Rapidly soaring temperatures have been a growing
worry for environmentalists all over the globe. Apart from human beings the
animal world too is feeling the ever rising heat. Last summer there was a news
from Hyderabad about instances of birds falling on ground out of exhaustion.
Listening this, my wife remarked in a
lighter vein: “The way things are hotting up we would soon be
getting roasted birds from the sky”!
The non serious way we, as a society, tend to
tackle the grave issue of controlling heat producing emissions, perhaps would
make the “roasted-birds-from-the-sky’ a reality, sooner than later!
There is no gainsaying the fact that most of our
efforts to minimise heat generating pollutants boil down to slogan shouting
only, which are enacted, ritualistically, in a willy-nilly fashion.
For instance “Grow more trees”, a ceremonial act
that is performed annually during these rainy days by various public and
private bodies, proves, in general, to be non productive exercise .
I remember how we in a local college, where I
was a faculty member for thirty-six years, used to plant hundreds of saplings
every year, on a designated day called “Van Maha Utsav day”. The ‘Utsav’ used
to be celebrated with much fanfare and was considered an important college
event worth recording in college magazine and annual report, to be read at
annual function at the conclusion of the academic session.
Had these plantation drives been enacted
faithfully, with plans for the regular after care of the planted saplings, at
least ten out of hundred would surely have grown into full-fledged trees every
year.
Even going by this supposed small survival rate
of saplings, by today the huge college campus, which is spread over a sprawling
48.3 acres of land, should have turned into a dense jungle. But till date its
green part is as good/bad as ever.
Our dangerously callous attitude towards such a
serious global warming issue perhaps is the outcome of our lopsided planning
that we adopt to tackle any issue. To solve a problem we keep
stressing more upon coining and popularising shimmery slogans than working on
actual solutions. “Plant more trees to save the environment”, “save the mother
earth” are such high sounding ‘jumlas’ that result in nothing more
than initiating meaningless debates and painting competitions in educational
and other altruist institutions. Actual gain; zero!
What we need to tell one and all is that the
mother earth, turning from a fire ball to a globe of ice to the present state,
does not need our help to protect her. She is very well equipped to take its
own care. On the contrary it is we, whose lives are in danger, who need to be
saved or protected or say prolonged!
Let us save ourselves, not only through planting
more and more saplings but also by ensuring they grow into trees. It would be
like providing a reliable after sale service of a marketed product that ensures
rich dividends.
