A Thought on Go Green

The groundbreaking of the building of our children’s future really relies on the present beings. The previous concern given and the awareness raised have been seemingly slowly fading away as the dark thick clouds hang on in the sky blocking the hope for a better world.

As quoted in the draft of the Preamble of People’s Protocol on Climate Change, the planet is experiencing a climate crisis of the catastrophic proportions. Global temperatures have increased twice as fast in the last 50 years as over the last century and will rise even faster in the coming decades.

Human beings in activities to produce goods and service for supplying their needs, have tendency more on exploring the natural sources rather than utilizing them. The need variety has been obviously changing. The more changes in needs take place the more people explore the mother earth to meet them. Mother Earth has been explored in such a devastating way without giving a chance for her to restore the damage caused.

Nowadays, there is a tendency that the needs of human beings are based on the greed which is limitless. The devastated nature now is in imbalance. The obvious imbalance is the change in climate nature with uneven and heavier rain than the last decades, the vast and longer drought, the downsizing of the nature production, floods and land slides all over the planet, and the worse winter in northern hemisphere. The planet is in danger. Even in Indonesia, last year, the country did not experience the dry season, meaning that there was rain in the dry season. This continued rainy season saturated the water reservoir, leading to the massive flood in almost entire country.

Then, what a single human being can simply do to revamp this long and impending damage. When people are asked this question individually, many will come up with the answer that they can not do anything about that because it is not falling under their responsibility. Many might claim that they do not do the damage to the nature so why they should concern. Some probably will say hopelessly and helplessly that nothing can be visibly done to the earth.

The earth finally will vanish one day. That’s when doomsday is coming. But, the current damage, though not yet an apocalypse, has been so acute and all the possible efforts possibly done will take many years to recover and be countless amount of money needed. The situation is simply like in a dark muddy tunnel with no way out. Everyone screams out loud to get out of the tunnel but none is struggling to find the door or make one due to an excuse that everyone has only small hands with ten fingers. They are occupied with thinking about huge ideas with immediate and revolutionary effect and leave behind a number of small ideas which are possibly shifted into big ones that might solve their situation.

We might have not realized that a lot of small actions can be revived and they can be expeditiously contagious. This action can be contagious both ways either negatively or positively. But of course, we prefer the positive one. We need to acknowledge that self controlling and self willingness could be a start for us. The action can be just simply not to litter. With lot of things we need to support life, we will produce a lot of garbage; from the compartment or just simply small bags or boxes. Many times we just throw them away anywhere without ever thinking what a possible bad thing can be caused by such a manner. We think we just litter small.

That bad action transforms into a bad habit which later is reborn as the well established behavior which can not be altered. This behavior is inherited and contagious to the people surrounding. Those people create such a horrible collective behavior contributing massively to the nature devastation. A small thing but is so destructive.

The ever existing idea that can be operational to at least minimize the effect and reduce the damage as time drifts is to start from ourselves with small actions but really contributive to the efforts of reducing the climate change menace effect. Starting from now on, we could do so many actions that are really determining at the assurance of our children future. We can start with implanting the awareness of the danger and threat of doing such a bad manner; littering.

We do efforts to increase the alertness of our people to take a part in these endeavors. Awareness

and alertness of the danger existence are much more a significant action rather than just telling people the story about not littering. Switching of the light at night, turning off the faucet, using the reusable bags, cycling to work, and many others are some of suggested actions that will come a long with those awareness and alertness without our screaming out loud to get people attention and compliance.

To the extreme extend, the decision I have made to my life and my family is born from the awareness and consciousness on the menace of climate change due to human activities. I have decided to have small family of two children. The reason for that decision is that if I have one more child, I will contribute more damage to the nature. To fulfill one human being’s need through producing the food, water, clothes and other needs, the nature must be sacrificed for that effort.

One human being is obviously contributive to the damage of nature in the process of meeting all his needs for the whole life. This consciousness drives me to a decision that having one child, without neglecting my existence as human being to contribute to the continuation of civilization, I have taken a part in preserving nature and reducing the damage to nature due to the human being activities.

All parties all over the world are screaming now about the effect of the climate change. A huge meeting spending millions dollar is convened every year just to show people that they are concerned about the global warming. They meet at the very luxury prime place, spending a lot of water, burn more coal to produce electricity and create more garbage to the compound. They add more to the damage of the nature. It is because probably they think that at least it is not before their very eyes. But actually the contribution of the meeting as many people state is not significant.

As a matter of fact, as mentioned previously, the small things we can do will have a snowballing effect that will result in a huge impact. The key is that it must be started from us. The lifestyle must be adjusted, the need must be prioritized, the greed must be eliminated or nothing will be left for our next generation.

Today, on 21 March, we commemorate the International Forest Day. The forest will be our future. The forest will be our children inheritence. We have to keep the forest alive for the rest of the world time. We don’t think something huge to do that. You can start small. You can start with no littering. Small action will lead to great one, in particular buidling character toward presrvation of nature. Then some day you will be the one to defend the forest conservation. For better future and for better inheritence to the next generation. As many say that todays planet is borrowed from our children.