There Is an Elephant in the Room (We Smoothly Ignore It)

Questioner 1 Thank you Acharya Ji for taking the time and giving us this opportunity to sit down with you and discuss climate change, veganism, and a lot of other questions that we have for you. With me I have on the panel today, Niharika Raizada Ji, a renowned actress, and my name is Kuntal Joisher, I am a mountaineer.

Acharya Prashant: I am glad to be here.

Questioner 1: So, I had this thought where in the last twelve years of my climbing mountains, going on Everest and many other mountains in Nepal, in the Indian Himalayas, across the world, as I have been going every year, I have been seeing that there are drastic impacts of climate change that I can see on the mountains that I am climbing. Especially, let's say around glaciers melting in the mountains, like I go to Everest, every year I see that the glacier is receding internally, internally. Even the glacier at eight thousand meters where the temperature is easily about minus twenty-five, minus thirty degrees, that is losing ice, and it is receding at that altitude where impacts of climate change should not be seen technically or scientifically.

So, we are seeing these changes, these are glacial lakes that are getting formed that have an impact on smaller villages downstream. All these changes are happening, snowfall happening in weird times, and these things are constantly happening. But then I came back to Bombay, and there is no impact of climate change or at least something that I really can’t perceive. Sure, there may be a little bit more warmth in the climate or a little bit of extended monsoon, but sometimes you feel, “Ah, it’s Mumbai climate. It will just change up and down, here and there.”

And so, if I am sitting in my bedroom and I am not kind of feeling any massive impact of climate change, but there is massive impact of climate change happening in a very sensitive ecosystem like the Himalayas, and like let's say even the Arctic or the Antarctic, which is causing the havoc across the planet, where there are these floods happening and droughts happening and so many things that are happening. But sitting here in Mumbai, I feel, “Everything is fine, what's this big deal about it.”

So, how can we take this concept of climate change and explain it to everyone in a way where people can start getting serious about it and start doing something about it? If we are looking at any data points, then people are saying by 2040 or by 2050 this planet will literally be uninhabitable. So, we really need to be getting serious about this and do something about it now.

So, how can we bridge this gap, where I see something in the mountains, but I am coming home and can't even have this question constantly happening? What can I do?

Acharya Prashant: The First thing is to see that we are nearing extinction, it is not merely a problem. We have already entered the sixth mass extinction phase. It's a catastrophe worse than the Third World War that we sometimes metaphorically imagine to mean a deadly disaster of unimaginable proportions. When you want to say that something utterly terrible might happen, then you say third world war. What’s already happening is worse than the third world war that might, or might not happen.

We are rushing towards our extinction. This is the sixth one I said, right? Of the previous five, three happened due to exactly the same cause that ails us today, carbon dioxide. You talked of receding glaciers of the Himalayas, and you said that’s visible there, that's not visible here.

You see two things: one because our senses can pursue only gross changes, therefore what is happening a bit subliminally, we do not detect it immediately, right? I could liken it to getting infected by HIV, right? It can stay in the body for long and then it erupts, it's not AIDS all of a sudden. Or even the COVID virus, the disease that we all suffered so much from. It comes to you and the symptoms do not show up immediately, but when they do show up, they can be fatal.

You said technically the layer should not recede so much there, let me offer you an example, you will find it interesting. In a place like Canada, just a difference of five degrees centigrade in the average temperature can mean the existence or nonexistence of hundreds of meters of ice sheets. Just five degrees, right? That which you call the Ice Age, actually the average temperature then was not too different from what we have now.

Just five degrees and five degrees means unimaginably thick ice sheets or their absence. So, if five degrees lesser can mean the ice can get that large, five degrees higher would mean that all the ice can suddenly vanish. So, what is happening up there and that which you saw is exactly what is going to happen, and when we say the average temperatures are already one point five about normal and they will get to three degrees, five degrees, maybe even six degrees.

We feel like saying, “Oh, six degrees is not much, after all sometimes it is twenty-four at other times it’s thirty. Twenty-four and thirty are both things that we have tolerated and even enjoyed. So, twenty-four and thirty don't mean much.” They mean a lot. They basically mean that eighty to ninety percent of all life on the planet is about to go extinct. That's the severity of the problem that we are facing.

