Let's turn saviour this Earth Day

It has been 38 years since we as a global population have been observing the Earth Day on April 22 to explore and reinforce ways to save the planet from emissions and global warming.
Sounds like a lofty movement, but it is pertinent to point out that in these years the planet has been mauled so collectively and nastily that its longevity has literally shrunk a million times.
Just the other day the polar cap collapsed in the Arctic, setting off alarm and fears of consequences. Food shortages are no longer just for the below poverty line segment; irrational and bad weather has become an agent of virulent change; crops are crashing, water is vanishing and the ozone hole is threatening to get bigger than the stratosphere itself.
More alarmingly, on an average we dumped 70 million tons of global warming pollution a day into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet. The collapsing north polar ice cap may be vanish during summer in less than 22 years, with one estimate saying, may be even in just seven years. As many as 30 per cent of species are on an extinction list; and air pollution is set to cause around two million premature deaths worldwide every year. In India, air pollution is believed to cause 527,700 fatalities a year.
A current model also predicts a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere within 50 years, an amount that would raise global temperatures between 1.5 degree Celsius and 4.5 degree Celsius. All this and much more is happening, which is largely irreversible. This, despite those jamborees called environment meet.
Come to think of it, these were the very issues - and in much smaller scale then - that had given rise to the movement of Earth Day in an America of the 70s when the stench of pollution was often serenaded as the whiff of prosperity. Started by Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin, it was the outcome of his highly successful call for a nationwide people's movement to shake up the political establishment to force the issue into the forefront of political decision-making.
Thirty-eight years down the line, the movement of Earth Day may have gathered enough numerical strength around the globe; now many stringent laws and several top global leaders huddle to discuss ways and means of saving our planet from manmade disasters. But it has been just that - a movement full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Courtesy:timesofindia.com

Complete artical HERE