My country is on fire
We all have been in this game before. When they discovered water, they made it into a source of income and sold it. When they discovered molds that carried penicillin properties, they also made it into a product to sell. The comparison is not fair, of course, because they are all of different things with only one thing in common: they come from nature. Literally, they will capitalize on oxygen as well (because of the news I have seen on “oxygen house” to accomodate rainforest fire victims).
In today’s world, chaos erupts everywhere. The climate changes into the level that can’t be reversed anymore. The ocean becomes hotter and leading to the death of many coral ecosystems because they can’t bear the changes that are too extreme. The land becomes hotter, too, and it results in a lot of fire near the neighborhoods. Not to mention the greedy bastards who are, as per I am writing this journal, burning the rainforest across countries to turn them into massive-scale raw material plantation: palm oil, most of the time.
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My country has been burning ever since 1980s actually, but not enough people care to raise the issue and demand accountability and responsibility from the higher ups. Meanwhile, the higher ups themselves are paying people nearby the forest to burn because these very people are trapped in poverty and they can’t say no to that other source of incomes. And when the authorities feel like being performative for the sake of the social media appearance and their nonexistent “pristine” image? The same people from the impoverished will get caught and jailed for being the “actors” of these forest fire. And the higher ups who ordered and paid them? They will bury their tracks and order other people to do the job. It is sickening, the vicious cycle of land destruction that continues to grip the country because some idiots in the higher ups think the “new plants” will replace the rainforest. Yep, I rightfully call them idiots.
As per an anthropology professor from a well known university in my country said: the forest will have “memories” of the previous fire. The soil will consist of too much peat, and they will be highly flammable. When there are restoration and conservation efforts, it will take decades, and the “new forest” burns again in the future (trust me, it will!), the fire will be harder to fight and it will cause more damage. The soil will be “poisoned” more, and sometime later it will no longer be able to be restored for reforestation. He predicted that in no longer than 5 years, we will lose our rainforest and the diversity lays within. The government will blame the very people they paid to burn the forest, the people will try to shift the blame to some farmers, and so on (the blaming game continues to no end).
I am tied to my chair, I can’t do something about those rainforest fire directly. I can only sign petitions, be loud in social media to raise awareness because a lot of people are too cowardice to talk about it, to donate to charities with my honest but limited income because I am struggling, too, and I can only do so much. I have cried multiple times over the very struggles and sacrifices a lot of people have to do in those affected regions. Not to mention, the other chaotic events happening across the country: flood victims still struggling to live by, earthquake victims starting to die one by one in their tents, the fear of sudden volcanic eruptions that has no end to it, raising price in basically everything, and so on.
The country is on fire, but the government is too comfortable with it. If this goes on with the rate it is now, in 2030, this country will literally don’t exist anymore.
