NATURE, GOD'S NATURAL BEAUTY!

CLIMATE CHANGE

Nature is one of God's most beautiful, living creations. Through nature, God is able to teach us, speak to us, and provide for us. Psalms 95:4-5 reminds us about God who created nature. “In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land.”

During the lockdown of 2020, we felt nature reclaiming its space with the nostalgic chirping of birds, cool weather and the non-verbal melodic chanting of Mother Nature; “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.” (Psalms 19:1); which was silenced over the decades with the noise of the industrial revolution and climate change.

Greenhouse gas emissions may perhaps have dipped during this season of humans being in lockdown, but, sadly, our dreaded history of pumping of indiscriminate amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere with the industrial revolutions, mainly, mass production; will come back to haunt us, post the lockdown, and perhaps increase as we continue our greed to over consume whilst being under judicious. Now, with the fourth industrial revolution of social media, mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), Isaiah 24:4-5 gives us the bitter reality of what we’ve done to the earth: “The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, the heavens languish with the earth. The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant.”

Both Bitcoin and NFTS (Non-Fungible Tokens) which are the digital equivalents of cash and collectibles, generates the same amount of carbon emission and footprint per transaction, equivalent to 680,000 plastic card transactions at super markets, or an equivalent of over 51,000 hours of YouTube gorging.

India has constantly committed to its responsibilities and obligations to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). India is a forerunner in Climate Action, and the Climate Action Tracker has rated the India’s efforts as ‘2 degree compatible’, which means that if all countries made efforts like India’s, the average global temperature rise could be limited to 2°C by the year 2100, in keeping with the Paris Agreement and Kyoto Protocol. According to Babul Supriyo, MoS Climate Change, GOI, “India is the world's only major economy to be rated so. India’s intensity of GDP reduced to 12% between 2005 and 2010 while a reduction of 24% was achieved between 2005 and 2016.”

Therefore, let us be mindful that we are stewards on God's green planet, and we must take care of it, as Mother Earth takes care of us.