When I was at high school in the early 1970's, the main topic of environmental concern was the atom bomb. It seemed politics and war dominated the socio-economic landscape with the fear of human annihilation from weapons of mass destruction. Today, while the Alliance still go on about atom bomb threats under the guise of terrorist activity, the land on which these threats are alleged to be to and from, is slowly being contaminated and is sinking.  This didn't occur to me until I watched the 2007 Global Climate Change Animation production by high school student Jose Tapia, as listed on C4 Earth, which very sadly reminded me of fish.
In the early 1990's I proudly owned a fish tank and in that tank lived baby Cichlids, a Catfish and an orange fish that I thought was a Cichlid, but wasn't. I'd always wanted a fish tank in my dining room since falling in love with one in the dentist surgery waiting room and in the local Chinese Restaurant I frequented.   Waiting for my food to be served, I'd watch the peaceful belly dancing of the bubble mouthing fish while my partner probably sat silently wondering why he bothered leaving the house - but this is another story.  I found watching domesticated fish so relaxing that I wanted them in my home. So one day, I grabbed the opportunity to swap my big fat old camcorder with a friend in exchange for his hippy multi-coloured 4 by 4 fish tank and with enthusiasm my partner organised the water, air filter, ground pebbles and plants of the world that our fish were going to play, eat, sleep, reproduce and deficate in.  
As Jose's animation was reminding me, humans have done a pretty poor job of looking after the environment they live in. This feeling of doing a poor job immediately led my thoughts to the poor job I did of looking after my fish. My poor management of my fishes lives came about because I wasn't aware of how toxic defication can be in the small world they lived in. I loved my fish so much I overfed them despite the warning on the label that said 'do not overfeed Cichlids'. They gobbled up the food so I thought it was OK to keep on upsizing them: And upsize they did, for Cichlids have the capability to grow very quickly and very big. The bigger and fatter they grew, the more their water needed changing in order to keep the ph levels at a level the fish could breathe in. I didn't realise their environment was becoming toxic until I noticed my poor fish had decided to give space a chance.  One by one my massive Cichlids were jumping out of the tank, smacking the dining room floor and wrything to avoid air suffocation.  I was scared.  I'd never seen mass fish suicide before and it upset me that something was wrong and I didn't know what it was; despite suspecting that I was probably at fault for not changing the water enough.  But this story isn't all about suicidal Cichlids, its about the orange fish. The little orange fish, that no matter how much food I put in the tank, it never grew any bigger.  No matter how much the ph level changed, or how much the Cichlids contaminated it's home, it swam on. It was early one morning, when I was trying to save a magnificent blue black Cichlid from dying, I noticed the orange fish was trying to save the others waiting for their turn to jump into space. Was it my imagination or had Orange just become aware of me because she kept looking beyond the glass, frantically flapping her fins at me then at them as if to try and stop them from jumping out of the tank. She was probably bubbling 'don't go out there or you'll die", but what options did they have? I plopped the beautiful fat blue black Cichlid back into the water and immediately it jumped out again. This one wanted to follow the leader and I know it sounds weird but I felt that I had just connected with that little orange fish who was trying to save its family.  When it glanced fearfully out through the glass, it was like Orange knew something was out there that wasn't helpful to fish, and strange as it may seem, this sense of connection made me feel like a God. It was my fault. I had let the fish get bigger and bigger and no matter how many times I cleaned the tank, the defication from the fish was more than the small tank could bear. They really needed a bigger home, but just like God, the home they had was all I had to offer. 
After the Cichlids toilet flushing funerals, Orange and I had a little stare at eachother.  Orange was surviving my inexperience so well that my partner bought it some company. They all loved my ph level carers comfort zone so much that within a couple weeks both Orange and a younger orange had nested lots of tiny white eggs.  So Orange was a she and she was having a hell of a time with the younger mother who was acting aggressively towards her whenever Orange swam near her eggs. This aggression along with the male trying to eat the female eggs had Orange flapping her fins at me again.  As she was fighting to protect her eggs she would look at me, watching the crisis inside of the tank, as if asking for my help. I felt she was connecting with her God and this God felt the weight of  judgment day approaching. I felt she was looking for her God to protect her. But I, as a human God, was inexperienced and on reflection, the decisions I made were not in her best interest, despite my good intentions.  In the end Orange and her unhatched eggs died and it was all my fault because my ignorance and God like inexperience ended her world.  All she wanted to do was survive and reproduce her species.  She trusted me, her God, and I didn't save her or the others for that matter.   After her death, after all their deaths, I stored away the fishtank.  I couldn't bare to not look after fish anymore.  After humanity's death, do you think God will feel guilty and store away the earth? 
Years later the fish tank was exchanged yet again and became a hot house for weeds.  The tank still existed, but for a different purpose.  Is this what humans want their home to be used for after their death, a breeding ground for weeds?  It seems to me that if we want to keep our home in good condition, we certainly need to do something about it yesterday. 
Yesterday, the fragility of humanity was intimately understood because of the baby boom that happened after the destitution of the two World Wars.  Yet, whatever happened to the wisdom of the ages because some of us still don't get it.  In some civilisations, the baby boom continues, yet globally so do does political and economic war.  Only people are not jumping off the earth into space to commit suicide or are they?  Melting polar ice caps, earthquakes and tsunami's are telling us quite clearly that the outcomes are fouling up our fish tank.  What options do we have?
