As long as we mistake wealth for wisdom and excess for success, the Earth will keep paying the price. Most of us may not be the biggest emitters, but we’ve allowed those who are to shape our aspirations. Unless we step out of the stories they’ve sold us, our small green acts will keep feeling noble while meaning little. The Earth doesn’t need another planted tree or paper straw; it needs us to pause and ask: Am I truly awake to how I live, or just comforted by choices that seem right but cause harm?
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Originally published in The Pioneer on 6 aug '25.
Climate change is no longer a distant forecast; it has started showing up in ways we can all feel. The summers are harsher, the winters less predictable, and natural disasters more frequent. Concerned by this, many people are trying to do their bit: planting trees, wearing old clothes to reduce waste, and even deleting old emails in the hope of saving energy. These days, it’s not uncommon to hear someone say they’ve gone meatless on Mondays as just a little step to help the planet. People post about it, talk about it, and feel a quiet sense of doing the right thing.
But if we pause for a moment, a gentle question begins to surface: Is this truly helping the Earth, or is it mostly helping us feel better about ourselves? Today, we even have a term for this growing tendency to appear ecologically virtuous while doing little to meaningfully help the planet. It is called greenwashing.
