When unprecedented wildfires raged across Australia last year there was concern about destruction of property and loss of human life. In fact, several hundred people did perish but it was nothing compared to the holocaust of other creatures. The news reports showed us the cuddly and photogenic ones, the singed koalas and kangaroos. Then we heard that millions and as many as a billion animals died or were displaced by those fires, an unimaginable number. A year later we're told that the number is more like 3 billion, a staggering loss of diversity.
There is little doubt that human-made climate change was a major contributor to these massive fires, as is the case with both fire and flood in many parts of the planet which is our home. We simply have not faced the reality that our actions are changing the patterns of weather and threatening the fate of every living thing.
Tragically, religious fundamentalists who are often Youth Earth Creationists, rejecting evolution, are also climate emergency deniers, ignoring the scientific evidence all around them. \Humans have been users and abusers rather than care-full stewards of the Earth (a role mandated in scripture) for centuries. We know that species extinction brought about by humans is not new, although it is accelerating at an alarming rate.
The paintings in today's blog entry are by American artist, Walton Ford, after the style of J.J. Audubon, the 19th century naturalist and painter. The first shows the Great Auk which was once abundant on the Funk Islands off Newfoundland and hunted to extinction. The Thyacine, below, was theTasmanian Tiger or Wolf, thought to kill sheep and so wiped out by ranchers. Both species are gone forever and will be followed by many more as the mass extinction on Earth continues.
Do we have the will to repent, to alter our patterns of greed and ignorance, to honour Creation and Creator?
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