For the past 35 years, I’ve worked as an ecologist in the Amazon, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region on an array of environmental issues, mostly revolving around tropical forests, biodiversity, and the drivers of land use and climate change. I’ve seen many things — some good, some amazing, some heart-rending. But I’ve never seen a nation have such an overwhelming impact on the earth as China does now.
Across the globe, on nearly every continent, China is involved in a dizzying variety of resource extraction, energy, agricultural, and infrastructure projects — roads, railroads, hydropower dams, mines — that are wreaking unprecedented damage to ecosystems and biodiversity. This onslaught will likely be made easier by the Trump administration’s anti-environmental tack and growing disengagement internationally.
To be fair, China is also engaged in green activities, such as investing heavily in solar and wind energy, cracking down on its notorious air pollution, and replanting millions of acres of its denuded lands. And it’s in the process of banning the domestic sale of ivory, which should slow the epic slaughter of Africa and Asia’s elephants. But China’s burnishing of its green credentials is in many ways being overwhelmed by the sheer scale of environmental degradation that its policies and corporations are causing worldwide.
The country’s international resource push began in earnest in 1999, when China’s “Going Global Strategy” liberalized investment policies and provided financial incentives to encourage overseas investments and contracts. Bulging with foreign reserves and with Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s official blessing that “to become rich is glorious,” China’s international investments — and their impact on the natural world — exploded.
China’s most profound environmental impacts revolve around its drive to acquire minerals, fossil fuels, agricultural commodities, and timber from other nations. This often involves deals to build large-scale roads, railways, and other infrastructure to move natural resources from interior areas to coastal ports for export. The rapid pace of such activities continues despite a recent slowdown in the Chinese economy, with major projects now being planned in the developing world.
From 2004 to 2014, the China Export-Import Bank played a leading role in funding $10 billion in East African railway projects, many of which were constructed by Chinese corporations. The Chinese are now helping fund and build major rail networks in Kenya and Uganda, one leg of which is planned to pass through Nairobi National Park.
Even in the remote interior of the Congo Basin, Chinese companies are heavily involved in road-construction, mining, and logging projects, as I recently observed in Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. China also is proposing a 3,000-mile railway that would slice completely across South America, cutting through remote forests and savannas to transport soy, timber, and other goods to the Pacific coast, where they can be shipped to China. The $60 billion price tag has given Peru pause, but the project is still under discussion.
It is difficult to find a corner of the developing world where China is not having a significant environmental impact.
China is the world’s biggest financer and builder of hydroelectric dams, many of which are being constructed in biologically diverse regions where the dams and their associated roads and power lines will open up new lands for exploitation. China is involved in the planning, financing, or construction of major dams in Africa, including the massive Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, now nearing completion. A consortium of Chinese companies is bidding to help construct the Grand Inga dam project on the Congo River, a series of dams that could become the largest hydroelectric project in the world. Although construction could begin later this year, the Democratic Republic of Congo has so far done no environmental impact studies.
The scale of China’s international ambitions is stunning, as evidenced by the country’s “Belt and Road” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” schemes. These two initiatives would involve the creation of a massive network of transportation and other infrastructure projects designed to accelerate development and advance China’s economic and political interests. They will stretch across Asia to Europe and Africa, providing access to 64 percent of the world’s population and 30 percent of its gross domestic product.
Developing nations clearly need better infrastructure, and Chinese investments are yielding sizeable benefits in some countries, such as the recently opened passenger line between the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa and the port of Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden. Unfortunately, Chinese companies and investors rarely advance the type of equitable economic and social development, improved governance, and environmental sustainability that would promote stable, long-term growth in developing economies. An in-depth report by the Global Canopy Program, a UK scientific group, concluded that Chinese companies and financial organizations are among the worst enterprises in the world in terms of driving tropical deforestation.
