Copenhagen??

Do I really care of the generations to come in all honesty? Though I’d like to stand up and vehemtly agree with it; I have after thinking it over come to terms with the fact that I either do not or that I do not care. With Copenhagen Summit on the anvil, everyone is suddenly jumping into the ‘save the environment’ melee. Given the speed with which information travels today, I am not longer surprised to read front page articles which would even talk of Obama farting or Manmohan using his hands to eat in the days leading to the summit.

Everyday life across the world seems to be moving at its usual pace, the millions of Indians are still spitting pan on the road sides, using plastic and thousands of industries will carry on belching pumes of smoke into the air and colouring our rivers black with contaminants. I hear and read about blocks being formed and discussions/ disagreements being made on the percentages of emission reductions by the year 2025. Countries are bargaining and selling carbon credits, something I will never understand; it’s like going to the pot and asking someone else to flush simply because you can afford to.

Its amazing how countries are promising a 15-30% cut in emissions, so what happens if we don’t meet our targets? There will be bans and trade blocks? A developed country who acts as boss will stand up and spank you across? Is that it? Not meeting the emissions cut would still mean, we’re polluting more than within reason. Spanking someone won’t reduce the pollution, will it? A few countries on the developed block have an even funnier version which when we simply sounds something like this – ‘I messed up everything before the standards were set so you should not put any additional burdens on me to help clean up. That was before, that was before..!!’. If you agree you messed up, should you be doing something to fix it irrespective of when it was that you created the mess?

In the end, I think we fail to see it in our everyday lives - the changes that are happening around us and the destruction that is happening around us. I don’t see the glaciers melting and I don’t comprehend the gravity of the increase of sea levels by a foot or two. When I don’t see it, it doesn’t strike me hard enough to move towards change. The guys on some remote island say, they’ll lose their land, how would that affect me? Isnt this why we all doing absolutely nothing? Have we actually allowed ourselves to think that these so called man made borders being used to setup structure in the form of states and countries have any effects on the environmental disasters we are facing? Its almost like saying, your dirt flows only in your territory, the pollution be it on land, water or air will stay within your borders without flowing into my country. I wish it did but we in the end, we have only one earth to work with and it belongs to nobody. Simply put, don’t damage what is not yours.

We all sagely nod our heads when someone says that we are destroying the earth, but do we really understand or comprehend the meaning of that phrase? I still have a roof over my head, my three meals come easily, my fuel I can purchase at any time and I get to do everything I want to without having to struggle for it; the sky above is blue, I have no difficulty in breathing and I live a relatively safe life. When we have millions thinking on similar lines, then the so called strength of a bottom to top approach becomes our main weakness and we have nowhere to go but deeper into the graves of pollution we are slowly building around ourselves.

The sad thing about all this is I also am a culprit, I not only not work towards cleaning up my mess, I don’t particularly think about saving the world during my day to day activities either. So where does that leave me? Drowning with the rest of the wasted lot I guess… see you all at the bottom. Cheers!