Occasionally grace comes as an unexpected experience, turn of fate, good word, even a glance. The most recent arrival of grace for me was watching the documentary My Octopus Teacher, then watching it again. It was not grace directed at me but received by diver and filmmaker Craig Foster, who let its nectar flow to us all. As grace is rare, My Octopus Teacher is doubly so.

We are in the midst of the Sixth Extinction event, which, if completed, would entail losing 50 to 75 percent of all species within the century. Yet most media and politicians observe a resounding silence about this imminent, unthinkable catastrophe. Which begs a question. Do people actually believe that humanity can cause a mass extinction and there will be no consequences?

Another pandemic is sweeping the globe. Under the radar of much of the public, there’s been a steady uptick in military investments worldwide in the last decade. Even as the existential threats of mass extinction and climate upheaval are gathering intensity and becoming increasingly inescapable, the world’s superpowers and many other nation-states, in alignment with the corporate-industrial sector, are busy adding insult to injury. Some highlights: In 2019, 1,917 billion dollars were poured into global military expenditures, the highest figure since 1988 Fifteen nations account for over 80 percent: the US, China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Italy, Australia, Canada, and Israel

Disease is natural and unavoidable. Today’s global order, however, produces epidemiological environments that favor the accelerated spread of both infectious and chronic disease. The current pandemic is a case in point. Rather than focusing on it narrowly, let us look into the mirror of COVID-19. It reflects defaunation Big wild animals, freshwater animals, amphibians and reptiles, marine animals, all manner of birds, insects, the anonymous of the tropics, and others are experiencing species extinctions, population drops, and range contractions. The holocaust of animals leaves behind “empty world syndrome.”