The time is up … yesterday!

We are running out of time to protect sharks and to stop their senseless slaughtering has been known for quite some time. As such, we are aware that some shark populations dropped by 90% in the last few years. If it is true and the research sounds solid, then we are not running out of time anymore, we have run out of it already. 

There is a reason why nature needed that many sharks; to maintain balance. With every balance comes a little wiggle room, a buffer zone, but it can’t be plus–minus 45%, as the 90% drop would include. The slaughtering of sharks is the biggest ecological time bomb and we can’t even seem to understand what its yield is. Well, it sure is gigantic. As with any large bomb, one agency can’t fight it alone; it needs all men on deck.

When it comes to environmental issues, our society always seems to have more pressing matters at hand. Granted, some of these issues are valid but more often than not, tabloid oriented issues are not just ridiculous but down right idiotic, but people still seem to care about those. Does it matter what singer, actor or artist is caught with his or her fingers in the cookie jar? Or what dress someone wears? Absolutely not, but considering the internet presence of some of these issues tells me otherwise. Because such issues seem important, real problems are shrugged off. Such as the state our environment is in. For most people, nature is just there, and to be used. And should some environmental crisis really make it to the front page, the general census is the respective agency or governmental branch will take care of it. But, these branches are too few with a work force that is too small and funds that do not even cover the basics. This is a disaster in the making.

So where does this leave us? We are pretty much stranded. A ship won’t go anywhere once it hits the beach. That pretty much sums up our situation when it comes down to environmental changes. True, some agencies and non-governmental organizations point in the right directions and put efforts into it but, it is not enough - by far. 

To change the course earth takes, a multinational effort needs to be launched that dwarfs anything the United Nations has ever come up with. Which sounds pretty impossible, but when we start choking we will ask ourselves what we did in the past. What we did was we believed that someone else would take care of us and we, as the individual person, have not had to carry our share. Wrong! The environment and its health is a burden that needs to be carried by all of us, a few people might be able to guide us in the right direction but the work will be spread among all of us.