If you speak about Greta Thunberg, a crowd will raise their hands and join the chorus in saying she is a ‘misled’ Swedish environmentalist who keeps promoting enmity by participating in a criminal conspiracy.

This not only proves how foolish or irrelevant these allegations are but also highlights the relevance of the issues that this 21 year old has been fighting for the past few years.

Well, if one is trained for distractions or taught to see an opportunity in every calamity, this will naturally be the extent of our toxic thoughts; because however bright it is, sometimes we stubbornly refuse to see the light behind the burning candle.

When Greta was only 15, her essay on climate change won her an award. Three months later she took a banner, sat outside the Swedish Parliament, vowing not to relent until the government met the carbon emissions target agreed by world leaders in Paris in 2015. This is how she became one of the first child Global Andolan Jeevis!

Last summer, she left school, ending her school climate strikes. But she continues to fight, even if she has been arrested and fined by the Swedish courts several times for her participation in environmental protests around the world.

But that is not all. Greta is a descendant of Svante Arrhenius. This foreign name might not ring any bells but he was the scientist who not only came up with a model of the Greenhouse effect way back in 1903 but who also won the Nobel Peace Prize for Chemistry. So it was but natural for those green genes to activate themselves in Greta.

But here’s the thing. Greta is also blessed with an extra pair of ‘genes’ that allows her to sharpen her attention to details in unique ways. So in her iconic speech when she thundered:

‘I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day’; she wasn’t being dramatic.

When she shouts from the podium:

“I shouldn’t be up here. I should be in school. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!”, she isn’t pretending like most pretenders. She isn’t being theatrical. She is just being herself. If you ask why, it is because she is ‘blessed’ with what the Psychologists term as The Asperger Syndrome. Perhaps with this heightened sensitivity, she clearly sees what we ‘normal’ people still refuse to believe in.

Her detractors often complain that she doesn’t smile. Seriously? Why should she use her face as a fake social balm when her priorities are so sincere and genuine- which is to heal a contaminated world and clean the polluted lungs of an infected and diseased globe.

I was reminded of Greta, when once we found our granddaughter immersed in a book. When we wanted to know what she was reading, the ten year old slammed the book shut and then vociferously imparted a lot of gyaan to her grandparents. The book was titled ‘Climate Change’. Which got me thinking- Shouldn’t ‘we’ be the ones who should be making ‘them’ aware? Is it right to count on the coming generations to fight the irresponsible battles that we have created?

In the green environs of Victoria in British Columbia, where we spent nearly two months, what really impressed me was the infrastructure of road travel. It was not only the public and para-transport or the shared mobility alternatives that attracted my attention. It was how the pedestrians and the cyclists are ALWAYS prioritized. They know that walking and cycling does not only melt down the traffic, it is also environmentally friendly and beneficial for health. Isn’t it time we acknowledged it too?

Why keep widening roads instead of narrowing down our interests to include more parking facilities, sidewalks, paths, lower-speed roads, and public transit services? What stops us from creating more pollution free zones around all schools? Why isn’t it important to introduce safe cycling infrastructure in our own neighborhoods?

Even though an ambitious project of public bicycle sharing was introduced here in Bhubaneswar a few years ago, unfortunately it failed to make its mark. People gradually lost interest in the eco-friendly cycle rides due to many reasons. But it was mainly because of the city’s topography that did not ensure smooth rides, and of course, the absence of a proper cycle track. Thousands of cycles are now parked at hundreds of cycle docks created across the city. But, hey- at least we tried!

Think about the AQI’s growing graph due to the silent slaughter and the mindless massacre going on in our country in the name of progress. Data shows that 95 per cent of the tree cover loss from 2013 to 2023 has occurred within natural forests. T

he Char Dham Highway Project in the ecologically fragile Himalayan mountain ranges in Uttarakhand, despite warnings from ALL the scientists, resulted in the felling of 56,000 trees. WOW! That is some news even for a non-tree-hugger like me. In remote areas, it’s a known fact that roads can be widened without harming trees on the ridge- if 5 to 10 percent of the land is acquired from every farmhouse. But at an environmental expense AND for the benefit of the owners, the mass chopping down of trees relentlessly continues.

Bumper to Bumper dams carry on being constructed in friable areas, restricting the natural flow of rivers. Hill slopes keep getting shaved off with the muck getting dumped into clean rivers. Avalanches and landslides are common where people keep losing their precious lives. In a tree felling analysis in Delhi, it was found that in the last few years at least 5 trees are being cut every hour. Not only are we cutting down our natural oxygen supply but replanting concrete forests that allow our kids to breathe poison.

But all this does not make headlines. Why? Because the National media is busy digging their way into the rubbles of the past trying to establish whatever lies under. No one cares about the toxic environment being created, not only in our social circles but also in our ecological system.

When my daughter lived in Gurgaon, there were constant complaints of her children’s allergy and breathing problems. But guess what? It miraculously vanished when they spent nine months in the clean and green city of Bhubaneswar with us. After they moved to Victoria, the scenario became even greener. But this isn’t about MY city, YOUR city, or ME and MY family.

Come winter every year, does it seem fair to lock up your coughing kids in rooms so that they can avoid the toxic air in empty playgrounds in the Capital? Don’t the cheery scenes of your carefree childhood of chasing butterflies in fun filled gardens ever haunt you? Is it okay to keep silent when extremely scary signs are so obvious? How can you brush off polluted air just because it is invisible? Just bulldozing illegal constructions to keep expanding lanes or growing buildings isn’t enough; because cities are built for people. Not for Skyrises or cars!

If my vocabulary was rationed to just four words to what kind of a future we as concerned citizens/ parents/grandparents should envision for our coming generations, it would be a ‘Happy’, ‘Healthy’, ‘Peaceful’ and a ‘Safe’ one. But in the midst of an immediate climate and pollution crisis, if I was to choose one out of the four, it would definitely be ‘Healthy’. Health is Wealth is a saying we have been hearing for ages. It’s about time we understood what it truly signifies; because all said and done, ‘Jaan hai toh Jahaan hai!

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