ON GREENER PASTURES ??
As I sit to write on this World Environment Day, I am elated at the front page headline of Hindustan Times, the newspaper I subscribe to. It says that "Indian consumers are the greenest in the world", according to a global survey of 17 countries conducted by the National Geographic Society and Globescan, an international opinion research consultancy. The survey uses an index of consumption habits and their environmental impact in five categories: Goods, food, housing, transport and attitudes. Brazil is ranked No.2, while US consumers are ranked the last. The survey also covers countries like Russia, China, South Korea, Mexico, Argentina and Hungary.
There's another article which says that there is a remote village in Bihar, called Dharhara, 230 km east of Patna, in Bhagalpur district, which follows an age-old ritual of planting 20 fruit-bearing trees at the birth of every girl child.
The above two news might insanely make us think that we don't need people like Nobel laureate, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the United National Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Changes, to preach us on global warming, more since he made some obscure mistakes in calculating the melting rate of Himalayan Glaciers. But to me, as I take recess from the knee and ankle wrenching trek I undertook recently of Sunderdunga Valley at Kumaon region of Himalayas at Uttarakhand, I have no doubt in my mind that, people like me are the parasite to this world and few people like Dr. Pachauri are, if not saviour, at least a dredger.
Speaking of global warming however fashionable it might be, at the context of believing that most speakers of them are pseudos, I cannot fail to notice many traces of climate changes in that trek to Sunderdunga Valley and Maiktoli Base Camp.
Reeling under the intense heat of May, I thought the trek would be weatherly cool there. I was so wrong! Even at 2700 mts. above sea level, at Dhakuri, a picturesque plateau, the weather was no better than Kanpur (131 mts), my current home. More to this, there are traces of indiscriminate destruction of trees everywhere, mostly by the locals, for demand of livelihood and fuel, but few also due to pathetic past time desires, most conspicuously by invaders, who most conveniently called themselves, tourists, vacationers or trekkers.
I leave with a couple of pictures as proof of such misdeed by such invaders.
There's another article which says that there is a remote village in Bihar, called Dharhara, 230 km east of Patna, in Bhagalpur district, which follows an age-old ritual of planting 20 fruit-bearing trees at the birth of every girl child.
The above two news might insanely make us think that we don't need people like Nobel laureate, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the United National Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Changes, to preach us on global warming, more since he made some obscure mistakes in calculating the melting rate of Himalayan Glaciers. But to me, as I take recess from the knee and ankle wrenching trek I undertook recently of Sunderdunga Valley at Kumaon region of Himalayas at Uttarakhand, I have no doubt in my mind that, people like me are the parasite to this world and few people like Dr. Pachauri are, if not saviour, at least a dredger.
Speaking of global warming however fashionable it might be, at the context of believing that most speakers of them are pseudos, I cannot fail to notice many traces of climate changes in that trek to Sunderdunga Valley and Maiktoli Base Camp.
Reeling under the intense heat of May, I thought the trek would be weatherly cool there. I was so wrong! Even at 2700 mts. above sea level, at Dhakuri, a picturesque plateau, the weather was no better than Kanpur (131 mts), my current home. More to this, there are traces of indiscriminate destruction of trees everywhere, mostly by the locals, for demand of livelihood and fuel, but few also due to pathetic past time desires, most conspicuously by invaders, who most conveniently called themselves, tourists, vacationers or trekkers.
I leave with a couple of pictures as proof of such misdeed by such invaders.
Comments