It was my dear teacher Don Vicente who, when I was eight or nine years old, told us one day at school that in the Middle Ages, in our Iberian Peninsula, a squirrel could cover the route from Cádiz to Guipúzcoa, that is, cross the entire country, jumping from branch to branch. I created the corresponding visual image and it seemed to me something precious, an image that, as I say, I still have on my retina.
I later found out that the construction of ships to the Americas in the 16th century, and to so many of the battles that crown our history, caused the clearing of many forests and wooded areas. And that the plateau of the two Castillas is so dry because the forests were cut down when it was agreed to turn it into “the pantry of the kingdom” with the cultivation of cereals. My question is always one in this regard: Couldn’t they have cut down 50, or 60, or 70, or even 80 percent of the Castilian forests and oaks, instead of one hundred percent? Because the entire center of the peninsula was converted into a dry land, a desert that remains as is today.
And another important question would be why hasn’t it been repopulated at least part of the trees felled over the centuries. Or why today part of the taxes we all pay are not used for this purpose. Because intuitively we all know that trees are fundamental to our lives. We need the oxygen that trees exhale. They give us fruits, wood, shade, beauty; they regulate temperature, absorb pollution, improve health and relieve current ills such as stress, attract rain, feed human and non-human animals, compact the earth that also feeds us. In short, we share the same fate. Without trees, human life is not possible.
So much so that many peoples and many cultures have considered them sacred, such as pre-Columbian cultures, many Eastern peoples and almost all pre-Christian peoples, whose spirituality was linked to nature. Also the Mesopotamian cultures, and, of course, the Celts, many of whose sacred symbols are tree-shaped; and trees were also an important part of Greek mythology, through which many of them were made sacred precisely to prevent their felling.
If in ancient times there was full awareness of the vital importance of trees for humans,Where does this general contempt for natural life come from? that we live today, in what we wrongly call “civilized” or first world countries? As in everything, the factors that explain the actions, behaviors and events are usually diverse, but in this case there is a fact that can explain, in a summarized way, that contempt of a good part of humanity with respect to nature.
The Colombian Philosopher Fernando Vallejo Ior explains very well in his books. One of the dogmas of Christianity is the anthropocentrism that arises from the idea that they spread that man is the main creation of the Christian god, who later created nature and animals, as a gift, for the use and enjoyment of man. That is the ideological origin of contempt for nature and animals, and the perfect justification for being able to use, enslave, mistreat and trade with them indiscriminately. as it says milan kudera, “there is no proof that God has entrusted to man the dominion of nature and animals; rather it seems that man invented God to make his dominion over them sacred”.
Spain burns and desertifies. Heat waves and the global rise in temperatures, one of the consequences of the serious climate crisis we are experiencing, will make fires more frequent each year, according to climate scholars. Forest fires, which in ninety percent of cases are caused, have burned, to date so far this year, more than 235,000 hectares of forests in Spain, which is a true tragedy. And global warming and climate change are already showing the beginning of their consequences. And still nothing happens.
This is an emergency issue that should be a priority for all the governments of the world that, however, seem to be in tune with the interests of the big power lobbies and the big multinationals that are, of course, deniers. We need urgent lawsresounding decisions that forcefully stop this madness.
A group of young Portuguese sued 32 European countries (including Spain and Portugal) five years ago, accusing them of not carrying out sufficient or adequate climate policies. They argue that the climate crisis interferes with their right to life. And finally this fall the European Court of Human Rights will study this case in the Grand Chamber. There is some more demand in this sense, like a Swiss women’s association, and like a French mayor whose demand exposes that his government is not working as it should to stop the climatic emergency. All citizens with a minimum commitment to the future of humanity and our planet should follow these steps. Coral Bravo is a Doctor of Philology