{"id":134422,"date":"2023-05-18T16:39:05","date_gmt":"2023-05-18T23:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=134422"},"modified":"2023-05-18T16:39:58","modified_gmt":"2023-05-18T23:39:58","slug":"sorry-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/05\/18\/sorry-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Sorry, Earth!’."},"content":{"rendered":"

Malinda Seneviratne<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The late Lanil Kalubowila once offered some interesting reflections on language and politics. The last time I met him, along with our mutual friend Kanishka Goonewardena, he informed us that he had restricted reading to the perusal of encyclopaedias. They were, he observed, to the point. No frills, no editorialising, no propaganda, he said. True, for the most part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also said he had a problem with a television show called \u2018Good morning Sri Lanka.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Why only Sri Lanka?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good question. Sri Lanka is not a planet in and of itself, although some may think so. One says \u2018hello\u2019 or \u2018good morning\u2019 to an individual, but you are, whether you like it or not, saying \u2018good morning\u2019 to more than those in Sri Lanka when you say this on some mass communication platform. What if aliens are listening in, for example. We don\u2019t know about aliens, but we know that Sri Lanka is an island in a planet, a country in a world of nations, an economy that does not allow us to remain an island in the strictest sense. What we do impacts the world. What a country does and indeed what an individual does has an effect on the entire planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that he had considered an alternative: \u2018Good morning, earth\u2019 in the spirit of International solidarity or rather in recognition of interconnectedness.  And then he said, \u2018We don\u2019t have the moral right to say good morning\u201d to the earth. We should rather say Sorry, Earth.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t say \u2018sorry\u2019 enough, do we? The human species is marked by love, kindness, compassion etc., but our footprint on this planet also contains indelible streaks of cruelty, arrogance and selfishness. As individuals and as small collectives, we can and are generous, compassionate and sensitive to the world around us and the denizens therein. As a collective?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Sorry\u2019 just doesn\u2019t seem adequate, but \u2018Good morning, Earth\u2019 without reflection or remorse would sound that much more out of order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tammana Begum in an article titled \u2018Humans are causing life on Earth to vanish\u2019 published in the National History Museum website, shares some interesting and worrisome facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only 3% of land on Earth still qualifies as \u2018ecologically intact,\u2019 studies show. There was never a 100% \u2018intact\u2019 planet. Not even before the first humans appeared. That said, what we\u2019ve done is simply atrocious. We have directly altered at least 70% of the Earth\u2019s lands. Deforestation, land degradation, depletion of biodiversity, pollution are some of the more visible crimes. We have land, freshwater ecosystems and the oceans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Live coral cover on reefs has nearly halved in the past 150 years and is predicted to disappear completely within the next 80 years. Coral reefs are home to some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet,\u2019 Begum claims, citing multiple studies.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biennial \u2018Living Planet Report 2020\u2019 published by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, states \u2018on average, global populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles plunged by 68% between 1970 and 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The data, collected by 134 experts from around the world covering 20,800 populations of 4,392 vertebrate species including high-profile threatened animals such as pandas and polar bears as well as lesser known amphibians and fish, clearly indicates that nature is being exploited and destroyed by humans on a scale never previously recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greed, selfishness and ignorance have played their hands well.  

It is good to say \u2018good morning\u2019 to the Earth for all that we have been given. It is good to say \u2018sorry\u2019 too for all the harm that we, as individuals and collectives, have caused. It is good to say \u2018thank you\u2019 or \u2018bohoma pin\u2019 to those who knew very well that living leaves an imprint and there made it a practice to live consciously of possible wrongs and include in the life practices conscious, compensatory, actions.

We \u2018intervene,\u2019 for example, when we build a reservoir, even a \u2018village tank,\u2019 but what we also do is harvest rainwater, raise water tables, make things green, provide for other creatures etc. That\u2019s a \u2018thank you.\u2019 That\u2019s an indication of true remorse. True \u2018sorry.\u2019

There are \u2018village tanks\u2019 we can build in the city. There are many \u2018village tanks\u2019 we can build in our gardens, in our households, as we walk, as we greet one another.

\u2018Sorry, Earth,\u2019 then, is a good way to start the day. And for this I am eternally grateful to my late friend, Lanil Kalubowila.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[‘The Morning Inspection’ is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Malinda Seneviratne The late Lanil Kalubowila once offered some interesting reflections on language and politics. The last time I met him, along with our mutual friend Kanishka Goonewardena, he informed us that he had restricted reading to the perusal of encyclopaedias. They were, he observed, to the point. No frills, no editorialising, no propaganda, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}