Why is India lacking behind? || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2022)

Acharya Prashant

Full Video: East Meets West on Climate Change || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2022) Link:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1rJhkzMmOI&t=16s  The interviewer is Dr. Eban Goodstein, Environmental Economist, Director - Center for Environmental Policy, Bard College, New York, USA.  Video Information: 11.02.2022, Interview Session, Goa  Context: ~ What is Climate Change? ~ How to stop climate change? ~ What is the solution to global warming? ~ How can we control the increasing population? ~How can spirituality solve the problem of global warming? ~What is the most effective way of dealing with climate change? ~ How can population control help in dealing with climate change? ~What is the solution to climate change? ~How spirituality can stop climate change? ~Climate change has no scientific solution  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00 We are treating climate change as if it is something outside of us.

00:09 As if some asteroid from outer space came over and delivered all the gases and trapped

00:18 all the heat in our atmosphere.

00:23 I want all of us to pay attention to the fact that we have done it.

00:30 It is our action and every action is representative of the state of the actor.

00:38 We are in a particular state internally and therefore we are doing what we are doing externally.

00:45 Now our internal state has brought about this external action, this external state and we

00:54 are not addressing the root cause.

00:56 We are not addressing the way we are and the way we have been probably all throughout our

01:01 history.

01:02 We do not want to address that because probably that's too painful and that would cause

01:06 too tectonic shift in our entire life system.

01:13 So we want to treat it as one of the problems that face us.

01:18 That's a very fragmented approach.

01:24 Hence the solutions that we are thinking of are also pretty external in nature.

01:30 So we want to move to greener technologies, we want to have carbon sequestering mechanisms,

01:38 we want countries to pledge for reforestation, we want auto manufacturers to come up with

01:47 newer technologies and such things.

01:52 And countries quabble with each other, who should be at the brunt and then issues of

01:56 climate justice and such things crop up.

02:01 The thing is, I want us to inquire into it.

02:05 Are we even understanding where the whole thing is coming from, really?

02:10 And if we do not understand that, is it not a fundamental conclusion that we will never

02:17 be able to solve this problem and all the actions that we are trying to have as remedial

02:24 actions would just be consolations.

02:29 We would be entertaining ourselves and we would be rather gratifying ourselves that

02:37 we are doing something meaningful and fruitful and nothing would come out of it.

02:42 And I'm not just hypothesizing in a vacuum.

02:46 You see, we started taking this thing a bit seriously in 1990, right?

02:52 That's the watershed year.

02:54 And we are more than three decades from there now.

02:59 And not only have we failed to reduce or neutralize carbon, the fact is today, we are releasing

03:09 20 to 40% more carbon than we used to do three decades back.

03:16 And that's with all our climate action.

03:19 And there is really no hope that we are going to achieve carbon neutrality any soon.

03:27 My country, India, for example, even as a matter of pledge has quoted 2070.

03:35 Now, that to me is just too far off.

03:41 And this kind of action is just too insufficient.

03:46 So we are doing it, we are doing it and there are two things about us that are causing it.

03:54 They are so fundamental that we don't even talk about them.

03:58 Those two things are the numbers that we are and the numbers that are represented by our

04:08 per capita consumption.

04:11 And even these two are fundamentally one.

04:15 The inbuilt human tendency to take consumption as an indicator of the fulfillment or success

04:27 of one's life.

04:28 That's the reason we multiply.

04:32 And that's the reason we want to consume more and more.

04:36 And climate change is hardly anything but a function of our numbers on this planet,

04:43 our population and the per capita consumption by each person of our species.

04:51 Unfortunately, irrespective of the variations in culture, thought, religion, ethnicity,

04:59 all that we have across the world, about one thing, we all are fully in agreement.

05:08 And that is that we all need to have a good time by consuming more and more.

05:15 Be it the Indian, the Chinese, the American, the African, anybody, we all want to have

05:20 a happy life and about a happy life, the thing is consumption.

05:26 Consume more and let there be more people who can consume more.

05:30 So the slogan really is more to consume more.

05:35 And nobody seems to want to address that because that is just too explosive an issue probably,

05:39 especially in a democratic setup.

05:41 [Music]

05:45 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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