Can we not protect the environment?

Can we not protect the environment?

The protection of the environment is critical.  Depletion of environmental energy is not only harmful to our growth, but also it jeopardizes the uplift of civilization of the world. It is a concern for all of us.  Why? Because we live in it, and we live with it.  There is a significant meaning behind all these edification. In the deep level, if you ponder then you will agree that the environment provides us the means to our livelihood.  We must utilize our traditional wisdom to ensure its protection.  The environment supplies us various kinds of resources to increase our productivity.  We get immense benefits from the environment, for example, we utilize its resources; cultivate and harvest its fruits, remove the rocky path to ease the transportation, cleaning the thorns and muddy grounds to the benefits of people to construct buildings and houses for their shelter and innumerable other advantages.  We can cite all these facts when we analyze the truth “we live from it.”  When we consider “we live in it,” we have to ascertain the reality that it is just not a precondition for human existence and productive activity.  We have to accept the truth that we earn our bread and butter because of environment’s enough blessings on us.  It also plays a pivotal role in our social, cultural and aesthetic fulfillment.  We have a valid reason to accept environment’s contribution because our work life is related to its existence.  Our individual and collective sustenance are dependent on environment.  After grueling working hours, we relax, walk, gossip with our friends, fishing, climbing, swimming, playing, etc. due to its availability and we are lucky to utilize its resources.

We get all these resources to complete our regular activities from ocean, forests, beaches, rivers and mountains.  As per the economic pundits, it is known as recreation value.  We live in the environment means that environment already existed before our arrival.  Further, it will stay for an extended period on the earth.  If we accept their contributions and think to protect this precious asset, we can obtain more and more from the environment.  One has to note that the getting the abundance resources of the environment is a great blessing of God to humanity. We must accept this fundamental issue.  Since we have not created any of the natural resources of the environment; we should express a feeling of awe for them.  The environment has its distinct value, and it does not depend on human beings for its existence.  Of course, it on its own cannot make uplift of social, psychological and spiritual development of human mind, but it plays a supportive role, which one should not ignore at any cost.  If you consider the role of environment that on its own, it cannot do anything, you may be correct on the face of it, but the economists term it as an ‘existence value.'  Many rational thinkers abhor the concept of measuring the value of the environment in materialistic value or terms of satisfaction level because they opine that the environment plays a tremendous role in the backdrop of human beings sustainability.  Further, environment also plays a vital role regarding social meaning, social relation, and commitments, the value of which is not too easy to quantify for measurement purpose.

The values stated above are of intrinsic nature; they don’t have any extrinsic value.  The intrinsic value is closely related to our being.  The human beings have a spiritual bondage with them.  One cannot only judge this relationship by materialistic comforts and its use.  So, it is incompatible with market relations. If anybody wants to assess the above spiritual relationship with market dynamics, it will be an utter failure to evaluate the same. The monks, sages, and the spiritual masters define that environmental pollution and its savage is not due to need, but it is due to greed and our natural and unnatural desire to have more and more from the environment.  As per them, our physical desires are quite understood as when you become hungry; you require food and in the same way, when one is thirsty, he needs water. 

So, these requirements are genuine and must be fulfilled.  But unnatural, artificial and deceit needs are not at all true, and they are the developments of our unwanted desire to satiate our greed for possession.  It goes on unceasingly, and we seldom can control these desires.  Further, a natural desire is fulfilled or satisfied no sooner we get what we desire.  For example, when you drink, your thirst goes off, and so your wish to get water is solved.  Similarly, when you feel cold in the winter, no sooner you get a blanket or a quilt, your shivering gets stopped, and you feel comfortable.  But man's appetite for more money, acquisition of more gold and possession of more movable assets are a never ending game.  This game of possession of extra things leads our lives in disharmony disturbing the ecological balance of the environment.  Why is it so?  The reason our craving for more cars means we need to acquire more lands, to do the environmental clearance and finally to enhance the capacity of production.   In one way, it creates more employment, but on the other hand, the environmental protection gets disarrayed.  The craving goes on without an end because it does not proceed from an inclination implanted by nature. When you show new desire, your mind becomes imbalanced to fulfill your greediness.  You then strive very hard to accomplish this feat employing the right or wrong technique.  You forget that all things are interconnected.  The destruction of one thing leads to the destruction of another thing.  Therefore it is imperative to lead a modern life, but without degrading the beauty of the environment.  The environment is our asset, and we must protect it for our benefit and survival.