Hey human, the other creatures want to talk to you

You may remember how, in previous articles, you once heard from an ant, a butterfly, a fish, a gorilla, and even a white rhino. Today we animals would like to collectively address you and your tragic desire to save us other creatures.

Sure, you humans have more sophisticated ways of communicating, and your brains have allowed you to rise above us other creatures, but you only need to look around to realize that you have made a tremendous mess of it all. You cannot even understand how misplaced your desire to save us, other creatures, sounds today.

Let us be very frank: We are sick and tired of your romantic do-gooder cravings to save us. We were doing just fine before you showed up and destroyed our habitats and ecosystems. You are the ones who need saving, not us.

Think about what you have done. You have polluted air, land, and sea to the extent that everything you depend on to live is being ruined right in front of your eyes. You have left the air you breathe so toxic that it has almost doubled the number of you dying of strokes, heart disease, and lung cancer. You have destroyed 85 percent of wetlands and degraded a third of the world’s once-rich agricultural land. You keep cutting down the rainforests that provide you with oxygen and the biodiversity that yields new medicines, all that in a bid to raise more livestock, which already takes up 80 percent of your agricultural lands and represents a major element in your disastrous carbon emissions.

Most of you do not even realize that the oceans provide more oxygen than even the rainforests, and you are killing the oceans off at a terrifying rate.

Some scientists estimate that in less than 40 years, there may be literally no more fish left in the sea. Today, 90 percent of all fish stocks are either fully exploited, overexploited, or have already collapsed. If ocean ecosystems break down, the algae and plankton that produce most of the world’s oxygen will also collapse. If you continue to feed runaway global warming, it will not be long before the melting ice and permafrost of the Antarctic, and the Arctic Circle will release vast quantities of methane and carbon. Also, viruses that have lain frozen for millions of years will likely cause vastly greater havoc than the coronavirus disease pandemic you have just lived through.

We were doing just fine before you showed up and destroyed our habitats and ecosystems. You are the ones who need saving, not us.

To get an idea of what you have done to the animal world, consider that the background extinction rate of species was about one species per millennium before you humans showed up. A few thousand years ago, that extinction rate accelerated by somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times, all thanks to you. You have eliminated 300 species of mammals alone, and you have caused the world’s vertebrate species to decline by about 68 percent in the last 50 years, and the world’s insect species by between 40 and 70 percent in the last 30 years alone.

Give yourself a big pat on the back. No other species has been capable of this before you, and you sure are exercising that ability. While your conservation red lists cover 50,000 species at risk of extinction today, the real number, according to your UN, is closer to one million species, and it could possibly happen “within decades.”

You will understand now why your desire to save this or that species in Africa is so laughable to us other creatures. You have made such a tremendous mess of this world that you are the ones who really need saving.

Your technology is nothing but a shield that makes you believe you have answers, but nature is there to remind you every day how wrong you have it all. If only you would listen. We are delivering this important message to you, and should you want to get back to us other creatures, please write to [email protected]  Hassan and the other creatures.

• Hassan bin Youssef Yassin worked with Saudi petroleum ministers Abdullah Tariki and Ahmed Zaki Yamani from 1959 to 1967. He headed the Saudi Information Office in Washington, DC from 1972 to 1981, and served with the Arab League observer delegation to the UN from 1981 to 1983