E-Paper
World’s future must not be at stake because of our greed
Why should I live sustainably? Why should I care? Well, these ignorant questions call for immediate introspection.
To us, the school going children, we see the term ‘sustainability’ in many textbooks and have memorised several definitions. But to put it in simple terms, sustainable living means to live on as few resources as possible with minimal environmental damage and depletion for the future generations to deal with.
About 1.2 billion people in the world live without clean drinking water and 8,000 acres of forests are being destroyed every day. The world’s population is expected to rise to about 9 billion by 2050. And these are not dreary facts – they are a wakeup call.
When the rate of consumption and the growth of population is more that the formation and replenishment of natural resources (exhaustible and inexhaustible), a sustainable life ceases to be an option and becomes an essential requirement. Alarmingly, this is happening now.
Why should I live sustainably? Why should I care? Well, these ignorant questions call for immediate introspection. For starters, the world is not ours to destroy. Its future must not be at stake because of our greed. We must remember that we share the world with about 2 million other species, each of whom has as much of a say in the usage of the earth’s resources as we do.
Therefore, over-consumption, over-exploitation, excessive usage and wastage must never be an option. Each of us should do our bit for the world that sustains us.
This has been summed by Lester Brown – “We have not inherited this earth from our forefathers; we have borrowed it from our children”.
(The author is a Class 10 A student at Gyan Bharati School, Saket)
