Importance of Climate Literacy-by Daya Dissanayake

Source:Dailynews

It is a very tragic confession, if Earth Day organisers have to admit they too have failed. Judging by the statement released by Dr. Tracey Ann Ritchie and the EARTHDAY‍.ORG Education Department, “We can’t expect to solve the climate crisis if we don’t learn about it….Since the first Earth Day in 1970, three billion students have graduated from high school or equivalent worldwide without the fundamental skills and critical thinking necessary to effectively steward the Earth. We have stranded them by failing to educate them on the interplay between the environment and their own lives. We have not prepared them to participate in their communities. We have not equipped them with the skills necessary to build a green economy.”

Half a century after we began Earth Day events, if society has failed to provide Climate Literacy among young people, we need to re-think our strategies. It is difficult to accept that three billion young people never learned climate literacy. Children from primary school to university need to learn, discuss, participate in events, knowing the importance of reducing global warming, contamination and destruction of natural resources.

Earth Day has become one more International Day, in the World Calendar, celebrated, commemorated and just forgotten for the next 364 days. According to Wikipedia, there are 128 International Days related to the environment, climate or the fate of the Earth. This includes 66 days for fauna, and only 14 days for flora. Yet, all the events, discussions, debates on all print and electronic media reaching most of the literate human beings around the world have been ignored or not understood.

Insatiable human greed is perhaps the major threat to Mother Earth. Our disregard for energy conservation and renewable energy, has driven us towards nuclear power. Nuclear plants around the world routinely discharge water containing “small amounts” of Tritium, a radioactive isotope of Hydrogen, into the ocean, while 1.2 million tonnes are to be released from the Fukushima plant in the near future.

Human greed and disregard of the fate of the Earth leads to inevitable ecocide. We replace one evil, coal power, with a bigger evil, nuclear power, while talking about renewable energy.

The people who lived in our country 4,000 years ago would have been living with nature, because they were not culturally “advanced” enough to live off nature. Because I believe that every step we take forward in our culture is a step towards the destruction of nature. Man did not evolve from barbarians. But barbarians evolved from the early humans.

Mahinda Kumara Dalupotha, in his novel ‘Diya Holmana’, shows us how Agri-Culture turned into Agri-business, by agri-vultures, declaring war against Mother Earth. ‘Diya Holmana’ is the story of three generations. It begins with the grandfather after he had made his round of the paddy fields stepping into the tiny stream beside the field, to rinse his mouth with the flowing water. Dalupotha doesn’t have to tell us the water flowing over the paddy field was crystal clear. In the last chapter, he mentions a child diagnosed with cancer, a cancer the traditional village physician says, no one has heard of for the past seven generations. The novel ends when the Vel Vidane goes to a newly-opened pharmacy to buy a drug for his grandchild and finds the logo on the bottle, is the same as the one on the pesticide bottles.

It is tragic even after reading Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’, and writers like Dalupotha, we continue to add poison to increase food production, justifying the poisons, saying by increasing the harvest from the farmlands, we stop destroying more forests to develop more farmland. We have to ask ourselves do we really have to increase food production or if we should work on minimising the 30 percent post-harvest losses. In 2018, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN reported that 1.3 billion tonnes of food goes waste, valued at US$ 2.6 trillion, enough to feed 825 million starving people four times over. The World Food Programme would not have to seek donations from people if they can get this US$ 2.6 trillion. In addition to wastage and losses, we also need to control over consumption, which grows day by day promoted by the new daughters of Mara, in the guise of marketing, via the mass media.

Though we do not realise it, the changing climate can cause the ground to shake, volcanoes to rumble, and tsunamis to crash on to unsuspecting coastlines. We ignore that this solid Earth we stand on, is just a thin crust, consisting of the tectonic plates that move and shift and grind. This might mean Mother Earth is writhing in pain, or growling in anger.

On the other hand, if we accept Mother Earth as a living entity, then all we have to do is give her our loving kindness, practice Ahimsa, try to treat her as we treat our own mother. Then we will think twice, before doing anything that would hurt our mother, or her children, because her children are our brothers and sisters. We are all one family, all the human beings, all the animals from elephants to ants, and all the plant life from Vanaspathi trees to algae.

Every day is an Earth Day, because this is our home. Our only home. We have nowhere else to go, if we destroy this home. Earth Day is really our Mother’s Day. The earth is our Mother, our Mother Goddess as worshiped by early man.

Our great writer, journalist and nature lover, Karunadasa Sooriyarachchi, left us an important message.

When Sandawathi’s sister asks her if she could cut down a jakfruit tree in their land, Sandawathi replies, she has to ask Mother Earth, because she can feel the pain of a tree as it is cut down. But her sister thinks Sandawathi is pretending to be mad, fooling herself as well as others. The sister’s sentiment applies to all of us living on Earth today. By believing trees are not sentient beings, that they do not have feelings, we are fooling ourselves.

A ray of hope appeared when the Daily News of April 17 reported of the webinar, ‘Voices of the Young, to Save the Planet’, by children living in the US, UK, Canada and Sri Lanka, ranging from age 6 to 17, who presented their views on saving our planet, confirming they are climate literate, and eco-literate.

It is time we learn from our children how to save Mother Earth.