As I watched Jose's fine annimation, I found myself wondering if humans are as dependent on Godlike forces as much as the Cichlids were.  My Cichlids consumed and deficated just because life simply was provided by the heavens.  When they found their skins burning from toxic living conditions, the Cichlids turned to the heavens for salvation and that salvation was air.  Is this what we are doing to ourselves in this age of the fish? Looking towards the heavens for the answers about our contaminated waters?  Surely we are more intellegent than that.  Surely we can do something about reversing the contamination ourselves?
When I was at school in the 1970's humans were hell bent on killing eachother.  Thirty years on and it seems like nothing much has changed other than the way we categorise our killing activities.  I can still see the fear in the eyes of  that vulnerable and fragile orange fish, and I look and I listen to the ongoing saga of  humanities environmental suicide, feeling the weight of my daughters future upon me.  Jose's shares her common future and strangely this thought provokes me to think about my God like status over fish.
The real victim in this story belongs to the Catfish. From beginning to end this shy and peaceful fish kept on working, eating up the mess on the floor of the tank no matter how toxic the conditions. The little Catfish cleaned up alone and probably could have done with some help.  It worked so hard at cleaning up the mess, that it became the mess and was forgotten until the tank was drained of water and it's freedom became the pipe that led away from the kitchen sink.   © 2011 The Shy Editor 

It's weird to think that something as beautiful and life giving as water is also deadly and destructive. Yet this is water today as it tsunami's from New Zealand in the far south through Australia and into China and Japan. The loss of life may be just the beginning of massive changes happening just in time for the doom and gloom predictions of 2012 that are supposed to represent the end of civilisations as we know them. There are those who are preaching that civilisation will not end, rather it will transcend into something more spiritual and enlightening.  Irrespective of what your spiritual or non spiritual beliefs are, one thing is for certain, the earth is healing. For whatever reason, be it an overdose of carbon products in the atmosphere, oil drilling holes deep within the core of the earth  or an alien force beyond our comprehension; what seems to be happening is a warning. Get your act together and simplify your life. Tell your mother you love her, Give your father a hug, be nice to your wife, husband, lovers and more importantly love and protect your kids.  Failing this, at least try to review your priorities this year and bring the future just that little bit closer to your heartland. For what if the next decade is about humanity managing the earths need to heal itself from our termite and white ant activities of the past fifty years.  It was popular in the sixties and seventies to think about the end of the world in terms of atom bombs going off everywhere. Today, it isn't the bomb we are frightened of;  apart from the threat of the nuclear electricity feeding plants of Japan being corrupted enough to want to explode;  but water.  Earthquakes and water, torrents and torrents of freezing cold salty water and its collations of  garbage, debris and dead mammals, smashing through our cities, crushing our mechanical and electrical goods  as if they are toys!  God forbid.
I always prided myself on choosing safe houses in live in, near enough to the ocean so I could enjoy the beach, but far enough away from the threat of drowning. Always aiming for the top of a cliff  instead of at the bottom, just so the threat of flooding water couldn't drown me in my sleep or take away my fragile house.  Today, for reasons of insanity I'm sure, I find myself living on the dusty plains, hours away from a decent or indecent breath of salty sea  air.  Yet, I still experienced the floods that came within a hairs breath away from my house and the experience wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  This was because I'd already gone through a huge period of grief and loss and only weeks before the Queensland floods I'd accepted life over the protection of material goods. That isn't to say I didn't feel a little drama of concern the night before the floods were due to happen. How civilised could a flood be that it let us know it was coming. If the local water authority had done its job and let a little water out of the local dams when it reached 65% capacity, the need to drown its local community with a sudden release of dam water after weeks of torrential rain, wouldn't have happened.  But happen it did at 2am in the morning and I was sound asleep. I would have drown in my bed if the water had got as far as the huge swimming pool octopus I'd filled with air just incase we all needed a life bouy to hang onto to float away into the unknown ravages of whatever.  In my street, we were all one of the lucky ones.  The people of Grantham met the torrential rivers of water raging through their town with loss of human life, loss of cattle farms, loss of domestic pets and wild life, crushed homes and end of a small town economy and may the lord forgive the insurance companies who are still refusing to pay out, but considering a class action against the government who, after years and years of drought, decided to leave the dams full - just incase it didn't rain again after the downpour.  And I do understand the need for fresh water after cleansing my highly sensitive skin raw, during Queenslands driest summers,  with the gritty mineral remains of Lockear Valley reservoir deposits.  The Brisbane floods all over and done with and Cairns gets a massive cyclone that floods Far North inland Queensland, then angelic and peaceful Christchurch people are New Zealand victims of a low lying violent earthquake that drenches torn up streets with debris filled, sewage stenched sea water.  Then suddenly its China people who are being were crushed by another violent earthquake then so quickly forgotten, like the devastated town of Tully in Far North Queensland, as Japan takes centre media stage with the worst tsunami I have ever had the misfortune of witnessing human pain on TV, since the Indian Ocean tsunami a few years ago that is, and the Brazil earthquake and the fall of Greece last year. 
So where to from here?
Which way is this belt of environmental change going to go and who will it hurt next?
My guess is its going straight up to heaven if we're not careful, but even if we are careful I'm not sure what we can do about yesterdays capitalism now, if it is our fault for screwing up the earth with all of our drilling and digging and use of dead matter to keep us in pollution.  
Today, Scientists are being quoted as saying its not our fault and natural disasters happen.  Ah well, all's well that ends well then.  For now that we know this we won't have to change anything and we can get right back on with the digging and the drilling and chucking the rubbish into the bin. Once all of this earth muck and the death its caused has been washed away with clean water and the nightmare cannot be seen anymore. 
Who was it that said that life is but a dream?  They obviously hadn't experienced an earthquake or tsunami.   God rest their souls.    © Chris Tyne, 2011.