It's not about the kind of daily weather that we experience, “Oh, it's a bit humid today,” “Oh, it's raining without reason,” “Don't you feel a bit warm under the collar;” it's not that kind of a thing, we are not talking about the weather. It’s climate change, everything is going to change, and the planet will become uninhabitable not only for us but for all the species that we know of, that's the extent of this crisis.

We, I repeat, everybody needs to repeat it as many times as possible to as many people as possible. Mass extinction is what we are staring at, and we are quickly rushing towards it. That's what is happening. And the thing is, because we do not experience it on our skins immediately, so we feel as if it does not exist. You know, that's the first and the most cowardly way of dealing with a disaster, denial. Just deny it. It does not exist.

We all want to deny things, bad things when they first happened to us. “No this can't have happened.” And then there are advanced stages of grief, and then there are other methods of coping with it, but the first thing itself takes away so much time, and we have already lost so much time.

Questioner 2: Like you said, there is denial. So, it means that we know that it's there, it's going to come, but we tend to avoid it. So, is it there that there are problems bigger than that at present that people can see and that's why they tend to ignore it?

Acharya Prashant: No, it's just that if you accept it then it demands action. Acknowledgment means responsibility, that's the reason why you find mainstream media giving so little coverage to the most important problem of our times. We talk of this, we talk of that, we don't talk of the thing that means everything to us.

What you are seeing today, please understand, is carbon dioxide levels that we have not seen over the past ten lakh years, ten lakh years it was never so bad. And especially to you (pointing towards the questioner), you just told me you are a 2021 pass-out from IIT Delhi. You know, most of the carbon that we see in the atmosphere today has been emitted in your lifetime, after you were born, that's how lucky your generation is. That’s the reason I want to talk more and more to youngsters. “See how lucky you are. That's what we, the elder ones have done to you. That's what we have bequeathed to you, take it.” Lots of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And that's going to wipe you out, finished.

Questioner 3: So where are the solutions? What can we do being a millennial generation, a Gen X, GenZ generation? What is it that we can do? Like for example, when the cyclone came this year in Mumbai, we were all asked to plant trees across Mumbai post the cyclone and we all participated, and all the people I know participated, but it's not enough. That’s for example not enough to cut down the carbon dioxide amount. You just can't plant a few trees; you have to do a lot more. So, what are the few solutions that our generation can implement?

Acharya Prashant: First thing, obviously is true, and it must be understood that we all take action towards the solution. At the same time, a few data points have to be considered. It is around twelve percent of the world's population that’s responsible for more than eighty percent of the excess carbon accumulated in the atmosphere so far.

So, if I start talking to the common man in Mumbai that you should do your bit, it sounds good in a moral sense, but it won't be effective. It's the rich man in the rich countries and obviously the rich man in the not-so-rich countries like India, who is contributing the most, who is the biggest culprit towards the climate crisis. So, what do we do? We need to raise awareness to a point where it becomes an electoral issue.

Obviously, we can do our own bit—not use a four-wheeler when unnecessary, fly less often, and don't consume meat. We all know of those measures. Go solar, go tidal, whatever you can do you know. Obviously, a person cannot go tidal on his own. So, these are things that we can do. But most of these are mostly feel-good measures. You will feel that you are on the right side of morality, you have done your bit.

The thing is that an effective change cannot happen unless it is at the policy level. In a democracy, policies depend on the number of people who are sensitive to the need for policy change, regulation, or formulation. We don’t have sensitivity at all. So, if you have any reach among the audience, the first thing is to keep shouting this in their ears all the time.

You are happily sleeping in your little dark caves, and you just do not know that there is a nuclear explosion outside; you cannot let this happen. So, if you have an audience, if you have any reach, if you have people who would listen to you, that's the first thing to do. Without that the common man would remain busy in his usual petty affairs, we cannot blame him for that. And when it comes to choosing our governments at any level, even at the local level, he will vote on largely meaningless issues and the central issue will remain in oblivion, that means nothing.

This has to be there on the front page of the newspapers, has to be there. Constantly, somebody has to, and a lot of people have to wake up to it. The stats themselves are so terrifying that if they are brought out in the public domain, they are already in the public domain, it’s just that they are not getting publicized. Being public and getting publicized are two very different things. There is so much that is available if you want to look up it, but nobody wants to Google something as specific as the statistics concerning climate change and such things. So, we need to shout it out from the rooftops and the statistics have to be clear to us first of all. What are we doing? Where is it really coming from? What contributes to it and how exactly are we participating in it all?

