Aashiq Hussain Kuchy
Besides the inevitable threats to the environment by human imprints we have a battle of ideas to believe or not to believe the threats.
Cassandra, a metaphor has been in circulation since at least 1949 when French philosopher Gaston Bachelard coined the term ‘Cassandra Complex’ to refer to a belief that things could be known in advance. Tracing its origin in Greek mythology, this metaphor finds its application in a variety of contexts like politics, cinema, psychology, corporate world, science, philosophy and in environmentalism. Well, Cassandra is making its position firm and spellbinding more people in environmentalism more than ever. This is because of the interest or the lust; people would either show interest in caring about the earth or the lust of acquiring fame and pageantry or the materialistic gains out of mayhem of environmental issues. Lust of issues I mean, who create something from nothing and in a way wrong policies are framed and adopted and thereby satisfy their personal interests. With the advancement of science and technology, it has now been easier to distinguish between Cassandra’s (aware in advance) and the people thinking like Cornucopia. Today’s cornucopia believes that man’s advances in science and technology will allow us to engineer enough resources to ensure the survival of the human race, no matter how large it becomes.
The clash of thoughts between Cassandra’s and cornucopia is an emerging issue facing the planet, apart from the real threats at the present time. Down from higher concerned agencies that are informed about the threat and who design strategies and frame policies, and eventually the middle and bottom receivers who follow and adopt the policies and strategies drafted. A bedlam and confusion have emerged where one is in quandary to either believe or not to believe the caveat related to earth. This has not been seen in the general public only, but among the scientific community at various echelons who are working towards the challenges which earth is battling with. The super-scary report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2010 about its claim that the Himalayan glaciers would have all but melted by 2035, a claim which was strongly criticized by climate scientists from various quarters and later IPCC pull out the report. The criticism was so pervasive that even non scientific community knit jokes about the IPCC and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri. A column in ‘The Telegraph’-March 01, 2015 by Christopher Booker is witness to the humiliation the then chairman of IPCC faced. This kind of situation is a paradigm how people loss the trust and reliability about the decisions and aware calls and in due course, this kind of approach is leading
to loss of serious concern towards the real and inevitable threats among the general public. Here Cassandra’s would really fail to convince cornucopia and is indeed Achilles’ heel environmentalists are concerned about nowadays.
The environmentalists are sometimes accused of direct mail business to raise funds by scare tactics, conspiracy theories, bogeymen, and preposterous levels of exaggeration. The criticism is legitimate and sometimes disastrous too, as the loss of reliability by any prestigious organization or the body will further lead us to nowhere instead the present threats and alarm bells will be ignored and lack of coordination will crop up amid nations working in collaboration.
We may achieve a bit success by tackling local issues of environmental degradation, but the global issues would really create a concern for the very survival of the planet. Working locally and getting together at global scale to solve and determine resolutions to global environmental threats is the only sustainable option. We may call ourselves Cassandra’s but leave a space to cornucopia thought as well at places where it shows the fruit.
A major part of GDP of various countries is now diverted to tackle global problems like climate change and is really showing a much needed result among concerned people. The threat has been perceived and many unexpected effects are proving their impact now, which were anticipated long before by the people working towards environmental matters. The Himalayan glaciers may not completely vanish till 2035 but the receding speed is a lot faster than ever before. According to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Global CO2 level has surpassed the 400.57 ppm mark (March, 2015). The report suggests this is the highest ever concentration of CO2 in air in recent history. Researchers show that there has been an increase of 120 ppm Co2 since pre industrial times and major contributor of global CO2 is the fossil fuel use in excess either for industries or for transportation. Further, it has been warned of unpredictable environmental changes, including melting of glaciers, unprecedented temperature fluctuations and emergence of various airborne diseases. This sort of message is an eye opener and a realistic point towards pro industrialists who directly or indirectly advocate development at the cost of environment. They may use their computers to work and model the predictions and get outcomes and further debate if they find a lacunae or exaggeration to the predicted reports.
A broad collation of scientists, environmentalists, journalists and policymakers, who were asked to put their collective brainpower together to draw up a list of the 25 future environmental threats that might arise in the U.K. up to 2050 (but could just as well apply to most countries around the world). The main recommendations made by this broad group of 35 experts were: more forecasting and critical evaluation, less dawdling on existing, well studied issues. This report was published in the Journal of Applied Ecology and asserted that policymakers and researchers need to rely more on horizon scanning (i.e. forecasting) to identify the gaps in knowledge and policy that could predispose the future risks. This report, which helped foster the type of interdisciplinary communication and the need at this time. As the prediction may sometimes turn out to be a little more than hype while many of the predicted threats are likely to come to the fore over the coming decades (if not earlier). As per the reliability of the latest technologies and serious analysis towards future planet risks, one could easily feel a sense of threat looming in the future or so. Like a few years back India had no such weather prediction so that a person could rely upon and thereby design their plans as per prediction. With the advancement of latest satellite based and computer modeling outcomes, weather prediction is at its best. This could be another revolution in agriculture and allied fields after the green revolution occurring between 1940’s and 1960’s.
I believe there are much evidences, causes, consequences and vital signs on hand to be a Cassandra. The celebration of various days like World Environment Day (June, 5) each year emphasize and remind the alerts and alarm to work in collaboration whether at international, national, and by and large among people who have ideological differences. To comply and work together in order to achieve a sustainable future for the planet which is a much needed at this juncture when many environmentalists think we have already passed the point of no return.
(The author is PhD Scholar, Dept. of Environmental Science, University of Kashmir, Srinagar.)