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"A principle is a principle, and in no case can it be watered down because of our incapacity to live it in practice. We have to strive to achieve it, and the striving should be conscious, deliberated and hard."
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
I owe all young people an apology for my generation, which is actively colonizing the young today, even more ruthlessly than the British once colonized India. The instrument of this colonization is the usurpation of the life-support infrastructure of future generations - air, water and land. In fact, the climate change problems we see around us are a direct result of the over use and misuse of our natural ecosystems. Also our lack of understanding of how our planet functions. This ignorance encourages a very tiny minority of very, very powerful men and women to decide on our behalf that it's fine to put more and more carbon into the atmosphere, in our search for more and more energy for heating, lighting, transport and more. This one single activity - energy production - is in fact key to almost all our environmental problems including biodiversity loss and climate change.If we do not find a way to stop this process, history will remember my generation as the most destructive ever to be born on earth. But it need not be this way. We cannot allow it to be this way.
How I wish Gandhiji were alive today to guide us all out of the environmental chasm towards which we are inexorably moving. While debates rage about where development ends and destruction begins, I would like to state unequivocally that I want tigers, elephants, snow-leopards, whales, dolphins, birds, butterflies - all creatures great and small - to thrive in India as they once did. Economists today say that keeping such species alive is a luxury we can ill-afford. I'd say they have it very wrong. We cannot afford to lose them. This is because they are the Gardeners of our fragile Eden and keeping wild nature alive is a survival imperative. After all, no human scientific invention can do what nature does when it comes to moderating climate, purifying air and water and producing abundant food for all living things. Yet, my misguided generation believes that it is their 'duty' to destroy rivers, lakes, corals, mangroves, coasts, grasslands, wetlands, forests and mountains.
Why? To make life better for young Indians, they claim!
Photo: Indranil Sengupta
Special Mention HP Climate Change Photography Contest / Sanctuary Photolibrary
Somehow, young people must find within them the wisdom and the strength to respectfully inform their elders that 'the king wears no clothes'. That they know that in the process of squeezing 'development' out in a hurry, this generation is exporting pollution, climate change, disease and hunger to the next.
But to young persons, I would say: "It's not enough just to protest, or speak the truth." Young men and women need to break free from the shackles of false ambition into which they are being wrapped by some of their very persuasive elders. I hope that teenagers today will find within themselves the self-respect, strength and vision not to allow large corporations to reduce them to the status of mere 'consumers.' This in truth is one of the primary objectives of the Sanctuary Asia team. We take thousands of young people out each year to enable them to experience nature first hand in forests, city nature trails and on outdoor camps. We want to share with them the truth of an adage that we live by: "the best things in life are free."
But there is more we ask of young adults. We ask them, to "be the change they want to see." This means:
1. Consuming less, wasting less, walking short distances and using public transport.2. Protesting against deforestation and supporting those working to regenerate natural ecosystems.
3. Using solar and wind energy wherever possible and convincing other to do so too, even if these cost marginally more now.
4. Keeping windows open and using fans and cross ventilation, instead of air-conditioning.
5. Switching to energy-saving appliances. Turning computers and other electric gadgets off when not in use.
6. Saving water. This is a big one! Not only is energy consumed in the process of bringing water to our doorsteps, it's also consumed while lifting it up to the tanks on our roofs. Recycling newspapers, bottles - everything possible! « Previous 1 | 2 | 3 Next »
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