World Environment Day

When the teenagers today are busy playing Piano Tiles or tweeting or stalking somebody on Facebook, I took out a little time to write this. I would've been doing the same had I not been galvanised by something that I read on Twitter yesterday. And you would ask why. Why? I'm not sure. Do I plan to motivate you? Maybe. Do I plan to talk about something of sobriety? Definitely.

This is something that is heart wrenching for me. We constitute maybe two percent of the Earth and yet we want to be the masters, the hegemons of it. We think of ourselves as the Creator. "We have not inherited this planet from our ancestors, rather borrowed it from our future," and other stimulating quotes like these go in vain. We made these quotes yet we don't abide by them. 

How many of you know it is the World Environment Day today? Are you saying 'yes' because you read the title of this article a while ago? Until yesterday, I myself wouldn't have known about it too. But I ask you this, do we really need one day to celebrate the Earth? Is one day enough to thank our planet for what it has given us since times unimaginable? think it is to be celebrated everyday unexceptionally. It is this day that we spread awareness and this year I wanted to be a part of this too.

The sea-ice cover is melting at an average rate of five percent per decade. Where has the thick ice gone? Thick ice takes a lot of heat to melt, so the fact that it is disappearing so fast is of great concern. The older ice which has accumulated volume over time - also known as multi-year ice - has not recovered at all, and is showing a steeply negative trend.

Marine animals like whales and dolphins deliberately beach themselves to get away from pollution, shipping noises, and in some cases, military sonar. Poisonous "red tide" - harmful algal bloom - is one of the causes too. They don't want to live in their own home. Imagine being thrown out of your house and not wanting to go back because the conditions are noxious. I think this is obscenity.

  In degrees Celsius per decade

When you look at the map, you will see that the Antarctic waters have not experienced much change even after drastic global warming. With the rising carbon dioxide, you would expect more warming at both the poles but we only see it at one of them. This is because the unique Gale-force winds whip the water and continually pull deep, centuries-old water up to the surface, seawater that last touched Earth's surface before the machine age and has never experienced fossil fuel-related climate change. This is Earth saving itself from the wrath of the humans. How insconsiderate can we be?

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia is larger than the areas of the United Kingdom and Ireland combined. Sediment, nutrient and pesticide pollution from the catchment run-off is having a major impact on the health and resilience of the reef ecosystem. Nutrient loads have also increased,  encouraging red tide, which, in turn, provide food for larvae of the devastating crown-of-thorns starfish. Since 1985, the coral cover has declined by half along the Reef. Pollution driven crown-of-thorns starfish are responsible for over forty percent of the loss. Fifty percent of the Reef is damaged and five percent permanently damaged. Do you still think it is beautiful?

India recorded it's highest temperature on May 19th, 2016 in Phalodi, Rajasthan, the temperature being 51°C. The previous highest recorded temperature was 50.6°C which was in Alwar, Rajasthan in 1956. Other hot spots in India include Churu, Rajasthan at 50.2°C; Bikaner and Barmer, Rajasthan at 49.5°C and Kandla, Gujarat at 48.4°C. The population of Phalodi is 44, 756. Can you imagine people actually living in such obdurate conditions?

I'm not just blindly giving statistics. The instances I just gave you contain in them a deeper meaning. The irony being, we know what to do, but we choose to not do it. This is just the starting, we have a long way towards suffering from our own deeds. The best thing about nature is that it is eternal. And the second best thing? Like a loving companion, it forgives and forgets. Why don't we take advantage of that? 

But fret not. We have had some bright success stories last year from the Paris Agreement to the establishment of Marine Protected Areas or MPAs, from addressing illegal wildlife trade to the waning of oil dominance. 

With the prices of solar power dropping by 80% in the last seven years, it has become a competitive alternative to fossil fuels. The most high profile case occurred in the Arctic during the summer of 2015, when Shell abandoned plans for a large off-shore drilling operation in the waters north of Alaska. 2015 also saw the rejection of the long proposed Keystone pipeline, an environmental victory that keeps 800,000 barrels of oil a day in the ground.

The COP 21 Paris Agreement aims at bringing down the global temperature by 1.5°C. Tuvalu is a country aiming to be a complete renewable resource energy user by 2020. 

Even though late, but we have realised our duty. It will take a lot of time to replenish and compensate all the previous years of damage but nothing is impossible if there is steady improvement. 

The greatest threat to our planet is the 'belief' that someone will save it. Even if we try to deny it, this is a part of the thought we try to suppress and move on from. 

What can we do on our part? Volunteer, buy sustainable seafood, switch to growing only native plants, or bike to work instead of driving. The possibilities are endless.

Don't make Zoology into History. Turn off unwanted lights, that'll keep the future bright!