Francisco Miraval
It seems that changes in weather patterns led polar bears to change their diet and now they eat dolphins. Those two animals seldom meet, but, according to experts, the warmer weather allows dolphins to swim north, reaching water they never reached before. Once there, they become dinner for hungry polar bears.
The bears use a very simple strategy: they just wait for dolphins to get to the surface to breath and they catch the dolphins. Bears carefully observe which holes in the ice dolphins use to get oxygen and, when the dolphins briefly leave the water, death is waiting for them.
According to the story, reporters noticed that not everybody like it about the new diet of the polar bears because both polar bears and dolphins are “cute” species generating a high level of sympathy among humans and, for that reason, we humans don’t want to know that a cute animal is eating another cute animal.
Now, it is clear that we humans are also living on this planet and, regardless of what or who is causing changes in the weather, if we accept those changes are happening, then we will also be affected. And in what ways our behavior is going to change at that time?
Let’s imagine, for example, that a group of people not similar to us decides to move from south to north (not unlike what the dolphins are doing now) looking for opportunities they can’t find in their original land, but that they can find in a new place thank to changes in economy, society, culture, technology, and climate.
Like the dolphins, those going “north” (there are several ways of understanding “north”) will mostly remain “under the water,” in the shadows, “under the radar”, or similar expressions to describe the situations many newcomers face.
And, like the dolphins, those persons will need from time to time to get to the surface to “breath” (to get services, education, or medical care.) What would happen to them once they make their presence known in their new land?
If climate change forces “cute” species to become mortal enemies, will we also lose our sympathy for other human beings to become their mortal enemies? Or, as it seems it is happening, are we going to be concerned only with the cases where those who are being “devoured” are cute?
A polar bear eating a sea is not news because it is seen as something natural and normal. Thousands of immigrants dying on their trek from south to north is almost not news anymore. Could it be we also assume is something natural and normal?
Obviously, we don’t need to wait for changes in the weather to turn into enemies of other human beings, regardless of how intelligent or desperate they might be. More than two millennia ago, Plautus said that “humans are the top predator of other humans.”
Or perhaps we should listen to Seneca and Hobbes who from different perspectives spoke about humans being sacred to other humans.