“It shall be the duty of every citizen to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife and to have Compassion for wild creatures.” – Article 51 A(g), Constitution of India
Sometime back I was asked to address online a group of doctors in a premium private medical college and hospital on the ‘’world environment day’’. This is a ritual in which many institutions currently engage as a notional acknowledgement to nature and environment. I asked Google to fetch me the news from across the world of the various environmental disasters and climate change consequences events reported in popular media in the prior 24 hours. There were about 8 of them reported. I presented these to them and told them that for every one of the stories reported there are possibly about 100 that go unreported, and the consequences of Climate Change is far worse than what we have so far been informed, sometimes by a factor of hundred or more.
The onset of “instances of extreme weather” as a recurring phenomenon across the globe and the inability of cities, communities and societies to manage the same has been reported adequately world over. The World Economic Forum reported earlier in this decade that the institutional and systemic capacity to respond to climate change is an abysmal 19% or so globally and out of this less than 5% is proven to be reliable even as the world recognizes that majority of the tipping points have already been crossed. The IPCC reports have warned us again and again regarding the disastrous consequences of the climate change and need to chart an alternative path of ‘’growth’’ and ‘’development’’ globally.
Our current global economic system profits a small percentage while fuelled by the hard work of billions who aspire for a share of the profits. It is as much to sustain the profits of the small percentage (less than 1%) as much to maintain the oasis as an aspiration for the billions that the population is made oblivious to the imminent threat and the need for the climate change adaptation today. This year is the hottest recorded year in history, says news report and what the planet needed to consume for the entire year (if we followed any semblance of sustainability) we ended up consuming before 1st August this year. So, we are consuming our next year reserve as I write this article in early September.
The frog in the pan is an imagery that we often use to understand the scenario. While it provides us a sense of urgency that we ought to have towards the climate change response, humans are not frogs and we do not have to be frozen into inactivity after having survived very trying circumstances in history over a long period. We are one of the most resilient species in the world and have figured out a way to survive under extreme circumstances.
The problems that we created in the process are the inequity, injustice and lopsided economic balance globally. Unless every economy, career, skill building, and stream of education is tuned towards the creation of a different pathway, we will continue to be the stakeholders of a path of destruction for someone somewhere and await our turn. It is a matter of time.
Working on Climate Change today is primarily working on the injustice, inequity and environmental conservation much more than what we have done until now. Our ability to imagine and create something new rests largely with the youth because they are not caught up with a necessity to sustain the status quo. They can achieve it by challenging every opportunity presented to them, question everything given to masked as ‘’gift’’ sometimes by well meaning friends and elders, by rejecting the path of excessive consumption, by avoiding to accept the role any institution that represents the interest of the existing inequity and injustice economic order and by strengthening and being part of an alternative.
In the choice of the careers that every youth today makes rests the promise and the hope for the future, indeed the very existence of this planet. Each one can make the different, and that is where the sense of urgency needs to be utmost in play. Time for blame game, ideologies, condemnation, analysis and developing patchwork solutions is long over. Be the change that you want to see, has never been far more apt than today.
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