蜜芽传媒

Good morning.

Yesterday鈥檚 Armistice Day commemorations were marked by the flowering of millions of red poppies on lapels and wreaths across the nation.

Recently I鈥檝e been haunted by images of this delicate flower growing in profusion among the trenches, in sterile landscapes shattered by shells and muddied with blood. I鈥檝e been reflecting on the poppy as a symbol not only of suffering humanity but also of nature鈥檚 struggle to survive amidst the destruction wrought by humankind. Let me explain what prompted these thoughts.

In 2014, a supermarket chain partnered with the Royal British Legion to produce its Christmas television advertisement. This was a beautifully filmed depiction of the famous Christmas truce in 1914, when British and German soldiers emerged from the trenches to play football together. Some praised the advertisement for its courage and originality, while others condemned it for sanitising the grotesque reality of trench warfare.

This year, another supermarket chain has produced a controversial television commercial for its Christmas campaign, but this time the advertisement has been banned. Its use of footage originally created for an environmental campaigning organisation is deemed to have breached rules about political advertising. It shows a touching cartoon of a little girl and a baby orangutan whose habitat has been destroyed by palm oil plantations. The ravaged forests in the film made me think of scenes of desolation also associated with war.

In the biblical story of Cain鈥檚 killing of his brother Abel, the Lord tells Cain: 鈥淵our brother鈥檚 blood cries out to me from the ground.鈥� I see those red poppies blooming in Flanders fields as the cry of Abel鈥檚 blood, echoing across the ages. From the story of Cain and Abel to the battlefields of Syria and Yemen the fratricide continues unabated, and the environment is always one of the casualties of wars that are now fought on an industrialised scale.

I believe it is time to come out from our trenches, out from behind our borders and barricades, to seek one another across the blasted landscapes of our threatened planet to work together for a more sustainable future. The urgent call to defend endangered species and their habitats is, for me, a message that transcends politics.

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