China has long been a black hole for the illegal wildlife trade, the biggest global consumer of everything from pangolins, to tiger parts, to shark fins and rhino horn. The promised ban on public trading of ivory in China is a good sign, but it’s only one facet of a thriving illegal wildlife trade that drives intense levels of poaching internationally. And China is a heavy consumer of illegal timber, despite belatedly taking steps to staunch the flow into its markets. In western Africa, rosewood forests are being illegally denuded, almost exclusively to feed high demand in China. The impacts are even heavier across the Asia-Pacific region, where native forests from Siberia to the Solomon Islands are being overexploited to feed Chinese timber markets.
More generally, there is little demand in China for eco-certified palm oil, timber, beef, seafood, and agricultural products, weakening global efforts to manage these resources more sustainably. And although China is one of the world’s biggest importers of palm oil — a major driver of tropical deforestation — the Chinese government charges import tariffs on environmentally certified palm oil, further undercutting domestic demand for its use.
Of course, China is not alone in promoting its own economic interests over those of other countries and their environmental health. This is a story that goes back to the colonial era and beyond, when European nations ruthlessly exploited resources and local populations from Africa, to South America, to India. More recently, Western corporations — such as Shell Oil in Nigeria, Union Carbide in India, and Texaco in Ecuador — have caused numerous environmental crises.
The difference with China is one of scale. With nearly one-fifth of the world’s population (1.35 billion people), a highly competitive business culture, little tolerance of criticism, and a stunning capacity to make decisive shifts in course, China is unmatched as a global force. No nation has ever changed the planet so rapidly, on such a large scale, and with such single-minded determination. It is difficult to find a corner of the developing world where China is not having a significant environmental impact.
The factors that might restrain a U.S. or European country in foreign resource-development projects — intense press criticism, or laws governing foreign business practices — are largely lacking in today’s China. For example, while U.S. companies are bound by the anti-bribery laws in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, there is no comparable legislation governing the conduct of Chinese business people and corporations. Europeans in Africa frequently complain about the scale of Chinese graft. “They go straight to the top officials and bribe them lavishly, and then nobody can stop them,” a Dutch forester in the Republic of Congo told me. “We used to offer small ‘gifts’ to many people, but now the money is all concentrated at the top and corruption is out of control.”
The Tekeze Dam in northern Ethiopia while under construction. The project, funded and constructed largely by Chinese companies, began operating in 2009. International Rivers/Flickr
According to a major World Bank analysis of nearly 3,000 projects, Chinese foreign investors and companies often predominate in poorer nations with weak environmental regulations and controls, causing those nations to become “pollution havens” for Chinese enterprises.
The magnitude of China’s international resource exploitation is only likely to increase. The Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is heavily capitalized and is moving rapidly to fund overseas projects with “streamlined” environmental and social safeguards. Alarmingly, last year the World Bank announced that it was softening its own environmental and social safeguards, in a move that was widely seen as an effort to remain competitive with the AIIB. As I argued recently, the AIIB and other Chinese development banks could force a “race to the bottom” among multilateral lenders — with potentially grave consequences for the global environment.
Over the last decade Chinese government ministries have released a series of “green papers” outlining lofty environmental and social guidelines for China’s overseas ventures and corporations. The Chinese government readily admits that compliance with its guidelines is poor, but accepts no blame for this. Instead, it insists that it has little control over its corporations and blames the host nations themselves for not controlling Chinese corporations more carefully.
The truth is that while China’s private firms enjoy significant autonomy from the Central Communist Party, China is among the most centrally controlled societies in the world. If China really wanted to reign in its freewheeling corporations, it could easily do so by making some strong official statements and visibly punishing a few extravagant sinners. It hasn’t done this for one simple reason: Despite their often-egregious environmental activities, China’s corporations operating overseas are enormously profitable.
Domestically, China’s environmental impact is also profound. In terms of climate change, for instance, in recent years China has blown past the United State as the world’s biggest carbon polluter — and now produces twice the greenhouse gas emissions of the U.S., as well as larger amounts of dangerous air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Yes, China is investing in new wind and solar technologies, but it is plowing far more cash into big hydropower, coal, and nuclear energy projects.
