Stop human profligacy!

A principle is a principle, and in no case can it be watered down because of our incapacity to live it in practice. We have to strive to achieve it, and the striving should be conscious, deliberated and hard.
– Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

On the eve of yet another squandered year, when my generation refused to walk their talk, I would like to personally apologise to all young people for the environmental crimes of omission and commission of generation. We, I must confess, are actively colonising the young today even more ruthlessly than the British once did to India. The instrument of this colonisation is the usurpation of the life-support infrastructure of future generations – air, water and land. In fact, the climate change problems we see around us are a direct result of the over use and misuse of our natural ecosystems. Also our lack of understanding of how our planet functions.

A lioness bares her canines – evolutionary gifts, such weaponry cannot sadly defend Earth's creatures from the ecological misadventures of humans

This ignorance encourages a very tiny minority of very, very powerful men and women to decide on our behalf that it’s perfectly fine to put more and more carbon into the atmosphere, in our search for more and more energy for heating, lighting, transport and more. This one single activity – energy production – is in fact key to almost all our environmental problems including biodiversity loss and climate change.
If we do not find a way to stop this process, history will remember my generation as the most destructive ever to be born on earth. But it need not be this way. We cannot allow it to be this way.
How I wish Gandhiji was alive today to guide us all out of the environmental chasm towards which we are inexorably moving. While debates rage about where development ends and destruction begins, I would like to state unequivocally that I want tigers, elephants, snow-leopards, whales, dolphins, birds, butterflies – all creatures great and small – to thrive in India as they once did. Economists and some social activists respond that keeping such species alive is a luxury we can ill-afford.
I’d say they have it very wrong. We cannot afford to lose them. This is because they are the Gardeners of our fragile Eden and keeping wild nature alive is a survival imperative. After all, no human scientific invention can do what nature does when it comes to moderating climate, purifying air and water and producing abundant food for all living things. Yet, my misguided generation of rich and poor believes it is their ‘duty’ to destroy rivers, lakes, corals, mangroves, coasts, grasslands, wetlands, forests and mountains to improve the human condition.
Somehow, young people must find within them the wisdom and the strength to respectfully inform their elders that ‘the king wears no clothes’. That they know that in the process of squeezing ‘development’ out in a hurry, this generation is exporting pollution, climate change, disease and hunger to the next.
But it is frankly not enough any longer to just protest, or even just “speak the truth.” Young men and women need to break free from the shackles of false ambition into which they are being wrapped by some of their very persuasive elders. I hope that today’s youth will find within themselves the self-respect, strength and vision not to allow large corporations to reduce them to the status of mere ‘consumers.’ This in truth is one of the primary objectives of the Sanctuary Asia team. We take thousands of young people out each year to enable them to experience nature first hand in forests, city nature trails and on outdoor camps. We want to share with them the truth of an adage that we live by: “the best things in life are free.”

Gandhi with Lord and Lady Mountbatten

But there is more we ask of young adults. We ask them, to “be the change they want to see.” This means consuming less, wasting less, walking short distances, using public transport, protesting against deforestation and supporting those working to regenerate natural ecosystems.
But when those of us who know what nature is capable of handing down when ill-treated raise the alarm, the myopic instantly retort: “What are your alternatives?”
Frankly, we have no alternatives for the kind of toxic ambition that passes for development. And the reason we hit stonewalls when we actually do offer safe, sane alternatives was best expounded by that incredible climate change messiah Al Gore: “It’s difficult to get someone to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Nevertheless, in the fond hope that there is indeed some intelligent life left on earth, here is a message from those who have, to those who may not yet have discovered earth truths:
The Paradigm of Nature: The measure of human progress – economic or otherwise – must be judged by whether our activities improve the quality of our air, water and lands. This in turn will only be possible if equity is the foundation of human life across the world. Not just equity between humans, but between humans and the rest of life on Earth as well.
Postulation: Economics cannot possibly be sustainable if its mantra is unbridled “growth”. After all, every bit of the technosphere (what humans make) – buildings, roads, agriculture, clothing, comic books, croissants, coffee, computers, cars, ships and planes – comes from the biosphere. The ‘technosphere’ can ONLY expand by depleting the finite biosphere.
Diagnosis: The planet has a life-threatening fever. For ages economists have been in denial of the “limits to growth”, suggesting that science tomorrow would inevitably find ways to overcome what we consider to be limits today. Climate change has made a mockery of this optimistic prognosis by economists. 
It is because economists have consistently undervalued the services provided by the oceans, rivers, forests, coasts, corals, wetlands, mountains, polar habitats and even deserts, Earth’s self-governing mechanisms have been damaged. The planet is therefore in revolt. The protective shield for the biosphere, our atmosphere, has been wounded. 
Prognosis: All imagined human progress–in rich countries and poor – is likely to vanish, because the human circumstance will inevitably worsen at the hands of extreme climatic events, and temperature and humidity related disease and hunger. 
IF, however, corrective short and long-term steps are taken right now by countries that discover the courage and foresight to reduce atmospheric carbon concentrations, we have an outside chance of saving ourselves and all life on earth. The planet’s life-support systems are self-repairing. That has been the cornerstone of the blueprint for life on earth. But we must not overwhelm such systems.
The bottom line: “Poverty is not the greatest pollutant” as all our world leaders like to suggest. The greatest pollutant always was and will remain profligacy. We consume too much. We destroy too much. We understand too little. And we care too little. 

Bittu Sahgal in discussion with villagers from Kolsa village in the Tadoba Tiger Reserve, Maharashtra

We will need technology to overcome some of the most dangerous threats to the planet. But technology cannot save us if we fail to protect and restore ecosystems. Fortunately, like any cut or wound on our body, the planet can repair itself, but for this we must stop wounding an already damaged planet. 
In effect, the planet is forcing us to pause, contemplate our actions and then alter human ambitions, laws and social mores to bring them in line with nature’s laws. The instrument of nature’s repair are the many species we are so unthinkingly sending into oblivion – tigers, polar bears, elephants, bees, frogs and even flowers, grasses, mosses and algae. 
The Earth’s atmosphere and its biosphere are in exquisite harmony. Homo sapiens is the ONLY species that is destabilising this harmony. ALL other species are working to restore the planet’s status. If we let the plants and animals fix the planet, they will. If not, we will perish much before they do. As we debate the issues nature will not sit obediently on the sidelines. Nor will it judge us.
It will merely deliver consequences.

The writer is the Editor of Sanctuary magazine. His work today revolves around saving the tigers and the forests of India.

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