Environmental activism and COVID19

It’s not been long when Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion along with local city groups globally tried uniting the citizens of the world to save planet earth. Humanity is heading for extinction is what all environmentalists were trying to communicate through peaceful protests. They constantly talked about oxygen levels going down due to reduced green cover and how the ever increasing pace of industrialization was leading to global warming.

The warning was that if we did not slow down, the drastic effect we had witnessed in the last decade would worsen in the coming times.

This warning was visible to anyone who wanted to see. The melting of the Artic and the Antarctic along with innumerable glaciers would increase the sea levels and cities would vanish underwater in no time. But capitalist interests have become so prominent that the activists were given to understand that it was impossible to slow down the ‘development’. Governments felts that cutting down of forests, ever increasing flights polluting the air globally was all a necessity for economic growth.

Those who would try and apply brakes to this speeding juggernaut would be enemies of the state. When one of the founders of extinction rebellion, Roger Hallam, tried flying drones to stop flights from taking off and landing at Heathrow airport, all he was trying was to get global attention to the issue of climate change but many of us were too busy “growing in life”, that we had no time but to multiply our assets and “secure” our lives. For our elected representatives, climate change was a non-issue and any discussion on the same for them meant wasting time and deviating from the path of growth.

When Covid19 struck humans in Wuhan, China, no one could imagine what the entire world was about to face. As the spread started increasing its radii slowly effecting Asia, Europe, Canada, Australia, North America, South America, Africa, we could already feel things slowing down. It was visible on the stock exchanges and in everyone’s lives.

Work from home started setting in more and more, from few flights getting cancelled to nations imposing a complete ban on entry of foreigners in their country, restricted movement within cities and so many other changes came in which we had never imagined. Who would have thought of entire countries getting locked down and curfews for weeks being imposed in cities!

In fact, the pace at which we were traveling, most of us thought that we could continue to keep multiplying exponentially and infinitely. No one tried stopping, even for few minutes, to actually analyse and realise that all were running like headless chickens not apprehending that resources and elasticity of planet earth is finite. Covid19 is not by chance but a befitting reaction by nature to its plundering by the human race.

Now the world has come to a standstill, not for a few minutes or hours but for weeks and months. People’s minds are oscillating between future anxiety and living in the present. They have been used to innumerable daily shocks and staying away from family for work most of the day. Now family is the new colleague and home is the all-day office. In these uncertain times, they are innovating ways to live life differently. Many are engaging with their inner self in these social distancing times through meditation and spirituality and finding peace suddenly is looking like a possibility!

What is ironical is human beings were already getting away from each other in an ever burgeoning virtual world for the last few decades and now when social distancing has been imposed on them, they look so perplexed as if they never knew or heard about it in their lives. Covid19 is also bringing out the basic tenets of a human being in the open and re-proves the fact that self-interest and insecurity are in the human genome.

Climate Change and its impact and now Coronavirus, raise a pertinent question--why business and political leaders didn’t listen to environmentalists since 80s when they started demanding governments to slow down the greed-driven economic model and this consumerist lifestyle. And now in a few weeks, we see complete lockdown in many countries.

The only logical answer is that humans are driven by fear and insecurity. When fear is imminent, and the threat is personal, they act immediately. The fact is that coronavirus doesn’t discriminate between developed or developing countries. It doesn't need a passport to cross the border. Neither does it discriminate between rich and poor. It kills a billionaire and poor equally. That’s why we could see that the mighty system has implemented immediate lockdown in all big countries like China, US, India, UK and Germany.

The Covid19 pandemic is an outcome of exploitation of living species, which was going on for decades. We humans need to pause and reflect on what we consume in our daily lives. The world leaders should pay heed to the climate scientists and environmentalists if they want to save this planet. The world leaders need to invest more in healthcare and researches around virus and bacteria than on military and weapons.

It is time to set up universal healthcare and set our priorities right. We must focus on health and ecology instead of weapons and fighting fake wars. The real battle is against this virus, diseases, poverty and greed, and unfortunately, they are winning. We look so feeble against this virus. Isn’t it?

In India and across the globe, what has been visible till now has been hoarding of goods to secure our very own selves thinking that we will live few months more than those who won’t be able to hoard. The same has been witnessed when someone is not able to breathe in polluted air, rest think that it won’t happen to them because they are healthier! This behavior won’t take us a long way. We need to think about society as a whole but in a different way.

We cannot go out physically helping people in these times but can surely ensure that we are maintaining a peaceful equilibrium in our lives, ensuring that we radiate positive energy for our family. We pray for others and let ration remain stocked in shops instead of our houses. During these times, millions of school children who were dependent on mid-day meals are not getting food because the system has been locked down globally. Many other life-saving services are available scarcely and we all need to reduce the pressure on them by not availing them if it’s not an emergency.

These are life changing times and if we are able to create a sustainable change today, the world will surely be a better place to live in. Self, fellow beings including flora and fauna, all need to cohabit and if the current imbalance is corrected for good, we will see a healthier planet very soon.

We are all being made to change for good during corona times and accepting our faults of the past and making amends is the way forward. Else this is just a dress rehearsal and the bigger game is waiting to be played.

Views expressed in the article are the author’s own