Earth is our Big Home, Keep it Clean!

Pro. Chetan Singh Solanki Professor at IIT Bombay

We have two houses – one small and one big. A house is the four walls which we consider as our home. It contains our sofa, dining table and bed. We take special care of this small house. Let us keep it clean and preserve it, because it gives us security. It protects us from dust, heat, cold, wind and rain.

Similarly, we also have a big home, the atmosphere of our earth. This also gives us security. If it is not a big house, the sun’s rays may be so intense that we cannot bear them. Or the Earth’s temperature may become so low that life is no longer possible here. But despite this – what is the reason why we do not take care of this big house of ours?

If the environment becomes too hot, too cold, or there is too much rain, it affects us. Overall, whatever happens in the environment affects our lives. But whatever we do also impacts the environment.

In fact, there is hardly any human activity in modern life which does not have an impact on the environment. And unfortunately, most of our actions impact the environment negatively, not positively. This environment, this big house of ours, gives us life.

It gives us air, water, food and provides living conditions. But what do we give it in return? We make it dirty. Carbon dioxide and other pollutants are added to it. Whenever we cook food, travel, use electricity, buy something, we release invisible waste in the form of carbon dioxide into the environment, which increases the temperature of the earth.

We think that climate change or pollution is caused by factories. No, it happens due to uncontrolled consumption of goods made in factories in our everyday life. We all are harming our big house of the environment by throwing invisible garbage every day, or to be honest, every minute.

I once told the audience in one of my lectures, I give you all a little bit of garbage. Would you take it home and throw it in your own house? Everyone immediately refused. Someone said, the wife will scold. Someone said, mother will get angry. Then I asked him, when we cannot throw garbage even in our small house, then how do we throw garbage in our big house which gives us life?

Today, there is unseasonal rain in the country and the world, a deadly heatwave is going on in cold Europe, and forests are on fire. This imbalance of weather that we are seeing is a reaction of nature. It’s nature’s way of telling us that something is wrong. Sometimes I think that if you were nature, perhaps you would have given similar punishment to everyone. After all, we are spreading garbage in his house, disturbing its balance and still expecting everything to remain normal.

The future generations will have to suffer the consequences of the garbage we are throwing on the earth. This bitter truth is to bring us to our senses. Maybe with this the real work of improving our environment can start. And let us start limiting our needs on this limited earth – whose resources are also limited.

Climate change doesn’t start with technology or rules and regulations. It starts with awareness. Starts with restraint. It starts with each of us treating our big home with the same respect we treat our bedroom. (These are the author’s own views)

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