Pesan Bumi Pada Hari Bumi

Pesan Bumi Pada Hari Bumi 

Andaikan bukan lima milyar manusia menghuni  bumi, melainkan  
lima  milyar harimau; tidak  ada  jarak seratus meter pun di Pulau Jawa tanpa anda bertemu seekor  harimau.  Apa anda  tidak  akan  mengalamitrauma/frustrasi dihantui begitu banyak harimau? 

Bagi umat bumi yang beruntung tidak dibudidayakan, melihat manusia ibarat melihat harimau yang  lebih harimau  daripada harimau yang sebenarnya;  karena “manusia  harimau” ini tidak puas  memakan  daging
saja,  melainkan  juga hasil  tumbuh-tumbuhan,  ya buah,  daun, bunga, kayu bahkan juga bahan  bakar, logam, plastik, semen, beton dan lain-lain lagi. 

Bayangkan,  untuk memenuhi kebutuhan  lima  milyar “manusia harimau” itu, betapa banyak makhluk  bumi harus  dibudidayakan  (alias   dicalon-korbankan), diburu,  ditembak, dijerat,  dijaring,  dipancing,
dibabat,  digergaji,…. Perut bumi pun dibor  dan diledakkan.  Dan  pengotorannya  tidak   tanggung-tanggung  mencemari  tanah,  sungai,  laut,  udara bahkan  menyebabkan  hujan asam,  merusak  lapisan
ozon diudara dan meningkatkan suhu bumi. 

Jika dibiarkan, dalam tahun 2025 menurut  ramalan, umat manusia akan mencapai jumlah 8,5 milyar. Naik sekitar 3,5 milyar dalam 35 tahun menuju malapeta­ka dimana bumi berikut umat insan akan meratap dan
berkabung. 

Sebaliknya,  andaikan  bukan  kenaikan   melainkan penurunan   3,5  milyar jumlah penduduk  itu  bisa diwujudkan, bumi dan umat insan akan berseri. Begitulah pesan bumi. 

Sadar akan “menghamanya” umat manusia, di  Indonesia, terutama dikota-kota besar yang padat  penduduk,  pasangan-pasangan subur sibuk  ber-KB  untuk menurunkan jumlah populasi sampai serendah-rendahnya.  Memang  lebih baik,  daripada  menurunkannya melalui  peperangan  atau  membiarkan  orang-orang mati konyol melalui kelaparan atau penyakit.   “Satu  anak  saja demi masa  depan  tanpa  polusi, tanpa kemacetan  lalu-lintas, tanpa  pengangguran, tanpa  kemiskinan,  tanpa  harus  hidup  berhimpit dalam kampung kumuh/rumah susun, tanpa transmigrasi,  tanpa  penggusuran,  tanpa  cemas  kehamilan, tanpa pengguguran,…”   

Begitulah  semboyan mereka. Semoga menjadi kenyataan.                                         

Kompas, 29 April 1990.

Message of Our Earth
On Earth’s Day

Imagine not just 5 billion human beings as it is at this time, but 5 billion tigers inhabit the earth. There will be no place of a hundred meters far that you wont meet, see a tiger. Wouldn’t you become alarmed, stressed, frustrated, hunted, haunted by so many tigers?

Wild animals, creatures that are not tamed, domesticated, seeing man is almost like seeing a tiger, who’s more ferocious than real tigers are, for “man-tigers” aren’t content to eat, consume just meat for food, but also vegetables and fruits, and wood, and oil, and metal, and plastic, boulders, cement, concrete, …

Calculate how many millions of cows, sheep, chicken, tons of fish, corn, oil, wood, metal, … each year is needed to feed, provide for a 5 billion hungry world population and the mountains of waste it leaves that will pollute the streams, the air, the earth and cause the ozone-layer in the sky to deteriorate and the earth temperature to rise. Thus said The Earth.

According to prediction – then in 1990 when I wrote this -, in the year 2025 the world population would rise to 8,5 billion, an increase of about 3,5 billion within 35 years. Some one comments that the world population since the birth of man through – not just 35 years – but perhaps millions of years, only recently, just reached one billion. Wouldn’t it be disastrous for the earth including all its inhabitants with such a huge population?

On the contrary, suppose man could achieve a decrease of 3,5 billion instead, I, the Earth and all its citizens would rejoice.

That’s Earth’s message.

Conscious of the harm a world population that large would inflict, especially in the big and densely populated cities in Indonesia, a tight family program is campaigned aiming a decline in its population: a one-child family planning policy towards a better, happy world without pollution, traffic jams, unemployment, poverty, overcrowded slums, flats, without transmigration, without fear of conception, without abortion, …; for man, all Earth’s inhabitants and Nature alike.

Sure, it’s better than lowering, reducing them by poverty, neglect, starvation, war, decease or illnesses comments Pak Arif.

I pray, hope, wish so.

From Kompas, April 29, 1990

May 2010