By Barnes Mawrie
“The craze for economic prosperity has taken precedence over the very survival of humanity itself. For too long mankind hasexploited Mother Nature beyond limit. Extraction of fossil fuel has brought about material well-being for many countries, but the use of it is causing a collateral damage on the planet.”
Watching on TV the flames and smoke engulfing the Mediterranean countries of Italy, Greece, Turkey, Algeria and Tunisia, some people say “it’s apocalypse time.” It is horrifying to see our planet turning into a tinder box and so susceptible to flames. Who could imagine that a place like Siberia with its freezing climate could be affected by bush fires. Beside the bush fires, other natural calamities like flash floods, landslides and volcanic eruptions are becoming frequent occurrences. The terrible floods that took place in parts of Europe and the on-going floods in China, Japan, India and other countries, have claimed a lot of lives and destroyed property worth billions of dollars. Climate scientists have predicted that worse times are ahead. Everyone agrees today that all these are man-made. These calamities are signs that Mother Nature is taking her revenge on humanity because we have mistreated her for too long.
The words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Actor and former Governor of California are true, who said “I’ve starred in a lot of science fiction movies, let me tell you something, climate change is not science fiction. This is a battle in the real world, it is impacting us right now.” Those who deny global warming and climate change, are either blind or arrogant. We witness day after day the adverse effect of these two natural phenomena.
How many Earth Summits and how many ecological conferences have been held for the past many decades, yet humanity seems never to have learnt the hard lesson. The craze for economic prosperity has taken precedence over the very survival of humanity itself. For too long mankind has exploited Mother Nature beyond limit. Extraction of fossil fuel has brought about material well-being for many countries, but the use of it is causing a collateral damage on the planet. The mining of coal for example, causes pollution in the atmosphere and the use of coal in thermal plants is responsible for the massive pollution of air due to the CO2 emission. As someone has rightly said “God has purposely hidden these minerals deep in the recess of the Earth because they are harmful to living species.” This is why the exploitation of these natural resources which appeared at first to be a great boon, has ultimately become a bane. Human beings unlike other living species are endowed with extra intelligence but unfortunately we are using it to gratify our greed and ambition. Human greed is so vicious that human beings are not satisfied with exploiting the Earth, but today they intend to exploit the Moon and other planets as well. Today there is already a race among powerful nations to colonize the outer worlds. It is evident that humans are not satisfied with destroying their own habitat but they are on a rampage to extend their destructive activities.
Climate change as we experience today, has become irreversible and all we can do is to slow down its impact through our responsible behaviour. As Leonardo Di Caprio has rightly said “climate change is real. It is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.” It took a little girl Greta Thunberg to awaken the adults to the reality of climate change. Perhaps because the adults are drunk with power and wealth and have become insensitive to the future of their posterity. Perhaps because we have become too ego-centric, self gratifying that we do not care for the well-being of our future generations. In the words of the former president of the US, Barrack Obama “we are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it.” Humanity is ingenuous, creative and resilient and whenever a crisis arises we have always found some kind of solution to it. Positively, today like never before, the whole world has come to acknowledge the reality of an ecological crisis we are in. All countries are decisive in finding solutions to climate change like the global agreement to cut down CO2 emission by having recourse to clean energy like solar and wind energy. Many countries are on a war footing to produce electric vehicles and to phase out fossil fuel automobiles. Most developed countries have already closed down thermal power and nuclear energy plants. These are right steps in the correct direction to save our planet. Although the efforts have come a bit late,
yet as they say “better late than never.”
The recent IPCC report on climate change comes with a great warning for humanity if we do not change our behaviours. One section of this report says “observed changes in the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere and biosphere provide unequivocal evidence of a world that has warmed. Over the past several decades, key indicators of the climate system are increasingly at levels unseen in centuries to millennia, and are changing at rates unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years.” Such a report should therefore awaken all of us to this grim reality of our planet. Ultimately we realize the futility of the so called “material prosperity” or “economic power” when we witness the very ground on which we stand (our planet) crumbling beneath our feet. The questions we need to ask ourselves would be: what for are we exploiting Mother Earth when in reality we are digging our own graves? For whom are we amassing wealth when our children and grand children would inherit from us a dilapidated Earth unfit to live in?
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