Questioner 1: Right. So, I wanted to point out that where you just said that what contributes to it? At least whatever I have done in the research and whatever reading I have done; animal agriculture is a very big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Now sure there are very controversial numbers, one agency says, “No, these numbers are not correct,” or some agency says, “These numbers are not correct.” But at the end of the day, every agency agrees that animal agriculture produces a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions, which is eventually contributing to climate change. In addition, there is a lot of land use, a lot of water use, there is a lot of biodiversity loss which are indirect contributors to the climate change crisis.

Now you said that we need to make changes at a policy level, we should elect properly, and those kinds of things. But these lobbies are super strong and these lobbies like let’s say meat lobby, or the dairy lobby, or even the car-making lobby, or petroleum lobby, these lobbies are super strong, and they are also going to influence the elected members quite a bit to continue supporting these industries, subsidizing these industries and continue contributing to the greenhouse gases emission and a lot of these things.

So, what can we do in these situations where it just feels like such an overwhelming problem to me? I look at this and I am like, “I can’t do anything.” All I can do is, I can stop eating meat, I can be a vegan. Okay, I have been a vegan for twenty years. I stopped flying. I don’t even have a car, I travel in the metro as much as I can, and I travel by public transportation. So, I do a lot of these things, but anytime it comes to the election or the electoral politics, I am like, “I can’t do anything.”

Acharya Prashant: No, It’s not that way. Please see the tobacco lobby used to be equally strong. And for a very long time, they tried to obfuscate the ill effects of tobacco on health. But then they were concerted attempts, people got together and ultimately we had regulations on tobacco. There were taxes, there were prohibitions, and they continue to date, and we have been able to mitigate the ill effects of tobacco on human health.

That could be done, this too can be done. It’s just that, you know, it’s not getting into the public conversation. I just read that sixty-three percent of Americans, and why do I quote America? Because countries like America are the ones worst responsible for the state we are in today. Sixty-three percent of them admit to never having even discussed climate change in their households. Now, that’s the problem, that’s a real problem.

And why do we not discuss it? Here the thing gets interesting. We do not discuss it because it challenges, the discussion challenges our very basic philosophy of life. You see, what is the philosophy that we are living in our daily lives? We are saying, “More is better.” We are saying, “If you want to be happy, you need to have more goods, you need to have better furniture and bigger cars. You need to fly more.” How about a dollar five hundred million yacht? Things like that. So, that’s the philosophy that we live. Not only the common man but the common man that philosophy becomes the philosophy of the governments.

So how do the governments, for example, measure their economic success? They talk about GDP. What exactly is GDP? GDP is just the same thing. How many more goods, transaction-worthy goods is your economy producing? Now, basic things that make life richer are not really amenable to monetization. Because you cannot monetize them, therefore they do not even count towards the GDP, right? And it is the GDP-focused approach, it is the material happiness-focused approach that is at the root of the climate crisis.

We keep on saying, “The country is producing more and more, or my income is getting higher and higher, therefore there is welfare. “ It’s another thing that what GDP successfully hides is a lot of inequality. We said the top rung of people, the very elite in terms of money, one percentile, top one percentile, or five percentile, they are the ones contributing in the heaviest sense to this crisis. But they are also the role models and aspirations for the remaining ninety-five percent, we all want to be there. And that’s the philosophy that has been taught to us.

The climate crisis is a product of a wrong way of living. We have been conditioned; we have been taught the wrong philosophy and that’s the problem. And the problem is deeper because your generation sees no alternative except that one philosophy because it is not been exposed to anything else. The work that we are trying to do of taking Vedanta to every household is therefore something that is striking at the very roots of the climate crisis.

And all these are related—veganism, climate crisis, loss of biodiversity, extinction of species. You name the problem and what you will find is that the same philosophy, philosophy of material happiness is at the root of all of them. And therefore, you cannot solve any single one of these problems without really addressing all others. And if you have to address all of them and all of them are intersectional, they all touch upon each other, then you have to go to the very base. Is more really better? Are we benefiting from that?

