Locked down, meaning some things one did one does not do now.
One does not wander out and walk a street full of people, one does not drive 40 km to go to a restaurant, or 20 km to visit a friend, or go to the 'office' or factory or school or college! Or t a movie theatre or hang out with friends.
But that does not mean that one does not eat, or work or 'meet' friends. While food is real, al lot else is virtual.
I wonder, if all my 'work' can be done with the screen and phone and ear plugs, why have I been travelling so much all these days? Why has human species been doing this high carbon runaround?
In indian villages before vehicles became so easily available, did not people spend a life restricted to wandering as far as the feet could take one? To the river to bathe, to the fields to till, to clear weeds, to run the water, to graze the cows and bulls.
Was that a primitive life? Is our life, one that has been rudely corona interrupted, of physical wandering over 10s of kms to 1000 km in a day a better life? Are really accomplishing more?
In our corona confined life I find plastic creeping into my home, relentlessly, with everything I purchase. Food, medicine, oil! The ocean floor has alarming quantities of micro plastics. And I am contributing my mite. Now, I have been made to compulsorily suspend movement and cosumption of petrol and diesel, dramatically reducing emissions. Fear and legislation, with override powers over freedom to move, have resulted in the oil markets going into a tizzy. But the markets are holding, waiting to return to 'normal', the high consumption mode, to further aggravate global warming.
Will we stop throwing plastic in the environment only when another normalcy rattling event occurs? Is there no way we can embrace a sensible way of life together, as a planet, as humanity?
Will our collective endeavour only be made of an oft heard platitude? "
There is much that people are doing, that is why the world is not worse than it is!"
And we are ready to offer the earth, bruised and battered, to the next generations with this weak disclaimer?
One does not wander out and walk a street full of people, one does not drive 40 km to go to a restaurant, or 20 km to visit a friend, or go to the 'office' or factory or school or college! Or t a movie theatre or hang out with friends.
But that does not mean that one does not eat, or work or 'meet' friends. While food is real, al lot else is virtual.
I wonder, if all my 'work' can be done with the screen and phone and ear plugs, why have I been travelling so much all these days? Why has human species been doing this high carbon runaround?
In indian villages before vehicles became so easily available, did not people spend a life restricted to wandering as far as the feet could take one? To the river to bathe, to the fields to till, to clear weeds, to run the water, to graze the cows and bulls.
Was that a primitive life? Is our life, one that has been rudely corona interrupted, of physical wandering over 10s of kms to 1000 km in a day a better life? Are really accomplishing more?
In our corona confined life I find plastic creeping into my home, relentlessly, with everything I purchase. Food, medicine, oil! The ocean floor has alarming quantities of micro plastics. And I am contributing my mite. Now, I have been made to compulsorily suspend movement and cosumption of petrol and diesel, dramatically reducing emissions. Fear and legislation, with override powers over freedom to move, have resulted in the oil markets going into a tizzy. But the markets are holding, waiting to return to 'normal', the high consumption mode, to further aggravate global warming.
Will we stop throwing plastic in the environment only when another normalcy rattling event occurs? Is there no way we can embrace a sensible way of life together, as a planet, as humanity?
Will our collective endeavour only be made of an oft heard platitude? "
There is much that people are doing, that is why the world is not worse than it is!"
And we are ready to offer the earth, bruised and battered, to the next generations with this weak disclaimer?
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