Fires and pandemic

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The world is being heated.

The warming increases the risk of infections transmitted from animals to humans. Malaria, the name of which has been forgotten by the "civilized" world, is threatening the Western world again. Insects and arthropods transmit new diseases to humans. Physicians start to see the diseases that they know from the books that they read in real life.

The world is being heated.

First, the seasons are getting weird. There is no longer spring or fall. There is suddenly winter or summer. But there is no human(ity) to understand this bittersweet warning; the heating is incrementally increasing.

The world is being heated.

Abnormal climate episodes are becoming a part of our lives. The huge boulevards built on dried up stream beds are submerged. Meteorologists warn "the ones who are shorter than 1.60 meters to not go out."

Similar to what we have done to the elders during the outbreak, we immediately confine the ones shorter than 1.60 meters to home; but the floods are still over our heads everywhere, from İstanbul to Rize.

The world is being heated.

Every drop of carbon dioxide we emit to the atmosphere is reflected on earth as development. As for development and progress, they lead to the destruction of nature by the cities where we live, like cancer. We witness the defeat of urban woods, forest lands and forests to concrete. And to the obstruction of air corridors by the buildings reaching high into the sky...

The world is being heated.

The pandemic that broke out in China's Wuhan, standing at the intersection of Yangtze river and the railway line, described as a development line in one corner of the warming world, spread all across the heated and developed world within three months by following the airlines.

The warming and developed Wuhan has offered SARS-CoV-2 to humanity as a legacy of neoliberal urbanization. The cities, going into the ins and outs of trees and forests by destroying them, are bringing the wild life and the domesticated human life closer together. The weapon of civilization is more powerful: Trees are surrendering to cities. But microbes are not as powerless as trees. With COVID-19 and similar diseases, they are taking revenge for the destruction of the natural life which they had been living for thousands of years in line with the principle of "mutual advantage".

The world is being heated.

We are the ones who are heating the world. More precisely, the transnational companies, which exploit us as well, are the ones heating it. But, be that a fire or pandemic, we pay the price for it all together.

As a matter of fact, it is not "all of us" who pay the price. The ones who heat the world, the ones who can heat the globe with the carbon dioxide that they emit to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels are relatively distant from the pandemic and fires, which are the consequences of the ecological destruction that they have brought about. The faraway islands where they can escape, the destinations distant from fires and pandemics promise them a heaven on the earth which they have turned into a hell.

As for us, we are burning, from Hisarönü to Turunç, from Manavgat to Hozat; we are losing our lives in the intensive care units of hospitals due to the diseases, the names of which we have recently heard.

The world is being heated.

As for the political power holders who refuse to fulfil any duty other than acting as the spokespersons of the companies that are heating the world, they - as in the case of Turkey - are just mere onlookers while our cows, dogs, houses and insects are burning to the ground.

As if they were not in power for many years, they do not even take the responsibility for our failure to have firefighting aircraft.

Just as they do not take the responsibility for the failure to produce the vaccines that eliminate the diseases...

Just as they "blame" the elders, children or the ones who do not wear face masks during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, they are now looking for new scapegoats so that they can put the blame for their own shortcomings in handling the fires on them.

They abandon trees, birds and humans to death just to be able to say "our state is strong" during fires and "we wrote history" during the pandemic.

There is no life for us unless they leave. (OE/KÖ/SD)