On the 6th of June 2018, Texas was hit by a hail storm – in the middle of a summer. The Artic has lost more than 50% of its ice. Russia, US, Scandinavian countries and many more are already on their way to claim the resource rich seas. The average temperature of the world is higher than ever. The awe that people had when the skies were clearer during the near global lockdown due to COVID-19 was evident. The amazon rainforests are on fire, yes, they still are. The Canadian and European forests are burning faster and earlier than in recorded history. There have been cases of untimely forest fires in India as well, not to forget that a large part of Australian bush wilderness was lost in 2020. To add to this, a million cubic meters of the Gulf of Mexico is dead, Antarctica is browning, Yemen has lesser water than the already no water situation and many countries have brought green energy into their federal budgets. That’s a lot many things happening together.

When I was still a high school student, we had studied about all the important conventions and their goals with regards to the planet – the Kyoto protocol, the Montreal Protocol and so on. Then came the Paris Accords. To add to it was the information that global temperatures must be limited to a degree and half more than the 1950 level or else the planet will go berserk. I don’t know how old the new news is, but the news is that the scientists concluded that there is no way the goal can be achieved. And now we must try to limit the temperature at four and a half degrees above the previously said level to avoid the loss of agricultural lands across the planet.

That is a huge leap of faith for me and maybe for many more people who do not really invest even very small amounts of time to know the news that the planet has to give. We are too occupied with corruption, civil wars and international blame games. To be frank, I try not to waste water, electricity or even throw plastics or dump trash outside a bin or a designated area. I try to walk or cycle and as of now, just lie around in my room for most of the time. And the trouble is, the environmental problems are too large now. Because one, everyone doesn’t carry out the simple acts of being considerate towards the environment and two, the emissions by the rich and the ones not so rich but busy in producing what we consume are too big and have restrictions full of loop holes on them. The environment norms are yet not very sturdy. Sturdy is not strict, rigid and harsh. Sturdy are the ones that help. For instance, to implement rules eliminating the use of fossil fuels based vehicular fuel eliminates the exhaust the vehicles shall produce. However, in most countries, especially the most populated ones in Asia, South America and Africa still produce their energy using fossil fuels. How are these countries going to charge electric vehicles? Using fossil fuels. That in turn means the use of “dirty” energy is itself not eliminated. There are several more examples like the flawed system of Carbon credits and so on.

What can we do? Be more considerate to the world to reduce domestic output of toxins. And to reduce consumption of goods that are harmful to this planet. And google is a sufficient enough aid for knowing which products do that and which don’t.