Society of Environmental and Occupational Health
Society of Environment and Occupational Health
Society of Environment and Occupational Health
Climate change- Global change & Environment
The pace at which the adverse global climate change is taking place has become exigent – a now or never situation. The consequences of a warming climate have already impacted global food production, freshwater resources, sea levels and causing extreme weather events.
We and Environment
“The ancient wisdom counsels that, it be the other way; Environment and We,
But alas, we humans of the day are the most-self-conceited species on earth.”
“यत् पिण्डे, तत् ब्रह्माण्डे” (yat pinde, tat brahmande),
or
“यथा पिण्डे तथा ब्रह्माण्डे, यथा ब्रह्माण्डे तथा पिण्डे” (yatha pinde tatha brahmande, yatha brahmande tatha pinde)
This shloka (श्लोक) is from Yajurvedah (यजुर्वेदः yajus (यजुस्) meaning “worship”+ veda (वेद) meaning “knowledge”, one of the four Vedas).
Meta-phrasing or elucidation of the shloka can be as infinite as its very quintessence; the ‘brahmande’.
However, it may be expressed thus: “As is the Individual (Microcosm), so is the Universe (Macrocosm); as is the Universe, so is the Individual” or, “As with the self, so with the Cosmos and reciprocally so.
Every entity, existence, form or substance : Inanimate or animate (जड़, चेतन), movable or immoveable (स्थावर, जंगम), variable or constant (चर, अचर), subtle or gross (सूक्ष्म, स्थूल्); every manifestation has a harmony, an eternal synchrony and order, a oneness of all five primordial elements (पंचतत्व अथवा पंचमहाभूत), namely: space or ether (आकाश), air (वायु ), fire or energy (अग्नि) ,water or force (जल) and earth or matter (पृथ्वी). And thus these five elements, by a supreme force – a Shakti (शक्ति अथवा मूल शक्ति) or a Creator, stay cohered together as what we call a Universe and the same constitute a pinde too.
These fundamental elements are the fountainhead of genesis of a phenomenon we call ‘life’, a perpetual continuum provided by the very interplay of these elements that nourish and nurture it.
Coming down to earth; literally and figuratively; the earth, that we revere and call mother, with its bounties and resources, and the elements, also manifests for us as nature (प्रकृति – the eternal energy with material manifestation), and that what we call nature is encompassed in a medium what we call environment(पर्यावरण).
In a God-ordained state of equilibrium in Environment, there is a self-reliant co-existential order & discipline among the material-mineral (padarthavastha-पदार्थावस्था), plant kingdom/order (pranavastha-प्राणावस्था), animal kingdom/order (jeevavastha-जिवावस्था), and innate human wisdom (jnanavastha) enriching and fulfilling a cyclic (आवर्तनशील) order.
One day may be it was so, but today, it sounds like a utopian concept – a cosmic daydream
What has gone wrong where?
A very insidious beginning of the decadence commenced with the second industrial revolution, from the late 19th to early 20th century – an exciting phase; cities grew, factories sprawled and people started living by the clock rather than the sun or diurnal characteristics. The environmental aberrations began, no one knew or suspected it and if someone did, he or they didn’t care, it was either ignored or considered too benign (we presumed!) to worry about. The century progressed with tremendous advances in mass production, all forms of transportation, and abundant availability of energy from all the known and developed sources; notably fossil fuels. With the advent of the late twentieth century, not only the common metals and chemicals but also the rare earth elements, exotic metals, minerals, and chemicals are being excavated from the bowels of the earth. With computerization, internet access, digital technology for data storage and transmission, production and consumption got a whole lot more and faster and changed the pace and overall profile of life as well.
We began to coax soil for more yields with pesticides, fertilizers synthesized in labs, and produced in factories, as were other products manufactured for our comfort and convenience. The effluents, outflow, solid and liquid waste mostly untreated was (and even today) discharged in sewage, rivers, or allowed to seep in the ground, and the debris, toxic sludge, nuclear waste, etc. buried often hazardously. Likewise, the emissions and pollutants being released untreated in the atmosphere and are done even today.
The rumblings of environmental aberrations grew and began to be noticed and matter. We still thought it was “inconsequent, doesn’t matter or looked the other way” and those who did; they didn’t count or matter, and sometimes paid for it, and again, all this happens even today when we are in the phase of the fourth industrial revolution – Industry 4, and on the threshold of the fifth – Industry 5.
The soil is now laden with toxic chemicals in most habitable parts of the earth. The rivers, even the venerated ones (Holy Ganges; the lifeline of our country) are being used to discharge the toxic effluents, all types of sewage and wastewater. This environmental neglect, degradation, and pollution have also led to the consequent global warming causing rising temperature and water levels of seas, ocean acidification, melting of glaciers, depletion of good (Stratospheric; upper atmosphere), and an increase in bad (Tropospheric; ground level ) ozone levels, changing patterns of climate; more extreme weather events like changing rain and snowfall precipitation, erosions, cyclones, floods, fires, biodiversity loss; with some species of flora and fauna already lost and some on the verge of extinction, even a greater propensity for the spread of diseases & pandemics – a dysfunctional ecosystem and becoming more so. The listing, however, is fickle and by far incomplete.
How far have we come?
Pollution today pervades every constituent of the earth and its environment, and this treachery of the human race to itself, to other species and living beings – from single-celled microbes to whales, all habitats, has now begun to hurt all, and really bad. For too long we have taken the enduring benevolence of these bounties “for granted” and for too long they have silently endured, lamented, and suffered.
By every moment, we are moving closer to the point of no return and are not oblivious to it.
The earth, the air, the rivers, the seas, the skies, the very nature, the other species of plants & animals – so many decimated and many with impending extinction are simply looking to us humans, for environmental justice and their rightful place in this nature and planet, and we have already lost much time. “factum fieri infectum non potest” “It is impossible for a deed to be undone,”
