Life on Earth is Dying. Thousands of Species Cease to Exist【地球上の生命が死んでいる。数千種が絶滅！】
On the day that you read this article, 200 species of life on Earth (plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects, reptiles) will cease to exist. Tomorrow, another 200 species will vanish forever.一日に200種の生命が絶滅し、明日はまた別の200種の生命体が消えいくのです。植物、鳥、動物、魚類、両生類、昆虫、爬虫類が消えています。
The human onslaught to destroy life on Earth is unprecedented in Earth’s history. Planet Earth is now experiencing its sixth mass extinction event and Homo sapiens is the cause. Moreover, this mass extinction event is accelerating and is so comprehensive in its impact that the piecemeal measures being taken by the United Nations, international agencies and governments constitute a tokenism that is breathtaking in the extreme.人間の猛攻撃ゆえにこの間ない地球の歴史の破壊が続いている。第六代大量破壊【絶滅】イベントがまさに行われている。ホモサピエンスの人類の責任です。大量絶滅の問題は国連が断片的な措置をとっていることだが、世界中で取り組まなければならない。
And it is no longer the case that mainly ‘invisible’ species are vanishing: those insects, amphibians and small animals about which you had never even heard, assuming they have been identified and given a name by humans.見えない種が消えているわけではない。人間によって名前が与えられている種が消えている。
You and I are on the brink of driving to extinction some of the most iconic species alive today. For a photo gallery of threatened species, some of which are ‘critically endangered’, see ‘World’s wildlife being pushed to the edge by humans – in pictures’.世界の野生動物が人間によって淵に追いやられている。絶滅危機種の紹介がされていますね。【クリックしてみてください】
If you want to read more about some aspects of the extinction threat, you can do so in these recent reports: ‘World Wildlife Crime Report: Trafficking in protected species’ and ‘2016 Living Planet Report’ which includes these words: ‘The main statistic from the report … shows a 58% decline between 1970 and 2012. This means that, on average, animal populations are roughly half the size they were 42 years ago.’42年前に比べると動物の数は半分に減少。世界の野生生物犯罪レポート、保護種の売買などのレポートが開示されている。
And if you want to read just one aspect of what is happening in the world’s oceans, this recent UN report will give you something to ponder: ‘New UN report finds marine debris harming more than 800 species, costing countries millions’. 海洋ゴミが800種以上の生き物を傷つけ何百万ドルものお金がそのために支出されている。
Of course, some of what is happening is related to the ongoing climate catastrophe and there isn’t any good news on that front. See ‘What’s Happening in the Arctic is Astonishing’.気候災害ゆえでもある。
But not everything that is going badly wrong is well known either. Did you know that we are destroying the Earth’s soil? See ‘Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues’.地球の土壌も傷つけている。
And did you realise that even nitrogen is now a huge problem too? See ‘Scientists shine a spotlight on the overlooked menace of nitrogen’.窒素の問題も指摘されている。
Of course, military violence has devastating consequences on the Earth’s ecosystems too, destroying land, water and atmosphere (not to mention killing human beings) in the fight over resources. You will get no joy from the article ‘Iraq’s oil inferno – government inaction in the face of eco-terrorism’ or the website of the Toxic Remnants of War Project. 軍事的暴力は生態系の問題にとって大きな脅威です。土地、水、大気を破壊しています。エコテロリズムへの政府の対応、戦争の有毒などのサイトを見てほしい。
But every single aspect of military spending is ultimately used to destroy. It has no other function.軍事費は破壊するために使用されます。
While 2.5 billion human beings do not have enough to eat. See ‘One in three people suffers malnutrition at global cost of $3.5 trillion a year’25億の人間が十分に食べることができない。3人に1人は３．５兆ドルの世界的コストで栄養失調になる。
As you read all this, you might say ‘Not me’! But you are wrong. You don’t have to be an impoverished African driven to killing elephants for their tusks so that you can survive yourself. You don’t have to be a farmer who is destroying the soil with synthetic poisons. You don’t have to be a soldier who kills and destroys or a person who works for a corporation that, one way to another, forces peasants off their land.私に関係ないというかもしれない。しかしー。
You just have to be an ‘ordinary’ person who pays your military taxes and consumes more than your share of world resources while participating without challenge in the global system of violence and exploitation managed by the global elite.普通の個人であるかもしれない。しかしグローバルエリートに管理された暴力や搾取のグローバルシステムに挑戦しないかぎり、加担していることになる。（んん、厳しい指摘）税金を支払うことによって軍事費を支え、消費をしている。
‘Why is this?’ you might ask.
