I’d like to write about the bigger issues which affect our lives and the lives of our cat companions. These issues are at the top level, where politicians and powerful businesses often operate together. They have the greatest impact on us and therefore our cat. What affects us affect our cats. Also what politicians and business do or don’t do affects cats directly sometimes.
There are thousands of examples. Here is one in the Times today.
India is the home of the Bengal tiger and the Bengal tiger is “the” tiger living in the wild. There are some Bengal tigers in Bangladesh too and there are Siberian tigers in the far east of Russia but the survival of the tiger in the wild is really down to how Indian politicians and the directors of large Indian companies treat the Indian landscape. Do they protect it and the reserves? Or do they gradually erode it for commercial gain?
India says that Greenpeace is a threat to their economy. Greenpeace wants to curb India’s coal mining. Coal feeds powers stations and power stations generate electricity. But it is crude technology because it relies up natural resources under the ground. Mining for coal leads to destruction of the environment both in the air and the forest. Forests are where many wild species live. Kill the forest and you kill the forest dwelling animals.
Greenpeace handed a 1,00,000 signature petition to the Indian government urging an end to deforestation for coal mining. It targeted India’s most powerful companies.
In January protestors wearing tiger suits scaled the offices of the Essar Group. They placed a banner on the building, “We kill forests.” Essar’s response was to initiate a defamation action in the courts for $50 million against the activists. Heavy handed? Typical business.
The protestors were campaigning against Essar’s plans to develop a coalmine at Mahan, a densely forested are of the state of Madhya Pradesh. Essar has not yet received government approval. What chance do you think there is of the government blocking the development? None. Money will exchange hands.
Debi Goenka, the leader of the Conservation Action Trust says,
“It’s corrupt politicians and corrupt industrialists who are poisoning this country….This kind of model of development that is being pushed down our throats comes at the expense of the poor in India and the country’s biodiversity”
At the end of the day it is the bigger issues, the behavior of our “leaders” in conjunction with relentless and often corrupt international businesses who dictate our welfare and therefore the welfare of our cats. They often affect the welfare of wild cats directly.
Note: Essar is an Indian multinational conglomerate.
Yes unfortunately our animals will properly be affected. Hopefully will be resolved.
Yea that’s very scarey that kind of stuff. I guess we live in a corrupt world now, where none of us will be free of. I guess we got to protect our cats and all animals at all costs. Thankfully here in New Zealand things haven’t been as extreme, but will definitely go as the rest of the world as gone. It will be a sad day for me, when ill need to put my cats inside. I hope by that day that im able to protect them. Its bad enough now. There’s a hope over here that there be harsher penalties for Animal Abuses but as yet to be seen.