In all our stargazing… We have yet to find a beautiful earth like planet to move to.. And even it we did find one… How would we get there? Currently, and possibly for a very long time, It would be an impossibility… So what choice do we have? We have to take care of the planet that we have been blessed to evolve on.
Our planet will survive no matter what. After all, Earth has survived five extinction level events before. All know life wiped out. everything gone… Boom… For millenia upon millenia the planet regenerated and then different kinds of life form started blooming and thriving, until again, boom! An extinction level event wiped everything out…
This time, in this particular cycle of flourishing live… The extinction level event will be caused by a species. The human species.
In all our years of evolutuon… Some 2. 5million years since we turned up and 70 thousand years of our cognitive evolution… Have we evolved so much.. Done so much.. Achieved so much… Just for our achievements to be the cause of our extinction?
We can’t develop at the rate we are any more.
We can’t consume at this rate any more
We can’t reproduce at this rate anymore
Our luxuries are not sustainable any more.
Our garbage can’t be swallowed up by the earth anymore
Our oceans can’t provide for very long with out that whole ecosystem collapsing.
Our ice in the polar regions are not holding up as they should
Carbon dioxide is overflowing in the atmosphere and that very same carbon dioxide is reacting with ocean water and causing widespread ocean acidification.
We can’t eat non veg at the rate we are anymore.
Hollywood films have done us a huge service by showing us exactly what would happen to us if we continue at this rate of industrialisation. We have seen cities reduced to rubble by incoming tides that swallow up entire coastlines. Monster earthquakes. Volcanoes erupting. Freak cyclones tornadoes. Crops failing. Drinking water unavaialbe. But we come out of these movies awed by the special effects. Not believing that this will soon be our fate.
We can’t simply just say ‘oh it’s the government’s job to fix this’ or ‘my country has signed the Paris
Climate Accord. We are good’
Change has to happen from you and me. In our hyper consumable lifestyle, everything that we consume has an environmentally negative impact.
Its almost like this is someone else’s problem to fix. Chalaao jab tak chalta hain…. Trust me, our planet is saying just the same. Jab tak ho sakta hain hum sambhalenge apke liye beta… Lekin Uske baad Yeh party humesha ke liye bandh!
As I said earlier, Our planet will recover… After a few thousand or a million years… There will be life on earth.. Again… Its just won’t be with humans.
We have to decide. Will our greatest Legacy be wiping out all life including ourselves from this planet… Or will we be the saviour our planet desperately needs
If you want to start with some basic research into things…
Watch Leonardo dicaprios documentary Before the Flood
Read : The 6th Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