In addition to its monolithic Three Gorges Dam, the world’s biggest hydropower project, China is building or planning to build 20 mega-dams along its stretch of the Mekong River, which could have serious impacts on biodiversity, fisheries, and water users in downstream nations, such as Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
If China really wanted to reign in its freewheeling corporations, it could easily do so.
Many have lauded China’s incredible tree-planting spree, which began in 1978 and has reforested roughly 100,000 square miles, mostly in western China. Yes, those trees are storing carbon, helping to stabilize soils and reduce sediment runoff into streams, and producing wood for China’s domestic sawmills. But nearly all of the planted trees are monocultures of exotic species such as eucalyptus and aspen, which have little value as habitat for native wildlife. Further, in southern China, large expanses of biologically rich rainforests have been cleared for exotic rubber plantations.
China is paying increasing attention to its air, water, and soil pollution, which is among the worst in the world, especially in scores of cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Xingtai. But progress has been limited and large expanses of eastern and central China have become unhealthy places for people and biodiversity alike. China’s leaders and scientists acknowledge that its impressive biodiversity has suffered greatly.
As China’s environmental impact continues to grow domestically and internationally, the Trump administration — with its anti-environmental agenda and nationalist, inward-looking nature — has already pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. China and its overseas investment banks are leaping into the Pacific vacuum.
The Trump Administration seems barely cognizant of these pressing realities. And that leaves conservationists in a very tough bind. We never expected Trump to get elected, much less to support our views. But the weaknesses of the Trump administration could be leading to a broader U.S. decline that will hasten environmental degradation worldwide.
For me, the worst-case scenario plays out something like this: Two years ago, I was discussing with a researcher from the Wildlife Conservation Society in Cambodia whether the society should advise a German development bank on how to build a paved road through the heart of the Seima Forest, a haven for rare wildlife. He hated to do it, but he didn’t see much choice. “If we don’t help the Germans,” the scientist said, “a Chinese corporation will just come in and blast the road through anyway — and that would be an ecological disaster.”
dissident on Tue, 28th Mar 2017 5:41 pm
BS. The UK deforested Argentina, Canada, and many other regions during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Given China’s size and considering the size of the whole developed world including the colonial powers about 100 years ago, it is clear that China’s footprint is smaller.
Davy on Tue, 28th Mar 2017 6:06 pm
“Given China’s size and considering the size of the whole developed world including the colonial powers about 100 years ago, it is clear that China’s footprint is smaller.”
Dissident what planet are you on? Surely not planet earth you are totally into some kind of agenda crap.
onlooker on Tue, 28th Mar 2017 6:33 pm
I think surely Dissident means footprint per capita, because on the whole China is fast surpassing any other countries cumulative impact. Final in the coffin India and China modernizing. That is roughly 2 and half billion people
Midnight Oil on Tue, 28th Mar 2017 6:59 pm
Chinese will eat anything with legs, except for maybe a table.
They want what Americans have, the dream that can’t ever come true..but it looks good on paper. ALLRIGHT
Marimco, Munster, Manson and Mitchell
onlooker on Tue, 28th Mar 2017 7:05 pm
I heard they even make plastic into vegetables in China
makati1 on Tue, 28th Mar 2017 8:30 pm
China’s foot print is way smaller, Dissident. But you will never get the rabid American consumer locust to admit that. China is getting their resources by opening their wallet, not by the pint of a gun. And the U$ total pollution and ecology destruction is still Number One in the world by far.
Talley up the acreage that AMERICAN corporations are plundering …er… managing all over the world and it would be a small country. Tropical forests destroyed by American corporations to grow palm oil, raise cattle or other Capitalist Greed, certainly is significant, but totally ignored by the U$ Corporate owned MSM.
