Today is the World Environment Day. Well, yet another environment day because it has been a few decades since we have been shouting environment-environment even as temperatures rise, monsoons go astray and catastrophes with fanciful names keep striking mankind, year after year.
With one trend, though. Their frequency is rising. So things have hardly changed. Yes, there is more awareness about the threat environment degradation is posing to mankind. Yes, there are events being organised to promote environment consciousness. And yes, more and more people are talking about their concern for environment. But is anybody listeningIJ This perhaps is the biggest issue.
There are distinct lobbies. From green technologists, to green crusaders to green businessmen. But the objective still eludes as global warming continues to increase and the warning is loud and clear — the efforts are too little and much more is needed. We are experiencing a planetary emergency with the fever of the earth continuously rising. Ambient air quality tells that the suspended particulate matter is reaching danger levels in more and more cities. The groundwater is receding and is reaching vanishing point. The soil quality is becoming more and more alkaline. The forests are getting denuded and the rivers are gradually disappearing.
But what is mankind doingIJ Organising meets to think what to do and there are as many views as the number of people. All this may sound pessimistic and cynical but can we afford to be optimistic when with each passing year there is more and more disheartening newsIJ Striking a cautionary note may well be in order and timely when despite so much environmentalism and environmentalists, the quality of environment fails to pick up.
Hard statistics suggest that summers are getting warmer and longer with every passing year. In fact, we are slowly approaching the threshold after which catastrophes will sweep civilisations. Awareness time is over and enough warning has been sounded. It is time to act, and act fast. What needs to be done may not be a difficult question to answer if we realise just one basic truth that the state of the environment is more a matter of ethics and morality than science and technology; law and governance.
The fault lines can be seen in the consumption pattern and lifestyle changes that the rise in vulgar consumerism has brought about in society. Marketers and manufacturers on one hand, and poverty and misery one the other are both contributing towards environment degradation. Greed of the rich and need of the poor have made strange bedfellows in creating environmental mess in a developing, nay, fast-developing country like India.
Solution lies in changing the ways of life that is the consumption pattern. The kind of food that is wasted by passengers travelling in the elite express trains like Rajdhanis and Shatabdis may well be an eye-opener as to where we are going wrong. The volume of water that those RO purifiers waste is yet another pointer. To make one glass of water families that have installed the ROs spill three glasses. Petro fuel wastage and electric energy misuse are a massive drain on our scarce resources. More than the technologies it is our thinking that needs to change. Global warming may not be clearly observable by individuals in their lifetime, but in the context of the earth it is actually happening very fast.We need to act faster!
The writer is a professor of management and public speaker. He can be reached at ppathak.ism@gmail.com