With Biden making saving the environment a major policy objective, it is time for mankind to show a little humility and acknowledge that we are just the ape that got lucky

Ayo Akinfe

(1) One of the most heartening things about the incoming Biden administration is that it has agreed to return to the Paris Climate Agreement abandoned by Donald Trump. This may be our last chance to save our planet

(2) As futuristic and sci-fi as it may sound, we could easily de-oxiginate our planet and make it unsuitable for human habitation. All those putting profits before the environment are being short-sighted in the extreme

(3) Do you know that during the Ice Age, we neatly became extinct? We were down to about 10,000 humans at two colonies in Russia and South Africa

(4) During this period, all the other hominoid bi-pedestal primate who were our cousins got wiped out. It really makes my heart bleed that there are no Homo Erectus, Homo Neanderthalis, Homo Habilis or Homo Heidelbergis beings alive today

(5) Only our distant cousins like chimpanzees, gorillas, ourang outangs, baboons, etc survived, which is really not the same. Just think of how lonely lions on the African plains would be if there were no leopards or cheetahs

(6) For me, this Biden presidency calls for a period of sober reflection. Mankind must stop pillaging the planet. For instance, the tropical rain forests are considered the lungs of the earth but alas, we are felling trees with reckless, irresponsible and careless abandon

(7) Do you know that once upon a time, Lagos used to look like the Amazon? Now, we cannot turn back the hands of the clock but can we please at least preserve our existing rain forests? We should protect them jealously

(8) Do you know that Nigeria once had thriving populations of lions, elephants, manatees, wilderness, giraffes, etc. Like the vandals we are, we have hunted them all to extinction. Eyinmba actually means elephant in Igbo. Is there one elephant in southeast Nigeria today?

(9) If I had my way, I would designate Taraba State, Nigeria’s most natural beauty spot as a nature reserve and create the world’s largest games reserve there. I would make it the biggest wildlife park on earth, attracting millions of tourists a year. It would be like the Mecca of the wildlife industry. There were once neatly as many lions as humans on earth. I would try to recreate that

(10) I hope Presidents Buhari and Biden discuss this matter at length and reach some sort of agreement. At the moment, we clearly do not understand the issues at all as we are still exploring for petroleum, flaring gas, chopping down the rain forests and killing reptiles for food. If everyone behaved like us, our planet would soon not be suitable for human habitation

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