Is Extremism A Good Idea?

What would you do if somebody violates your mother? Or if you love your country, what would you do, if an alien army invades your motherland, raping your women, killing the children and pillaging your property?
Would you stand with folded hands and watch the tamasha?
Now something greater than your mother, women and possessions are being violated. The mother of all these is crying out for your understanding, your help. Mother Earth who gives sustenance to everything on this beautiful blue globe is being raped, gang raped. And you watch with folded hands and imagine that it is happening to someone else and you are not responsible.
To explain this fully I quote from a novel that I wrote recently. It is not a work about environment at all. Still I make the protagonist mouth the concerns that trouble me constantly.
I quote.
"‘The problem, the greatest single problem that humanity faces today isn’t anything that the politicians have us think. What is in question is our very existence on this earth, our very survival. Man has survived on this planet, even when the great dinosaurs had died out, become extinct. The instinct for survival is the strongest instinct in any living being. Man survived through the ages because of this and also using his superior intelligence and powers of adaptation.’
‘And now it’s as if man is bereft of his powers of reasoning, it’s as if he has suddenly succumbed to a death-wish. It’s as if, like the lemmings of the tundra, he is hell bent on committing suicide en masse. If we go on like this, by the turn of the next century, mankind as specie will have become extinct.’
‘If we take preventive action with immediate effect and a long term perspective in view, we can arrest this problem now. But the tragic thing about it is the fact that there’s only one group of people who can really help and those are the politicians.’
‘In a way, you can’t blame them. All their actions are governed by their tenure of five years sometimes even less in these times of political uncertainty. Their imagination refuses to stretch beyond this time limit, with the result that they can’t or are afraid to take any long-term decisions. In the meantime humanity suffers. In spite of the warnings of experts, the politicians refuse to see the problem that’s facing all living beings, for what it is. And in collusion with some greedy, grabbing industrialists, they’re hell bent on destroying life, the most fragile, the most divine of all things on earth. The warnings of the experts are just laughed off.’
‘BUT I INTEND TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!’
‘Before long, our atmosphere will become piss and shit. Depletion of the Ozone layer will cause skin cancer. It’s already evident in certain countries of the Northern Hemisphere. Millimeter by millimeter, the sea level is rising and cities lying along the sea - as most of them are - will be inundated, under water, in the very near futurre - this is already under way in the beautiful italian city of Venice. Soon we’ll have to wear oxygen masks as if we’re on a lunar landscape. The decimation of forests will bring down the oxygen level and the building of dams will release lethal doses of methane into the already dying environment. And the fact of the matter is that all these processes are under way NOW!’
‘The industrialist pollutes the environment, the politician pollutes the nation.’
‘And the world suffers in the meantime.’
‘I’ve already begun to do something about it. And I’m getting results, but in very slow measure.’
‘Environmental extremism.’
‘…the end does not always justify the means, but sometimes it does.’
‘Not that. That’s not an alternative. Its. It's even called terrorism.’
‘Yeah, maybe. Some dirty Jap used this term when certain daring individuals tried to prevent the hunting of whales by some cruel Japanese.’
‘Come to think of it, it is the terrorism of the future. Folk will die for it and they’ll be dying for a good cause too. Causes like religious and political extremism will die out. What relevance these forms of extremism have when the existence of the very specie hangs in the balance?’
‘Don’t worry. I hope that I’ll never have to resort to such a step. But the option is there all the time, wide open. I’ve the very persons to do it. But I’ll use them only as a last resort. May be I won’t use them at all. But the option is there, ready all the time,’
The protagonist ends the speech thus. 'And I promise you one thing. I’ll make it very difficult for people who are in power who turn a blind eye to the slow destruction of our beautiful, blue planet.’
I think this will do for a starter. If you feel what I believe is right, let us turn into a noble Protector of Mother Earth and fight those who rapes her incessantly.
LISTEN TO THE CALL OF THE MOTHER!

Labels: Environment, Extremism, Pollution