Daily Times

In the environment of modernisation, every person wants to breathe but what is the cost of this wish?

To find the answer to this crucial and time-sensitive question, we have to understand the catlike changes in our thinking, which ultimately lead to changes in our surroundings via our actions. If I ask a question, what will you love to have in the near future; its definite answer would be a wide range: well-furnished house of concrete, an office at the top floor of a high-rise building, where you can enjoy the view of the whole concrete city from the window, a car or a private jet to travel and access to multi-star hotels. But hardly does one think about a healthy body, fresh air, clean water, natural food and a small house in the woods. This is all about the thinking style that humans have developed in the last hundreds of years. We set GDP as a benchmark of growth rather than living standards and human wellbeing. These growth goals have ultimately manipulated our standards of living.

History claims that man started disciplined agriculture after cutting unwanted trees and in the latter half of 18th-century, man started the transformation from agriculture to industrialisation at a large scale, known to be the first industrial revolution. As rocks and forests have their specific place, people started cutting rocks in the shape of bricks and shifting into the woods. Afterwards, this phenomenon was linked to capitalism. Forests started shrinking and housing colonies began expanding with an increasing population on the earth, which is the only place where life exists. To meet the objective of high-yield from farms’ use of fertilisers, use of harmful chemicals in industries to make luxury items and fancy products, and for the modern travelling, man started burning almost everything like wood, fuel, coal and natural gas, etc., which could produce energy for more growth. On the other hand, a gigantic amount of carbon emission continued on an hourly basis.

Devastating climate change started from a change in the mindset and it can only be controlled by changing our mindset again

The story did not end here. Countries started a race of development. Developed countries made dangerous weapons–from sword to nuclear warhead–for the sake of security. Under-developed and developing countries are now following their footprints to achieve that shine and glow of modernisation. Countries started wars for their political gains to sustain their developed status on this innocent and unique planet using dangerous and deadly weapons. After a huge loss and destruction of this planet, it now seems to have become difficult to continue breathing, producing food, and sustaining life. But it is not too late to rethink about our values, control our unnecessary wishes and greed.

The whole matter had started from a way of thinking and it can be controlled by aligning our thinking again. The world needs to revert towards simple lifestyle, peace, cleaning our air with new technologies, promoting nature-friendly energy production methods and producing nonorganic yet healthy food. The developed world needs to create a pool of the environmental protection fund for the developing and underdeveloped countries.

Because almost all developing countries are victims of climate change, especially the Asians, they cannot make the finance required to control this devastating climate change. The world needs a collective struggle on an emergency basis to save nature for our future generations and all other creatures on this planet. If we did not correct our knowledge and avoid redefining the terms of growth and standards of living, we cannot fight with hunger, dramatically changing weather and vanishing quality food at our home planet. We need to start huge awareness campaigns and take effective actions to stop this dangerous change in the climate. If our actions remained the same, it would not be wrong to say, ‘The world is warm welcoming climate change.”

The writer is an economic analyst