World Environment Day: The climate crisis and the need for inner awakening

We lament the planet's condition while continuing to pursue our destructive desires, indulging in pointless consumption, and ravaging natural resources.

- ACHARYA PRASHANT

On June 5th each year, the world commemorates World Environment Day. The occasion invites reflection and introspection. We must ask: has it become just another ritual, well-intentioned yet lacking practical impact? A ritual without transformation slips into mere performance.

We know of the environmental crisis—climate change, mass extinction of species, rampant deforestation, and toxified air and oceans. Yet even as these warnings grow louder, we return to the same patterns everyday. We lament the planet's condition while continuing to pursue our destructive desires, indulging in pointless consumption, and ravaging natural resources. This being our deliberate pattern, special days take the purpose of planned expiation for guilt — an hour or two of hashtags and symbolic gestures. The ego receives a temporary fix of redemption, and the destruction continues unmitigated.

Let's be honest: the world doesn't need sympathy or poetic speeches. It requires a deep, inner revolution. Not noisy slogans, but a rethinking of our daily living. Not eco-friendly commercials, but a genuine examination of the roots of our violent patterns of compulsive consumption.

CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT JUST ABOUT THE CLIMATE Climate change is often discussed as a scientific or environmental issue, but at its core, it reflects something much deeper. Climate change is not only a carbon emission-induced scientific phenomenon but fundamentally a reflection of human discontent, ignorance, and disconnection. It is not nature that is in rebellion; rather, it is the human mind that is succumbing to the burden of its compulsions.