Tree Plantation is False Climate Activism

Acharya Prashant: I will say something with respect to this tree plantation thing. You see, it is very well known that one tree over the course of forty years would absorb just one ton of carbon dioxide. How effective is that? Please. And that is if that tree gets to live forty years old. One tree over forty years absorbs one ton of carbon dioxide; in one year how much does it absorb? 0.025 tons. Whereas, having one less child causes a difference of sixty tons per year. Now, do you want to happily plant trees and then go home and have a child? One child is sixty tons per year, and one tree is 0.025 tons per year. But by planting a tree you start feeling that you have done your bit, and you feel very happy; now you can go on a date, get married, and then, obviously, you will have kids.

Now, this is the kind of thing I become very, very unhappy with. All the measures that social activism is taking can contribute not even one percent of that which has a child less does, but then all the do-gooders are roaming and they are going around with a lot of pride. “You know, we are climate warriors.” What climate warrior? What is this tree plantation thing?

Devote your resources, your energy, your Fridays, your Saturdays, or your Sundays to doing the right thing. Have an awareness campaign. Go to young people in schools and colleges and tell them not to procreate. That’s what you must be doing. Instead, you are feeling good by planting trees. Not that planting trees is harmful, I am fully in support of it, but then the opportunity cost is great. Do you understand opportunity cost? The same time that you invested in planting a tree could have been invested in delivering a presentation in a particular college. By planting the tree, you refuse to make that presentation in the college. And this is criminal. This is outrightly criminal. I do not support this.

So, do not say, “We are little beings, we can only do this much!” The ones who are doing this much are the ones causing the problem. Misplaced climate activism is not solving the problem; it is a part of the problem. Everybody is becoming a climate activist without realizing what is it that really needs to be done.

There are a few things you must understand. At the root of the climate catastrophe lies man’s tendency to consume, and man consumes in three clear ways and three distinct ways; man wants to consume the entire world, and the entire world consists of human beings, prakṛtik beings—which you call as natural beings—and man-made things. Whenever you will look around you, these are the three kinds of things you will find: other human beings, other natural beings, and other man-made things. Man consumes all three, and consumption of all three leads to carbon emissions.

When you consume another human being, what do you get? Kids. And that is the biggest cause of carbon emissions. When you consume man-made things, again, what do you emit? Carbon, because whatever is man-made is made using energy, and energy comes from fossil fuels. So, whenever you are consuming something man-made, you are causing carbon emissions. And the third thing is the consumption of natural resources. Whether you are eating vegetables, whether you are vegan or not, or whether you are consuming meat, all of this is highly carbon-emitting. Even if you are vegan, you will eat grains at least. Where will the grains come from? They can only come by felling forests. But then you start feeling great: “I am a vegan, you know. I am holier than thou!”

The Earth does not have the resources to support eight billion or eleven billion vegans, so do not be happy about just being a vegan. Veganism does not help the cause of climate change beyond a point. We need two things: less people and less consumption, and both of them together. Even if one of them is missing, you are gone. The US has not too many people, just thirty-two crores are there, and yet they are the biggest carbon emitters in the world because they consume. On the other end is China; in China, the per capita consumption is one-fifth or one-tenth of the US, yet they are number two on the carbon list. Why? Because they are just too many.

You need a situation where there are not more than two or three billion people in the world—that has been scientifically calculated to be the sustainable limit—and currently, we are eight billion. We need to reduce it to two or three billion; that’s the first thing. Secondly, these two or three billion people have to be spiritual so that they do not have a tendency to consume. Unless you are spiritual, you are bound to be living a consumption-centric life.

The very urge for liberation, when it doesn’t find an outlet, becomes the urge to consume. Do you see this? Where does the tendency to consume so much come from? It comes from the misidentified and thwarted urge towards liberation. If you will not provide liberation to a man, his energies will flow in the direction of consumption.

So, these are the two things that we require: one, less population; secondly, the population that remains must be highly spiritual in its outlook. Only then can you avoid climate catastrophe. All this tamasha that is happening on the streets will not help; instead, it is making people feel good about themselves. I look at these climate warriors, young men, and young women, some of them were fighting the police recently in Bombay, and I thought to myself, will these young people refuse to have a kid? No, that they won’t. Here, for a tree, they are prepared to lay down their lives—and I respect that sentiment, seriously I respect that—but then I want to question the efficacy of that.

You don’t want these two thousand seven hundred trees to be cut down, but then if you get one child, that is the equivalent of cutting down a lakh trees. Bringing one child into the world is the equivalent of cutting down lakh trees—maybe more; just do the math. But you show so much of sentiment when a tree is hacked down, and you show no sentiment when you see family after family procreating; you in fact send them congratulatory messages: “Wow! Nice, didi! Good that you have your second or third kid now!” Returning from a climate demonstration, what does this young girl do? She calls up her didi and says, “So, didi, was the delivery fine?” What nonsense is this?

Climate catastrophe is a spiritual problem and it can only have a spiritual solution. All else that you see happening around you in the name of climate activism is just tamasha . It will not help. Yes, it will boost up a lot of egos; it will give fame and limelight to a lot of young people. They will become climate warriors; they will become saviors of the world. Tomorrow, one of them might even get the Nobel Prize. So much of the limelight is there, you know. “This young man, he has really brought this issue to popular consciousness. Let’s bestow upon him the Nobel Prize for peace!” All that can happen, but all that will be just symbolic, not helpful at all. Or even if it helps, it will help only to a very marginal degree.

Do you get the real solution? From eight billion, take it back to two billion. And you don’t have to kill people for that; you just have to educate and encourage people not to reproduce; even if they want to have kids, let them have at max one kid. And the second thing is, this two or three billion that finally remains must be deeply spiritual from the heart so that it does not have a tendency to feast upon the world.

But the way climate activism is going, it is going in a very blind direction. People are trying to get governments to intervene by way of legislation. What can the governments do? It’s a democratic world; the governments will only do what the people want them to do. And the people want only cosmetic steps to be taken, so the governments will take cosmetic steps.

In fact, chances are—you know, as far as this tree plantation exercise is concerned—chances are we have already crossed the threshold where tree plantation can reverse the effects of climate change. That threshold has already been crossed. Now we need stricter action. Now we need more meaningful action. Now we need real action. Planting trees might have been a useful step twenty years ago, but that threshold has been crossed long since. You need to do more concrete action today, and more concrete action is not about Friday demonstrations and Friday strikes and all that stuff; all that is just a show. Real action needs to be taken.

Full article link: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/dont-blindly-rush-into-good-deeds-1_6a3958c

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