Save Your Environment

I remember an article that I read on Washington post social reader about the ill effects of climatic changes in South Africa. Though I don’t know much about the geography of South Africa, but still I know that it is a small and naturally beautiful country. The article that I read, said that due to climatic changes, South Africa will have to suffer an unthinkable loss. It presented an image of the country without the savannas of the Kruger national park, the Cape of Good Hope without its penguins and the Karoo desert without the seasonal symphony of its beautiful wild flowers.

While writing this hub, I was sitting in my room, wearing just a half t-shirt and shorts and it was already the end of November 2011. We know that India is not a cold country, but there used to be a time, when even the central plains of the country, where I live, got winter temperatures as low as zero degrees Celsius. But now days, even wearing a full thin cotton shirt gives you sweat. People aren’t taking this problem seriously, because for them, this weather is pleasant and everything in their lives and their country, except for a few political issues and a few price hikes, is fine. They prefer watching the coverage of Anna Hazare’s struggle against corruption on their television sets, switching the news channels for more detailed information rather than giving a thought to the alarmingly increasing problems of global warming and climate change.

I can very well recall the memories of my school days. During the recess time, all the students came out of their classes into the playground to play and have lunch. During those days, dozens of eagles and almost double number of crows used to fly above our heads in the hope of getting a hand on our lunch.The eagles showed beautiful acrobatics in the air, diving at right angles and so neatly sweeping off the food from our lunch boxes and the food dropped on the ground and then going back above, eating the food clutched in their claws and flying so carelessly and nicely and with utmost ease. At that time, we might have, for sure, cursed those ‘cunning’ birds for stealing our food. But now, I feel pity on them. Now when I go back to my town and visit my school, I consider myself lucky if I find even a single eagle flying above the school compound.

The sparrows, that once used to come to our houses in abundance and chirped around, waking us up even before the morning alarms and the ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’ of the hens, are very rarely seen now. But no one gives a notice to this change, because for them, this isn’t a big change. The reason behind the vanishing of these birds is the change in climate and rise in temperature. So many birds die because of thirst during the summers. I feel so sorry for those small, pretty and innocent birds. Few years ago, we used to throw grains and keep water pots for the sparrows and they finished everything so quickly. Now, the grains thrown for them remain just where they are and the water kept for them dries out of the heat. No birds come for a meal now.

I guess until now, the numbers of birds that have died in summers because of heat stokes and thirst has even taken a lead from the total number of people that died in the two world wars. This sentence may sound a bit foolish, comparing the lives of birds with human beings. But ask yourself – do these creatures have no value for you? Don’t they make your world, your life, a little more beautiful? Have you ever looked into their innocent eyes? What if you yourself were a bird or any such creature?

I am neither an environmentalist, nor am I a nature conservationist. But I think, for protecting these priceless properties of our mother earth, one doesn’t need to be any of the two either. You just need a heart that understands feelings and a determination to protect your planet – your home!

These are just examples. God knows how many animal and bird have vanished from the planet and how many more are standing at the edge of extinction.

I remember a scene from the movie “The Matrix”, where Agent Smith (a character from the movie) delivers a dialogue – “I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague...”
This whole dialogue is self-explanatory. Human-beings are the meanest creatures in the world. For their own sake, they don’t even care if other’s lives are in danger. The rise of ‘just a few degrees’ is not a big issue for them, because it doesn’t affect their lives much. But go and ask an Eskimo who has not gone for fishing from the past several winters, because the ice is not setting up as it used to do several years ago. Go and see those penguins and sea lions that die because of lack of food and rise in temperature. According to theonion.com, “Due To Global Warming Eskimos Have Lost Seven Percent of Their Words for Snow”. There are several other examples of the people living in colder regions losing their livelihood

I could have chosen a better and catchier title for this hub, but that doesn’t matter anyway, because no one would pay attention to it and find it just a waste of time reading such things. From my childhood itself, I used to think that why people don’t understand that they’ve been harming the environment and they’re not doing anything to heal its wounds. Everything that we need to survive, we get from the environment but everything else that we want beyond our basic survival needs has been harming the environment in one or the other way. Okay, I may agree that these things that were invented which are turning out to be harmful for the nature were invented for us only and for making our lives easier. So if we are the ones to avail the leisure, then why does the environment need to pay for it? If you want to enjoy all the facilities that give you an easier and better life, but in return destroy the nature, then you must do something to prevent this exploitation, if you can’t directly pay for it. Here, by ‘paying the price’, I am not talking about the physical money, but I mean something that one can easily do to cope up with these problems. For example, if you too are a fan of automobiles, just like me and you love to travel everywhere in your car, then it’s not worth asking that you know or not, that you’re harming the environment. You might have paid hundreds of thousands of units of money for your car, but that’s what I am not talking about. I want to say that whenever you drive a few miles in your car, the environment takes in the harmful fumes, while you enjoy the drive, sitting in your comfort zone inside the car. Have you ever given it a thought? You could have very easily paid the price for this leisure of yours. Just think you can plant a tree every month if you love to travel in your car. That way, you can relieve some burden from the nature.