WE ARE SIGNING OFF FROM EARTH

Dystopian literature abounds. Why? Because everyone knows we are all destroying Earth.

- by Sumita Dutta Shoam

Pollution is rising - air pollution, I mean. That means, if I have children and they have children, somewhere down the future, we are giving birth to people who will suffocate to death! Or grow tumors in their bodies because of the very air they breathe. Not to forget, the polluted water they will drink, and the produce grown in polluted soil, that they will eat! Is there anything that I, as the father of my progeny, can do to change the situation – to make the world a healthy, beautiful place for my children to grow and flourish? No! Not enough!

I know there are people who are making a difference. People who have single handedly grown forests, transformed deserts to lush greenery. And yet, the bulldozer keeps moving forward, razing Earth – that bulldozer, made up of giant factories, big pharmaceutical companies, big businesses that need to churn out big profits. Their tall chimneys keep bellowing out gusts of poisonous air. They filter it, you say? I still see smoke in varied shades of grey being emitted! Nothing much has changed from the time Lowry painted England's industrial landscapes with humans as stick figures in the foreground. Only the list of artists has lengthened - those who have painted industrial landscapes trying to find beauty in billowing smoke.

But when Covid happened and those stick figures disappeared from the foreground, and from the factories which consequently stopped emitting their noxious gases, there was a period when Earth could breathe clean air. The wild reclaimed their lands. Greenery flourished. The skies were so clear, mountain ranges that had never been seen by towns that were latitudes away, could suddenly see them amazingly rising above the skyline. What an unbelievable moment.