Americans are dumbed down in more ways than reading, writing, and arithmetic. They are dumbed down in world history and current events too. Not to mention financial corruption and rape. That is deliberate. The serfs need to be unable to think and see their chains. Again, the U$ is Number One in that are also.
makati1 on Tue, 28th Mar 2017 8:32 pm
Wish there was a way to change mistakes here. lol
Dooma on Tue, 28th Mar 2017 10:41 pm
To Davy and other American consumers. How much environmental damage do you think 2 atomic bombs, sweat shops for Gap, Nike etc, all the places you have bombed since WW11 like Vietnam have caused? What about the human misery caused by sanctions?
You have little to no memory of the crimes committed in the name of preserving the American way of life. Yeah China is a big target because they actually have money to buy things instead (as Mak says) of taking over countries and taking things and leaving people in misery. Money gained from selling cheap goods to the western world who cant get enough of these crappy products.
You really need to read “Confessions of an Economic Hit man” before you say anything.
Cloggie on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 1:56 am
China has formulated “the Chinese Dream”: a moderately prosperous society by 2021 and the building of a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious by 2049.
Not to demonize China, but it is obvious that the enormous rise of China will be the #1 geopolitical development of this century, that will dictate the rethinking of all the other major players. It is a matter of another decade or so until China will be the #1 super power on this planet. Vladimir Putin has long drawn his conclusions and is patiently waiting for the Europeans to come to their senses.
On a comical side note, now that the British have decided to leave the Great White European world, Britain is on the lookout for new allies and seems to have found one:
Turkey!
http://www.telegraaf.nl/buitenland/27895449/__Flirt_met_Turken__.html
http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2017/03/nick-de-bois-turkey-is-an-essential-post-brexit-partner-to-britain.html
This is a promising development because the British have a lot to offer to the Turks: basically all their big cities.
Unfortunately not all Brits are yet convinced that Islam is their “cup of tea”, but a little bit of cultural reeducation and the famous “stiff upper lip” as well as a portion of famous British humor could do wonders here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FeZorURoDE
The British created the largest empire in world history. Now the empire is taking over the British. Britain, the new Al-Andalus. Without a single shot fired. Chapeau!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJheODYpuEI
Anonymouse on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 2:09 am
Amerikan corporations, and ‘consumers’s (cant forget them now), have, wrecked — are wreaking ecosystems and biodiversity and have done unprecedented damage.
Fixed.
Skimming through this nonsense, one could substituent China with ‘america’. It would make for a far more honest and accurate statement than it does currently. I guess the author forget to mention the uS consumes (steals) ~ 30%, possibly more, of the planets entire resources, and its slovenly ‘consumers’ do damage all out of proportion to their numbers.
But no, its all …China…..!
Davy on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 5:08 am
“To Davy and other American consumers.”
Classic anti-American (Anglo/Australian) hypocritical response. DOOMA, when the article is an American centered article then you can ask me your intellectually lazy question. I don’t hide from American criticism and I generate plenty of it here and from someone who lives here. Your American experience is TV and the net. This article is about China let’s stick to the topic.
I talk about China often because there are dumbasses here that want to lessen China’s impact and shift the blame for China’s destructiveness to the US. China and Asia are now a big part of the planets destruction now because they are developing and with a high population. They are being added to the high consumption of the west but a west who is shrinking and in decline. If you want to play your stupid emotional game of fake environmental concern for America look at your Australia that is one of the worst.
The US is the target of 90% of the critical articles on peak oil dot com and most of the commenters here are Anti-American and this includes the Americans. This anti-Americanism goes with the territory and I am here too because I am upset with what is happening in America but I am not going to sit back and allow assholes like you try to tell me what is happening is all my faults. This is an extremist blog of intellectually gifted people but sidetracked by emotions of hatred, racism, and hypocrisy. We have many comments that are very stimulating then that productive thread gets tainted by the likes of you.
Davy on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 5:24 am
Let me fix it for you anonymouse:
Canada is one of the highest standard of living countries on earth. It got that way from trade and protection from its southern neighbor. It is complicit in its neighbor’s sins and as such an accomplice of equal criminality. These sins are the mutual exploitation of the planet and the promotion of a destructive way of life called the North American Dream.
