In 2014 the Swedish writer, Henning Mankell, after being diagnosed with cancer wrote Quicksand, a meditation on life and fate, in which a central obsession was the storing of nuclear waste, the potency of which lasts thousands of years.

Eight years later, a nuclear power station is used as a pawn in a European war and considered a ‘safe’ place from which to lob rockets.  When the UN is unable to intervene, the prospects for the planet are exceedingly grim.

Why isn’t NZ vehemently protesting and expecting others to do the same?

In Norway, a walrus that became a tourist attraction was put down ‘in a humane manner’ because the public were disregarding the recommendation to keep a safe distance. Therefore, according to the director of fisheries, ‘the possibility for potential harm to people was too high’ and the walrus is not an endangered species, there being 30,000 of them. I would have thought that any universalising of the proposition, once considered a useful part of ethical consideration, would have pointed to the obvious abundance of the human species. The walrus had no say in the matter.

Why not let the walrus gnaw at a few people to teach them a lesson and then take her to the nuclear power station in the Ukraine to chase off the soldiers. Any refusing to go should be humanely euthanised.

Advertisement