Any living being is subject to death. From the tiniest of creatures to the mammoth---none can avoid the inevitable mortality. Some of the living organisms survive for a few days to a few weeks. Mosquitoes and sugar ants belong to this category. The male of mosquitoes die shortly after mating, so do the males of sugar ants. But female mosquitoes live about two to six weeks on an average. They need blood meals to produce eggs. The longevity of a few of their species can span up to a few months under ideal conditions and some other can hibernate through the winter.
Yet they are not the shortest-living creature on this planet. That credit goes to the adult female American sand-burrowing mayfly. It lives for less than five minutes. The entire stage of adulthood is dedicated to finding a mate, reproducing and laying eggs. It has no functional mouth and digestive system.
On the other hand, the longest-living species is glass sponge found in deep ocean waters of Antarctica. Among the common creatures, tortoise lives for an extraordinary long time. Giant tortoises are known for 150 plus lifespan. Longevity, however, does not depend on size and body weight. If that would be the case, elephants in the wild would have a longer lifespan than that of human beings.
In this context, it should be noted that once human beings on an average had a shorter longevity than elephant. But now the average longevity of human kind is slightly higher than that of elephant. If elephants live for 70 years, the average life expectancy of the people in Bangladesh is 74-75 years. No other animal has been able to systematically improve longevity like human beings. Before 1950, the life expectancy of people in this part of the world was 35 which increased to 37-38 in the 1950s. So, here is a phenomenal leap for the people here.
Monaco boasts the longest life expectancy at 86.73 years for its people followed by San Marino at 86.03, Hong Kong at 85.9 and Japan at 85.15. Now does longer longevity of a people tell a story? It indeed does. Improved lifestyle including food habit, care for physical fitness and a sound healthcare system backed up by financial solvency goes into the making of a healthy nation. But then there is yet another important factor involving the location with its enabling environment. Monaco is an outstanding example of this.
Not all places or countries are gifted with Nature's generosity. Urbanisation and industrialisation at a breakneck pace has compromised many places' and countries' living conditions. Poverty, migration from villages to urban centres have strained the utility services as well as created filthy slums in big cities in many countries. The air pollution level has reached a critical point where life is cut short. Even if the natural setting was favourable for living a decent life, human intervention has only led to deterioration of living conditions.
Although life expectancy has gone up, it has happened at the cost of pristine Nature. The effect of climate change has been so telling that it has radically upset environment and ecology. Heatwaves in Europe and natural calamities like the recent unprecedented glacial collapse on the Nepal-Tibet border present an ample evidence of what nations across the world can expect in the days to come.
Overexploitation of Nature's bounties in order to raise the living standard is to blame for this. The fact is life has become more complicated with the fuelling of consumerism. Life could be led decently without many of the consumer goods. There has been a race for comfort and luxury. Unhealthy competition for making money and spending it on needless consumer goods has created an artificial society. Socio-economic disparities are widening. The poor are deprived of their basic needs for survival.
Thus overexploitation of resources has invited Nature's backlashes in the form of calamities. The plus sides of life are getting negated by the rising incidence of natural calamities. Longer lifespan now confronts unprecedented challenges origination from human's own action. It is time to rein in consumerism and rivalries between nations. There is no point spending staggering sums either on comfort or luxury and mass-killing arsenals. Life can be better off without such expenditures. Humanity has achieved unimaginable success in science and technology only to lose on its Achilles' heel. This is unacceptable.
