Death or life

I spent some time yesterday at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens. Besides just being simply beautiful. It struck me that there is a striking contrast between natural areas relatively devoid of human construction and those areas characterised by naturally occurring plants, rocks stone etc..

Human structures and building stand out as lacking harmony. The desire to obliterate life is most common- no 'weed'/ undesirable plant may grow where we do not want it- the monoculture of grass so beloved of suburbanites, farmers and others. The exclusion of life by means of fences, walls, paving etc.. The hardness of surfaces and the complete lack of symbiosis.

Nature engages in no such genocide- there is the constant struggle for space, resources and such, but it is rare that a complete alienation of all other species occurs.

I wonder about us as human beings and the death we sow- I despair some days feeling caught up in a machine that seems to wreak havoc on the earth. The Judeo-Christian scriptures contain the oft quoted dictum- be fruitful and fill the earth. I think this is one of the few commands we can say human beings have achieved remarkable success in. Going from 3.5 billion in the 1960s to 7 billion this year. I suspect however that we have achieved this command a number of years ago and now we are in a state of 'overfilling' the earth.

Social scientists predict that increasingly the wars to come (if not some already) will be fought over access to food and water. Already seeing China amongst others buying land for cultivation in other countries alarms me.

Mid last century there was a deep sense of perilousness with our nuclear arms race- a sense we were about to destroy ourselves in the cold war. Today I often feel we are faced not with a singular event that will be cataclysmic but rather a billion or trillion small decisions coalescing into the slow gradual extinction of humans.

I am not to concerned about the survival of life on earth- the earth has faced far greater threats than humanity. Yes there is the sad truth that we continue to extinguish the diversity of life the Creator seems to so enjoy, but if anything our continued discovery of life in extraordinary environmental conditions reminds me that it will be very hard to destroy all life before we extinguish of our species.  The questions is whether we will survive?

I really struggle to process all these thoughts with my faith- we are called to be people of hope. However I often feel a sense that the path we are gradually moving in is despair.

What would it mean to have hope in the midst of such environmental crisis that I often feel we are unconscious of?