Why shouldn’t I aspire to own expensive cars and new gadgets?
Every time you purchase an updated model, the old ones go to the dump. Your new clothes come with packaging of plastic. With every new computer and mobile, e-waste increases. For everything new added, environment is degraded.
Think about this when you make your next choice
But development is necessary
Of course it is, but at what cost? ‘Development’ can truly help us develop when it is sustainable and when it takes into account people at all levels of society. If setting up an industry translates into thousands of people being forced out of their homes it is not a reasonable proposition, is it?
What can I do alone?
You are the most difficult person to convince. If you can, rest assured others will follow. And what you can do will take you by surprise too. Never burn the garbage of your house. Take a cloth bag when you go shopping. Make a kitchen
garden. Take baby steps and you will soon be fit to leap frog.
The system does not work!
Because you don’t too! As a citizen you have been entrusted with duties in the constitution, do you do them? Most of us
do not even know them. Tools like Right To Information (RTI), welfare schemes, are unused because of lack of awareness and will power. A lot of things are possible by operating within the given system. Make a habit to file RTI every time you feel an injustice is being done. Know all the schemes of government for your area and give feedback. System works, and sometimes if it doesn’t, then you make it work. But for that, involvement is a pre-requisite
I do my bit by switching off the lights
Great! But do you end your sentence with a comma or a full stop? While we appreciate what you do, we also expect more than the routine stuff from you. Don’t say you have done enough, but ask what more can I do? You can harvest rainwater
in your area, demand a green school programme in your school, segregate your waste and have a compost, use public transport, never allow a polluting factory to come up in your area. So switch off that light and go out to do more.
India has other more pressing issues to tackle than environment?
In fact just start a discussion on any issue , and the conclusion you draw will essentially be about environment. Talk of economy growth and you will end up talking about monsoon failure and climate change. Talk about civic issues of cities and you will discuss depleting water table and drying rivers. Talk about nuclear science or world politics , It will all boil down to debates on environment . Human and all their activities are linked to nature . And if you don’t see the link now , work hard till you do!!.
I don’t have the time!
But you don’t need to take out any extra time. It is all about making the right ‘choices’. When you have to go to work or to school, choose a bus or a carpool over your car. When you go out for picnic with family, choose a park or a zoo instead of a mall. When you go out shopping for grocery, choose vegetables from a street vendor instead of the food mart. So just make a choice favouring your environment!
Nothing ever changes
Wake up! And take note. Things are changing, and changing too fast for nature to cope. There is evidence that oceans’
temperatures are at a 130 year high, the summers are more severe, forest fire is most intense, species are getting extinct at the rate of 10 every year, groundwater level is falling, fossil fuel stocks are depleting. Neither life, nor lifestyle
can continue as it is. It will change because it will have to. And the greenest would be the fittest.
