The Handshakes and Speeches!!

We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children – Native American Proverb

We are all living together on a single planet which is threatened by our own actions. – Yuval Noah Harari.

Hello friends, when I was a small kid, used to wonder, where all the trash generated by us would go! Where the dense fumes spewing out of thermal power plants would assimilate ( one of my uncle worked in it)? As I spent my childhood in a coalliery(my father worked as survey officer in Central Coal Fields), seen so much fine coal dust flying all around, even the water of the ponds and open quarries were black in colour. It made me sad.

But then, my tiny mind, used to assure me that earth being so big, would annihilate all the bad things into its large bosom, keeping us safe from its harmful effects. The lessons taught in environment books, were felt to us like mere rhetorics, just to terrorise people into rectifying action. They were only the points to be memorized and written down in examination papers.

Decades have passed after that, the environment book is now scrapped out of the curriculum and the lessons are clubbed into other subjects like geography or physical sciences as a foot note. Does it serve its purpose?

I am afraid the answer is a big no. We have become more and more embroiled in natural catastrophes in the form of wild fires, sudden and unprecedented deluge, higher and unbearable summer temperatures, fiercer and more frequent storms. The onslaught of a devastating pandemic could be one of it’s off shoot repercussions.

Now I realise that if the point suggested to tame the global warming, had been implemented at the earliest in letter and spirit, the world would not have reached such a sorry state. A sense of guilt overwhelmed me being one of our generation who had kept their eyes willfully shut and thought that the problem would go away on their own.

I must tell you about my father, who was a non smoker, tea totaller and an active person had to be installed with a pacemaker in his early sixties. I think the blame must lie to the door of his strenuous job of going inside a long surpentine coal mines. I had the experience of going inside upto allowed extent to the visitors, can certainly vouch that the atmosphere inside was absolutely unhealthy and hazardous.

The coal mines are still extracting coal and being fed to the industries like steel, power, cement and fertilizer. I fear, how many more people are directly getting sick due to the harmful environment. I agree coal industries give jobs to a large number of people but they must diversify to the greener and safer option of earning their livelihoods. The dependence on fossil fuel must be curtailed to save our environment.

Passing the buck by the member countries won’t do. The developed countries must share the greener technologies and fund the developing countries to switch to renewable and sustainable fuel to feed their development agenda.

A great lot of determination and resolution is required by the countries of the world to work united towards saving the earth from imminent disaster. Only giving speeches , shaking hands and then forgetting all about it is detrimental to the cause. The positive changes must show in the grounds to make it worthwhile.

If we unite and work with great intent towards a common agenda than nothing is impossible. Now or never, will it remain a mere rhetorics in lofty speeches of the world leaders assembled for COP26 in Glasgow, England or it would be turned into positve action? We have to wait and see!!

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