by Ayomide Atitebi
What time of the night it was I can not remember, but the cold which engulfed the house made me recoil into the solitude of my room. The darkness of the night struck like lightening as the rain poured heavily on the roof. My heart skipped noisily with each beat seeming to have fallen out of place with a loud thud that made me shiver almost out of my skin.
For once I thought: would this rain swallow up the house tonight? Would my birds get blown away by the wind into a strange planet where they would never really survive? Would the sea rise above its level till it breaks over and drown us all? Would earth be here when the rain is over tonight? And I pondered intensely on these passing questions as my mind raced hastily from imaginations to reality.
As I clutched my pillow to the almost warm side of my bed, for the very first time, I felt the vulnerability of nature.
I felt how nature must feel when we burn forests and kill wildlife without care for their ecological impacts. I felt how nature must feel when we dump loads of wastes in streams and water channels without fear of an imminent flood or health disasters. I felt how nature must feel when we cut down trees without plans of replacing them. I felt how nature must feel when we release in the air, very toxic substances from plants and machines in our industries all in the frantic race to survive. I felt deep within me, the VULNERABILITY of NATURE!
If there is any vestige of love in us, if there is a heart that truly cares deep in us, if we have hands that help and conscience that prickle, we will feel the vulnerability of nature and give our voices to save earth.
We will go to streets and schools, we will go to churches and mosques and temples in other places of worship, we will go to banks, other companies and eateries in our communities and ask help for our environment.
We will tell ourselves to stop littering the environment with papers, sachets, and other thrash. We will tell our fathers, brothers and everyone to stop cutting trees without saving for the future. We will tell our women to adopt sustainable methods of cooking. We will demand our governments to implement eco-friendly policies and take actions on climate. We will tell our companies to stop flaring gas and polluting the atmosphere.
We will move and encourage ourselves to feel the vulnerability of nature because, when we push this earth to her limits, we would have clearly defined and activated our own doom!
Ayomide Atitebi (Mr Save Earth) is an emerging voice in the international environmental community, widely acclaimed for his significant contributions to global campaigns on environmental responsibility and community development initiatives having served twice as Regional Ambassador to Nigeria for United Nations Environment Programme – Tunza Eco-Generation. He currently serves as Head of Human Resources (Africa) for Green the Gene and Country Director (Nigeria) for IDEAS – a UN accredited international environmental and public charity organisation. He tweets from @AyoAtitebi.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
