I had a very strange, quite surreal, experience yesterday…Two educated, well brought up people working at one of the top companies in India asked me some shocking questions. I was stunned and amazed not at the questions as much as the attitude and method of cross questioning. Here’s the first question…brace yourself.

“Why do we need plants and trees? We have made so much progress, so many forests have been replaced by industrial development, and we are still alive. What difference would it make to have a world without greenery? Nothing personal…just saying.”
It took me a moment to reorient myself. Such was the shocking, impact of this statement. The environmentalist in me didn’t like it one bit and I was surprised by my own reaction. Oh this is personal, very personal!

Why do we need trees? Hello? Where do you get the oxygen from? The breeze you enjoy during hot suffocating summers? Global emissions have actually risen by 24 per cent mainly due to green house gas emissions. There will be a five-degree increase in temperature over the next hundred years. Vast stretches of coastal India may just go under water if we don’t take some serious steps, large areas will be submerged and displace around fifty million people in India alone.

The world was created keeping a certain balance in place, nature provided us with the necessary tools to survive and progress. What have we done and still continue doing?

Taking from Mother Nature like ungrateful brutes and destroying the only source we’ve got left to survive. How many hours do we work in a day? Ecosystems maintain an equilibrium, flora and fauna work 24/7 to provide us with the comforts that we are taking for granted. Where do you think you are getting your fax, printouts and photocopies from? The newspapers you read everyday, the magazines you flip while waiting at the salon? These materials come from the trees that are being chopped left, right and centre. At the end of the month you take your salary home using nature’s resources, and what do you give back?
India is rapidly growing into a rich consumer class which has made the country the 12th largest luxury market in the world. The other side of the coin… The richest consumer classes produce 4.5 times more CO2 than the poorest class, and almost 3 times more than the average.

These people fire the statements but can’t reply once we start asking the real questions. Because we just don’t ask the questions, we find the solutions and give the answers with the facts not frills.

Blue Alert, one of the hottest campaigns of Greenpeace is focusing on just that. Engaging people through posting climate hazard signs, slapping eviction notices on buildings under threat of submergence and organizing climate migrant kiosks in high risk localities in the five coastal cities. Mumbai, Kochin, Chennai, Kolkata and Panjim.

Blue Alert – Climate Migrants in South Asia: Estimates and Solutions, a paper authored by Dr Sudhir Chella Rajan, professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras, and a climate expert, estimates the number of people who could be displaced from their homes at 125 million in India and Bangladesh alone. With Greenpeace by their side More than 5000 people have signed postcards of concern to their MPs.
Citizens, celebrities and politicians have joined the Blue Alert campaign...what are you waiting for? It’s time to stop asking and start acting.
It is very personal as I said at the beginning. Look at it from the macro levels as all should, you can bet your last breath on mother earth it’s not. It’s public!

Saira Sayani for Greenpeace