And now we have another problem: Global Warming. Although developed nations like the US are the ones who have created the bulk of this problem over the past century, and continue to constitute the bulk of carbon-emitting nations, India and China have the dubious distinction of being frontrunners among nations that take the planet towards towards the ecological tipping point of no return with their rampant consumption growth.

For millions of years, nature has been taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere — taking carbon out of circulation — and stashing it away, not only as trees, but also as enormous coal and crude-oil reserves under the earth. But since the discovery of the steam engine and the industrial revolution, mankind has been taking these carbon and hydrocarbon reserves and burning them. Every passing year, we thus undo the work of a few thousand years of nature. Humankind is now a rampant force of nature… and India is very much there in this beautiful picture.

Our GDP and per-capita consumption is rapidly rising at close to 10%, and so the carbon footprint of each individual human-being in India is doubling every 10 years or so. Each extra shirt we buy and stash in our cupboards or each apple that we eat that has been flown in from Australia or China, or even lorried in from Himachal Pradesh, represents an unnecessary load of carbon in the air that we have contributed.

As the global population grows at a galloping pace — rising as much in 10 years as it did in the entire millennium between 1 AD and 1000 AD — the collective footprint of humankind in terms of carbon emissions, chemical pollution etc grows in geological proportions. In other words, the ‘weight’ or ‘impact’ of humankind on earth is doubling every decade.

We are driving over 53,000 species to extinction every year, and much of this is happening in India. The web of life in India, as elsewhere, is being torn apart… and yet all we think about is HUMAN POVERTY?

I think we need to realign our priorities. Poverty alleviation and relief was a post-Independance agenda. Now it needs to take the back-seat to alleviating mass extinctions and climate change.

I don’t know if remedies are available. Personally, we are already in deep shit and blissfully unaware of it, like a guy who is falling to his death from a skyscraper, but is heard saying as he whooshes past the 10th-floor window, “So far so good! Everything feels great!”

Our economies, which depend primarily on combustion, need to be urgently unhooked from combustibles and hooked onto alternative sources even if they are uneconomical at first. Energy from combustibles seems economical only because it does not take into account the environmental cost; in other words, such energy is environmentally ‘subsidized’. However, such subsidies are no longer sustainable, and there is an enormous ‘natural deficit’ that has built up that needs to be balanced.

So we need to learn to consume solar energy, wind energy, tidal and hydro-electric or human-generated energy, even if it seems terribly uneconomical at first. Simultaneously, we need to learn to live with drastically lowered energy consumption.

Immediate measure 1: We need to impress on decision-makers (and not just general public) at various levels the urgency of our situation.

Immediate measure 2: We need to show that we ourselves believe in our message. It is not very convincing for us to continue to go around in our big air-conditioned cars and sit in air-conditioned offices, air-conditioned homes and air-conditioned chambers of commerce. We need to show our willingness to step down into less-stylish cars, or maybe even scooters, public transport etc. We need to send out a clear message by (1) scaling down our own usage of electricity by opening our windows and using ceiling-fans etc, (2) walking and bicycling as much as possible instead of taking motorised transport and (3) depending on non-energy consuming forms of recreation such as going for long walks or playing cards together.

Immediate measure 3: To make a dent on the public consciousness, send out a clear message, and set off a mass movement, those of us who are aware of this problem and deeply concerned about it need to do something emblematic. How about something like dressing very simply and riding a bicycle to work (and everywhere else) one day of every week – something that is directly opposed to our increasingly ostentatious lifestyle?

I do realize that these ideas are quite a bit off the tangent w.r.t your blog about poverty, administration and governance, and they make me sound like a raving nutcase. But I find it difficult to imagine discussing an issue like poverty in India while we have a larger, nastier problem at hand. I’m actually wondering whether there is any government on the planet that is capable of even rationally looking at this problem, leave alone taking steps to tackle it.

I wonder if you would agree. Will appreciate a word in response.

Warmly,
Krishnaraj

Presume you want to create your own blog. The best place to start is probably blogger.com — it’s free, and easy to use.

best regards
sanjeev nayyar
mumbai