Whose Is This Planet Earth?

Whose Is This Planet Earth?

Is it a matter of course that we should claim it to be ours only? As though other fellow beings on this heavenly body have no right to it? As though we’ve got the authority to judge, to decide the question of their existence, to leave those that don’t harm us in peace or ignore them, or to exterminate those that plague us until they become extinct?

Like the pest that plague our paddy and Lamtoro trees, or rats, locusts,, weevils, flies mosquitoes, cockroaches, weeds, narcotic herbs, piranhas, sharks, alligators, tigers, … as though they’re mere evil and have no good at all. Is it their fault to be fated as pest, weeds, sharks, …?

Aren’t we the  greatest plague that haunts other creatures: poisoning innocent, harmless insects and birds through aerial spraying of pesticides with effects worse than the Bophal or Chernobyl disasters or chemical warfare? The harm pests inflict on us would be but a trifle as compared to what we inflict on innocent living things. We are destroying the habitat of flora and fauna, polluting rivers and seas without any consideration for the well-fare of the creatures. We are the generators of much of their calamities and of our own disasters as well.

As our world population rises steadily, the population of many kinds of creatures dwindles rapidly.

Whose is the land, the oceans, the air,  the Arctic and Antarctic? Penguins on Malvinas have as much right to the island as Argentine or England.

Some day we’ll settle on the moon, whose will the moon be? I insist, the earth, the moon, the sun, the stars, the heavens are for all being, human beings, animals, insects and plants as well. All want something like our human rights and to be treated as worthier citizens of this Planet Earth.

The Jakarta Post,  September 18, 1986                   

March 2011