated their food supply. In some places this has caused the surrounding ecosystem to collapse.
Global warming and the plight of the planet as a result of human greed and destruction are among the reasons why Greta Thunberg is vegan and even got her parents to become vegan.
The immensely inspiring Swedish 16-year-old shot to fame in mid-2018 by drawing attention to the global crisis that is happening in front of our very eyes. She did so unintentionally, by staging a one-girl school strike for climate change in front of the Swedish parliament, which has inspired millions of children around the world to follow her example.