Canada is populated by people who lack identity. They find their identity by pretending they got rich by squeaky clean means and blame most of the world’s problems on the US. This differentiates them by their anti-Americanism. Their ill-gotten riches are a story of a small country that is really just an American statelet. This makes Canada the most hypocritical country in the world who are per capita near the top of planet killers.
makati1 on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 6:01 am
What is happening in America is EVERY American’s fault. Lazy, asshole leeches who want to continue to live off of 25+% of the world’s resources while being 4% of its population. Greed and sloth describes the typical American today. And yes, you are ALL guilty. So, suffer the hellish fate that is coming to America, because it will be “yuge” and well deserved. lol
Sissyfuss on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 10:08 am
We are cancerous species and it is now China and India’s turn to promote the metastasization.We are no more guilty than termites devouring a church foundation. Enjoy the meal,could be your last one.
makati1 on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 6:05 pm
What, no comeback, Davy? Getting lazy? Or accepting fact? lol Americans are the grim reapers of earth’s ecosystems, not the Chinese.
Dooma on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 6:15 pm
Davy. I would not have posted anything if you didn’t prattle on about how bad China is all the time.
You cannot live in a massive glass house and nudge stones around inside but still throw them at full speed at other houses.
tk on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 6:21 pm
Surprised anyone?
China needs resources to produce crap
almost everyone depends on, to survive
AND
has to feed and supply it’s own population…
I’m sure this ends well …
GregT on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 7:02 pm
“It got that way from trade and protection from its southern neighbour.”
Protection from it’s southern neighbour Davy? I never thought of it that way before, but now that you mention it…….
Apneaman on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 7:13 pm
Slant eyed cancers, round eyed cancers, brown skinned cancers, white skinned cancers – what’s the difference?
The West may have been ruthless colonial cunts for centuries (like the Chinese never were), but you can’t blame the West for India and China’s retard levels of population. What’s the excuse for that? I mean you don’t need to be the richest country in the world to afford basic birth control. Only the very poorest and uneducated countries have that excuse, not China and India. It’s their tree and they are sitting in it. C’mon someone, let’s here a snappy comeback how their cock-A-roach breeding is somehow the fault of the white man. White man be guilty of plenty of shit but not their retard levels of over breeding. Maybe less dominate tribe/countries subconsciously over breed? Evolution’s way of helping them compete with the more dominate tribe. 250 years of industrialisation is not enough to flip that biological switch off. Methinks that if the West lost all it’s advantages/power and fell behind the new kids on the block we would see them start to breed like the good ole days when grandma popped out 10-12 little rug rats.
Davy on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 7:34 pm
Dooma, good come back, how old are you?
Davy on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 7:39 pm
Makati, say something worth a comeback. You don’t really say anything of substance just redundancies which is typical of old people.
makati1 on Wed, 29th Mar 2017 9:11 pm
Davy, that is your stock reply when there is no way to rebut my assertions. You can babble on for paragraphs when you want to spout your bullshit, but have no basis/facts to deny my take on the world except name calling, and putdowns. Find some POSITIVE facts that make my view wrong.(with references please.) Or shut the fuck up. LMAO
DerHundistlos on Thu, 30th Mar 2017 2:36 am
This is the complete account of what happened to me on January 16th, 2004. I think after reading it you’ll understand why I didn’t submit it before. I believed it to be too “out there” and would destroy my limited credibility, but now I’ve changed my mind and think it’s important to get everything in the public domain, no matter how bizarre.
It started with me waking up within my dream. I remember the time frame of my thought process. I still, no matter how futile, want to convince skeptics, although I know, deep down it’s a waste of time without any scientific proof. I guess I’m still trying to convince my former self, my old skeptical self before any of this Alien strangeness manifested in my life.
