This is not uplifting.
The shadows of political dysfunction, of ecosystem collapse, of biodiversity loss, of climate change, of health and wellbeing in crisis.
The Anthropocene is like an elderly person, who has smoked 40 cigarettes a day, drunk too much, eaten fast food at every meal, done little exercise and just gratified every whim at whatever cost. This person has been rapacious, cruel and selfish. This person disregarded the needs and interests of any other being he came across. He has no empathy, no compassion, not even for himself. He rises, aching, every morning, and instead of heeding the warning carries on just the same as before. Every now and then there is a twinge of conscience, but as it conflicts with his immediate desires. he ignores it. Business as usual.
Do you know that the world's most populous bird is the red-billed quelea? No, me neither. There are estimated to be about 1.5 billion of them. Mind you, at any point in time there are about 21 billion chickens suffering a tortured and short-lived existence.
The current weight of all land mammals in the world is made up of 30% humans, 67% livestock and 3% wild animals And they, the wild ones, are going extinct. Unless we find them cute, awesome or useful. The combined weight of our domestic animals today is more than ten times as high as the estimated weight of the megafauna living in the wild, before the Stone Age - and before we killed most of them. Our poultry alone weigh almost three times more than the weight of all the world's wild birds put together.
Half of the land on earth that isn't ice or desert is used for agriculture. But only a 5th of that grows plants humans eat. The rest is pasture or plants for cows, pigs, sheep and poultry to eat.
The benefits of all climate change and conservation schemes currently underway cannot keep up with the harms done to the rest of life by the increasing human population.
Invasive species are condemned in many nations - despite the fact that we were the first invasives whose actions in most cases brought these other plants and animals there.
We begin, some of us - and I believe rightly, to be concerned about the rights of plants, the needs of plants, and yet the rest of humanity happily oppresses and kills other animals and unfortunate humans.
The number of people giving to charity in the UK is declining significantly, according to new research from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). Between January and April 2022, an estimated 4.9m fewer people said they donated to charity or sponsored someone in the previous year, compared to the same months in 2019.
Though China is the world's most polluting country, the per capita figures tell a different story. Qatar holds the position of shame in this league table.
I won't go on.
But let me say this: it is a luxury, and an unethical one at that, to look away.
No -- not an uplifting post.