This is because the primary driver of the human-induced mass extinction is not such things as some people hunting a particular lifeform to extinction, horrendous though this is. In fact, just two things drive most species over the edge: our systematic destruction of land habitat – forests, grasslands, wetlands, peatlands, mangroves… – in our endless effort to capture more of the Earth’s wild places for human use (whether it be residential, commercial, mining, farming or military) and our destruction of waterways and the ocean habitat by dumping into them radioactive contaminants, carbon dioxide, a multitude of poisons and chemical pollutants, and even plastic.福島で垂れ流ししている原発関連有毒物質【放射能汚染物質】もある。組織的になされる自然破壊の数々、二酸化炭素、毒や科学物質、プラスチックの投棄、海洋生息地の破壊もある。
And do you know what drives this destruction of land and water habitats? Your demand for consumer products, all of which are produced by using land and water habitats, and the resources derived from them, often far from where you live. The most basic products, such as food and clothing, are produced on agricultural land, sometimes created by destroying rainforests, or taken from the ocean (where overfishing has savagely depleted global fish stocks). But in using these resources, we have ignored the needs of the land, oceans and the waterways for adequate regenerative inputs and recovery time.熱帯雨林の破壊、海洋生物の乱獲、地球資源を枯渇させている。回復の時間の必要性を無視している。
We also participate, almost invariably without question or challenge, in the inequitable distribution of resources that compels some impoverished people to take desperate measures to survive through such means as farming marginal land or killing endangered wildlife.資源の不平等な分配の問題。
So don’t sit back waiting for some miracle by the United Nations, international agencies or governments to solve this problem. It cannot happen for the simple reason that these organizations are all taking action within the existing paradigm that prioritizes corporate profit and military violence over human equity and ecological sustainability.国連や国際的機関や政府が問題解決するのだと後ろで構えないこと。企業の利益と軍事暴力を優先し、総ての人間の生態系の持続可能性を軽んじている。
Despite any rhetoric to the contrary, they are encouraging overconsumption by industrialized populations and facilitating the inequitable distribution of income and wealth precisely because this benefits those who control these organizations, agencies and governments: the insane corporate elites who are devoid of the capacity to see any value beyond the ‘bottom line’. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane’. 非常識な企業エリートは先進工業集団による過剰消費を奨励し、所得と富の不公平な分配を容易にしている。ボトムラインを越えた価値を無視する狂ったグローバルエリートたち。（？）
If you want action on the greatest challenge human beings have ever faced – to avert our own extinction by learning to live in harmony with our biosphere and equity with our fellow humans – then I encourage you to take personal responsibility.地球の生態圏、生物圏内の存在として生きるための知恵とアクションが求められているということ。
If you do, you need to act. At the simplest level, you can make some difficult but valuable personal choices. Like becoming a vegan or vegetarian, buying/growing organic/biodynamic food, and resolutely refusing to use any form of poison or to drive a car or take an airline flight.有機バイオダイナーミックな農法食品を栽培、ビーガンやベジタリアンを志向することも選択ー。車の運転、フライトの拒否など（厳しいね）船はどうなのだろう？自転車で移動は厳しい。
But if you want to take an integrated approach, the most powerful way you can do this is to systematically reduce your own personal consumption while increasing your self-reliance. Anita McKone and I have mapped out a fifteen-year strategy for doing this in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.個人消費を削減することがいい。
You might also consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ which obviously includes nonviolence towards our fellow species.非暴力の世界を構築する運動に参加することなどー。
One of the hidden tragedies of modern human existence is that we have been terrorized into believing that we are not personally responsible. See ‘The Delusion “I Am Not Responsible”‘.私達は皆有責者である。存在することはこの地球の生態系に責務があるという考えー。
For a fuller explanation, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’. なぜ暴力？怖れのない心理学、怖れにまみれた心理学、原理と実践。
It isn’t true but few people feel powerful enough to make a difference.違いをもたらすことを多くの人々が実感できる。
And every time you decide to do nothing and to leave it to someone else, you demonstrate why no-one else should do anything either.何かやらないといけないという気持ちにさせるレトリックー。んん、何ができるか。消費を減らすは可能。
Extinction beckons. What will you do?絶滅の前に何を？
Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com
歩く運動も必要ですね。何ができるか。物をあまり持たないミニマリストもいいですね。