I woke up, I don’t know where I was but I was standing in front of what looked like a 3-D hologram of the Earth. Everything was pitch black apart from this glowing globe. I could only see half the sphere, the top part of the globe; it was about a meter wide with very realistic detail, I could see the major land masses covered with wisps of clouds. It was like looking down from a satellite’s viewpoint. I couldn’t see anything else, like a room or anything, just darkness.
I heard a deep voice from behind me, it was a male voice and in slow English it started to explain how this hologram globe worked, all I had to do was touch a continent or a country and information would appear detailing anything I wanted to know about that place. I didn’t feel scared, I felt quite calm but just a little tired, slightly dazed.
I put my hand forward and watched it pass through the clouds. This was incredible. The first country I decided to choose (seeing that it was in the news so much) was Iraq. All I did was think about it and the globe turned itself until Iraq was below my finger.
As I touched the graphic representation of Iraq it turned bright red and rose up above the neighboring countries. Immediately without any warning multiple images and data appeared. The images were in rounded boxes of variable sizes, showing detailed information about the country and the recent war.
Now, this is the hard bit to describe, but I could also feel the emotional collective of Iraq and it’s people, the pain they’ve inflicted and the pain they’ve suffered (I don’t know how to explain it but it was like tapping into some kind of energy field (flow). The voice said “this is the birth place of your civilization, now look at the state of it”.
While I was just trying to make sense of it, the globe moved until I was looking at America. I pressed on the USA, and again it went bright red and raised itself and I was hit by a wave of figures and information, so fast I couldn’t take it all in. I was shown ‘Sept 11’ and the subsequent decisions to go to war. I was still thinking about Iraq, trying to take it all in. The information/data was coming at me too fast to process. I’ve replicated some computer images to demonstrate the rate of information flow.
I have great difficulty thinking about what I saw next and recalling it fills me with dread.
I was shown a deep underground military base with seven circular levels, connected by a vertical shaft. On the seventh and largest level I was shown a cross section revealing humans working with gray type aliens and large praying mantis type aliens.
There were literary thousands of aliens; I saw a figure that seemed to imply around 14 000 aliens in this base. So if this is to be believed, not only do aliens exist, but they also seem very well established on Earth. The base was somewhere in a desert.
I laughed to myself, “oh great, so it’s true then and I’m now in conspiracy hell.” (Before I didn’t really buy that new world order conspiracy stuff) but that’s what I was shown. Again, who’s going to believe this?
Significantly, the male voice said, “We have tried to communicate with them, in the past, but they lie to us and try to use us, you kill what you do not understand, you humans are still so un-evolved.”
At this point I tried to argue, “Some of us are trying to evolve but we have to fight the ones that (for want of a better word) ‘aren’t so evolved’, not because we’re cruel but because they want to kill us!” The voice didn’t seem interested in having a debate.
With no real pattern of context, I was next shown American corporations, and how they won’t stop until they own whatever resources they can lay their hands on.
Again I felt the crimes, the pain and the collective creed and sadness of the culture. Capitalism out of control. (Interestingly I was shown a figure detailing how much energy the average American consumes). The rate of information coming at me was becoming too intense. The voice said to me “time is running out, do you now understand?”
I then pressed Canada to. Again readouts appeared. I was shown a fragmented society I could feel the collective culture. I was shown a UFO crash on the northern border with Alaska, northeast of the country. I was shown the Canadian government helping to ship the wreckage and aliens to America, then they were being taken to the under ground base I was shown earlier. I then thought about British Columbia. The voice goes “Why do you want to reveal us? As you can see humans, destroy what they can’t understand” I thought to myself “oh shit it can read my thoughts, this is crazy but it’s still A DREAM right!?!”
I thought I must try and get as much information as possible (I was amazed). I thought China could be interesting, again the hologram turned until I could see China.
I quickly pressed on China and was shown how their government perceives itself to be (as the voice described) “Divine”. Which I thought was a strange word to use. The voice behind me continued “They think that is why we are working with them”.