When you say GDP is great and for example, Moody’s just said India is not going to grow at seven point six percent, it’s going to be six point eight percent, and there was a lot of hue and cry, “Oh my God, the country is not growing that much.” The fact is that the average income of the most disadvantaged section has not risen by much over the last thirty years, even in India. Whereas the top one percentile has gotten richer by more than fifteen times. (Inflation-adjusted figures)

So, what is GDP doing? It is taking an aggregate. It is presenting to you an average in terms of per capita income. What it is hiding is that what averages successfully manage to hide. Averages have been pulled up only by a handful of people. And the vast majority of people are actually remaining at the same levels where it was a long time back, or actually the levels have fallen; that’s what GDP is hiding.

So, it’s not even that we are getting even materially more prosperous. First thing is, is material prosperity giving us what we really need? What are the costs of material prosperity? Secondly, are we getting even materially more prosperous as a human community? No. Only a handful of people are gaining in wealth, all else are just valuing in their old positions.

So, we need to take up this discussion with the young people especially. “How do you want to live?” “What do you want to live for?” “What is your core philosophy of life?” As we used to say in IIT, “Funda kya hai tera? What is the fundamental you want to live by?”

Questioner 3: So, I have a doubt here. Like we all started from a point when we were an early man and lived in caves. Then we started technological advances, we developed and made these many things just to live a peaceful life. Now when we have these things, we are saying that we must go to minimalism. Then there are two options, either to develop such technologies, for example, the solar panels to reduce pollution and reduce harm, or we literally go to a point where we discard the things and go back to the same life where there is extreme minimalism. So, what should be the approach?

Acharya Prashant: Both. We need active economic degrowth. We do not need so much consumption. What was the consumption for in the first place? Why did the early man come out of the forest, out of the cave? For what purpose? You must remember the purpose. The purpose was not that he was not getting enough to eat there. No animal ever starves in the jungle, unless man interferes, right? You don’t really have pandemics in the jungle, again unless man interferes.

So, jungles are actually quite nice places and man was alright there in the physical sense at least, right? We do not die of hunger, heat, food, thirst, or starvation, that does not happen usually in the jungle. And if that happens, to that extent it happens even in the cities, right? We have people dying of starvation on footpaths. That happens even in the US. Even the US has people who are ill-fed, right?

Why did we come out of the jungle in the first place? Because there was something that could not happen in the jungle. There were conditions not really suitable for that particular thing. What was that thing? We wanted to develop ourselves more. We wanted to have more peace, as you said. Did we really get that by coming out of the jungle or have we failed miserably? The intention itself has been defeated.

When we were there and now that we are here, are we really better off in terms of the intangible thing that we wanted? Tangibly, we have gathered a lot. Tangibly, obviously, we have gathered a lot. But that intangible thing that we were so desperate for, I dare say so much in love with, we managed to secure that? No, we didn’t. So not only do we need to minimalize, we actually need de-growth.

A lot of things that we are using, we do not need, they have to be discarded. A lot of industries are simply wasteful, they do not need to exist. Do we really need huge military complexes? Do we really need these huge slaughterhouses? Animal agriculture he talked of, do we really need those industries? A lot of the cosmetics industry, for example, are these things actively needed? You have to ask yourself these things. Textiles, garments, do we really need so many clothes as we use? And there is just so much, you know.

The carbon emissions of the US military are larger than that of several other nations combined. I am not talking about the emissions of the militaries of the other nations, I am saying that, you pick up the Scandinavian nations for example, the emissions of the entire country are lower than the emissions from the Pentagon. What’s going on? Do we really need all those things? Do we really need to fly as much as we do? In a country like India, how do you justify flying from Delhi to Chandigarh? Or from Delhi to Jaipur? I don’t know if we have flights from Mumbai to Pune.

Questioner 3: We do, and to Surat as well, and many other places in Gujrat.

Acharya Prashant: I am not sure. And if the poor road infrastructure is the reason, we better ramp up that infrastructure. The kind of carbon footprint when you fly is tremendous. So, I liked it, we traveled to Bombay by train this time. We had a camp in Goa, we again used the train. Once the flight, then the train. Obviously, it’s all not that convenient, but that’s the minimum you need to begin to do. That’s just the minimum, that won’t suffice. There is a lot more that we actually require to do.

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