WE CAN ALL PLAY A ROLE IN SAVING THE WORLD

A story is told of a Machiavellian king who wanted to eliminate all the wise men in his village so that he could control his kingdom according to his own digression. The king picked five of his strongest young men and gave them a live bird with instructions that they visit all the wise men in the village and one of them would hold the bird behind his back, then the young men would ask the wise men whether the bird was alive or dead, if the wise men said the bird was alive, the young man would strangle the bird and kill it, but if they said the bird was dead, then the young man would produce the bird alive. He ordered the young men to kill all the wise men who failed the test for misleading the kingdom of their intelligence. Most of the wise men were killed until it was the turn of the oldest of them. When the young men confronted him, the wise old man looked at the one who was holding the bird and said, ‘my son, the life of the bird lies in your hands.’ The old man was crowned the thing-tank of the kingdom much to the chagrin of the king.



The world is slowly shrinking from global worming, yet we are saying so much and doing so little to help the situation. The ice caps of the world are melting away leading to a quick rise in the sea levels and some islands are already submerging as a result. The effects of climate change has hit most of the continents with a vengeance, especially the third world countries that relay almost entirely on rain fed agriculture. As of today, Kenya is staring starvation in the face with a food deficit of close to 5.3 million bags of grain. A press release from the office of the President early in the year read in part, ‘Our national assessment is that 10 million people are food insecure and require emergency support. These people will not be able to meet their minimum food requirements if emergency measures are not taken.’ These figures are replicated in many countries across the world, with some posting even worse readings. The Gods are not to blame for our present woos, we have increased the carbon emissions into the atmosphere almost ten fold over the past ten years, and to the contrary reduced the natural sinks of these harmful gases through the depletion of forest cover by almost the same margin, at best we can be likened to a speeding blind driver with no brakes, which ideally means that he is heading nowhere but may reach faster than he anticipates nevertheless.



While we ponder of ways of saving the world we must be conscious of the fact that we are the biggest threat yet to nature. Like the President of America Barrack once said, change begins with you and I. We must all take bold steps of saving Mother Nature in our own ways before we stretch our arms to point a finger, a little like they say goes a long way. Let us save our water towers and safeguard them from encroachments, increase the world forest cover by planting trees, and reduce all forms of environmental pollution to the level that we can because if we don’t, very soon we may just join the now extinct celebrated creatures like the dinosaurs. Where we are standing, our lives are really in our hands.