Down in Jungleland (DiJ) now presents an exclusive, first-ever interview with Mother Nature (aka Big Mama) daringly asking her why she appears to be in such a foul temper these days. Alas, we got an earful! Excerpts: DiJ: Big Mama – firstly is it all right to call you that? BM: No! Call me Big Boss Mama (BM)! DiJ: Er. okay ma’am. Well, ma’am many people feel that you’re beginning to behave a bit like Ms Trunchbull – you know from that Roald Dahl story, ‘Matilda’. Your response? BM: I can make Trunchbull look like Mary’s Little Lamb! DiJ: Wouldn’t dream of calling you that ma’am. But you cannot deny you’ve been in a pretty foul temper recently. BM: And whose fault is that? I take 4.5 billion years to evolve life from diddly-squat, to you. I ensure that every life form evolved has a specific role to play – a job to perform, a niche to fill – so that life on your beautiful (and now wretched) planet can go on just fine. And what do you do? Have you seen what the Great Barrier Reef l, or parts of the Amazon rainforest, or the poles look like? You gouge out and pillage the Earth, you foul the oceans, you make the air toxic, and you decimate every life form you can. You upset my climate calendar by pumping carbon-dioxide and methane and other toxic gases into the air like an obsessive-compulsive chain-smoker on amphetamine. DiJ: But ma’am, we need natural resources and energy in order to live: our economies depend on that. Surely you wouldn’t like to see us running around with spears and stones after prey, like shrieking chimpanzees. BM: That was the biggest mistake I made: to allow you to evolve beyond the level of chimpanzees. You think of yourselves as being at the top of the food chain, the most advanced species on Earth. And you go ahead, gung-ho, destroying all the things that made that possible! The rainforests, the oceans, the ice-caps, the mangroves, the savannahs, the rivers, lakes and wetlands, the mountains, the animals. No other life-form goes around behaving like this. And you expect me to remain quiet? With the cooperation of the Don (the Sun, in case you are wondering), I had put a perfect system in place. He bathed you with light, I evolved chlorophyll which used the photon-energy from that light, and carbon-dioxide from the air to make food – and emitted oxygen, which would burn that same food so you could live, and breathe out carbon-dioxide. and so round and round it went, like an ant-mill but without it’s fatal consequences. And now you’ve buggered that up good and proper! DiJ: But ma’am, your temper tantrums have caused untold hardship to millions of people. Even millionaires in swanky California have had to flee your ire (those wildfires) in their private jets. BM: It’s nowhere near the carnage you have let loose on your own species. You go to war, you mess with animals and live dirtily and catch Covid-19 or the plague, and you pump poison into the air and make breathing impossible for children… But, let me tell you sonny-boy, as some of your scientists and ecologists have been telling you, if I were to really let loose, my dogs of war – there may be no comebacks! And at the moment they’re really straining at their leashes. DiJ: But ma’am we have begun to mend our ways. Climate-change and global warming make the headlines nearly every day. The subject is being discussed at the UN even now. BM: You people talk and promise a lot and do and achieve much less. As for the UN meeting now: the three top countries which are the biggest greenhouse gas emitters (the U S, China and India) who should be giving an account of themselves are not even present. How much commitment does that show, and what kind of an example is it for other countries? Even if, as some of you insist, you are meeting your clean-up and emission targets, the message you are sending out is very different and dangerous. You say you are all for protecting nature, that it is culturally inherent in your psyche to protect all life, and what do you do? Make it easier for bulldozers to flatten tiger reserves and national parks and for industrialists to put up more cement factories and hack around like madmen for coal. The UK has pushed back the ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles by five years and permitted the drilling of 100 new oil wells in the North Sea. Your own scientists are saying you’re already halfway down the hellhole and yet. DiJ: But ma’am, we’re going into alternative-energy and sustainable ways of living in a big way. We’re doing solar, and wind and hydro-power. BM: But evidently not big enough and that is what infuriates me so much. You have the technology, you have the money, you have the means, yet you will not switch over totally to a better, more sustainable way of life: to think any species could be so brilliant and stupid at the same time! DiJ: But so many people have now taken nature to their bosom: they’re trekking, conducting clean-up drives, re-wilding, becoming vegan, afforesting. BM: And still you litter so much! You can’t even pick up after yourselves – look at your landfills and oceans! You’ve been around for 200,000 years and are not even potty-trained! DiJ: We’ll try to do better ma’am. BM: You absolutely have no choice, sonny-boy. Your timer is running out of sand!
