It is very early on a chilly morning that you wake up from bed and take a warm bath in the bathroom with water running out from the shower filter. You dress up in your cotton made clothes and decide to have a cup of brewed coffee before going to work. Afterwards, you get on your car and drive to the gas station to refill your empty gas cylinder. At this moment your life is wonderful and smooth sailing but do you ever sit and think of where these resources come from? How many resources are you taking from this beautiful Earth in your daily life? The Earth provides us with many resources and all the goods in it. Leopold in “the Land Ethic” quoted that we should be respectful of other people and treat them fairly, but how many people can do that? Most people are taking advantage from all sides by treating resources such as animals unfairly and now the land is giving back its revenge.
It has been noticed that Rich countries not only take advantage of the natural resources but they also take advantage of other countries and especially the poor ones. In this world, countries are broadly divided in two major groups, which are the developed and developing countries. One may ask, on what basis is a country termed to be rich or poor? Basically the Land is what decides it. For example, the land locked countries lack the essential resources needed to open up water transport system hence have to rely on the countries surrounded by water bodies to import and export commodities. Land locked countries are trapped in the middle hence they require the help from the neighboring countries.
Unlike land locked countries, countries that are near the ocean are usually rich because they can easily earn foreign exchange from exporting their products. In some cases, they neither sell the products nor get the goods directly from the land; they instead use it as a political trade.
According to Leopold the first dealt with relation was the relationship between individuals, for instance the mosaic Decalogue. After a short while Accretions research established that there was a significant correlation between the society and human beings. On the other hand the Golden Rule incorporates human beings to a society. As for democracy it is the opposite of the golden rule by incorporating the society into the life of an individual. In the example of a country like Brunei, they are rich because they have an oil-rich underground. Therefore people do not need to work in Brunei because they sell oil for money.
The whole world largely depends on them as they control the selling price of oil which is an important global resource. This makes such a small country to have the power and political benefit. Thus, they are not only taking advantage of the land but are also taking advantage of other countries.
Because human beings are the most intelligent living organisms, we have the responsibility to other living things. For a long time since time immemorial, people have used animal’s meat as food, used animal’s skin for clothes and used animal’s bone for decorations. Animals always have always been treated as a kind of poverty to the land. This can be depicted from the past where people only fought for their lives and never realized that they have to protect the animals.
Time is passing by, now it is 2011, people are no longer fighting for their life in the wild but how many of us try to protect the animals? Endangered animals such as the cougar, Green turtle and Chinese white dolphin just to mention but a few. However, there are over 100 different species of animals going to be endangered in the near future if the trend continues. According to WWT, there are roughly around 10,000 species that get extinct every year.
Some no longer exists such that we can only find them on pictures. Some organizations have tried to protect those animals, but on the other hand, some people are against such organizations and end up hunting for the animals. For example, the Japanese hunt whales while WWT has warned them to stop. Due to the reason that raw fish meat is one of the Japanese foods, the rare raw whale meat has an extreme high selling price, that is why the Japanese never give up hunting the whales. We should not hunt whales not because they are rare and going to be extinct. Does it mean it is less meaningful than other sources of meats such as beef or pork? Biologically it fits in the food chain, but we have to fairly treat other animals since it is an issue we are going to concern. It has been noticed that some people are trying to be vegetarian these days.
They think it is a curse to eat animals, and they think that people do not have the right to take off the animal’s life. It is true that eating greens is much healthier than eating meat. However, not many of us would want to be rabbits. It is true that Meats always taste better than greens. In Addition, some people catch animals and put them in zoo in the name of trying to “protect” them and educating the children. On the contrary these people just want to earn money and take off their freedom. It can thus be concluded that Human beings are the most selfish animals in the world.
A case on study was the December 26th, 2004 tsunami that killed over 230,000 people in 14 different countries. This huge disaster was caused by a 9.3 magnitude earthquake which in India some people thought that it was the doomsday. So many people always think the last day is coming, they believe that God will wash away the land as a punishment. Again, this year on Jan 6th, over 5000 birds’ dead bodies were found in Arkansas, Kentucky and Louisiana and over 100,000 dead fishes found in Ozark. This was not only in the United State but countries such as Swiss, Brazil and New Zealand also found groups of birds and dead bodies of fish.
Some people believe that it is some prediction of the end of the world. A predictor once predicted that the doomsday will start on May 21st until Oct 21st. However, Scientists claim that a group of animals suddenly die due to certain reasons. The deaths can be attributed to global warming that causes the unstable weather hence disturbing the animals’ natural environment. For all these deaths to take place, it can be blamed on human beings. This is because we are selfish and make the earth lose its balance.