To Dust We Return?

/CONTD/

You see, each time I walk out of eco class I walk out with the conviction that the world is on an irreversible path to ending in a blaze of fire, storms, or floods, and that too in our lifetime. These are not just the unfounded conspiracies of a paranoid doomsayer but actual projections made by scientists who insist on putting it all into tiny readable essays that PG students have to learn and then lose sleep at night (not based off of personal experience in any way, cough cough). And then there's Twitter. Opening the app these days has become something of a Herculean task – I would not recommend it for the faint-hearted. “Microplastics found in every human placenta tested in study”: A Guardian headline from two days ago. “Of all cancers, colorectal cancers will take the lives of most people under 50 by 2030”. Oof. 

If you are wondering how all of these are connected, I would ask you to come join one of our classes and see for yourself. In fact, I’m pretty sure some of our prescribed essays should be carrying some sort of trigger warning in them at this rate. Even if I were to stay off of Twitter (which I'm sure some of you might be suggesting I do), things have come to such a state that nowhere am I free from being reminded of the earth's impending doom. I kid, of course, but it is very difficult to be expected to get up every day and work hard to survive in a system engineered to benefit but a few – the ones in power, the global elite, the 1%, whatever you want to call them –  who have constructed the world in such a way that there is no turning back now. The global warming crisis that makes it unthinkable for me to walk from Heber gate to my house two roads away without an umbrella, the adultered food we all eat that cause daily gastric catastrophes, our poisoned air, poisoned water, poisoned land…these are all the consequences of a social structure that is deeply flawed at its core. No matter how many soggy paper straws we fish out of our drinks or the amount of uncomfortable recyclable tote bags we carry, the fact exists that the world around us – our world – is being systematically destroyed by forces far outside our control and at a pace we cannot fathom. And no amount of environmental protests or green drives are enough to bring about change at the level needed. 

(If I sound too much like this guy, know that it is only because I pay attention in class)

"From dust you came and to dust you shall return" 

Yet another tweet I saw the other day referenced The Guardian article on microplastics by humourously picturing the archeologists of the future (if there is indeed a future) growing horrified as they discover plastics in human bones. I could not help but wonder whether all of our biodegradable/nonbiodegradable fads, clean-up drives and recycling projects would be in vain one day in the foreseeable future, when the human body itself becomes a nonbiodegradable object, harmful to the very soil we’re born on, the very “dust” we’re supposed to return to in the end.

A heavy thought to end on, huh? In my very short blogging journey so far, I have tried not to end my posts on a negative note, but there are days when one cannot help but wonder what our future will look like, what we can do to prevent it, or perhaps the biggest question of all, whether there is anything we can do about it.