adapt or die??
i've been blog-surfing. it can get so addictive.A few years ago, i joined a team for a marine conservation project in Sabah. Not because i was over-zealous about it, but rather, I wanted a break. My stand on conservation is rather... actually, I don't know what my stand is. You can say that i am agnostic about it. I don't believe in it. But i would like to. Still I don't.
Conservation is important for all the textbook reasons. Yet isn't life all about adaptation? If we screw up our environment, and our technology can't keep up... we run out of arable land, potable water etc etc, then fine, we go extinct. i don't know... i have friends who are environmental enthusiasts, and we tell me stuff like "isn't it sad if you descendants never get to see a real shark?" i've never seen a dodo and somehow, i don't feel as if life has short changed me in any way. I can live without it.
Back to sabah. I wanted to believe in conservation. I joined the expedition hoping to be convinced. I learned conservation is like communism. Good intentions but to carry it through? Might turn into a disaster. Just like When Rubber Hits the Reefs. On the last day of the expedition, we stopped at a little island for lunch and such. And as I gazed into the water, I notice the amount of plastic bottles which littered the seabed. And i saw little fishes swimming all around and through them. As if it were their home. That looked like an adaptation to me. When the reefs are gone, its ok, we have the plastics. To be honest, its quite a sick thought to think that in future, there will be no longer any coral reefs. But people will still go diving to marvel at sea creatures making their home in plastic containers which their ancestors trashed into the sea years ago...
posted by eline @ 12:16 AM
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