By H H Mohrmen
What is unique about this Global Climate Strike is that it all started with a fifteen year old girl who after educating herself about the threat of the climate change to the World, decided to initially strike all alone in front of the Swedish Parliament. She started what she called ‘School Strike for Climate,’ and did not attend school every Friday of the week and called it Friday for the Future. Like a seed it started from just one girl and later her friends and others joined her in the school strike for climate until now it has become a global strike for climate. This has catapulted the young woman with Asperger’s syndrome to become very famous.
She no doubt has her fair share of detractors because fame has also made her vulnerable to being criticised. There are those who claim that she has been used by others and that her rightful place is in school. Dissenting voices say, “Greta Thunberg should be in the classroom and not in the streets.” We may remind her critics and those climate change deniers that you can say the same thing to Malala when she rebelled against the Taliban diktat prohibiting girls and young women in Pakistan from pursuing education. After the global success of Climate Strike, detractors who mocked Greta Thunberg about her looks and her diagnoses are now backtracking. The success of the climate strike not only makes us hopeful of being able to halt and ameliorate climate change, but it should also make us, elders ask many questions which we should have asked ourselves a long time ago.
How do we help stop climate change? The stories of Greta Thunberg and Malala bear witness to the fact that one girl can make a difference or that all it takes is one young woman to make a difference. It tells us that change has to start from each and every one of us. We all have a role to play. Here the question is what kind of future are we going to provide the young people? Is it enough to just give them food, shelter and education? The one message that the climate strike gives us is that young people are fed up, and are collectively saying enough is enough. What is the point of going to school when their future and their very existence is uncertain?
The second message that is coming from the youth led climate strike is that, we have failed our young people; we, each one of us the elders of the society have let them down. From politicians, to bureaucrats, businessmen and women and men and women in all walks of life should bow our heads in shame, when young people have to strike instead of going to school. The message that is loud and clear is that you cannot take young people for granted anymore. What can we do? Or how can we be of help?
Our state government has claimed that it has planted one million trees this last summer. We have heard of one citizen one tree approach and ‘adopt a tree’ idea too. These are all brilliant ideas which will no doubt contribute to the efforts to help slow down climate change, but what should we do at the individual level?
We can start by respecting nature and the world around us. I was fascinated by the story of noble laureate Albert Schweitzer who was influenced by Buddha and spent the last days of his life at Lambarene, Gabon in Africa. Schweitzer wrote an autobiography and named it Reverence for Life and to me this is the answer to the vexed problem that we are confronting now. Life with reverence for all creation is life worth living and is one way to fight climate crisis.
Albert Schweitzer further explained “Reverence for Life” by saying that “Ethics is nothing other than Reverence for Life. Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting and enhancing life, and to destroy, to harm or to hinder life is evil.” Living in harmony with the Earth and reverence for all life is one way to fight the crisis that we are facing now.
A friend Rev Dr Marlin Lavanhar who visited the Khasi and Jaiñtia hills after he had visited the Dalai Lama at the Dharamshala shared with us a very brief but profound story. He was a young American then and was on his whirlwind tour around the world. While he was at the Dharamsala he was tasked to clean the floor of a room. One morning while he was sweeping the floor, a monk came to him and told him to be gentle and sweep slowly. Initially he was perplexed and could not understand why the monk was asking him to do so. Later it dawned on him that this is because there are small insects on the floor which are invisible to one’s eye and which might get harmed if the floor was swept callously. This story teaches me one thing and that is about awareness or to be aware of one’s own life and the lives of those around us. Many a times we are not mindful of what we are doing and have no time to think of what we are doing! We do everything just so we can finish the task.
Reverence for life means living with awareness of what is going on around us and acting as the situation demands. For instance while eating, do we waste food or how much food do we waste? What impact will this have on the environment? While eating in a restaurant or while walking in the streets on a hot day, we drink water from plastic bottles, not aware of the impact of plastic bottles on the environment. Or using plastics without considering its impact on the environment are few examples of living without being aware that our action is impacting the environment.
Living with awareness of what is going on around us will help make the world a better place to live in than living in denial. While driving our SUVs, are we aware that our vehicles which guzzle gasoline like a hose pipe also emits carbon dioxide which contributes to the increase of global temperature? The point is each and every one of us have to sacrifice many things to help stop climate change.
There is another interesting story which shows how religious organisations can help bring awareness on the threat of climate change to the earth and also inculcating the habit of caring for the environment amongst the member of the church. Few months back I came across this story about a Unitarian service at the Upper Chapel in Sheffield which was led by Andy Phillips the minister of the church. The uniqueness of this worship service is that at the beginning of the service the minister invites the congregants who are willing and able, to come forward and water the potted plants that he placed in front of the altar and calling it “Tending the Earth.”
The minister said that the idea for ‘Tending the Earth’ arose from the need to keep our current planetary climate emergency, and specifically our intention to act, nearer the front of our minds, thus recognising our tendency to otherwise want to revert to ‘business as usual’ type of behaviour. He also said that however a plant, the watering of which requires trust in life’s process (as nothing much happens visibly immediately upon watering), seems more appropriate symbol for this critical issue. (The Inquirer/7962/4 May 2019)
The last story aptly describes the situation that we are in today. We know climate change is imminent and yet we are hopeful that the strike led by the young people the rightful heir of the future will help bring a change of hearts and change of minds especially amongst the many climate change denying leaders of the world. The other message of the Global Climate Strike is that it is about time that we listen to young citizens of the world.