During the past few months in fact years, there have been several tragic incidents concerning nature. From time to time, advisories have been issued by the authorities of probable tragic incidents. We have been witnessing several changes with regard to the weather across the world.
Dubai was in the news recently when torrential rains lashed the state on April 16, bringing it to a standstill. News from the internet says, ‘deadly storms that left Dubai under water and killed more than 20 people in Oman were likely made worse by climate change, scientists say.
Heat pumped into the atmosphere by humans made the record rainfall 10-40% heavier, they say.’ Note the words climate change and heat pumped into the atmosphere by humans. Clear indications there!
What about closer to home? According to news reports, recently a number of age old trees were cut down at Siolim in order to widen a road.
There are several other environmental issues in Goa which need to be tackled. Pollution of water bodies including rivers, garbage management for instance.
It is encouraging therefore to note, that the citizens are standing up and holding protests against such massacre of nature. We all must understand the importance of preserving and protecting our forests and water bodies.
In Mumbai, the civic authorities issued an advisory to keep away from the beaches as high sea waves were expected in the next 36 hours. And so, people were deprived of fresh sea breeze and beach shacks lost business. More recently, we witnessed a dust storm in Mumbai on May 13, causing tremendous damage. The worst incident was of course, the huge, oversized Billboard collapsing on a petrol pump, killing around 14 people and seriously injuring many more.
What are the contributing factors leading to the deterioration of the environment. Well, there are several factors, more largely responsible being destruction of forests and wetlands in the country, cutting down trees for infrastructure projects badly planned. The overnight butchering of thousands of trees in the Aarey forests for the metro car shed is well known. More recently, according to a news report recently, 55 trees were allegedly poisoned along the Eastern Express Highway in Mumbai, leading to their death and all this for the sake of advertisements.
A recent news item on the Net, states, in Delhi, 642 trees, including 458 on forest land, had been cut down in the southern part of the ridge in South Delhi to widen a road.
And then they say, the heat is unbearable?
Stop playing with nature, that’s what I always keep saying. But somehow, we don’t seem to rather, don’t want to understand. Nature has been sending out warning signals from time to time and man in his wisdom, keeps ignoring all these warnings. There is a saying, ‘you can take the horse to the water, you can’t make him drink!’ Well here we are, bearing the consequences of our actions. We will continue to come across words like Global Warming, Climate Change, etc., etc., but they will sound meaningless to our ears.
On June 5, when the world celebrated World Environment day, we need to ask ourselves what exactly we celebrated. Did we celebrate a decaying, dying Earth? Did we celebrate the injustices done to the Earth? Did we celebrate the killing of the Earth at our own hands? What is there to celebrate?
We need to get down to reality. Can we take remedial action? We need to stop all the wrongs we are doing to the Earth. Is it too late now to rectify the situation? Well, I suppose it depends on our sincerity. Are we willing to first take a closer look at our immediate surroundings? We can take it forward from there. As we continue with those small actions, we start to build momentum, and before we know it, we’re well on our way to seeing the larger picture.
Albert Einstein says, “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” Wake up before it is too late!