I was shown how they’re waiting for the west to fall (on its own accord) and then the Chinese will be the rightful leaders of the world. I was shown that there’s going to be in conflict with the world just for extra food stocks to supply its population. I was shown that they’re sitting on huge resources but they’re saving them. I could also feel and see the mega death potential of the nuclear missiles. I could once again feel or ‘tune in’ to the frustration of the people.
I felt depressed at this moment and hoped what I was shown was not true.
I thought of Europe and pressed Spain. I have a Spanish friend so thought any information I could get could be cross-referenced, plus I thought Spain would not be an obvious choice; my knowledge about Spain is limited at best…
Just by thinking about it, the globe hologram moved around from China to Spain. But, as I went to press Spain, my finger missed and I accidentally pressed the sea just off the coast of Spain. Immediately, a circle of rounded squares rose up from the ocean. Each square revealed a picture of an animal. The first box showed a sea bird, kind of like an eagle, the word extinct appeared next to it, this disappeared and I witnessed a sea lion followed by a fish. The words extinct were next to it; all in English.
As the fish was shown I thought about the fishing stocks, and again, at the mere thought about fish, high speed data flashed above the earth depicting (again too fast to read) facts and figures concerning the depleted fish resources. I was shown fishing boats pulling in huge amounts of fish, beginning with the coast of Spain then across the Atlantic sea and finally finishing with the whole world. All different types of countries, fishing the oceans, depleting resources.
The voice behind me spoke in an unemotional matter of fact way, “You see, they won’t stop until there’s nothing left. This is fact”. I weakly replied there must be something that can to be done, I mean, what about international treaties?
I stared at the destruction and the ‘knock on’ effect. Everything’s connected. One bit of the information I definitely recall depicted was Orcas (killer whales) off the coast of Canada starving because of the lack of salmon. This was happening all so fast.
I decided to go back to Spain, this time my finger found its target. Straight away, I could feel the collective conscience of the country. Every Living Life form is energy.
I was shown an image of what looked like 16th century Spanish soldiers meeting gray aliens and tall praying mantis looking aliens. The Spanish soldiers without warning pulled out their swords and began hacking the aliens apart. The voice commented on the scene of destruction “You see, you kill what you don’t understand, what you fear you destroy” (I was annoyed by the way the voice kept referring to me as a collective for the whole Human population)
I was then shown images and data which concluded that this incident lead to the rise of the Spanish inquisition. According to the voice many people were killed who were in contact with these so called demons. Again this is not something that I’d normally believe in, so I don’t believe it could have come from my sub conscious. Then again maybe I’m wrong, maybe the whole thing was merely a graphic representation of my sub conscious view of the planet.
The voice commanded “It’s time to go. Now do you understand?”
My last image I recall was of the globe pulling away from me and ‘seeing’ energy fields from all the country’s populations pushing against each other in a desire to control the planet, even though it will ultimately destroy it. I tell you, we paint a depressing picture from space.
Cloggie on Thu, 30th Mar 2017 3:34 am
The Lose Hound has been dreaming again but is begging for an exegesis: I was shown an image of what looked like 16th century Spanish soldiers meeting gray aliens and tall praying mantis looking aliens. The Spanish soldiers without warning pulled out their swords and began hacking the aliens apart.
Anti-semitism was rampant in those days in Spain.
The voice commented on the scene of destruction “You see, you kill what you don’t understand, what you fear you destroy” (I was annoyed by the way the voice kept referring to me as a collective for the whole Human population)
I was then shown images and data which concluded that this incident lead to the rise of the Spanish inquisition
About the true nature of the Spanish Inquisition:
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n1p-2_chalmers.html
It should be obvious to you now who these “aliens” from your dream really are.
America will soon be turned upside down and the “aliens” will be driven to the North-East and the Heartland will become the new Pale of Settlement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement
Cloggie on Thu, 30th Mar 2017 3:36 am
Rectification: the NE-USA will become the new Pale of Settlement.