You know ….. It’s all because of climate change!!
Shakir Ahmad
A few days ago i was talking to one of my friends living in Gilgit city about the road situation in many parts of the region that were being damaged by torrential rainfall and snow avalanches. He described the difficult situation in the region, starting from no electricity to lack of food items in the markets and the harsh circumstances when people had to move out of their homes and had to cross the damaged roads risking their lives just to reach to place for bringing some food or take some patients to the nearby health facility.
Later on, I asked many other people to know the reason behind this situation, and also read in the newspapers, and through social media got the impression that most of the direction of the debate heads to the point ……… “it’s all because of climate change”.
Climate change has become a very common terminology among the masses, many a time a scapegoat, if you may, to blame for everything that’s happening now in their lives. This idea stuck into my mind and I wanted to make it clear as I felt it was the need of the time.
There has been a lot of data written and published on various credible sources about the climate change phenomenon and its relationship with the mountain people of GB. The rising trend of using this term makes many things go in the shadow unnoticed. It’s so easy to blame everything on the climate and the flaws in the system of the governance. But, what have we done in our lives to accelerate the issue to such a huge level of destruction affecting the lives of every other human being and infrastructure?
The role of the people in the environment causing multiplication of the disaster impact in our region. We need to ask ourselves, belonging to any part and social level of the society, about what we have done wrong to be suffering so much with every passing year?
The focus will be the youth who are the backbone of the society in all its ups and downs. A child starts to go out in the environment at the age of 5 individually for education and social gatherings. Then he goes through the school age and reaches university life before becoming responsible for his family and society around him. With the passage of time his role in the family changes and finally faces the eternal place. Now the question raises here, what as individuals we do for the environment around us? That’s the point where no one wants to reach on to find out the responsibility for the current scenario. Just ask yourselves some questions on what have i done for my environment?
As a conclusion to the question, it comes out that as an individual we never learn how to take care of our environment. We never plant trees or promote it; have no understanding of solid waste disposal, lack the knowledge of recycling concepts; promote deforestation in the name of development without planning and we have no approach towards eco-friendly fuel consumption. We never try to learn about our environment and the role of various parameters in it.
In spite of all these alarming factors and reasons we still tell every other person that “it’s all because of climate change”.
