By Debbie Olujobi

The sight of houses being swept away into the sea kept playing over and over on the television over the weekend. The biggest earthquake in recent memory had just occurred in Japan and the disaster I was watching on television was the Tsunami that followed shortly after. The year 2011 is barely three  months old and this is the second, if not third major earthquake but unlike the one in New Zealand; this one packed a knockout punch of a raging Tsunami.

Before the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 that killed hundreds of thousands of people I had never heard of the phenomenon. A tsunami is a giant wave triggered by an earthquake in the ocean; the wave comes out of the sea like a black raging force that sweeps away everything and everyone in its path.

I remember then being horrified by the humongous wave that swept in from the sea to devastate Thailand and Indonesia on that Boxing Day; it killed over 300,000 people and lasted only a few minutes. It was like the summation of all horror and tragedy rolled together and it touched everyone everywhere. It happened at the height of the tourist season in Thailand and all nationalities lost souls to the raging sea as tourists were not spared.

The scenes in Japan were not quite as awful as the total devastation of Sumatra in 2004, but technology is no match for the wrath of Mother Nature and  though most of the houses survived the earthquake, the Tsunami wiped out entire towns and all their infrastructure; technology is not a match for nature’s fury.

Mother Nature has not been feeling very maternal towards the earth since the 90s. The weather seems to be the greatest threat to mankind of all the evils; man itself is the next threat to the survival of the earth and even mankind. I remember the weather phenomenon that led the trail of all the apocalyptic disasters; it was called El Nino the Spanish word for the Christ Child. Unlike the real Christ; El Nino is a destructive climate pattern characterised by variations in the temperature of the surface of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, its close friend and ally La Nina affects the southern oscillation but results of either are extreme weather patterns resulting in weather oscillations, floods and droughts of Biblical proportions. While I still don’t fully grasp the true form of the two patterns; the results are everywhere. Shifting rainfall patterns, rising levels; rising food costs as a result of drought in the normal food producing areas of the world meant that we all had to take note.

All of a sudden, the global warming idea became a reality; just like the scientists had been warning; the world was getting warmer and it would be disastrous if we didn’t change our ways and start respecting the earth and the resources. Later on the ice carps of Alaska began to melt and the ozone layer acquired super star status; there was a hole in it getting bigger and by the last measurement was bigger than the size of Europe. The earth is hotter, winters are longer and colder; sea levels are dangerously high and humanity is paying the price with precious lives. Everywhere you look there seems to be a cataclysmic weather occurrence; hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis; the earth; our home is in trouble.

The “Earth song” is a very depressing song by the late Michael Jackson; a musical icon of this generation. It shows the earth in ruins, forests gone, animals’ dead and humans almost extinct. There is a part of it that seems stuck in my head and it’s “What have we done the world; look what we’ve done to the world.” As I sat down watching the devastation in Japan; it just kept on playing. I am contemplating the horror that my generation may just be the one that destroys the earth and if my memoirs make it through to the hands of those to come; I hope they will learn to be everything we are not. I hope they will not be consumed by power and capitalism at the risk of their humanity.

In my generation, wars are fought for commercial gain and the black gold is the demonic lubricant for the earth’s destruction. Its use is the lubricant of 60 per cent of the pollution that is destroying the ozone layer; I almost wish petroleum had never been discovered. I am convinced we would have been forced to discover cleaner and more sustainable energy sources. Petroleum itself is not the enemy!!

The enemies are the cartels and the governments who value it more than blood; seeking to control the areas with petroleum with a fist of iron and a rain of bombs and bullets. It is a travesty that Nigeria, one of the largest producers of petroleum cannot even generate its own energy for survival. A country of over 150 million people is kept in the dark ages by the cartels and successive governments determined to create billionaires out of the population’s misery.

It’s not only an ugly world; it’s a desperately wicked one. We are Generation X, the epitome of consumerism, capitalism, nepotism, corruption, power drunkenness, avarice and darkness. Amazingly religion has never been so strong; yet the darkness has never been so dense… the earth is changing and we are all responsible in our own little or big ways; no one can claim innocence. We continue to procreate and I wonder why? Just look what we are doing to the world!! Look at Haiti; Iraq, Darfur, Libya, New Zealand, Haiti.
To be continued