It’s the Environment, stupid!

Actually, it always was.

For a time, we forgot.

Our collective amnesia persists still... But events around the world are giving us such frequent jolts that maybe it’s acting as electric shock treatment for an entire civilization!

For long, the Economy has loomed large in our collective psyche. The world is but a reflection of us, our individual selves. The lustre of gold weaves its magic over us. The planet called Earth never did have quite that pull. Everybody’s responsibility is nobody’s responsibility... So the more we progressed, we looted and plundered the only home we have. We filled the air with smoke, we cut down acres of forests, we blew open the protective layer of atmosphere over our heads and then laid down to die a dusty death! Millions of lemmings on a sad long march called progress...

But you know what? I love this species. Us. We have a tremendous capacity for rejuvenation, for turning back right in the nick of time before tumbling over a disastrous precipice. And after years of abusing the earth, finally we are waking up to the perils of our folly.

At least, some of us are. But earlier, these were just lone voices in the wilderness, croaking away... rarely being heard. But little by little more and more voices joined in. And with time created a crescendo that became impossible to ignore.

That, in a nutshell, is what has being going on all this time in present human history. I won’t bore you with the statistics. I won’t talk about greenhouse gases, melting glaciers, dangerous diseases, vanishing species or the obstinacy of the present U. S. Administration with the Kyoto protocol... If you are interested, and I hope you are, just take a peek into www.climatecrisis.net. I hope you do.

As I said, the tide is turning, and there is a glimmer of hope in the distant horizon the maybe things are about to change. So long we were blind, but now we are learning to see. A threshold needed to be crossed in our collective mindset; and I believe that the tipping point has now been achieved. Now we only need to keep the ball rolling; so that we can finally redeem our rightful inheritance.

Please don’t misjudge yourself. Don’t think the individual is too small to matter. You and I, and many others like us have collectively contributed to the Global Soup we are in now. And each of us can contribute to moving the wheel in the other direction.

According to Chaos Theory, a butterfly flapping its wings in China can eventually cause a tornado in distant California! Maybe we all can make the reverse come true... so that all the hurricanes and floods and droughts now ravaging our planet can finally lead to the magic of millions of colourful butterflies fluttering across a lush green garden called Home.

I love to dream. Hope you do too...

But let’s set the record straight once and for all.

It was never the Economy, stupid!