PEOPLE like to pride themselves on how much more intelligent we are than other creatures on this planet. It would be helpful to remember that one of the most basic lessons grasped by other ‘lower’ critters is: do not foul your nest. Even an animal as destructive as the elephant knows better than to destroy its own habitat.
It would serve us well, as human beings, to be a bit less arrogant and more aware of the harm we are doing to our planet. We should become more cognisant of the obvious but oft forgotten fact that we cannot survive if we continue on our path of pollution and climate devastation.
Ah, you say, but there are various efforts afoot to improve the situation. For example, many groups celebrate Earth Day. But how serious is their message? We hear about planting trees and properly disposing of rubbish. All well and good, but can trees survive droughts, flooding and forest fires? How many trees do we plant versus the number we cut down for ‘development’? Rubbish, meanwhile, needs to be disposed of somewhere. Shifting it from one place to another aids with cleanliness; it does not save our environment.
And let us face it, we — not only in Bangladesh but throughout the world — face major environmental and climactic challenges that will require vastly bigger solutions than planting trees and disposing of rubbish. One hugely important but oft neglected issue in the environment discussion is the automobile. How many groups are brave enough to point out the incredible damage we are doing with our cars?
Allow me to cite a few statistics. You may or may not know that road crashes kill more than a million people a year and injure far more than that. Since their invention, cars and automobility have killed 60–80 million people and injured at least two billion. Really, are we okay with that?
But we are talking about Earth Day. We may think that the main harm caused by cars is from older models with black smoke pouring out of their tailpipe. Many people believe that by buying an electric car, they can have their convenient transport while not polluting. Not so. Cars pollute in every stage of their life: manufacture, use and disposal. Electric cars require vast resources (read mining) to create the battery, which is difficult and dangerous to recycle. And being heavier, electric cars can actually emit more pollutants from the friction of tires on roads.
Cars are a major contributor to the climate crisis. They are also a major reason why we cannot engage in more activities to mitigate the crisis and adapt to it: we tear down trees to build wide roads; we spend so much money supporting the use of cars that we have little left for environmental efforts; and the use of cars in cities makes it nearly impossible to operate a good public transit system or for people to walk and cycle safely and comfortably.
Cars harm wildlife and reduce biodiversity. The roads and highways we build for them destroy and fragment habitats. And then there is all the noise — not ‘just’ from honking but from revving engines. Think of the roar of motorbikes in the city, which not only is a nuisance, but kills people through stress.
Despite all this, we may associate the car with nature. How else to reach beautiful natural places, to explore the wilderness, than with a CRV? That association is by no means accidental; automobile companies spend billions of dollars a year advertising their products, including through sponsorship of channels such as National Geographic. How many ads have we seen with a car driving through a serene, unpolluted, natural environment? And how well do such ads match the reality of car use?
This year on Earth Day, April 22, let us remember that people are singularly destructive inhabitants of our planet that while the earth can do just fine without us, we cannot survive without a healthy environment; and that one of the biggest causes of environmental damage on this planet is the automobile. Once we recognise the problem, we can use our intelligence to come up with better solutions — not better cars, but better transport systems. We can reduce the need to travel. And then we can begin to repair some of the damage we have caused. It’s time to stop fouling and start cleaning our nest.
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Debra Efroymson is Executive Director of the Institute of Wellbeing, Bangladesh.
