Climate change - Real or bluff?
The most important C`s that have dominated the discussion in last 2 years are COVID-19 and climate change. Not talking about COVID here, climate change is something which is still debatable. Although a lot of people agree to see the visible changes, there is still a community who believe that there is no any thing like climate change.
Why? Because they are not ready to accept that nature can be affected by human activities. I had debates with a lot of people around. And even they don`t believe the deeply rooted science and evidences that climate change exist. It is similar to the flat earth community, who still believe that the earth is not a sphere and just a flat surface. And we have nothing to tell them more as they are not ready to accept any evidence at any cost. This does not change the facts. Human activities has a lot of impact because of the scale at which human activities are carried out. Imagine the population number itself. 7,000,000,000 people on the globe, consuming food, wearing clothes, drinking water. Isn`t it a bit reasonable number to predict the affect the resources around. There are numerous articles and webpages showing the scientific evidences and numbers that shows climate change is real. Yes, whether you believe it or not, climate change is real and will affect everyone on earth equally. A short example for supporting the real life incident on human`s affect on nature. During covid-19 lockdown in India, river ganga was visibly cleaner because of stopped industrial activities. If a single river can show the direct impact of human activities, cannot be this enough to understand the impact all over the world. According to a research paper, the ganga river water quality is based on industrial effluents discharged into water and distribution of river water into different canals for consumption and agriculture [1].
Understanding the ways in which human activities have short term and long term impacts on nature and environment is quite logical and evident. But human being cannot stop the momentum that it has gained because population is at stake. The next time meal can even be the reason for a lot of environmental issues, but that cannot be compromised either. Hence we are in a trap where we cannot choose any one thing. Economics is directly related to the damage to environment, and this is what worries all of us. Any time we talk about environment, and threat on economy comes right away which than confuse people with use or lose. There is a lot more going on with nature than we have discovered, but accepting this will allow some scope to do something. Enough of problem discussed, but what is solution to this? Considering nature a part of our community and not just medium to get fruits. Just think about how we look at nature. I have heard really funny statements like nature is for humans, trees are for fruits and cows are for milk. Although for few it may sound "funny", but there is some truth to it. What would you prefer to have near your house, an apple tree or a neem tree or a pipal tree. Naturally, our inclination towards usefulness is far more than understanding the importance of existence of all. Hinduism has immense importance for all trees and thus they have involved use of specific trees in certain rituals. Now what this has with climate change? The answer is understanding nature and its importance of all species(animals, insects, plants, trees, micro-organisms). The cycle has each component involved in the dynamics of natural phenomena. Similarly climate change has appeared because of a lot of disturbances in this chain, including trees and animals. the day we realize its importance, it would be readily too late to act on. And we are going out of time. Human beings need to value nature despite of what we get from it. Nurture them despite of the fact that it will not give us directly anything. The discussion on this will never end. But understanding the value of nature is of immense importance, because nature is like mother. In the end, everything in nature is important and every solution lies in nature, balancing the environment.
REFERENCES
[1] Dutta, Venkatesh; Dubey, Divya; Kumar, Saroj (2020). Cleaning the River Ganga: Impact of lockdown on water quality and future implications on river rejuvenation strategies. Science of The Total Environment, (), 140756–. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140756