The drive to be as god always lurks the heart of every human being. That, after all, was the original temptation in the Garden of Eden when our first parents fell into sin. The serpent hissed that if Adam and Eve were to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they would not die at all, but would become like God, knowing good and evil for themselves. (Genesis 3: 4) Adam and Eve bought the lie. We, in our turn, were born into the lie, believing it and yearning to live it.
One of the downstream effects is to believe that power and wisdom are conterminous. This is why the idolatry of statism has such a powerful hold over our hearts and minds. We are born believing that, as gods, we should have power and dominion and that when we secure power, we will be wise and effective. We will make things happen--for good, of course, albeit good-as-it-seems-to-us, according to our lights, since we now think that we know good and evil for ourselves, on our own recognisance.
Usually, what happens, is that we succeed only in magnifying evil and doing more harm. Take something as prosaic as the protection of elephants and rhinos against extinction.
Governments end up wreaking far more destruction upon the species than any good. Why? Because their power blinds them to arrogance and overreach. Their sinfulness, combined with power, leads them to see issues in false religious nostrums, not in truth.
The US Government, in all its semi-divine wisdom, has announced that it is going to destroy all the ivory in its possession in an attempt to obstruct the ivory trade which threatens the very existence of elephants and rhinos. This is manifest crassness. But the demi-godlike thinking runs as follows: the ivory trade is evil. Even to possess ivory is wicked. Therefore, we must have nothing to do with the unclean thing. We must cast it out of our presence. By setting this great example, by making this religious sacrifice upon the altar of our divine wisdom, we will discourage ivory poachers and the ivory trade.
The actual outcome? The ivory poaching trade will become even more entrenched, more powerful, and more successful. Elephants and rhinos will come under greater threat than ever. The serpent sniggers into his sleeve.
It turns out the US Government has a huge stockpile of ivory, seized from poachers and smugglers. Meanwhile, the demand for ivory, particularly from China, far outstrips supply, resulting in higher prices, making the illicit trade even more economically worthwhile. The actions of the US Government will exacerbate the shortage, leading to higher prices still, making it more likely that elephants and rhinos will become extinct in the wild.
In principle, the best thing imaginable to kill off the ivory trade would be a surplus of ivory in the world, so that its price was twenty-five cents a ton. Since the Chinese love ivory ornaments, it would have been a far better thing to remove the quasi-religious overtones in the US government that make ivory sacred, and have the government sell off its seized ivory, increasing supply in the market, dropping the price, and using the funds raised to make ivory poaching more risky by increasing surveillance and interdiction of the ivory traffickers. Instead, it is grinding its ivory into dust to, well, set a good example. To whom? To the poachers and traffickers? You have to be kidding.
This from The Guardian:
US ivory crush sends the wrong message to elephant poachers
Don't give an incentive to criminals to kill more elephants. They see this as ivory getting scarcer, prices and demand going up
[Dr Daniel Stiles is a member of the IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group and has worked for the UN, IUCN, Traffic and many NGOs.]
On Thursday, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is planning to crush 5.4 tonnes of elephant ivory, seized since 1989 when US and international laws banned international trade of most types of African elephant ivory.Yet another manifestation of prohibition, the lust to rule the world and human beings with "wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command", to command with power to effect change. The works thus wrought are far more destructive than the evil they seek to combat. In fact, they make the evil far, far more likely to come to pass.
The stated purpose for doing this is “we [USFWS] want to send a clear message that the United States will not tolerate ivory trafficking and the toll it is taking on elephant populations …”, and that the action will tell criminals that the US will aggressively go after them for killing elephants for profit.
Admirable, but will destroying ivory get that message through to poachers, ivory traffickers and the workshops in east Asia and elsewhere that buy smuggled raw ivory? I doubt it. I have been carrying out ivory trade investigations for almost 15 years, financed in large part by the organisations that have been promoting ivory stockpile destruction, which is linked to their fierce opposition to any kind of legal ivory trade. [Emphasis, ours] Their lobbying resulted in ivory stockpile destruction in Kenya (2011), Gabon (2012) and the Philippines (2013), and they are vigorously working on several other countries to do it. The three governments all stated that the purpose “was to send a message” to those killing elephants for ivory. Elephant poaching and ivory trafficking have increased since 2011 according to the UN's Elephants in the Dust report (which I co-authored).
Apparently, a different message must have been sent to the criminals, as ivory bonfires and steamroller crushings have not deterred them. Having studied at close quarters elephant hunters since the 1970s as an anthropologist, and having investigated elephant poachers, ivory middlemen, workshops and retail outlets since the 1990s in Africa, Asia, Europe and the US, I believe I know what message they are receiving.
The message is: Ivory is scarce and with stockpile destruction is getting scarcer. The three since 2011 have taken almost 30 tonnes of ivory out of circulation, enough to feed China’s 37 legal ivory factories for five years. Now the US government plans to reduce potential global supply by another 5.4 tonnes. That means, with demand remaining stable, ivory prices will increase. Raw ivory prices in China have doubled since 2011, according to my sources. Poachers and those paying them now have increased incentive to go out and kill more elephants.
The US media and the biggest non-governmental conservation and animal welfare organisations in America have mounted a massive campaign to create awareness among the public about elephant (and rhino) poaching. The Obama administration (Presidential task force on combating wildlife trafficking) and the Clinton Global Initiative to prevent elephant poaching have taken concrete steps to save elephants. The public is demanding action.
In response, USFWS will crush seized ivory, almost certainly sending a message to criminals that they had better step up their killing of elephants before all the ivory is gone.
The serpent, ever the hater of all men and of the creation, hisses with mocking, spiteful pleasure.
No comments:
Post a Comment