If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it

I recently read “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” by Thomas L Friedman. Today most of us are not aware of the ecological truth that we live in. It’s not because we don’t want to know it, but because our government doesn’t allow the market to tell it. This book brings forward the ecological truth and the future we are to face. Consider this fact- the difference in global average temp between an ice age and interglacial period like we are in now is mere 5 to 6 degree Celsius. So a small increase in temperature can lead to big changes. Earth has warmed by 0.8 degree Celsius since 1750 and the hottest years have occurred between 1995 and 2005. Any further increase may bring unmanageable problem. Many people argue that India and China have right to grow as we are undeveloped and have full right to live as we want. I do agree with it, but that should not be at the price of our future. If we continue to grow at this rate, the cumulative warning by 2100 will be 3 to 5 degree Celsius over pre-industrial condition. This rise is enough to take away everything. We need clean, cheap energy, more than before.

Who is responsible for this? Is it us. To some extent yes, but to a larger extent no. Yes, I agree that we need to save energy and use renewable energy. But how can a person use renewable energy when it is sold costlier to him than coal or oil. It is our government who is responsible for this. They make the laws, which make clean energy costlier than coal or petroleum. They don’t let the market tell the ecological truth, by giving subsidies for petrol and diesel rather than promoting clean fuel, the technology for which is available and can be easily used. It is important to change ourselves and save as much energy as we can, but it is even more important to select right leaders, who can make the right rules and tell people the ecological truth. Sadly in our country we don’t have any such leader who has environment protection (or rather our future) as his election main agenda, let alone implementing them. They are still fighting in petty caste politics.

Sadly we are not alone; the world economy today is dependent on oil. Today oil is present with a small bunch of countries, that in future can control the world economy even more than now if we do not improve. The oil has brought huge sum of money to a small group of countries. They made this money not by any internal development but by discovering their enormous wealth. It’s like giving a person huge sum of money and he does not know how to spend it. This is disadvantageous for both them and to the world as a whole. Turning green is no more a liability, it’s now an opportunity. The country which develops clean fuel system will be the most in demand as someday oil will vanish. This country will create more jobs for its people and will be successful economically and ecologically.
Today we often hear about species going extinct. We also have protected areas like reserve forest to protect these species. But few years down the line as climate changes it makes these protected areas uninhabitable for the very creatures they were created to protect. What today we need is to create a new system, rather than solving one problem and creating another. We today have created many problems for which we don’t have any solution. We don’t know how to bring back the extinct species. We don’t know how to fix holes in the ozone layer. We don’t know how to bring back the snow in the Antarctica. We don’t know how to turn a land fertile which we turned into a desert. This is what Severn Suzuki at 1992 Earth Summit has to say- “If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it.”