Burning Bunnies in Sweden

When I first saw the title of this article (Stockholm's Bunnies Burned to Keep Swedes Warm), I was amused and intrigued by it. But, upon reading the first sentence, I was shocked and extremely disturbed by what I learned. In Sweden, there is a lot of overpopulating of bunnies going on. The author of the article even described them as "the subway rats of the suburbs." The bunnies are getting in the way of almost everything. They're crowding parks, roads, and basically all greenery. So, the Swedes came up with a solution - and a pretty innovative one at that. They have animal control authorities on patrol who are instructed to shoot any bunny they see with a special rifle. Next, the remains of the bunnies are all taken and burned. But, it's not like they're burning bunnies just for fun. When they burn bunnies, they use them to create more energy for humans. According to me, their solution is both a good thing and a bad thing.

In a way, it is kind of like recycling, but on the other hand, they are sacrificing a living thing in order to help themselves which I think seems a bit selfish. My general thoughts about burning bunnies are that it is extremely cruel to the point of barbarity. Just to sustain themselves, they are killing an animal who inhabits Earth with us and lives along with us peacefully. What the bunnies are doing (eating all the grass, disturbing parks, and walking across roads unconcernedly) are purely natural qualities. Bunnies will be curious; it's expected. I also think that all this goes right back to things like global warming and how we're running out of Earth's resources. To be more general, it is all part of something we learned about in Social Studies - Human/Environment Interaction. How we treat the environment will eventually affect us, whether it's in a positive or negative way is up to us. Like they say, what goes around comes around and after hundreds of years and maybe even less, our actions are finally coming to hit us in the back.

Anyway, going back to the bunny burnings, I think that it's probably about 1/20 a good thing because of two reasons. Firstly, the bunnies are creating more energy for us and with what's happening to our world, that is definitely a good thing. We won't have enough energy unless we come up with solutions like using bunnies for energy. But still, killing living things is too selfish for me to count it as a good solution. It is also fixing the problem with there being too many bunnies in Sweden.

All in all, I really, really hope that they stop burning bunnies in Sweden and that no other place or person decides to do anything like that. Personally, I think it is absolutely horrible. For now, they may go on, but later, I'm sure they will realize that they made a mistake.

My experience of reading the article and writing this blog has opened my eyes even more than before. I've realized now that everything is linked together in some way. The world is made of tiny dominoes and when one falls down . . . well, let's just say that the domino effect is by all means true. Even my previous blog is related to this. All our technology makes us dumber in a way. We spend hours with our eyes glued to a T.V. or a computer screen like it's our lifeline and we never going outside for a dose of the real, natural world. Plus, we spend a lot less time thinking critically about global warming, depleting energy, and so much more because of those things. If we really put our minds to it, focus, and think hard, I fully believe that we can solve all these problems, one at a time. It's possible. Believe it.

Click here for article 1. Click here for article 2. (both of them are part of the same article, but I found them separately.)

-Starflower794