T he World Environment Day has just passed amidst epidemiologists trying to contain the invisible mutant virus. This World Environment Day poses a grim reminder to the humanity that good times are not far from being over. That’s what humanity wrought upon the planet in the name of progress.
Planet earth is endowed with nature, which is an organic embedded intelligence, ensuring the sustainability of the planet lasting for over four billion years. But in the last 100 years alone humanity has kick-started the process of self-extinction in the name of capitalism that often means greed. A century later catastrophic accomplishments of humanity are visible on the face of the earth. Man-made catastrophes hit the earth around the year. The recent pandemic is no exception. Humanity is appalled. This is the last chance and humanity has to think it all over again before the good times are over.
It took one billion years to oxygenate the earth but the motor of the civilisation at today’s pace is bound to deoxygenate the planet in less than 100 years from now. If the pace of what we call ‘progress’ on the face of the planet is not halted or course-corrected, humanity is bound to face extinction. Early signs of the extinction of humanity are visibly apparent. Half of the world is starving and the other half is facing acute water emergencies. Big corporations are vying with each other to captivate aquifers, food bowls, and water sources that will have more value than gold mines in a decade or two. After water aquifers, oxygen plants shall become the next target of captivity by corporations. Cylinder-full oxygen will be the only inevitable accessory that will slither along with humanity as prevention from death by breathlessness. Remember kids, then, will be mesmerised by stories of life without oxygen cylinders. The latest pandemic is a grim reminder and a wakeup call not to precipitate the deoxygenation of the planet in the name of progress or greed.
Humans don’t own this planet neither are they the kings of this planet. Out of four billion years, nearly 10,000 years ago, humans were less than 1% of biomass and the rest were wild animals. Today, humans and land-based vertebrate animals that humans breed for meat constitute 98% of the biomass, while only 2% are wild animals. Man wants to own the land of the entire earth inch by inch. Man thinks as if he owns this earth but he is as much a part of the earth as other animals and plants are. The human race is one of the animal races. If humanity was endowed with the sense of better mathematical comprehension, this doesn’t mean that humanity will engage that instinct to ruin every blade of grass or eat up every animal on the planet. This godly endowment of comprehension to humanity is not for the fulfilment of overwhelming obsession with greed that is often camouflaged in beautiful fancy names like capitalism, socialism, or communism.
This planet is the only one that humanity has. There is no other planet. We may either ruin it or rejoice in its mesmerising beauty and mysticism. We may learn to live in it. Either we may destroy it or keep it pulsating for our children. The progress humanity had made so far is that we can travel more km per hour faster than earlier, we have more lumens of light in the night, we have more air-cool hours indoors, we can communicate remotely without being there by having access to more megabytes or terabytes of information. But in contrast, to achieve all that, we have mined all stuff from metals to oil to minerals from the womb of the earth and used them up for that what we perceive is our ‘prosperity’. Real prosperity is when there is fresh air to breathe, clean water to drink, and plenty of fresh food to eat. Prosperity doesn’t lie in jungles of skyscrapers built out of concrete, iron, and glass. Your cities may become uninhabitable once you run out of food, water, and air.
Wiser ones love forests, care for rivers, protect wildlife, and keep air and water clean to pass on a habitable planet to the next generation. Loving flowers, trees, and birds is their obsession. To be one with the existence that created this universe and the beautiful earth is the prayer of wiser ones. But scholars have built complex economic business models that won’t know where would be the danger button and how to press it. So we keep digging oil to abysmal depths, keep burning fossil fuel to produce electricity to make the planet hotter. We are determined to ruin all sources of oxygen, water, and food permanently forever to make humanity prosperous.
Every year 25000 wild animal species become extinct. The next generation will get to know about the wildlife on TV channels only. Every second 2.5 acres of rainforest disappears worldwide, that’s like 214 acres per day an area larger than New York City, 78 million acres per year. All tropical rain forests will be destroyed by 2030.
Animal farming for meat accounts for 51% of greenhouse gas emissions, which is three times more than all transportation put together, and one-third of the world’s methane production. Methane is 85 times deadlier than CO2, which makes the earth’s climate dangerously hotter. Cattle farming for beef is responsible for 80% of deforestation resulting in a decreased availability of oxygen, lesser rains, and climate warming. It takes 15,415 litres of water to produce 1 kg beef (while a hamburger costs you 660 gallons of water), 8,763 litres of water for 1 kg mutton, 5,988 litres of water for 1 kg pork, 4,325 litres of water for 1 kg chicken, 3,265 litres of water for 1 kg eggs, 962 litres of water for 1 kg fruits, and 322 litres for 1 kg vegetables. This means that over 50% of our agriculture production and 50% of water usage goes to meateaters.
Oxygen comes from oceans and trees. Oceans contribute more than 50% to 80% of oxygen that comes from phytoplankton ocean plants and the rest from the photosynthesis of trees. All lament jungles are cut but we hardly know that phytoplanktons are fast disappearing from the oceans. Every year to feed meat-eating humans 77 billion animals and trillions of fish are killed. Weighted bottom trawl nets scrape along with the ocean floor indiscriminately destroying everything from coral reef to endangered marine life including sharks, whales, and dolphins for km in one go. This is fast destroying phytoplankton that oxygenates up to 80% of our planet.
Pandemic indicates de-oxygenation of the earth. This reverberates in our lungs in the form of a virus attack that de-oxygenates our capacity to breathe oxygen. What we are doing with the world outside by destroying jungles and phytoplankton is echoed in our lungs. Oxygenation is our dependence on the planet and if we destroy the lungs of the earth, a pandemic ought to strike our lungs and that can’t be prevented unless we begin to make the earth a sustainable abode of humanity.
Lao Tzu, Mahavira, Buddha, and Osho tell humanity to be one with nature as we are part of nature. Being part of nature, if we want to fight nature for our own part, we will end up fighting ourselves. Thus, humanity is appalled today. Let’s be one with nature in friendship. To dance in its beauty, to love, and nature will immerse you in her womb. Every tree, flower, blade of grass, and animal is the messenger of love. Humans, animals, birds, and trees live here for few decades to vacate space for the next generation. Using up all resources of the earth in a lifetime of few decades might fill up your drawing room with the most expensive fancy items but you will end up in a situation where your kids might inherit a skyscraper residence like Antilia building that will have to be oxygenated artificially.
The author is a spiritual teacher and an independent advisor on policy, governance and leadership. He can be contacted at arunavlokitta@ gmail.com.