Global warming activists have been hitting all the right notes lately. There's the Al Gore Movie,
An Inconvenient Truth, there's the
report by the National Academy of Sciences that the earth is at its warmest in centuries and James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University's Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences makes a
great case on NPR's On Point Radio talk show.
In scientific circles, there is no more a fuzziness about the facts behind global warming and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times thinks that the time is ripe for a practical Green Party in the US. As I read Collapse, Jared Diamond's extraordinary treatise on the doomed choices that societies make and do not realize its consequences until it is almost too late, I am repeatedly transported to some of the ominous choices being made today and wonder if a fate similar to the Mayan civilization or the Polynesians in the Pacific Islands will befall us as well. "No! we are smarter and more knowledgeable than those people and we have the power to stop something similar from happening to us", proclaims a small voice inside my head. That voice does not sound that confident however, after seeing what nature's fury can do to man's best laid plans - tsunami, the flooding of Mumbai and hurricane Katrina are too vivid to sound confident - specially when you consider that in none of these events, cataclysmic as they might have been, Mother Nature was at her fearful worst.
So where should we look for signs of action? That something is being done? Jamse Hansen says that the momentum of the green house gases and global warming is now far too great to be controlled by individual actions. You may buy all the hybrids that you want, use all the energy star compatible appliances that you can, this genie cannot be put back into the bottle until governments of the world make a concerted effort. Where shall that effort come from? From the US - whose leaders are so beholden to the fossil fuel industries that they have made every effort to break the Kyoto treaty and tried to smear the scientists stating the facts about global warming with the brush of "fear mongering and hoax"? From China, whose very lifeblood of her booming manufacturing industries is cheaper and more abundant raw material consisting of metals, minerals and petroleum products? From India, whose leaders and population is so caught up in its own hype that they don't even bother to clean up the river Ganga (Ganges), not even when it is proclaimed to be sacred and equivalent to mother in ancient Hindu scriptures? Europe and Japan have been making all the right noises, but frankly, at this point on the world stage, wind is definitely not behind their sails and
their efforts could make only a small impact.
I don't think all hope is lost yet; between India, China and the US, I feel that with the right leadership and motivation, US and India might still be able to save the day; China has too much of its economy staked on non-renewable fuels to meaningfully support this movement.
What kind of leadership will be needed in the US and India to be able to provide a vision for reducing the threat of climate change? More importantly, who will provide that leadership? While Dick Cheney may proclaim the 1% doctrine to be the operating principle while dealing with terrorists, somehow, for climate change, it is not relevant. Even in the eyes of this administration, isn't there at least 1% certainty that global warming might be occurring? Why is it then that the US must act, even if there is 1% probability of terrorism but not when there is a threat of global warming? India at the moment is similarly bereft of leaders who can rise to the occasion. Where are the Gandhis, the Churchills, the Roosevelts, the Lincolns, the Kings of this era?
Not surprisingly, the hope for both nations might lie in their respective dominant religions - Hinduism and Christianity.
Hindus take great pride in their ancient culture, the scientific foundations of many of their rituals and their symbiotic relationship with nature and living beings. Jainism and other religions and cultures in India take this respect for all living beings to yet another level. Should it not be axiomatic then that a country, where a majority of people are spiritually and religiously respectful of their surroundings rather than claiming a god given dominion over them, should also be a country leading the way in promulgating a lifestyle and developing technologies that help alleviate the current problems associated with global warming? After all, if you consider all species of living beings to be just another form of yourself, aren't you morally obligated to stop a process that is leading to extinction of a vast number of species? Unlike the US, India can lay a claim on only a handful of great leaders in the past few hundred years, and the greatest amongst them all was Gandhi. Almost sixty years after his assassination, his warning that "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed” sounds surprisingly true. He was also a leader who understood that the best way to unite this country is through her religion. Gandhi used his religion to give the nation a sense of righteousness and purpose and there is a need for religious leaders in India who can yet again help people renew their ancient relationship with Mother Earth and everything else, green energy, sustainable development and pollution control will simply flow from that.
People of the United States are no less enamored of their Christian roots. Indeed, many of the great movements in the US were
created around religion. The idea of John Winthrop's
"City Upon A Shinning Hill", Lincoln's Civil War and King's Civil Rights movement were all deeply influenced by Christianity. Can another great leader originate from the same tradition? Already there are many religious organizations in the US who are breaking ranks with the conservatives on the issue of global warming, proclaiming that it is the right thing to do to take care of the earth; but there are still too many people getting riled up for the wrong reasons, gay marriages, gay bishops, abortion etc. A few days ago, Larry King mentioned on his program that people are too busy to think about what will happen from fifty years from now on! Fifty years! As one of the guests on NPR's talk show mentioned that if a civilization cannot think fifty years in advance, then that civilization is doomed! During many critical crisis in the recent past, the US has not acted until really pushed hard but once it gets into the arena, it plays to win. Can enough people in this country be convinced, by religious or political leaders that time for inaction is long past?
Scientists have been trying to re-enforce that the time period we now have to act is not centuries but decades or even years. Many amongst us might end up seeing the face of the earth as we know it change during our lifetimes, or we might be lucky enough to see some truly great leaders stride on the world stage to guide humanity through this unprecedented crisis.