Our children, do we care

This was posted long time back, just copied into the new blog. So time references look off...

Not random thoughts. I realized that the more I consume, the less I am leaving for my children. From being a cliché long time back, now when I can associate real faces with the word children, I realize how criminal it is. I feel so proud that the company pays for my fuel, and I guzzle a tonne of it. I have driven more than 70,000 kms already. And I have deprived my next generation of as much.

I came into Houston, last week. I hired a taxi. The driver was an Ethiopian. We had a conversation on things, about Bombay, about why Ethiopian’s run so well in Marathon. But we also talked about the weather in India, and in Houston and in Ethiopia. He said, when he left Ethiopia 26 years back, the weather was so different. They would see the sun but not the heat. But now, when he goes there, the weather feels so warm. The one thing that struck me was that if one country that was not responsible for this, it was Ethiopia. And if I could borrow, some philosophy from Einstein, here is what I thought. If the acts we are doing today, can impact somebody so far off, in a country like Ethopia today, and all of it was happening in space, why would it not impact the things in time. How is that poor country, that is the showpiece of everything that has gone wrong with the way we treat our earth, different from what my own kids would face just a few years from now. If the change has to begin, it has to begin here, it has to begin now.

The answer is not in making the future of our children secure by earning more and providing them more. The answer is in consuming less and less and only what is justified. Having money does not give us right to be indiscriminate on the environment. And if I want to see that the future of my children is becoming secure (going into the future), I would know that if there is a happiness spread in my environment which is powerless to speak. Somalia, Ethopia, Bangladesh, Maldives, Melting Himalayas, Ravaged Amazon forests, Destroyed nature in cities like Bangalore.

It’s not a joke. It’s more real than you think. If you don’t believe what I say, just think about this article and look into the eyes of your child. I promise you won’t be able to because you are killing them.