COUNTDOWN: FOR THE END?

In the past months, our Indian news channels have luckily covered an issue other than the Bollywood drug scandal... which were the floods that struck Telangana on the 17th of October with over 60 reported deaths and major loss of property. Similar and even more dreadful situations were witnessed in Bihar and Assam and their occurrence every year has now become ‘normal’ to us to the point of insensitivity. The major cause of these floods are the greenhouse gases whose emissions have increased to such an extent that it has caused a rise of 1 meter in the water level of the world, what’s worse is that it doesn’t stop there. In the globally celebrated webinar ‘TED COUNTDOWN’, it was noted that if we don’t do something to cut down the emission of greenhouse gases it could lead to a rise of about 2 meters in the water level which is enough to erase a population of nearly 200 million people.

Climate change is no more just a theory it is a truth of our own creation that can’t be denied anymore. We have pushed the earth to all its limits and there’s not much time left in it becoming a place where hardly anyone can survive. Parts of Maharashtra (India) are experiencing heavy rains in October which is an indication of how bad the effects of climate change are going to get. Johan Rockstrom said 'the pace we are on right now we are rewinding our climate clock for up to 5 million years.'

According to COUNTDOWN’s Agenda 21, they plan to plant a million trees within the next 3 years and to cut down the emission of greenhouse gases to half by 2030. But the question with these long term goals is, ‘Will they be enough?’

For we can only ‘do’ in the present and it has to be NOW!