Man is a self-indulgent being. We are always talking about human rights, but do we ever take the time to ponder that these planets where we are temporary residents have rights as well.
In earlier times nature played the biggest role in maintaining the earth’s natural equilibrium. As famously quoted by the father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed”, today human materialism has resulted in the forest and the green cover getting replaced by townships and industries.
We have all heard about our forefathers living in vast open spaces, surrounded with lush green trees, clear blue day skies and starry nights. The atmosphere was then clean and there was sufficient oxygen for humans to breathe freely. The environment has changed drastically since the last five decades. Human beings are themselves degrading the land surfaces, by polluting the water bodies and by emitting poisonous greenhouse gases and adding particulate matter to the air at an unprecedented rate.
Pollution is clearly a by-product of human activity. Our interference with nature is causing the depletion of basic natural resources like air, soil and water. Burning of fossil fuel is the largest contributing factor of carbon contamination in the environment. Deforestation along with dumping of huge quantities of human and industrial waste in oceans and fresh water bodies is another big reason for water pollution and oil spillage is largely effecting water pollutant. We humans are responsible for all of this upheaval and chaos.
We pretend to be ignorant about the level of destruction we are causing individually. In order to set the record straight, we have to realise that one of our biggest obstacles in achieving our goal for better living environment, is our mindset. We need to emotionally connect to nature and understand how it works for us and how dependent we are on it. Let us not live in this false belief that someone else is going to come and fix this for us. It is we, who have to set the ball rolling.
We must understand that even the most powerful nations have not been able to anything substantial to check the alarming rate at which environmental conditions are deteriorating. If we don’t take remedial action at an individual level then this will take the form of an incurable disease. Let us all participate equally and contribute to leaving the earth in its purest form for the future generations to prosper and live joyfully.
