Waste generated by the burgeoning human population of the Earth and its ever increasing energy consumption have made the endeavour of finding another inhabitable planetary neighbour for humans, gather momentum.
When tragedies like the recent Himalayan tsunami in Uttarakhand occur we are dazed, we marvel at & curse natuer’s fury in the same breath. We then immediately start a blame game, making a scape goat out of authorities and years of neglect.
Conservation of Energy and reduction of waste are the need of the hour. Unfortunately, we continue ignoring these. Focus should be on minimizing wastage and optimizing the energy sources available.
Innumerable methods of effective garbage disposal are available at hand, be it landfill methods, incineration, biological reprocessing, enery recovery, wate recovery, recycling, waste minimization. The main entity unavailable is our lack of will and implementation to do the needful. Barring a few metropolitan cities,we the educated masses are clueless about waste segregation.
Trash and muck dumped on roadsides or any empty plot of land is such a common sight everywhere and not even a flutter of eyelids from us humans around. So many people unabashedly quote civilizations of the ancient past to justify or take pride in spitting and squatting publically, while conveniently forgetting the eco friendly ways of living that our ancestors followed.
Cities are bursting at their seams with an ever increasing population to sustain, resulting in indiscriminate infrastuctre development. We all know these facts, we contribute to them.
A recent survey by the Reader’s digest shows how the most exotic of locales like Mt.Everest and Bahamas are also being littered by mankind with all sorts of garbage! What is truly appalling is the fact that nearly 13,000 miles surrounding Earth are crowded with garbage. In addition to large objects such as inactive satellites and parts of launch vehicles, scientists estimate that millions of smaller bits of trash—flecks of paint, fragments of metal, even a lost glove and camera whiz around our planet at up to 22,000 mph. The bits regularly fall toward earth, but they burn up in the atmosphere before making landfall. Space trash can be dangerous, though—NASA frequently replaces space shuttle windowsafter unfortunate collisions with the tiny garbage.
Our attempts at damge control or environmental recovery are marginal. Afforestation for example, cannot be relentless tree plantation of a species that do not naturally occur in a place.
In reference to the Uttarakhand Tsunami, what came to light was a fact that environmentalists have been crying foul about since long. The naturally occurring ‘Banj’(Himalayan Oak) has been allowed to be replaced by the ‘Chil’(pine tree) of the Southern slopes of Uttaranchal over the years. While ‘Chil’ provides resin and timber, thereby increasing revenue, it damages the ecology extensively. The pine needles that fall, do not sustain any undergrowth and land becomes barren as a result it is unable to stop soil erosion during floods. The naturally occurring and fast depleting ‘Banj’ on the other hand is extremely beneficial. The fallen leaves of the ‘banj’ become mouldy catalyzing under undergrowth which holds soil and allows rain water to percolate slowly into the Nothern plains(the granaries of India). The ‘Banj’ also makes good fodder for the animals but doesn’t yield anything substantial for the coffers like resins or timber. This being a small point in the case of environmental neglect has had colossal repercussionsthat we endrued recently.
Development and maintenance of ecological balance can go hand in hand though may not form an ideal money making situation always. Tourism in our hill states has rapidly increased. We choose to build cement jungles to meet this ever growing demand. In ignoring wood and stone as building options, we make the environment warmer as cement generates heat increasing the ambient temperature of the localized area. We eat into river beds, not only do we build along them , we dump construction debris in the river bed. The river left with very little room to flow engulfs the population on its edges.
Pristine and lush green carpeted mountains as tough peeping through their 
curly locks of clouds and mist greeted me at Kasauli. I was experiencing bliss wrapped in nature’s embrace when a glance at the garbage in the valley below made me cringe!
Through with our careless and energy inefficient ways of living, we might just end up turning the new planetary habitat we find into another unliveable garbage dump. This option is a few centuries away and hopefully we would have mended our ways by then, making migration to another planet unnecessary; just a sightseeing trip there should be fine.
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