All the industrialised countries managed to kill their environment for growth and then are going back to environment after they have reached a state where they can afford to think about environment. Saving forests at the cost of nutrition, health care, immunisation, jobs, education, roads, electricity, clean drinking water etc cannot be justified. It is very easy for us to sit in our cozy offices/homes and comment about saving environment.
Forests have become breeding ground for maoists who continue to make sure people in those areas live in extreme poverty and continue supporting maoism. People are opposing nuclear plants after getting influenced by Greenpeace. How many people died in Fukushima outside the plant ? None! Millions die everyday due to lack of medicines, healthcare, clean drinking water and all this cannot be delivered to people with energy. We have an option of either using nuclear energy which is relatively clean or use thermal which is heavily polluting. We do not stop flying just because a plane crashed.
Similarly, we enforce coastal regulatory zones (CRZ) in cities like Mumbai and do not allow to build drains and water treatment plants as these will result in some mangroves getting cut. In Mumbai, metro line 2 is not being made as the coach depot has green hurdles. What is the use of CRZ in Mumbai ? People say that mangroves help Mumbai from flooding. Why not just make sure we have enough infra to take care of storm water? Other large cities manage it. I am sure Mumbai can manage without mangroves too.
I don't think we can continue to live in these city villages & forests and dream of growth. We cannot have both at the same time.
No comments:
Post a Comment