The Hug the Earth Squad
I read "The Falcon Thief" by Joshua Hammer, translated by Michiko Yashiro. It is a non-fiction account of a natural-born egg thief with rare talents and physical abilities, and the British wildlife crime investigator who tracks him across the globe in a tale of crime and pursuit.
People are fascinated by eggs. During the reign of Queen Victoria, oology was a branch of science, and the wealthy funded expeditions to collect eggs and birds from all over the world. Even after stealing eggs from wild bird nests became a crime, collectors obsessed with eggs continued their pursuit—a compulsion embedded in some individuals that persisted despite repeated arrests.
One could argue that since humans are part of nature, the act of humans stealing eggs is also natural. However, human desire knows no bounds, and it goes far beyond the scale of simply receiving a small gift from nature.
When the falconry of wealthy Arabs began to destroy the surrounding environment and they started seeking hunting grounds abroad, a rise in environmental protection awareness and the kidnapping of royalty in other countries occurred. In response, Crown Prince Hamdan of Dubai conceived the idea of holding "falcon races" within the Emirates.
There are large-scale breeding sheds, massive indoor training facilities with climate control, and falcon hospitals equipped with the latest medical technology and veterinarians gathered from around the world. While falcons are bred in captivity, there is a black market where eggs stolen from nests around the world are smuggled in, driven by the belief that wild birds are stronger and the need to introduce new bloodlines.
At this point, one can hardly say that humans are part of nature. The wealthy Arabs who use their riches to collect eggs of rare birds of prey—wasn't that wealth originally a gift from the Earth? If they only think of their own country and not the Earth, they are no more advanced than an elementary school student drawing a line in the dirt with the toe of their shoe and saying, "This is my territory." Even though the land on both sides of the line is part of the same continuous Earth. The eggs they think they have stolen are actually being stolen from their own Earth.
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The ocean crisis warned about in "The Brilliant Abyss: Exploring the Majestic Hidden Deep Sea" by Helen Scales, translated by Yumiko Hayashi, is also serious. The reason global warming is currently limited to this extent is that the ocean, which covers 70% of the Earth's surface, is absorbing heat and carbon dioxide.
It is said that ocean water takes 1,000 to 2,000 years to circle the globe due to differences in water temperature and salinity. This global ocean circulation keeps the climate mild and stirs the seawater to transport nutrients.
However, there are signs that parts of this circulation have begun to stall over the past few decades. Seawater cooled and made denser off the coasts of Antarctica and Greenland sinks, acting as a pump that drives the global circulation. As rising seawater temperatures at the poles cause ice sheets to melt and flow in as massive amounts of fresh water, the salinity and density of the seawater decrease, weakening the force that drives the circulation.
Although the ocean is on Earth, it does not receive as much attention as space. Without much research, colonialism and capitalist exploitation have entered, and the plundering of resources is progressing. There are likely creatures in the deep sea that will go extinct before they are even discovered.
What will happen when the ocean breaks?
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Humanity is like a Java sparrow gnawing at the base of the komatsuna plant it is standing on.
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