EARTH Hour may have the status of a symbol in Man’s global fight to save Nature from total degradation. But its importance is far beyond just a symbol; it suggests that the human community has to unite to reverse the damage Man’s greed has caused to Nature, as very rightly stressed by Mr. Marco Lambertini, Director General of Worldwide Fund International (WWF) as world celebrated Earth Hour at 8.30 p.m. on the last Saturday of March. Switching off lights at that moment all over the world at local time 8.30 p.m. certainly has a terrific symbolism involved in the joint action across continents. But if this symbolism does not translate itself into a warning as well as realisation that the people in all countries should move and move fast to save Earth from collapse out of human greed, then it would be good enough a point to be written in essays of middle-school children or to be highlighted in pontifications from political and apolitical pulpits as part of a worldwide statement of a fashionable idea.

 

This is the very point at which the Paris Climate Accord, too, seemed to have got stuck as a few powerful countries hedged and fidgeted over putting their signature on the global pact to save Nature from collapse. In fact, this has been the story of all such attempts for the past fifty-plus years. Every attempt in that direction met with a resistance from this or that quarter for reasons far beyond the understanding of the common man in the street in any country. Factually speaking, what is considered the most natural thing to do -- draw up a common global strategy to reduce and rationalise human greed -- has met with stiff opposition mostly from industrialised nations whose prosperity has depended on the global market for obsolete technologies that are far from being environment-friendly. At the World Economic Forum (WEF) three-four years Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi told the world how easy it was for India to join the global fight against environmental destruction since its cultural tradition and historical ethos supported the idea of complete sharing of common resources by one and all.

 

During that conclave in the Alpine Resort of Davos in Switzerland, one of the issues was to reduce stress on automation in industrial operations so that humans do not lose jobs to robots and machines. Despite a general agreement about the wisdom in the thought, many nations had their reservations since their respective industrial communities opposed the idea -- obviously fired by the thought of fast-buck profit. Thus, if the world has to make the best use of the Earth Hour symbolism, the human community will have to understand how ancient India looked at the issue -- from the period of Vedas onwards. The world would do well also to understand how some intellectuals opposed excessive spread of colonisation as a tool of expansion of political and industrial influence.

 

They believed -- like the sages who wrote the Vedas -- that genuine human progress was possible only if need is treated as the basis of all endeavours and greed is shunned as a monstrous vice. Some may see this as certain abstractism, but in actuality, the idea has the potential to protect the world from total damage to Planet Earth’s environment. That is what the Vedas insist upon -- use natural resources only to the extent of fulfillment of core needs of the people and allow environment time and space to rejuvenate itself from the human usage. The Vedas talked of a true globalisation and universalisation of usage of common resources. Those who opposed colonisation also had similar ideas -- which unfortunately modern society brazenly ignored. This negative phenomenon has to be understood initially and shunned subsequently. And the world is refusing to do exactly that -- of course to everybody’s detriment. The symbolism of Earth Hour has to be seen and understood from this point of view. The idea needs a practical application and not just a contextual reference and hollow intellectual consideration. At this stage, this need has become quite urgent.