It is a long way from the days when the earth nurtured the human and the human attempted to give back to the earth what he had taken from it. Today, the human endeavors to extract whatever he can from the earth for his own gain with scant regard to anything else. It is, thus, my firm belief that human activities are indeed harming the earth rather than making it a better place to live in.
What is the use of the information highway and super conductors if one day we may have to live indoors for the fear of radiation? The alarming state of the ozone layer makes this almost a certainty. Is this the kind of world that our children will inherit from us? All the advancements that humans have made till this day have taken their toll on the earth. Today rainforests have been converted into rice fields, mountains have been degraded, carbon particles greet us as we leave home and our rivers have chemical effluents in them. All this is the result of human follies. We have degraded nature to such an extent that it is no longer able to nurture us. One example I would like to offer in this regard is that of the river Bagmati in my home town of Kathmandu. When I was a child we used to go swimming in this river. There was plenty of water then and the water was clean. Since then, however, hundreds of industries and factories have sprung up next to the river due to the easy access to water. These worthy pillars not only take water from the river but also discharge all their effluents into it. The results today is that no one dares to swim in this river, the waters are a sludgy black and the river itself stinks to the high heaven. If this is not human activity, what is it?
Wherever we look, human activity is making the earth a worse place. Besides the degradation of the environment activities like terrorism, narcotic smuggling, and crime are doing their bit to make the world worse. Even cultural hegemony, bigotry, religious fundamentalism contribute to making this world worse. These are all common phenomenon. As an example,l just look at the great numbers of people who die in the terrorist insurgency of Nepal-my country. Another example is the race riots that erupt on a regular basis in Gujrat state in India. Scores are either killed, maimed or psychologically scarred.
Thus, I would like to reiterate that even though there may be a small number of human activities that make the world a better place, the vast majority of our activities contribute to making the world a worse place.
What is the use of the information highway and super conductors if one day we may have to live indoors for the fear of radiation? The alarming state of the ozone layer makes this almost a certainty. Is this the kind of world that our children will inherit from us? All the advancements that humans have made till this day have taken their toll on the earth. Today rainforests have been converted into rice fields, mountains have been degraded, carbon particles greet us as we leave home and our rivers have chemical effluents in them. All this is the result of human follies. We have degraded nature to such an extent that it is no longer able to nurture us. One example I would like to offer in this regard is that of the river Bagmati in my home town of Kathmandu. When I was a child we used to go swimming in this river. There was plenty of water then and the water was clean. Since then, however, hundreds of industries and factories have sprung up next to the river due to the easy access to water. These worthy pillars not only take water from the river but also discharge all their effluents into it. The results today is that no one dares to swim in this river, the waters are a sludgy black and the river itself stinks to the high heaven. If this is not human activity, what is it?
Wherever we look, human activity is making the earth a worse place. Besides the degradation of the environment activities like terrorism, narcotic smuggling, and crime are doing their bit to make the world worse. Even cultural hegemony, bigotry, religious fundamentalism contribute to making this world worse. These are all common phenomenon. As an example,l just look at the great numbers of people who die in the terrorist insurgency of Nepal-my country. Another example is the race riots that erupt on a regular basis in Gujrat state in India. Scores are either killed, maimed or psychologically scarred.
Thus, I would like to reiterate that even though there may be a small number of human activities that make the world a better place, the vast majority of our activities contribute to making the world a worse place.
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